Categories | True Crime |
Author | David Grann |
Publisher | Random House Large Print; Large type / Large print edition (April 18, 2023) |
Language | English |
Paperback | 528 pages |
Item Weight | 1.1 pounds |
Dimensions |
6.06 x 0.9 x 9.19 inches |
I. Book introduction
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder is the fifth nonfiction book by American journalist David Grann. The book focuses on the Wager Mutiny. It was published on April 18, 2023 by Doubleday. The book became a bestseller, topping The New York Times best-seller list in the nonfiction category for its first week of publication.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on The Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire.
On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.
But then … six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court found guilty could hang.
The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann’s recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O’Brian, his portrayal of the castaways’ desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann’s work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.
Editorial Reviews
- “The most gripping sea-yarn I’ve read in years….A tour de force of narrative nonfiction. Mr. Grann’s account show how storytelling, whether to judges or readers, can shape individual and national fortunes – as well as our collective memories.”
— Wall Street Journal - “Glorious, steely…a tightly written, relentless, blow-by-blow account that is hard to put down”— The Washington Post
- “As much a rousing adventure as an exploration of the power of narratives to shape our perception of reality.” — The New York Times
- “Propulsive….finely-detailed…a ripping yarn…remarkable.” — The Boston Globe
- “Riveting…The Wager reads like a thriller, tackling a multilayered history—and imperialism—with gusto.” — Time Magazine
- “The beauty of The Wager unfurls like a great sail…He fixes his spyglass on the ravages of empire, of racism, of bureaucratic indifference and raw greed…one of the finest nonfiction books I’ve ever read.” — The Guardian (UK)
- “The story of the shipwreck and its aftermath features scenery-chewing characters, unexpected twists and an almost unimaginable amount of human misery. Grann, the author of the acclaimed “Killers of the Flower Moon,” tells it with style. He manages to wring maximum drama out of the events and sketch out nuanced portraits of key players on the doomed ship.”
— Associated Press - “His dogged search through ships’ logs and other contemporaneous accounts of the disaster and its mutinous aftermath has turned up the kind of sterling details that make his writing sing; he is also interested in the way these events were recorded and then recounted, with many different people trying to shape the memory of what happened. Grann simultaneously reconstructs history while telling a tale that is as propulsive and adventure-filled as any potboiler.”
— The Atlantic - “A genre-defying literary naval-history thriller, part Master and Commander, part Lord of the Flies” — Vanity Fair
- “A thrilling account…dramatic and engrossing.” — The Economist
- “This astonishing tale of maritime warfare, mutiny and survival in the 18th-century Atlantic proves that a nonfiction book can be as thrilling as any summer blockbuster.”
— People - “The Wager” is a soaring literary accomplishment and seductive adventure tale… enthralling, seamlessly crafted… ‘The Wager’ then, is an accomplishment as vividly realized and ingeniously constructed as Grann’s previous work, on par with Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm. Welcome a classic.”
— Minneapolis Star Tribune - “Gripping … Combining impeccable research with exceptional storytelling powers, [Grann] spirits the reader aboard a creaking wooden ship trapped at the eye of a howling storm… No book that you’re likely to read either this year or next will prove more dramatic and enthralling than Grann’s magnificent story of life both at sea and out on the desolate, mist-laden island whose solitary peak the Wager’s unfortunate crew aptly named Mount Misery”— Financial Times
- “A masterclass in story-telling…With a series of twists and turns worthy of a well-plotted thriller, the author of ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ uncovers an epic sea-faring tale…Epic true story as told by a master… David Grann has produced this riveting book…with the artistry of a superb novelist.” — The Toronto Star
- “[Grann’s] meticulously researched stories, with their spare, simmering setups that almost always deliver stunning payoffs, have made him one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today…[Grann] has mastered a streamlined, propulsive type of narrative that readers devour for its hide-and-seek reveals…David’s stuff reads like literature, but every detail, every quote, every seemingly implausible glimpse into a subject’s mind is accounted for”
— New York Magazine - “Your favorite writer’s favorite writer for decades…David Grann is poised to become the moment’s leading storyteller… [Grann] specializes in gripping historical chronicles and crime stories…so rich in intrigue that they would strain credulity in fiction…[Grann’s] become one of our culture’s leading sources of holy shit page-turners.” — GQ
- “David Grann is one of the premier nonfiction storytellers of our time…Grann’s masterful new book…is at once an adventure on the high seas, a horror story, and a courtroom drama — a little bit Rashomon meets Lord of the Flies.” — Rolling Stone
- “Not just a good but a great story, fraught with duplicity, terror and occasional heroism… the story of the Wager is, like many of its antecedents — from Homer’s “Odyssey” to “Mutiny on the Bounty” — a testament to the depths of human depravity and the heights of human endurance, and you can’t ask for better than that from a story…The Wager will keep you in its grip to its head-scratching, improbable end.” — Los Angeles Times
Praise for Killers of the Flower Moon
‘An extraordinary story with extraordinary pace and atmosphere’ Sunday Times
‘A marvel of detective-like research and narrative verve’ Financial Times
‘A riveting true story of greed, serial murder and racial injustice’ Jon Krakauer
‘A fiercely entertaining mystery story and a wrenching exploration of evil’ Kate Atkinson
‘A fascinating account of a tragic and forgotten chapter in the history of the American West’ John Grisham
And for The Lost City of Z (shortlisted for the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize)
‘Absorbing… a wonderful story of a lost age of heroic exploration’ Sunday Times
‘Marvellous… engrossing’ Daily Telegraph
‘At once a biography, a detective story and wonderfully vivid piece of travel writing… suspenseful… rollicking… fascinating’ New York Times
About David Grann
David Elliot Grann (born March 10, 1967) is an American journalist, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and a best-selling author.
