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The Wager A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
$22.40 + Kargo
Other
| ASIN : | B0B6Z4SVTH |
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| Publisher : | Doubleday (April 18, 2023) |
| Publication date : | April 18, 2023 |
| Language : | English |
| File size : | 63844 KB |
| Text-to-Speech : | Enabled |
| Screen Reader : | Supported |
| Enhanced typesetting : | Enabled |
| X-Ray : | Enabled |
| Word Wise : | Enabled |
| Sticky notes : | On Kindle Scribe |
| Print length : | 327 pages |
| Page numbers source ISBN : | 147118370X |
| Best Sellers Rank: | #1 in Mass Murder Biographies & Memoirs |
| Customer Reviews: | 28,858 ratings |
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ATE 13.0460-5655.2 BremssättelB07YNZM5LF
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TonyT –
This tale vividly portrays the harsh life of British naval officers and seamen. The author describes in detail the technology, procedures, and limitations of the Era. The fact that ships could navigate vast distances, fight the enemy, and cope with injury and disease is remarkable. The interpersonal relations, however, are timeless. The characters in the tale exhibit the same ambition, prejudice, weakness, duplicity, heroism, and compassion that exists today. A great read.
HHJ –
One of the best nautical books that I have read of seafaring adventures in the 18th century. Quite descriptive of life aboard the tall ships of the time and the hardships endured by the sailors especially in the rough seas and weather around Cape Horn. Additionally, and more important, was the description of the interpersonal relationships between the captain and his crew in regard to leadership qualities and innate capabilities. The philosophical and legal questions that arose from the activities of the crew and the captain would bring great discussion to any group.
Book Dragon 🐉 –
I’ve been an avid reader my whole life but I’ve been having trouble finding books that hold my interest lately; I feel like I’ve read it all before. This one I had no trouble enjoying every moment and detail, and the most outstanding part was that it’s all true. I’ve been recommending this book to everyone. The audiobook narrator was excellent as well.
Charles Salmans –
Grann’s Gift as a Story-Teller on Full DisplayIn the first half of the 18th century, Britain already had the most powerful navy in the world. But financing that navy was a huge burden on the Crown and England had not yet achieved the wealth that the industrial revolution and its own colonization efforts would later bring. The answer: intercept the gold and silver that Spanish ships were bringing home from its New World colonies.Author David Grann is able to tell not only this larger story but also to resurrect one of the most astonishing seafaring events of the time. A ship named “The Wager” was to be part of a British fleet that would intercept gold-laden Spanish vessels in what was officially-sanctioned piracy. As the book’s cover indicates, what then transpired was shipwreck, mutiny and murder. This is also the story of unexpected survival and efforts in an Admiralty court back in England to establish the truth of what happened.Life on board a ship at the time, so full of danger and disease that it was not unusual for as few as ten percent of the crew to survive a long voyage, meant that the Royal Navy had great difficulty manning its ships. Grann provides graphic descriptions of able-bodied and not-so-able-bodied men being kidnapped off the wharfs (“impressed”) to fill the complement of seamen just as a ship was about to sail. (Some years later the impressment of American seamen was a contributor to the War of 1812.)The hulls of wooden sailing ships had a very short life-span due to wood-eating worms, and were susceptible to leaks and other threats to seaworthiness. Scurvy could render entire crews incapable of functioning. Other communicable diseases could cause widespread death on board a crowded, ill-ventilated vessel.In the case of The Wager, the author was able to find a remarkable record of its 1740 voyage and of the events to come. This was in part due to the fact that on board as a junior officer was John Byron, a gentleman volunteer and a compulsive diarist. Incidentally, he was the grandfather of Lord Byron.Additionally, another major actor in the drama, John Bulkeley, had kept a voluminous diary which chronicled the events of the voyage. Buikeley held the position of Gunner, a crucial role in ship combat, and had many other responsibilities on board. He was an instinctive leader, physically imposing, who commanded respect.Finally, there was the record of the court-martial proceedings themselves, in which the main actors including David Cheap, the captain, provided their own version of events. Cheap was an ambitious, younger son of a Scottish Laird who, under the rules of primogeniture, did not inherit his father’s estate. He ran off to sea at 17 and set his sights on becoming a captain, which he realized when an opening occurred on The Wager.The Wager survived the perilous passage around the treacherous Cape Horn, only to run aground and break up on the rocks of an uninhabited island off Patagonia. There were no animals or other significant source of food on the island. The crew soon divided into two factions, one supporting Captain Cheap who wanted to build a vessel out of timbers salvaged from the shipwreck and continue up the Pacific coast of South America to engage Spanish ships. The other group was led by Buckeley, who wanted to build a vessel to return to England. The situation was so dire it would seem impossible that either group would survive.Improbably a few men did make their way back to England to be hailed as heroes. That is, until a second group, including Captain Cheap, also arrived. This forms the final chapter of the story of The Wager and the launch of an inquiry to establish the truth.Faced by death by hanging if they were found guilty of mutiny or of discipline if they failed their duty, each survivor told his story. “Members of the Admiralty found themselves confounded by competing versions of events,” the author tells us. The result was unexpected, but only if one fails to consider that the leaders of an institution, in this case the Royal Navy, have as their first priority the preservation of that institution and the protection of its reputation.This is a wonderfully-written book and Grann is a masterful story teller.
