The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
2023 • 294 pages
Ratings50
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings50
Average rating4.1
#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. "A tour de force of narrative nonfiction.” —The Wall Street Journal 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.
Reviews with the most likes.
An astounding book which was made more engaging and exciting by the outstanding audiobook narrator. This non-fictional historical tale is written like the best adventure novel imaginable. The author begins by noting that not one, but two different groups of castaways made it back to England after being shipwrecked in South America. This point sets the stage for how the facts are now able to be told-from the journals of the surving seamen. A great adventure and the telling is vivid and exciting. Hard to belief that the main figures were able to survive ridiculous levels of hardship and therefore able to return safely home so their tales could be told. Highly recommended!
The best book I've read this year, and probably the best story ever. Period.
Wow! This was an action packed story from start to finish. The book did a good job telling us about what happened based on the sources without a lot of extra postulation. We as the reader can make decisions about who we believe and what really happened. But the book did not stop there. It also gave us an up close and personal look as to the faults of the English navy at the time. We see the failure of the war of Jenkins ear and the corruption behind it. Great book.
A Shipwreck Comedy(?) of Errors
Somewhat to my own surprise, I've come to learn that I'm a fan of the nonfiction sub-genre of shipwreck tales, and so when I heard about this one, I couldn't wait. On the whole, I'd say it delivered. It was well-researched and compelling. It didn't excuse the way sailors mistreated indigenous peoples or gloss over the role of minority sailors (a common pitfall of these books), it took an honest accounting of the many different voices involved, and at the end, it does a great job of evaluating the value of the mission (or lack thereof) within history.
The story of the Wager's bad fortune can largely be summed up as critical mismanagement at all levels: a pointless military expedition executed with questionable guidance and poorly supplied ships, with all levels of leadership being shuffled about on the fly. To nobody's surprise, things go awry.
At the level of the ship itself, and most naval endeavours at the time, I feel like most of the problems could have been solved if someone's mother sailed with them to remind them to eat their vegetables and quit squabbling over nonsense. Just imagine if you decided to man a ship with a combination of homeless people, ex-cons, and over-privileged teenagers, with a handful of men who've spent their whole lives at sea in charge. Predictably, they try to subsist on a diet of jerky and rum and then can't figure out why they're all incredibly ill. Substitute jerky and rum with nuggets and rye, and it's my first year of living on my own, so I can attest that it's not very sustainable
