![]() (For example, sick seamen don’t serve on deck, but are sent below to get out of the elements and rest so they are literally “under the weather.”) ![]() He recounts and analyzes the politics on land and onboard the ships as well as the dangers of the journey and how the vocabulary of sailing has permeated the language. Grann, who recently spoke by video surrounded by his voluminous notes and a model of The Wager, dives deep into the maritime world of that era. Related: Sign up for our free newsletter about books, authors, reading and moreĪs David Grann recounts in his gripping new book, “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder,” neither group expected to see the other alive – and their competing stories created a new round of complications. Then, astonishingly, another three men turned up alive, including the captain and a young man whose grandson, the poet Lord Byron, would write about these exploits in “Don Juan.” It got worse from there: scurvy, typhoons, a shipwreck, murder and cannibalism and mutiny.Įventually, 81 men set out from where the crew had been stranded on a makeshift ship for a 3,000-mile journey that killed nearly two-thirds of them their survival was hailed as a miracle. ![]() Things went awry before they even left as the ships had trouble finding willing and able men. In 1740, a warship called The Wager left England as part of a fleet looking to make war with Spain in South America and capture a galleon holding millions in treasure. ![]()
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