Three quarters of the Gloucester’s roughly four hundred men had already perished, and after the remainder were transferred to the Centurion—most of them so sick that they had to be hoisted onboard on wooden grates—Anson had the Gloucester’s hull set on fire to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. He watched as its wooden world ignited, producing what one of his lieutenants, Philip Saumarez, called “as melancholy a scene as I ever observed since I have been in the Navy.”