His first book, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, was published by Doubleday in February 2009. After its first week of publication, it debuted on The New York Times bestseller list at #4 and later reached #1. Grann’s articles have been collected in several anthologies, including What We Saw: The Events of September 11, 2001, The Best American Crime Writing of 2004 and 2005, and The Best American Sports Writing of 2003 and 2006. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Weekly Standard.
According to a profile in Slate, Grann has a reputation as a “workhorse reporter”, which has made him a popular journalist who “inspires a devotion in readers that can border on the obsessive.”
David Grann was born on March 10, 1967, to Phyllis and Victor Grann. His mother is the former CEO of Putnam Penguin and the first woman CEO of a major publishing firm. His father is an oncologist and Director of the Bennett Cancer Center in Stamford, Connecticut. Grann has two siblings, Edward and Alison
II. Reviewer: The Wager
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1. LINDAL reviews for The Wager
“The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder” Thrilling account of a real voyage that reads like a novel
The Wager was an English ship that set sail from England in 1740 during an imperial war with Spain. It was the mid-1700s, and navigational tools were primitive. Diseases among the seafarers spread rapidly, and I was incredulous, realizing how little they knew about curbing nutritional deficiencies such as scurvy. It seems absurd that in addition to not knowing about the necessity for vitamin C, insufficient levels of niacin were causing psychosis and night blindness resulting from lack of Vitamin A. After shipwrecking on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia, the story is as much about human nature as it is about surviving on an island and attaining its mission against the Spanish. It is fascinating to read about how they discovered new food sources and what they chose to learn and ignore from natives whose cultures had thrived in the areas where the Englishmen became castaways. If they were going to continue to survive and continue their naval mission, they had to build new boats without the technology available in their homeland, and there were myriad disagreements about how to proceed and also about which path to follow when it was time to embark on the dangerous waters again. Disharmony leads some groups to set sail in opposite directions eventually. When the survivors arrived back in England, the accounts of what happened were not in sync.
The characters who are historical figures demonstrate the gamut of human emotions and an evolution of social mores. Without describing each character, I’ll point out that we meet a dominating captain with poor leadership traits. And, of course, we meet argumentative underlings who have smug independence. Then, we see ferocious workers and others with inherent leadership skills and charisma. All of the men are familiar with British naval order and ranking conventions. Yet, more hierarchies develop as the men struggle to survive and create social order. As the subtitle suggests, the fight for survival leads to becoming mutinous and murderous. Grann describes the basic human drives and terrors with admirable writing skills.
Writing, in the eighteenth century, was an honorable thing to do. The men onboard the Wager kept written logs—some were required, and others were kept to document some of the mutinous decisions. David Grann had copious notes and records to use when piecing this story together. Rousseau and Voltaire cited the Wager’s expedition reports, as did Charles Darwin and Herman Melville. The seafaring journalists quote the Bible, poets, and famous writers. It is incredible how learned they were. Grann uses his well-honed investigative and research skills to weave a beautiful story of what reportedly happened and the eloquent analysis by those who experienced it. Grann’s ability to combine first-person accounts of the expedition with his summation of the events provides fabulous text about the seafarers and their exploits. Each creative, descriptive section title structures the book and shapes the voyage with metaphoric summaries: The Wooden World, Into the Storm, Castaways, Deliverance, and Judgment are the main sections, and Gran used these to develop the book so that it reads like a novel and keeps the reader riveted. I highly recommend this narrative to everyone, even those who prefer fiction to nonfiction.
2. BURNS reviews for The Wager
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder. David Grann. Doubleday, 2023. 352 pages.
