Title:

The Wager

Author:

David Grann

Category:

Non-fiction

Rating:

Date Reviewed:

June 2, 2024

he Wager is the best kind of non-fiction writing - this book tells a tremendous true story about a British sailing ship, The Wager, which set forth in 1740 as part of five-ship armada with the goal of capturing a Spanish treasure galleon. The silver and gold that the Spanish extracted from Peru was put on a ship that then sailed up to Panama. There the treasure was laboriously dragged across the Panama isthmus until it was loaded onto another ship in the Caribbean Sea, and then sailed home to Spain. Despite the difficulties of crossing Panama overland, the Spanish choose to follow that route rather than risk sailing around Cape Horn at the tip of South America. This book explains why the Spanish made that decision.

The complete title of this book is The Wager - A tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. Things do not go well for the ill-fated men upon the Wager The five British ships encounter ceaseless waves and howling winds that prevent them from sailing around the southern end of South America. For weeks, Captain Cheap directs his ship against the raging elements - weeks of heaving seas and crushing cold and driving gales that threaten to drown the ship at any moment. The Wager gets separated from the other ships, and so fights on alone. Even worse, almost the entire crew is unable to function, being stricken with scurvy. Where twenty men might stand watch, the Wager can muster just six men healthy enough to stand on their feet to battle the elements. It is a scene of desperation, as the Wager fights its way through.

The exhausted crew eventually finds themselves in the Pacific (but the ocean belies it name, the Wager encounters more storms and mists). Eager to rejoin the British flotilla, Captain Cheap sails rapidly north. But the Wager is too close to shore, and soon there comes the sickening crunch of the hull striking a submerged rock. Water is pouring in - but fortunately there is an island nearby, and the men scramble to temporary safety. It is barren island, the castaways cannot survive here. They manage to salvage some supplies from the wreck which is wedged against the rocks, so the men can row out to the Wager and salvage their meager supplies. Starving, the survivors gnaw on wild celery which grows on the island; the celery contains vitamin C, which cures their scurvy.

Grann tells the narrative using material written in first hand accounts of various crewmen - Captain Cheap, Midshipman John Byron, and gunner John Bulkely. As months pass and the lot of the castaways grows ever more grim, each man tells his own version of the dark events as they transpire. The crew form cliques, plotting against each other, and hatching plans to steal the last remaining food and drink for themselves. Gunner Bulkeley eventually concludes that the Captain is incapable of leading the survivors. He and the carpenter devise a desperate, insane plot - they will lengthen the longboat so it can hold more men, and then sail it back around the tip of South America and upto Rio de Grande, a journey of three thousand miles over stormy seas. Captain Cheap opposes the plan - but remember the subtitle of this book: A tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. Desperate men take desperate chances.

Incredibly, two different sets of survivors eventually make it back to London, each telling a different version of what transpired on the Wager. A courtmartial ensues - which has deadly implications, because the judging officers might decide that the survivors are guilty of murder and/or mutiny, and therefore shall be hung.

I found this book to be a riveting read, I finished it in just a weekend of reading. It seems a miracle that anyone survived at all. Grann descriptions of the squalid conditions, the relentless weather, and the men driven to attempt impossible feats out of an unquenchable thirst for survival makes for an incredible tale.