CramedogCramedog –
I absolutely loved The Wager. As my headline suggests, I consider this to be a BigDog book. What constitutes a “BigDog” book? It has to be the right combination of Information, Amusement and Never Being Able to Put it Down. David Grann did all three at a very high level. I think I love this guy, David Grann. He must have worked so damn hard on this book. The amount of scribbles and scrabbles he was probably trying to decipher from these dumb 250 year old ship logs! It must have been so tedious.But Grann did it. He went to work and researched the tits out of this story. And sure, there are certainly holes he must have approached in the story and realized that he would have to creatively fill those in. That, in my opinion, is to be expected. Not only did Grann fill those holes, he did it expertly and seamlessly. Do YOU know why we have the phrase “3 Sheets To the Wind” as a euphemism for being drunk? Well, throughout this history of the British man-o-wars, David Grann teaches you that there’s more to being a shipman than knowing a few knots & phrases. It takes guts and sometimes, even honor.I won’t spoil the story for you here. I believe the Amazon description above gives you even too much information and “spoils” as the kids say. Speaking of kids, my 14 year old son was watching me devour this book. He was the only one in my family willing to listen to the new things I’d learned about man-o-wars or ancient tribes while we all gathered at the dinner table. “Did you know that the British Navy could just roll up on homies who had abandoned their ships and pretended to be dead so they didn’t have to go back to sea? They called these guys ‘Press Gangs.’” Only my 14 year old would chirp up and say something positive like, “That’s awesome, dad!” Or “Do you think you could be a seaman, dad?” What a nice boy.One day while I was cranking through the part of the book near the end that is sort of the political intrigue portion, my son said “David Grann.””What?” I asked.”David Grann. The author.” My son was staring at the book jacket cover. “I bet he’s a real G.”I motioned for the kid to come over and when he sat next to me I said, “A G? You better believe Grann is a G because he did all this freakin’ research to make this book come to life. If that’s not bein’ a G, then I don’t know what else is. Plus, take a look at this picture of him inside the book jacket!”He leaned in and looked at this picture of the most G-lookin dude of all time. David Grann, standing there with a polo shirt and jacket on top. Not really smiling, not really frowning. Just a look of a confident son of a bitch. My son was right: Grann is a real G. We looked at the picture and then my son read the little bio below, which is just his bonafides in the literary sense. We would have preferred David give us a little bit more personal stuff. For example, his favorite pizza topping would be a good choice to include. What about HIS favorite books instead of a list of books he wrote? I get it… his publisher only wants to pimp his books instead of other authors’. Still, give me a little flavor with Grann.Under his bio, there is his social media and website listed. Only his Twitter and Facebook handle. No instagram. I found that strange. You’d think there’d be a Wager Instagram handle at least! When I finished the book, I wanted to shout it out on my Instagram Story and let everyone know that David Grann is a G and he wrote a BigDog book. To my surprise, I found that Grann DID have an instagram page! I was shocked. Did one of his kids shame him into doing this? His publisher maybe? Regardless, my dude only has like 8 or 9 posts! And it’s just pictures of the hardcopy of The Wager stacked on top of each other. I tagged this sad Instagram account to my hype Story about the book anyway. I thought it couldn’t do harm.I recommend this book mightily if you couldn’t tell.