On January 28, 1742, a thing that could very loosely have been called a boat – more like boat-ish, washed up on the shore of Brazil. On it were about thirty barely living men who had once been part of the crew of the British ship called The Wager that had left England in 1740 as part of a small fleet off to harass the Spanish in the so-called “War of Jenkin’s Ear” or the War of Austrian Succession. They seemed to be all that was left of a crew of a couple of hundred, and they told the story of their wreck off the southern tip of South America, their survival on the desolate landscape for months, and their incredible 3000-mile-long voyage to Brazil. But, wait, there’s more! Six months later an even sadder boat washed up on the coast of Chile, with just three inhabitants, including the ship’s captain, and they added a new layer to the tale: murder and mutiny. When the survivors finally arrived back home in England, having been away from their loved ones for 4 or 5 years, accusations flew back and forth, various accounts were published, and the public was enthralled by the mystery and drama of what exactly had happened to The Wager and its crew.
David Grann is the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, and he has established himself as one of the top writers of narrative nonfiction working today. His follow-up to Killers doesn’t disappoint. The reader will learn a lot about life on a 1740s British warship and about how the command structure within the navy operated, but Grann also succeeds in bringing the men to life and telling their stories and how they dealt with their tragedy and hardships. Some men behaved more nobly than others, of course, but all suffered.
Grann also relates the story of the shipwreck and subsequent court-martial to the bigger picture: empire. This incident occurred at the time that the British empire was really in ascendancy. The British performance in the War of Austrian Succession and the possibly embarrassing public spectacle of a high-profile mutiny trial might have had a major impact on Brittania’s rule over the waves, and the world. Grann explores how all these big-picture ideas intersected with the very specific fears of some of the surviving crewmen that their careers and lives were at stake.
3. BILLY reviews for The Wager
If you enjoyed Endurance, you’ll enjoy The Wager – what’s not to dive into with an improbable story of survival wrapped up in a 18th century seafaring adventure across the Atlantic Ocean and around Cape Horn? Grann has done an inscrutable job of scouring the historical records and turning them into an engrossing narrative of adventure, intrigue, murder, and courtroom twists that will leave you mesmerized. I particularly enjoyed Grann’s sprinkling of the etymology of common day sayings that have their roots in the parlance of 18th century nautical jargon, such as “below the weather” for feeling ill.
Perhaps one of the most lasting impressions for me was in comparing this to Shackleton’s ill-fated expedition. Though nearly two centuries apart and not comparable in terms of technology, both medical and nautical, they still present interesting comparisons in leadership in terms of Cheap vs Shackleton, in my opinion. While I don’t want to give too much away, it does seem that Cheap’s style of leadership could be blamed for developments on the island where the Wager was shipwrecked, while Shackleton’s was clearly responsible for the morale and eventual rescue of his party.
In any case, I heartily recommend both books as both fantastic historical narratives and studies in leadership.
4. CMAXIMUS reviews for The Wager
In addition to, or perhaps a necessary companion to, his tremendous narrative skill, David Grann possesses an incredible (fortunate for his readers) ability to find historic incidents worthy of such skill. Historic occurrences such as this 18th century shipwreck tale come alive and translate into rollicking adventures in the hands of such a master. As much as I appreciate Erik Larson, Ron Chernow, John Meacham and others, Grann is today’s most readable popular historian. I recommend Candice Millard also.
Back to the tale at hand. I hope the publication of this book vaults the story of the Wager back into its rightful place in seafaring history, as well as furthering Grann’s fame. This thrilling tale of unequaled hardship, endurance, and ultimately infamy had vanished into obscurity, but as with the tragedy of the Osage tribe in “Flower Moon,” the story deserves to be resurrected.
“The Wager” is so much more than just a shipwreck tale, although it is a gripping, dramatic one. The book is a captivation exploration of the human psyche certainly, but I don’t want to sound pretentious for it can be read as a thrilling true-life adventure tale too.
5. AMACHINIST reviews for The Wager
David Grann, an award winner non-fiction author, has done his best to tease out the facts of the history of the British vessel, the Wager. Britain was at war with Spain. In 1740, the re-fitted merchant ship, Wager, joined a fleet setting out to capture a Spanish galleon loaded with treasure. The galleon had been sighted off the coast of Patagonia. Many on the Wager were enlisted naval men, but most were “pressed” into service and were of questionable character. On route, typhus killed the Captain and many of the original crew. Other sailors succumbed to scurvy. A young, inexperienced Captain, David Cheap was put in command of the Wager. Severe storms in the Strait of Magellan in addition to faulty navigation techniques, caused the Wager to shipwreck on a desolate island. There were sailors, who could not swim and they drowned in their attempts to swim ashore.
The survivors were weak, starving and frightened. Many were angry at the Captain and blamed the shipwreck on him. Three sects formed: those loyal to their Captain, those loyal to the gunner, John Bulkeley, and those loyal only to themselves. Captain Cheap did his best to keep a “stiff upper lip” and impose the chain of command codified by the British Navy. Cheap shot and killed one sailor for stealing from their meager food supplies. This deepened the rift and strife among the factions.
