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Sir Charles Wager (24 February 1666 – 24 May 1743) was a British Admiral and First Lord of the Admiralty between 1733 and 1742. Despite heroic active service and steadfast administration and diplomatic service, Wager's reputation has suffered from a profoundly mistaken idea that the navy was then at a low ebb. In reality its numerical preponderance over other navies was greater than at any other time in the century, and its dockyard facilities, overseas bases (Wager was much involved in the development of new bases in the Caribbean), victualling organization, and central co-ordination were by far the most elaborate and advanced. Although British warship design was inferior to French in some respects, the real problem was an insufficiency of the versatile and seaworthy 60-gun ships, a class that Wager's Admiralty had chosen to augment during the 1730s but, as wartime experience would show, not aggressively enough. ==Early life== Born in Rochester, Kent, after the death of his father Captain Charles Wager (b. 1630), on 24 February 1666. His father had started life in the merchant service and then gained advancement in the navy of the Commonwealth. His mother was Prudence (b. 1640/41), daughter of Vice-Admiral William Goodson, who became a renowned officer in the navy of the time. Wager remarked in 1731, "On both sides I am related to the navy".〔(Coxe, 3.116)〕 His paternal grandfather was John Wager (d. 1656) of St Margaret's, Rochester, who became a mariner after migrating from Charlton Kings, Cheltenham. His father commanded the ''Yarmouth'' in the fleet that brought Charles II to England and quickly proved to be a capable, trustworthy, well-liked officer of the Royal Navy. He dined at the home of Samuel Pepys who remarked in his diary "A brave, stout fellow this Captain is, and I think very honest.".〔(Pepys,Diary 2 Nov 1665)〕 Two years after the elder Wager's death, Samuel Pepys heard a friend who had been at Tangier contrast his conduct with that of others who had served in the Strait of Gibraltar, remarking, as Pepys noted, "that above all Englishmen that ever was there, there never was any man that behaved himself like poor Charles Wager, whom the very Moores do mention with teares sometimes".〔(Pepys, Diary, 9.137)〕 Prudence remarried after his father’s death to Alexander Parker, a Quaker and London merchant. There was already an older sister, Prudence, and the marriage produced six more children. The young Charles found himself lacking the advantages of patronage and parentage, necessary for advancement in the Royal Navy of that time, due to his maternal grandfather's dismissal from the navy following the restoration and his father’s untimely death. Wager was apprenticed to a Quaker merchant captain of New England named John Hull of Barnstable, Massachusetts who operated a transatlantic shipping service. Wager's mother was a witness when John Hull married Alice Teddeman in the London Quaker Meeting in 1684. When Dr Teddeman Hull, their oldest son, visited London in 1742 he had a letter of introduction from Governor Richard Ward of Rhode Island which stated that he was "the son of Captain John Hull, late of this colony, under whom Sir Charles Wager was educated".〔(Kimball, 1.215)〕 It was while working with the Quaker John Hull that Wager displayed the strength of character that ultimately brought him to the attention of the Navy. During one of many transatlantic voyages the vessel which Hull was commanding with Wager as understudy was waylaid by a French privateer and told to "strike". Hull could not fight due to his religious convictions but equally was loath to surrender his valuable vessel and cargo and so he turned to his right-hand man. The young Wager did not share his patron's religion and had no such compunctions, and so it was Wager, "who accepted the encounter, and falling to work with the Frenchman, soon obliged him to sheer off." 〔(Quaker Anecdotes pg44)〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Charles Wager」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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