Richard B. Schwartz –
Let me begin with the answer to a direct question: is this book better than KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON? Yes, and by a wide margin. This is a historical tale that draws on the powers of fictional narrative. First and foremost, the story must be true. Hence, the success of the story rises or falls on the quality of the historical incidents themselves, because the resulting story will directly affect the elements of the narrative that are essentially novelistic: characters, themes, setting and plot. The story of the Wager satisfies each of those elements. In other words, David Grann chose wisely. And such choices are always guesses, to some degree. Once the commitment is made to sift through mountains of documents and other evidentiary material, the die has been cast: the resulting story could be a crashing bore; key questions might never yield satisfactory answers; plot lines could end in blind alleys; themes could prove to be maudlin commonplaces, and so on. Not in this case. We have an array of fascinating characters, a great adventure story, a novelistic plot, a riveting setting and a sobering set of lessons learned.Basically we are in the War of Jenkins’ Ear; a set of British ships under the great seaman George Anson is dispatched to intercept and capture a Spanish galleon loaded with treasure. The voyage involves the negotiation of the treacherous winds and waters around Cape Horn. One ship—The Wager—is crushed against the rocks and the men must attempt to survive hunger, disease, and, as we say, insuperable odds, to somehow return to England and stand trial for their actions in Patagonia.I purchased the book as a backup for other books in my reviewing queue that were about to ship. After being disappointed by KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, but seeing the hype for THE WAGER, I decided to read it until more interesting books arrived. However, once I started to read it I simply could not stop. Only one small quibble: the book ends with what the author (SPOILER alert) considers a reflection on the evils of empire. In other words, a dash of seasoning from the Woke shaker. Ultimately, the story is relevant for our own times and our own preoccupation with colonizers/colonized/oppressors/oppressed, etc. It is worthwhile to point out that every thinking writer in the 18th century (especially the putatively most ‘conservative’ ones, Johnson and Burke) were opposed to the aspirations of empire, particularly as they involved self-interested motives. The book is being described as Master and Commander meets Lord of the Flies. Fair enough, but the brief, third act brings everything down to the seedy world of politics. The book does not end on some high, moral, virtue-signaling ground, but in the world that is simply all too familiar. Bishop Sheen said he gave up on politics after Pontius Pilate. Amen. That does not undercut the impact of the story. It simply reinforces the usefulness of James Ellroy’s category of ‘tragic realism’ and, in this case, the manner in which politics can dilute actions of heavily-compromised courage and determination and render them (publicly) mundane.
Tom Weikert –
“As a tale gets passed from one person to another, it ripples out until it is as wide and mythic as the sea.”The annals of British naval history abound with great and small adventures alike. None, however, captivates like the extraordinary tale of the HMS Wager. And no one can better recount such a hair-raising series of events than David Grann. With “The Wager,” Grann tops his previous works of narrative nonfiction with this harrowing story of inconceivable hardship and the machinations of desperate men. To be sure, no incident contained in this book is without ample evidence proving it occurred.It is hard to imagine a more horrifying set of survival conditions than those faced by Wager’s crew, and capturing those conditions accurately based on aging historical records and biased published accounts was undoubtedly tricky. Yet, Grann does yeoman’s work on this story of the ill-fated Wager, part of a British squadron ordered to sea in August 1740 against the Spanish in the apocryphal “War of Jenkins’ Ear.” Commanding Wager and at the center of Grann’s book is Captain David Cheap, a deeply flawed and complicated skipper.Like Grann’s other books, “The Wager” nearly requires one to suspend disbelief. The author carefully and patiently reveals the story’s events, shocking the reader in the process. Moreover, upon completing Grann’s 257-page account of Wager’s exploits and those of its sister ship, HMS Centurion, the reader better understands the ruthlessness and cunning demonstrated by the British Royal Navy as it navigated the high seas in quest of Empire. Indeed, British imperial ambitions are fully displayed in “The Wager.”Based mainly on seamen’s logbooks and trial records, many of which are over 250 years old, Grann pieces together the seemingly doomed Wager’s calamities while providing ample historical context. The author, for example, details the multitudinous threats