Separate groups sailed for home at different times and some made it to Britain. Once the history of the Wager was revealed, a court-martial tribunal was formed against the mutineers. If found guilty, they would be hanged. In the end, all were acquitted. Was this a “white-wash” by the British naval court or a moment of compassion and contrition? Several of the survivors wrote their own accounts of the wreck of the Wager. Between the embellishments and omissions to save their own necks and their naval careers, the sailors published their yarns. Grann deserves kudos for trying to present the many sides of this naval
6. DIANE S reviews for The Wager
Roughly two hundred and eighty days after The Wager shipwrecked, Grann pens the tale of.what happened and why. Using a narrative voice he used vivid descriptions about life at sea, a hard and dangerous life,often made more so by lack of men due to illness. The rough waters around Cape Horn created a life and death situation.Well researched Grann used a journal kept.by one of the men, as well as 18th century ship.logs, textbooks and lastly the court proceedings, themselves.
A drama of survival and betrayal and all of it, true. So few men returned and long after the ship.was deemed lost, and each had their own story to tell. Or rather their own interpretation. I found myself riveted to this book and found that I was reluctant to decide who was right or wrong. They all suffered terribly and were in a situation with few choices
Grann has become another non fiction author to which I look forward. His subjects are interestingly told in a story like manner. This audio was well done in a very dramatic, though I sometimes thought maybe a touch too dramatic, but a style that befitted the book.
7. BARBARA K reviews for The Wager
David Grann has a knack for finding neglected stories, researching them deeply, and then turning them into immensely readable books: The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, and now this tale.
And what a tale it is! During the War of Jenkins’ Ear between England and Spain (you all remember that one, right?), a small fleet of British warships set out in search of a legendary Spanish ship known to travel to and from the New World with cargoes of gold and silver. Their route would take them around Cape Horn, arguably the most treacherous passage on the high seas. During this Atlantic-to-Pacific ordeal, which lasted months, all of the ships were separated.
Grann’s story focuses on The Wager, a converted merchant ship that ultimately made the turn to the Pacific but then foundered on rocks surrounding an island off the coast of Chile. Several sets of castaways from The Wager eventually made it back to England, producing differing written versions of what ensued before and after the shipwreck.
These documents allowed Grann to introduce three characters vividly: the Wager’s captain, the gunner, and a teenage midshipman named Byron (grandfather to the poet); and to sketch in more lightly many other individuals. He ably uses his three principals to describe the character of a British naval ship of the time, and distills from the multiple recountings a reasonably clear picture of events.
The Admiralty, back in England, undertook much the same task regarding the events, but with a very different motivation, one that at first seems surprising but ultimately makes a great deal of sense, from their perspective.
It is not, I hope, divulging too much to comment on two issues that dramatically reduced the number of healthy men on the ships even before they reached the Cape: typhus and scurvy. The causes of both these diseases were unknown at the time but their effects were horrific, both for their victims and the ability of the remaining crews to persevere in the face of so many challenges.
The nature of the story, Grann’s narrative skills, and the work of the narrator, Dion Graham, swept me along. Not a single dull sequence, but nothing overwrought either. Highly recommended for those interested in naval history – or adventure.
8. JULIE reviews for The Wager
First-rate historical narrative nonfiction! I felt like I was on the set of Master and Commander although I reckon Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany smelled a bit nicer than the blokes on The Wager.
It’s hard to wrap the head around what these sailors endured, even before hoisting anchor. I had never given much thought to the term ‘press gangs,’ and was horrified to learn that it was the virtual enslavement of men and boys by the British Navy to serve on ships that were short of troops. The elderly, sick and disabled were yanked from convalescent homes, men were kidnapped off the streets in broad daylight, all to spend years at sea in rat and lice infested vessels, many never to return.
And so it was with The Wager and its sister ships who made up an ill-fated 18th century fleet with a mission to chase Spanish galleons around South America and into Pacific waters. David Grann recounts the sailing and shipwrecks and survival with gripping detail, taking the reader into the heart of storms, the ghastly ravages of starvation and disease . He brings to life multiple historical characters and it is their fates and the aftermath of their survival and return to England that propel this breathtaking plot.
The book is thick with sources at the end, so the actual narrative is concise and moves briskly. Fascinating, enthralling and highly recommended.
9. TAMMY reviews for The Wager
Wow this was such an incredible, thrilling story—a definite must read. Set in the 1740’s, it’s a true story based around the HMS Wager involving a court martial where two groups of shipwrecked British sailors accuse each other of mutiny + murder.
David Grann pulled out all the stops in this harrowing tale of the British ship Wager that embarked from England on a secret mission against Spain; to capture a Spanish galleon for it’s treasure aboard. It begins in Britain—with no sailors available to help man the ship they resorted to unfathomable acts.. (unbelievably) of paying gangs to snatch up unsuspecting men and forcing sick + (aging) invalid soldiers aboard as sailors on the ship.
David Grann writes of the shipwrecked sailors that survived.. only to fight for survival and dominance on what is now called “Wager Island” (some resorting to abominable acts.) Two years later (1742) a patched-up boat of thirty men landed ashore in Brazil with tales of heroism—six months later another three in Chile with tales of mutiny.. this is a fascinating tell-all of the true story behind what really happened onboard the HMS Wager.
