The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

by David Grann

In September 1740, during an imperial conflict with Spain, the Wager, carrying some 250 officers and crew, had embarked from Portsmouth in a squadron on a secret mission: to capture a treasure-filled Spanish galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans.” Near Cape Horn, at the tip of South America, the squadron had been engulfed by a hurricane, and the Wager was believed to have sunk with all its souls. But 283 days after the ship had last been reported seen, these men miraculously emerged in Brazil.

We all impose some coherence—some meaning—on the chaotic events of our existence. We rummage through the raw images of our memories, selecting, burnishing, erasing. We emerge as the heroes of our stories, allowing us to live with what we have done—or haven’t done.

It was January 1740, and the British Empire was racing to mobilize for war against its imperial rival Spain.

The conflict was the result of the endless jockeying among the European powers to expand their empires. They each vied to conquer or control ever larger swaths of the earth, so that they could exploit and monopolize other nations’ valuable natural resources and trade markets. In the process, they subjugated and destroyed innumerable indigenous peoples, justifying their ruthless self-interest—including the reliance on the ever-expanding Atlantic slave trade—by claiming that they were somehow spreading “civilization” to the benighted realms of the earth.

But since war had been declared, in October 1739, the Centurion and the other men-of-war in the squadron—including the Gloucester, the Pearl, and the Severn—had been marooned in England, waiting to be repaired and fitted out for the next journey.

In a lethal, floating chess game, these pieces were deployed around the globe to achieve what Sir Walter Raleigh had envisioned: “Whosoever commands the seas commands the trade of the world; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world.”

The Wager’s captain, Dandy Kidd, surveyed the work being done. Fifty-six years old, and reportedly a descendant of the infamous buccaneer William Kidd, he was an experienced seaman, and a superstitious one—he

At least from Cheap’s perspective, Kidd had earned his promotion, unlike the captain of the Gloucester, Richard Norris, whose father, Sir John Norris, was a celebrated admiral; Sir John had helped to secure his son a position in the squadron, noting that there would be “both action and good fortune to those who survived.”

The stranger blew his whistle; in an instant a posse appeared. “I was in the hands of six or eight ruffians whom I soon found to be a press gang,” the seaman wrote. “They dragged me hurriedly through several streets, amid bitter execrations bestowed on them from passers-by and expressions of sympathy directed towards me.”

at the sound of the blast the entire force—the five men-of-war and an eighty-four-foot scouting sloop, the Trial, as well as two small cargo ships, the Anna and the Industry, which would accompany them partway—stirred to life.

These volunteers, who often began as either a captain’s servant or what was known as a King’s Letter boy, were eventually rated as midshipmen, which gave them an ambiguous status on a man-of-war. Forced to toil like ordinary seamen so they could “learn the ropes,” they were also recognized as officers-in-training, future lieutenants and captains, possibly even admirals, and were allowed to walk the quarterdeck.

Unlike the other midshipmen with whom Byron had become friends, Campbell seemed haughty and mercurial. Lording his status as a future officer over ordinary seamen, he came off as a petty tyrant who went about ruthlessly enforcing the captain’s orders, sometimes with his fists.

“In the time-honoured English fashion, the experts were kept in their place; it was the commissioned officers, educated only as seamen, who took command.”

When Bulkeley was a castaway, he had stopped waiting around for others in power to display leadership. And now, months after his return to his native island, he decided to launch another kind of rebellion—a literary one. He began plotting to publish his journal. Bulkeley would shape the public’s perceptions and, just as he had on the island, rally the people to his side.

The commodore joined in the toil, putting himself, as one of the men recalled it, on the same level as “the meanest sailor in his crew.” Millechamp noted that the sight of Anson, along with all the other senior officers, sharing in the hardest tasks made everyone “endeavour to excel, and indeed we soon found that our work went on with great spirit and vigour.”

A naval court-martial was intended to do more than adjudicate the innocence or guilt of those on trial; it was meant to uphold and reinforce discipline throughout the service. As one expert put it, the system was “contrived to convey the majesty and strength of the state,” and to ensure that the few who were guilty of serious crimes would serve as examples: “The underlying theory was that simple mariners, having witnessed these spectacles, would be left trembling at the prospect that such tremendous force—the power of life and death—might one day be used against them in the event that they violated the law.”

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.