The three cruising voyages were to have a significant impact on the direction of British policy and action in the South Sea. They showed that properly planned expeditions could achieve much against the poorly defended Pacific coast of Spanish America and they stimulated interest in the South Sea Company and particularly in the opportunities for trade and plunder offered within its area of interest. Throughout the period of peace which began in 1721 the success of the Woodes Rogers expedition and the failure of Clipperton's informed political and commercial debates about how to exploit ‘the inexhaustible fountain of gold’ and helped direct attention towards a state-funded solution. The blue water policy first mooted in the time of William III was to be significantly extended with Anson's circumnavigation of 1740–1744, and without the pioneering exploits of the privateers the government might not have been tempted to trust its own ships on a venture so far outside its experience. On the other hand the failure of the Anson expedition to accomplish most of its objectives in South America suggests that the navy was not yet fully capable of carrying through long-distance expeditions of this kind.

Robert Harley's bill by which the government's unsecured creditors were to be incorporated as ‘the Governor and Company of Merchants of Great Britain trading to the South Seas and other parts of America and for running the Fishery’ received the Royal Assent on 12 June 1711, and the South Sea Company was incorporated in October, the same month as the Duke, Dutchess and what the newspapers referred to as the ‘Aquapulco ship’ (now the Batchelor) moored at Erith. The progress of Woodes Rogers's little flotilla from the Cape to the Texel and then to London had been eagerly followed in the public prints and provided an encouraging background to the debate about the opportunities open to the Company's investors.