I found this all hard to believe.. it’s like a cross between Robinson Crusoe and Lord of the Flies.. but according to David Grann’s years researching this.. it did happen. Highly recommend. 5 stars — Pub. 4/18/23
10. DAX reviews for The Wager
Grann’s best book yet. The story of the Wager is stirring, and Grann tells the tale with a concise narrative. It would be easy to let this story become unruly, as there are dozens of conflicting accounts, but Grann has sifted through the materials and created a flawless, engaging read. It is a story in the mold of “Robinson Crusoe”, however Grann posits the mutiny of the Wager as an example of the flaws of imperialism and human nature. There are no heroes in the “The Wager”. This one ranks up there with Lansing’s “Endurance”. Wholeheartedly recommend it.
III. The Wager Quotes
The best book quotes from The Wager by David Grann
“A “scuttlebutt” was a water cask around which the seamen gossiped while waiting for their rations. A ship was “three sheets to the wind” when the lines to the sails broke and the vessel pitched drunkenly out of control. To “turn a blind eye” became a popular expression after Vice-Admiral Nelson deliberately placed his telescope against his blind eye to ignore his superior’s signal flag to retreat.”
“Constructing a single large warship could require as many as four thousand trees; a hundred acres of forest might be felled.”
“Empires preserve their power with the stories that they tell, but just as critical are the stories they don’t—the dark silences they impose, the pages they tear out.”
“We all impose some coherence—some meaning—on the chaotic events of our existence. We rummage through the raw images of our memories, selecting, burnishing, erasing. We emerge as the heroes of our stories, allowing us to live with what we have done—or haven’t done.”
“Persons who have not experienced the hardships we have met with,” Bulkeley wrote, “will wonder how people can be so inhuman to see their fellow creatures starving before their faces, and afford ’em no relief. But hunger is void of all compassion.”
“Presence of mind, and courage in distress, Are more than armies to procure success.”
“Indeed these imperial structures require it: thousands and thousands of ordinary people, innocent or not, serving – and even sacrificing themselves for – a system many of them rarely question.”
“Just as people tailor their stories to serve their interests – revising, erasing, embroidering – so do nations. After all the grim and troubling narratives about the Wager disaster, and after all the death and destruction, the empire had finally found its mythic tale of the sea.”
“The authors rarely depicted themselves or their companions as the agents of an imperialist system. They were consumed with their own daily struggles and ambitions—with working the ship, with gaining promotions and securing money for their families, and, ultimately, with survival. But it is precisely such unthinking complicity that allows empires to endure. Indeed, these imperial structures require it: thousands and thousands of ordinary people, innocent or not, serving—and even sacrificing themselves for—a system many of them rarely question.”
“The average man-of-war was estimated by a leading shipwright to last only fourteen years.”
“During Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition—the first to circumnavigate the globe, in 1522—a scribe onboard wrote that the pilots “will not speak of the longitude.” Longitudinal lines, which run perpendicular to the parallels of latitude, have no fixed reference point, like the equator. And so navigators must establish their own demarcation—their home port or some other arbitrary line—from which to gauge how far east or west they are. (Today, Greenwich, England, is designated the prime meridian, marking zero degrees longitude.)”
“The ships glided in elegant formation, with the Centurion leading the way, her sails spread like wings.”
“Presence of mind, and courage in distress, Are more than armies to procure success. Bulkeley knew that none of them would survive much longer without additional sources of food.”
“(When ailing seamen were shielded belowdecks from the adverse elements outside, they were said to be “under the weather.”)”
“To “toe the line” derives from when boys on a ship were forced to stand still for inspection with their toes on a deck seam. To “pipe down” was the boatswain’s whistle for everyone to be quiet at night, and “piping hot” was his call for meals.”
“It is surprising, how soon a boy overcomes his timidity about going aloft. For my own part, my nerves became as steady as the earth’s diameter….I took great delight in furling the top-gallant sails and royals in a hard blow, which duty required two hands on the yard. There was a wild delirium about it, a fine rushing of the blood about the heart; and a glad, thrilling, and throbbing of the whole system, to find yourself tossed up at every pitch into the clouds of a stormy sky, and hovering like a judgment angel between heaven and earth.”
“He emerges in our story like one of those settlers who arrives on the American frontier with no discernable history—a man to be reckoned with by his present deeds alone.”
“As Samuel Johnson once observed, “No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.”
“how to measure the ship’s speed by casting a line ribbed with evenly spaced knots into the water and then counting the number that slipped through his hands over a period of time. (One knot equaled a little more than a land mile per hour.)”
“When a press gang surrounded a church in London, in 1755, in pursuit of a seaman inside, he managed, according to a newspaper report, to slip away disguised in “an old gentlewoman’s long cloak, hood and bonnet.”
