It’s 1742, and a makeshift craft carrying 30 desperate, bedraggled sailors washes ashore on the coast of Brazil. Two years earlier, the men had sailed from Portsmouth, England, aboard the Wager, a British ship that was part of a squadron assigned to capture or destroy Spanish shipping and, in particular, seize a treasure-laden Spanish galleon.
The seamen tell a harrowing tale about the wreck of the Wager near Patagonia and the marooning of the crew on a nearby island, where the sailors eventually built their rickety boat and sailed it almost 3,000 miles to Brazil. Not surprisingly, they are praised for the bravery and grit that helped them survive their ordeal.
Several months later, however, another vessel, this one carrying three more members of the Wager’s crew, arrives in Chile. The trio, whose ranks include the captain of the Wager, insists that the men who landed in Brazil, far from being intrepid heroes, were mutineers.
Historical fiction in the tradition of Patrick O’Brian and C.S. Forester, perhaps? Quite the opposite. David Grann’s The Wager may read like a novel, but the story he tells is quite true, and all the more mesmerizing because of it. The Wager is, without question, a can’t-put-it-down book that might keep you flipping the pages while you should be sleeping, cooking, eating or otherwise getting on with your life.
The shocking misadventures that preceded the loss of the Wager, the destruction of the ship, the chaos that plagued the castaways on their desolate island, the charges and countercharges that followed their escape, and the bizarre, carefully orchestrated court-martial that followed in England -- all are explored in sometimes heart-stopping detail.
Grann’s gripping account includes such a litany of jaw-dropping events that it would be hard to believe if not for Grann’s careful documentation and stellar reputation as a writer of narrative nonfiction. (His previous books include Killers of the Flower Moon.) If The Wager were a novel, readers would be tempted to lambast the author for going over the top with far too much high drama. But truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction.
The author lays the groundwork for all of this by deftly sketching the characters and personalities of key players in the saga, including Captain David Cheap; Midshipman John Byron (future grandfather of the poet, Lord Byron); highly literate ship’s gunner John Bulkeley; and other members of the Wager’s crew.
In a note to readers, Grann explains at the outset that he spent years researching the fate of the Wager and “tried to gather all the facts to determine what really happened.” But despite Grann's exhaustive research, he admits he could not draw firm conclusions, thanks to the participants’ conflicting perspectives. So he has tried "to present all sides, leaving it to you to render the ultimate verdict—history’s judgment.”
The Wager is, of course, the tale of the ship’s ill-fated voyage and its aftermath. But Grann also sees the episode as a consequence of the “ravaging dreams of empires.”
Grann does not dwell on that connection, but the reader will see it quite clearly. If not for the existence of European empires in the 18th century, Britain and Spain would not have been at war in the 1740s; a British squadron would not have sailed to South America in search of a Spanish galleon; the “shipwreck, mutiny and murder” of The Wager's subtitle would not have occurred; and indigenous people from South America, as well as a free Black seaman from the Wager, would not have been enslaved by the Spanish.
A final note: To his credit, Grann avoids a problem that occurs all too often in books -- particularly novels -- about the Age of Sail.
Some nautical writers have a nagging habit of assuming that readers share their familiarity with the nomenclature of a sailing ship: sails, masts, yards, shrouds, figurehead, bowsprit, etc. Grann is not one of them. When he first mentions the Wager’s quarterdeck, for example, he explains what a quarterdeck is. Some readers will need no such explanation, but those who do deserve to get one without having to consult Merriam-Webster.
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