The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder in Reading with Style

May 10, 2024 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: twenty-first-century, 5-star-reads, history-and-biography

My statewide Overdrive wait time for this book is, as of today, 392 days! This should give anyone a clue as to its popularity, keeping in mind my state has a total population of under 750k. My husband has read all things local and is a BIG reader of almost anything having to do with boats. So I bought him a copy. I had not intended it to be for me, but a member of my online group had recommended it for this season's challenge. (Thank you, Kathleen!)

This all takes place in the first half of the 1 My statewide Overdrive wait time for this book is, as of today, 392 days! This should give anyone a clue as to its popularity, keeping in mind my state has a total population of under 750k. My husband has read all things local and is a BIG reader of almost anything having to do with boats. So I bought him a copy. I had not intended it to be for me, but a member of my online group had recommended it for this season's challenge. (Thank you, Kathleen!)

This all takes place in the first half of the 1740s. England and Spain were at war. The HMS Wager and five other ships set out to cross the Atlantic, to round the tip of South America, and accost a Spanish galleon on the Pacific side of that continent. The Spanish galleon was expected to be filled with gold and vanquishing that ship would bring wealth both to the nation and to the men on the ships.

So much was not known about the world at that time. Certainly, Cape Horn at the tip of South America was not mapped. Little was known about the weather, that there are high winds nearly all the time. The cause of scurvy was not known, so the British did not yet know to carry limes on board (which eventually caused British seamen to become known as limeys). It was also not yet known what happens to human minds in the later stages of starvation, nor what happens to their bodies when starvation is reversed too quickly. None of us can know how we might behave when stranded, without food and without communication, in a part of world where it is unlikely we'd be noticed.

David Grann tells a good story and I found this quite readable. I must note that he is also filled with 21st Century opinions about European exploration and the conquest of the Americas in particular. He alludes occasionally that perhaps Europeans were too certain of their superiority. 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. Such things made me wince and I thought it unnecessary to include them in a book about people and conditions 275 plus years ago.

As I began, and until about 1/3 in, I thought this probably 4-stars worth. As I continued to read it got better, I came to better know the characters and their situation. I chose to ignore the 21st Century attitude. And so I have colored in that final star. ...more

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Jul 25, 2024 Wendy added it

Shelves: survival, non-fiction, nautical, 2024

As a massive fan of the nautical/survival genre, I was underwhelmed by this one. Here we have an interesting true story about a wreck/mutiny and a tangle of the survivors' clashing accounts, grist for a good yarn. However, if you, like me, have read your fair share of shipwreck stories, this one plays to the most standard of tropes: a controlling captain, obligatory details of scurvy and typhus, a basic rundown of nautical terms, and some power dynamics within the ranks that failed to get me exc As a massive fan of the nautical/survival genre, I was underwhelmed by this one. Here we have an interesting true story about a wreck/mutiny and a tangle of the survivors' clashing accounts, grist for a good yarn. However, if you, like me, have read your fair share of shipwreck stories, this one plays to the most standard of tropes: a controlling captain, obligatory details of scurvy and typhus, a basic rundown of nautical terms, and some power dynamics within the ranks that failed to get me excited because the author kept me at arms length emotionally from the central players -- perhaps deliberately as, the author repeatedly notes, these British seamen are the cogs powering evil imperialism. Despite many of them being press-ganged into the service, they really should have known better (right?).

One of the principal characters is 16 year old John Byron, yes, grandfather of *that* Lord Byron and who supposedly inspired parts of his famous poem Don Juan -- a fascinating connection that I had to delve into on wikipedia because the book barely mentions this in passing. No tangents into Romantic poetry here. The Wager is nautical tropes 101, and shall not deviate. I personally much preferred In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick, which isn't afraid to delve into its source material's inspiration of Melville (and others), as well as some weird and interesting anecdotes about how one guy burned down a Galapagos island by accident, or the intimate secrets of lonely Quaker whaling wives, while still delivering a rip-roaring tale.

I can see this being an interesting enough story if this is your first encounter with the nautical/survival genre, but it doesn't bring much new to a crowded field and leans on too-easy critiques of almost 300 year old cultural attitudes as its main point. Apparently, there's a lesser known Patrick O'Brian novel about The Wager called The Unknown Shore which brings a bigger emotional core to this tale, and there are many other excellent survival books I'd recommend over this one:
- Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
- The Terror by Dan Simmons (fiction but thoroughly researched)
- Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Bernard Nordhoff
- South Sea Tales by Jack London
- Anything by Herman Melville ...more

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Dec 16, 2023 Kathleen (itpdx) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, rws-2023-4-winter

A fascinating story, well-told! One ship, the Wager, from a British fleet sent out to harass the Spanish and capture their treasure ship ends up wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of what is now Chile. What follows is a tale of adventure, survival, and betrayal. Grann uses the tale as a condemnation of imperialism, and colonialism.

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