“They were consumed with their own daily struggles and ambitions—with working the ship, with gaining promotions and securing money for their families, and, ultimately, with survival. But it is precisely such unthinking complicity that allows empires to endure. Indeed, these imperial structures require it: thousands and thousands of ordinary people, innocent or not, serving—and even sacrificing themselves for—a system many of them rarely question.”
“the Wager, a British man-of-war. When the news reached England, it was greeted with disbelief. In September 1740, during an imperial conflict with Spain, the Wager, carrying some 250 officers and crew, had embarked from Portsmouth in a squadron on a secret mission: to capture a treasure-filled Spanish galleon known as “the prize of all the”
“God forbid he should say he was on a ship rather than in one.”
“Men-of-war were among the most sophisticated machines yet conceived:”
“they were devised to be both murderous instruments and the homes in which hundreds of sailors lived”
“toe the line” derives from when boys on a ship were forced to stand still for inspection with their toes on a deck seam. To “pipe down” was the boatswain’s whistle for everyone to be quiet at night, and “piping hot” was his call for meals. A “scuttlebutt” was a water cask around which the seamen gossiped while waiting for their rations.”
“Nevertheless, the case against all of the men of the Wager seemed overwhelming. They were not accused of negligible misconduct but, rather, of a complete breakdown of naval order, from the highest levels of command to the rank and file.”
“The men wondered whether Cheap, like Captain Kidd and Commodore Anson, understood that the secret to establishing command was not tyrannizing men but convincing, sympathizing, and inspiring them—or if he would be one of those despots who ruled by the lash.”
“Empires preserve their power with the stories that they tell, but just as critical are the stories they don’t—the dark silences they impose, the pages they”
“A share of the prize money was given to each seaman: about three hundred pounds,”
“Anson, who was soon promoted to rear admiral, was awarded about ninety thousand pounds”
“It was the long-lost Captain David Cheap, and accompanying him were the marine lieutenant, Thomas Hamilton,”
“the boatswain’s whistle for everyone to be quiet at night, and “piping hot” was his call for meals. A “scuttlebutt” was a water cask around which the seamen gossiped while waiting for their rations. A ship was “three sheets to the wind” when the lines to the sails broke and the vessel pitched drunkenly out of control. To “turn a blind eye” became a popular expression after Vice-Admiral Nelson deliberately placed his telescope against his blind eye to ignore his superior’s signal flag to retreat. Not only did Byron have”
Excerpted from The Wager by David Grann
Chapter 1 – The First Lieutenant
Each man in the squadron carried, along with a sea chest, his own burdensome story. Perhaps it was of a scorned love, or a secret prison conviction, or a pregnant wife left on shore weeping. Perhaps it was a hunger for fame and fortune, or a dread of death. David Cheap, the first lieutenant of the Centurion, the squadron’s flagship, was no different. A burly Scotsman in his early forties with a protracted nose and intense eyes, he was in flight—from squabbles with his brother over their inheritance, from creditors chasing him, from debts that made it impossible for him to find a suitable bride. Onshore, Cheap seemed doomed, unable to navigate past life’s unexpected shoals. Yet as he perched on the quarterdeck of a British man-of-war, cruising the vast oceans with a cocked hat and spyglass, he brimmed with confidence—even, some would say, a touch of haughtiness. The wooden world of a ship—a world bound by the Navy’s rigid regulations and the laws of the sea and, most of all, by the hardened fellowship of men—had provided him a refuge. Suddenly he felt a crystalline order, a clarity of purpose. And Cheap’s newest posting, despite the innumerable risks that it carried, from plagues and drowning to enemy cannon fire, offered what he longed for: a chance to finally claim a wealthy prize and rise to captain his own ship, becoming a lord of the sea.
The problem was that he could not get away from the damned land. He was trapped—cursed, really—at the dockyard in Portsmouth, along the English Channel, struggling with feverish futility to get the Centurion fitted out and ready to sail. Its massive wooden hull, 144 feet long and 40 feet wide, was moored at a slip. Carpenters, caulkers, riggers, and joiners combed over its decks like rats (which were also plentiful). A cacophony of hammers and saws. The cobblestone streets past the shipyard were congested with rattling wheelbarrows and horse-drawn wagons, with porters, peddlers, pickpockets, sailors, and prostitutes. Periodically, a boatswain blew a chilling whistle, and crewmen stumbled from ale shops, parting from old or new sweethearts, hurrying to their departing ships in order to avoid their officers’ lashes.
It was January 1740, and the British Empire was racing to mobilize for war against its imperial rival Spain. And in a move that had suddenly raised Cheap’s prospects, the captain under whom he served on the Centurion, George Anson, had been plucked by the Admiralty to be a commodore and lead the squadron of five warships against the Spanish. The promotion was unexpected. As the son of an obscure country squire, Anson did not wield the level of patronage, the grease—or “interest,” as it was more politely called—that propelled many officers up the pole, along with their men. Anson, then forty-two, had joined the Navy at the age of fourteen, and served for nearly three decades without leading a major military campaign or snaring a lucrative prize.