facing British ships as they pursued the Empire’s aims in the mid-18th century. He also describes shipboard conditions on a British man-of-war sailing the world’s oceans during this era.Wager meets its fate while searching for a Spanish galleon laden with treasure and attempting to negotiate the treacherous seas off Cape Horn at the tip of the South American continent. The crew, already decimated by storms, scurvy, and sundry other trials, finds its ship dashed on the rocks off the coast of Patagonia, Argentina. Marooned in May 1741 with little hope of rescue, the men struggle to survive on a scabrous spit of land subsequently named Wager Island.Malnourished and desperate, Wager’s surviving company suffers a complete breakdown in discipline and decorum. Having lost confidence in the ailing and unpredictable Cheap, still in command, the castaways defy British naval law and flout regulations. A fulminant Cheap, for his part, opposes the indiscipline and enforces his authority at the end of a pistol. A mutiny takes shape, and eventually, a breakaway faction, led by Gunner’s Mate John Bulkeley, abandons Cheap and his loyalists, leaving them to fend for themselves on Wager Island. By this time, subsisting on the meagerest of diets harvested from terrain that barely sustains life while withstanding storm after storm, Cheap and crew somehow endure.Sailing a small transport boat reinforced with scrap lumber harvested from Wager and equipped with makeshift sails and rigging, Bulkeley and his charges successfully navigate the Strait of Magellan to Brazil. Meanwhile, Cheap and the Wager Island stragglers experience an equally implausible outcome. Sailing on an eighteen-foot yawl salvaged from the Wager, they set off to reach the Chilean coast. Surviving their respective ordeals, the two parties return to London, providing their lurid accounts of mutiny, betrayal, abandonment, and murder to an incredulous British Admiralty and fascinated public. They alternately face scorn and approbation and, eventually, court-martial.It is the Wager leadership’s trial for which Grann saves his best narration and jaw-dropping, surprise ending.”The Wager” asks which of the stories is harder to believe: the death-defying travails and travels of these indomitable seamen or the unanticipated result as the British Admiralty adjudicates their fate. Yet, Grann provides the reader with all the evidence necessary to confirm these events happened irrefutably. Relying on an abundance of journals, logs, diaries, and even letters, Grann demonstrates again his seemingly unquenchable thirst for the truth to inform his audience. His single-spaced bibliography alone exceeds 13 pages.Without question, “The Wager” is an astonishing naval story reminiscent of Charles Nordhoff’s and James Norman Hall’s “Mutiny on the Bounty.” Considering the inglorious actions of the Wager’s crew, Grann’s book is worth reading and rereading to comprehend the motives of desperate men. Experiencing the audacity and might of the 18th century British Royal Navy, particularly exemplified by Centurion as she squares off with the Spanish man-of-war Our Lady of Covadonga off the Philippines, provides immensely satisfying adventure reading. Grann’s spellbinding account of the naval gunfight puts the reader in the crow’s nest as though he is viewing the fight aboard the Centurion from the very mast top!”The Wager” offers an incredible piece of storytelling suitable for any devotee of narrative nonfiction or lover of naval lore.An extraordinary tale.
EVA M VANDENBOS –
Easy to read, interesting and amazing facts!
Tammy –
Wow this was such an incredible, thrilling story—a definite must read. Set in the 1740’s, it’s a true story based around the HMS Wager involving a court martial where two groups of shipwrecked British sailors accuse each other of mutiny + murder.David Grann pulled out all the stops in this harrowing tale of the British ship Wager that embarked from England on a secret mission against Spain; to capture a Spanish galleon for it’s treasure aboard. It begins in Britain—with no sailors available to help man the ship they resorted to unfathomable acts.. (unbelievably) of paying gangs to snatch up unsuspecting men and forcing sick + (aging) invalid soldiers aboard as sailors on the ship.David Grann writes of the shipwrecked sailors that survived.. only to fight for survival and dominance on what is now called “Wager Island” (some resorting to abominable acts.) Two years later (1742) a patched-up boat of thirty men landed ashore in Brazil with tales of heroism—six months later another three in Chile with tales of mutiny.. this is a fascinating tell-all of the true story behind what really happened onboard the HMS Wager.I found this all hard to believe.. it’s like a cross between Robinson Crusoe and Lord of the Flies.. but according to David Grann’s years researching this.. it did happen. Highly recommend. 5 stars — Pub. 4/18/23
Mary Q. –
This is my favorite kind of nonfiction book: true history told as a fascinating story, and not too long!Well-written and well-researched, really a great book.