John Byron was awakened by the maniacal cries of the Wager’s boatswain and his mates summoning the morning watch: “Rouse out, you sleepers! Rouse out!” It was not quite four a.m., and still dark out, though from his berth in the bowels of the ship Byron couldn’t discern whether it was day or night. As a midshipman on the Wager—he was only sixteen—he was given a spot below the quarterdeck, below the upper deck, and even below the lower deck, where the ordinary sailors slept in hammocks, their bodies dangling from the beams. Byron was stuck down in the aft part of the orlop deck—a damp, airless
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