Tall, with a long face and a high forehead, he had a remoteness about him. His blue eyes were inscrutable, and outside the company of a few trusted friends he rarely opened his mouth. One statesman, after meeting with him, noted, “Anson, as usual, said little.” Anson corresponded even more sparingly, as if he doubted the ability of words to convey what he saw or felt. “He loved reading little, and writing, or dictating his own letters less, and that seeming negligence . . . drew upon him the ill will of many,” a relative wrote. A diplomat later quipped that Anson was so unknowing about the world that he’d been “round it, but never in it.”
Nevertheless, the Admiralty had recognized in Anson what Cheap had also seen in him in the two years since he’d joined the Centurion’s crew: a formidable seaman. Anson had a mastery of the wooden world and, equally important, a mastery of himself—he remained cool and steady under duress. His relative noted, “He had high notions of sincerity and honor and practiced them without deviation.” In addition to Cheap, he had attracted a coterie of talented junior officers and protégés, all vying for his favor. One later informed Anson that he was more obliged to him than to his own father and would do anything to “act up to the good opinion you are pleased to have of me.” If Anson succeeded in his new role as commodore of the squadron, he would be in a position to anoint any captain he wanted. And Cheap, who’d initially served as Anson’s second lieutenant, was now his right-hand man.
Like Anson, Cheap had spent much of his life at sea, a bruising existence he’d at first hoped to escape. As Samuel Johnson once observed, “No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.” Cheap’s father had possessed a large estate in Fife, Scotland, and one of those titles—the second Laird of Rossie—that evoked nobility even if it did not quite confer it. His motto, emblazoned on the family’s crest, was Ditat virtus: “Virtue enriches.” He had seven children with his first wife, and, after she died, he had six more with his second, among them David.
In 1705, the year that David celebrated his eighth birthday, his father stepped out to fetch some goat’s milk and dropped dead. As was custom, it was the oldest male heir—David’s half brother James—who inherited the bulk of the estate. And so David was buffeted by forces beyond his control, in a world divided between first sons and younger sons, between haves and have-nots. Compounding his upheaval, James, now ensconced as the third Laird of Rossie, frequently neglected to pay the allowance that had been bequeathed to his half brothers and half sister: some blood was apparently thicker than others’. Driven to find work, David apprenticed to a merchant, but his debts mounted. So in 1714, the year he turned seventeen, he ran off to sea, a decision that was evidently welcomed by his family—as his guardian wrote to his older brother, “The sooner he goes off it will be better for you and me.”
After these setbacks, Cheap seemed only more consumed by his festering dreams, more determined to bend what he called an “unhappy fate.” On his own, on an ocean distant from the world he knew, he might prove himself in elemental struggles—braving typhoons, outdueling enemy ships, rescuing his companions from calamities.
But though Cheap had chased a few pirates—including the one-handed Irishman Henry Johnson, who fired his gun by resting the barrel on his stump—these earlier voyages had proved largely uneventful. He’d been sent to patrol the West Indies, generally considered the worst assignment in the Navy because of the specter of disease. The Saffron Scourge. The Bloody Flux. The Breakbone Fever. The Blue Death.
But Cheap had endured. Wasn’t there something to be said for that? Moreover, he’d earned the trust of Anson and worked his way up to first lieutenant. No doubt it helped that they shared a disdain for reckless banter, or what Cheap deemed a “vaporing manner.” A Scottish minister who later became close to Cheap noted that Anson had employed him because he was “a man of sense and knowledge.” Cheap, the once-forlorn debtor, was but one rung from his coveted captaincy. And with the war with Spain having broken out, he was about to head into full-fledged battle for the first time.
The conflict was the result of the endless jockeying among the European powers to expand their empires. They each vied to conquer or control ever larger swaths of the earth, so that they could exploit and monopolize other nations’ valuable natural resources and trade markets. In the process, they subjugated and destroyed innumerable indigenous peoples, justifying their ruthless self-interest—including the reliance on the ever-expanding Atlantic slave trade—by claiming that they were somehow spreading “civilization” to the benighted realms of the earth. Spain had long been the dominant empire in Latin America, but Great Britain, which already possessed colonies along the American eastern seaboard, was now on the ascendance—and determined to break its rival’s hold.
Then, in 1738, Robert Jenkins, a British merchant captain, was summoned to appear in Parliament, where he reportedly claimed that a Spanish officer had stormed his brig in the Caribbean and, accusing him of smuggling sugar from Spain’s colonies, cut off his left ear. Jenkins reputedly displayed his severed appendage, pickled in a jar, and pledged “my cause to my country.” The incident further ignited the passions of Parliament and pamphleteers, leading people to cry for blood—an ear for an ear—and a good deal of booty as well. The conflict became known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear.
