The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

by David Grann

It was also where, on the foremast, a condemned mutineer got hanged from a rope—or, as the saying went, took “a walk up Ladder Lane, and down Hemp Street.”

Even Reverend Walter, whom a colleague described as “rather a puny, weakly, and sickly man,” said of fear, “Fye upon it! It is an ignoble passion, and beneath the dignity of man!”