It made her second and final run for the Company to India in 1738, sailing via the Cape of Good Hope to Madras and Bengal, and returning to the Downs on 27 August 1739.

[2] The Admiralty bought her to fill in a squadron under Commodore George Anson that would attack Spanish interests on the Pacific west coast of South America.

It was apt that it carried the name of the principal sponsor of the voyage, Admiral Sir Charles Wager, First Lord of the Admiralty.

It was fitted for naval service at Deptford Dockyard between 23 November 1739 and 23 May 1740 at a cost of £7,096.2.4d,[2] and was registered as a sixth rate on 22 April 1740, being established with 120 men and 28 guns.

Some of the crew broke into the spirit room and got drunk, armed themselves and began looting, dressing up in officers' clothes and fighting.

After the wreck of Wager, these factors, combined with terrible conditions and murderous in-fighting between officers and men, caused discipline to break down.

[6][7] In the 1740s the viceroy of Peru and the governor of Chile converged in a project to advance the frontiers of the Spanish Empire in the Southeast Pacific and prevent the establishment of a British base.

As a result of this plan the Juan Fernández Islands were settled and the fort of Tenquehuen established in Chonos Archipelago near Taitao Peninsula.

It lay on the bottom of a small river, which had temporarily become a torrent after a three-day storm, which had the effect of removing a covering layer of sand.

The expedition also identified "Mount Misery", named by the survivors in the contemporary accounts and used as a viewpoint, as being the 180 m high hill about 3 km south and inland from the remains.

What is now an inland lake at the north west corner of the island was once an inlet connected to the sea, as shown on Admiralty charts of the early 1800s.

"The spot which we occupied was a bay formed by hilly promontories; that to the south so exceeding steep, that in order to ascend it (for there was no going round, the bottom being washed by the sea) we were at labour of cutting steps.

This would be consistent with descriptions of the Spanish sponsored salvors in the late 1700s hacking pieces off the wreck, dragging them to the nearest beach, and then burning them to release the valuable metal from the structure.

The SES 2006 expedition made a 68 minute film (by Lynwen Griffiths) which is available on YouTube called "The Quest for HMS Wager V1A".