British authorities soon devised a plan to launch an attack on a hub of Spain’s colonial wealth: Cartagena. A South American city on the Caribbean, it was where much of the silver extracted from Peruvian mines was shipped in armed convoys to Spain. The British offensive—involving a massive fleet of 186 ships, led by Admiral Edward Vernon—would be the largest amphibious assault in history. But there was also another, much smaller operation: the one assigned to Commodore Anson.
With five warships and a scouting sloop, he and some two thousand men would sail across the Atlantic and round Cape Horn, “taking, sinking, burning, or otherwise destroying” enemy ships and weakening Spanish holdings from the Pacific coast of South America to the Philippines. The British government, in concocting its scheme, wanted to avoid the impression that it was merely sponsoring piracy. Yet the heart of the plan called for an act of outright thievery: to snatch a Spanish galleon loaded with virgin silver and hundreds of thousands of silver coins. Twice a year, Spain sent such a galleon—it was not always the same ship—from Mexico to the Philippines to purchase silks and spices and other Asian commodities, which, in turn, were sold in Europe and the Americas. These exchanges provided crucial links in Spain’s global trading empire.
Cheap and the others ordered to carry out the mission were rarely privy to the agendas of those in power, but they were lured by a tantalizing prospect: a share of the treasure. The Centurion’s twenty-two-year-old chaplain, Reverend Richard Walter, who later compiled an account of the voyage, described the galleon as “the most desirable prize that was to be met with in any part of the globe.”
If Anson and his men prevailed—“if it shall please God to bless our arms,” as the Admiralty put it—they would continue circling the earth before returning home. The Admiralty had given Anson a code and a cipher to use for his written communication, and an official warned that the mission must be carried out in the “most secret, expeditious manner.” Otherwise, Anson’s squadron might be intercepted and destroyed by a large Spanish armada being assembled under the command of Don José Pizarro.
Cheap was facing his longest expedition—he might be gone for three years—and his most perilous. But he saw himself as a knight-errant of the sea in search of “the greatest prize of all the oceans.” And along the way, he might become a captain yet.
Yet if the squadron didn’t embark quickly, Cheap feared, the entire party would be annihilated by a force even more dangerous than the Spanish armada: the violent seas around Cape Horn. Only a few British sailors had successfully made this passage, where winds routinely blow at gale force, waves can climb to nearly a hundred feet, and icebergs lurk in the hollows. Seamen thought that the best chance to survive was during the austral summer, between December and February. Reverend Walter cited this “essential maxim,” explaining that during winter not only were the seas fiercer and the temperatures freezing; there were fewer hours of daylight in which one could discern the uncharted coastline. All these reasons, he argued, would make navigating around this unknown shore the “most dismaying and terrible.”
But since war had been declared, in October 1739, the Centurion and the other men-of-war in the squadron—including the Gloucester, the Pearl, and the Severn—had been marooned in England, waiting to be repaired and fitted out for the next journey. Cheap watched helplessly as the days ticked by. January 1740 came and went. Then February and March. It was nearly half a year since the war with Spain had been declared; still, the squadron was not ready to sail.
It should have been an imposing force. Men-of-war were among the most sophisticated machines yet conceived: buoyant wooden castles powered across oceans by wind and sail. Reflecting the dual nature of their creators, they were devised to be both murderous instruments and the homes in which hundreds of sailors lived together as a family. In a lethal, floating chess game, these pieces were deployed around the globe to achieve what Sir Walter Raleigh had envisioned: “Whosoever commands the seas commands the trade of the world; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world.”
Cheap knew what a cracking ship the Centurion was. Swift and stout, and weighing about a thousand tons, she had, like the other warships in Anson’s squadron, three towering masts with crisscrossing yards—wooden spars from which the sails unfurled. The Centurion could fly as many as eighteen sails at a time. Its hull gleamed with varnish, and painted around the stern, in gold relief, were Greek mythological figures, including Poseidon. On the bow rode a sixteen-foot wooden carving of a lion, painted bright red. To increase the chances of surviving a barrage of cannonballs, the hull had a double layer of planks, giving it a thickness of more than a foot in places. The ship had several decks, each stacked upon the next, and two of them had rows of cannons on both sides—their menacing black muzzles pointing out of square gunports. Augustus Keppel, a fifteen-year-old midshipman who was one of Anson’s protégés, boasted that other men-of-war had “no chance in the world” against the mighty Centurion.
Yet building, repairing, and fitting out these watercraft was a herculean endeavor even in the best of times, and in a period of war it was chaos. The royal dockyards, which were among the largest manufacturing sites in the world, were overwhelmed with ships—leaking ships, half-constructed ships, ships needing to be loaded and unloaded. Anson’s vessels were laid up on what was known as Rotten Row. As sophisticated as men-of-war were with their sail propulsion and lethal gunnery, they were largely made from simple, perishable materials: hemp, canvas, and, most of all, timber. Constructing a single large warship could require as many as four thousand trees; a hundred acres of forest might be felled.
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