While still very young, he accompanied Anson in his voyage of discovery round the world.
In 1768 he published a Narrative of some of his early adventures with Anson, which was to some extent utilized by his grandson in Don Juan.
The city, settled in 1840 and named in honour of the merchant and philanthropist, Anson Green Phelps (1781-18J3), was originally a part of the township of Derby; it was chartered as a borough in 1864 and as a city in 1893, when the township of Ansonia, which had been incorporated in 1889, and the city were consolidated.
The voyage of Lord Anson to the Pacific in 1740-1744 was of a predatory character, and he lost more than half his men from scurvy; while it is not pleasant to reflect that at the very time when the French and Spaniards were measuring an arc of the meridian at Quito, the British under Anson were pillaging along the coast of the Pacific and burning the town of Payta.
But a romantic interest attaches to the wreck of the " Wager," one of Anson's fleet, on a desert island near Chiloe, for it bore fruit in the charming narrative of Captain John Byron, which will endure for all time.