Book Review: The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann
The title of this book confused me at first; I thought it referred to a bet. In fact, however, The Wager refers to the HMS Wager, a British man-of-war named after Admiral Sir Charles Wager, which left England in 1740 as part of a squadron of six warships commanded by Commodore George Anson. The squadron’s mission was to find and engage Spanish treasure ships. To accomplish this, they sailed southwest, pursued by Spanish warships, and amidst tumultuous seas and frequent storms rounded Cape Horn, the southernmost end of South America.
The extreme weather caused the ships to become separated. The Wager turned north prematurely, got too close to the coast, and wrecked on rocks in western Patagonia. The acting captain and some of the officers and crew made it to shore on a cold, remote, uninhabited island that became known as Wager Island.
The story is told in ruthlessly grim detail, beginning in England with descriptions of the deteriorating condition of the vessels before they set sail and the need to send out press gangs to kidnap able-bodied men to serve as sailors. Grann graphically depicts the brutal life onboard British ships, the filth, the vermin, the lack of decent food, and the horrific scourge of scurvy, a debilitating disease caused by a lack of vitamin C. Burials at sea were common, so much so that by the time the Wager rounded the cape many of the crew had died or were incapacitated and the ship was undermanned. On Wager Island, the lack of food and poor living conditions led to anarchy. Most of the surviving sailors mutinied against the captain and his loyal officers and on a makeshift vessel made their way back through the Strait of Magellan and up the east coast of Argentina. Some of them survived and eventually made it back to England. The captain and a few of the officers that had remained with him also finally got home, leading to a court-martial to find out what had really happened amidst conflicting reports.
This is an exciting true story, and Grann has researched and written it extremely well. It is easy to empathize with the difficult plight of the castaways. I wonder how I would have fared and the decisions I would have made if I had been an officer or a member of the crew on this ill-fated voyage. That any of the shipwrecked officers and crew survived and returned home is nothing short of miraculous. Naval vessels were so primitive and so prone to rot and breakages and infiltration by pests, navigation was so imprecise, and medical science was so rudimentary that it is a marvel that seafarers were able to accomplish what they did, including exploration of vast unknown oceans and circumnavigation of the globe.
This is the type of book that doesn’t come along very often: a thrilling, well-written true story of adventure, tragedy, and eventual triumph on the high seas. Highly recommended.
