"The journals of Captain Philip Saumarez were written while he was aboard the "Centurion", flagship of Anson's fleet, which circumnavigated the world in 1740-44. The circumnavigation was one of the great voyages in the history of exploration and was distinguished from the Elizabethan buccaneers in that it was a naval expedition, sanctioned to capture the Spanish Acapulco galleon and harass the Spaniards to the best of its power. The treasure captured during the four year voyage amounted to about fifty million pounds (in today's currency), the biggest prize of all time ... Saumarez ... was killed by a cannonball during a battle off Cape Finisterre in 1747. His four logbooks of the voyage, long thought lost, were recently discovered in a cardboard box in the Saumarez manor in the Channel Islands. With the logs were numerous letters and documents that gave an unusual insight into the voyage and its leaders: Anson (father of the British Navy) and Saumarez. Saumarez's journals were used to provide information for the popular account of the day, by Richard Walter, and that source has become the standard work on the expedition, with its mistakes perpetuated by commentators ever since. With the accurate, daily accounts of the voyage and supporting documents, Leo Heaps has edited and compiled the hardships of circumnavigation in the original words of the Centurion's Captain ..." -- Jacket