The Wager by David Grann recently won the 2023 Goodreads Choice Award for Best History & Biography.

David Grann is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Killers of the Flower Moon (recently made into a film by Martin Scorcese) and The Lost City of Z.

In this latest book he chronicles the fate of the 18th century British warship, the Wager, which had set out on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain (with dubious reasoning behind it), with the intention of tracking down a fleet rumoured to be carrying a horde of treasure.

Not only was there a significant human cost to these excursions, it was the era of plundering natural resources, constructing a single large warship could require as many as four thousand trees, therefore a hundred acres of forest might be felled.

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 swathes of the earth, so that they could exploit and monopolise other nations’ valuable natural resources and trade markets. In the process, they subjugated and destroyed innumerable indigenous peoples, justifying their ruthless self-interest – by claiming they were somehow spreading “civilisation” to the benighted realms of the earth. Spain had long been the dominant empire in Latin America, but Great Britain, which already possessed colonies along the American eastern seaboard, was now on the ascendance – and determined to break its rival’s hold.

Wrecked off the coast of Patagonia, after rounding the notoriously dangerous Cape Horn, those who survived would spend months on an island before putting together makeshift vessels from what they had salvaged, leaving the island in two groups, heading in opposite directions, with different stories to tell.

Reading Outside the Norm

It’s not my usual reading fare, however after reading a praise-worthy review, I was drawn to it, when I read that the men who laboured on these large ships were often kidnapped and forced to crew, sometimes taken from workhouses or even snatched just as they were returning from having crewed on another ship, much to the consternation of their waiting families.

After peaceful efforts to man the fleets failed, the Navy resorted to what a secretary of the Admiralty called a “more violent” strategy. Armed gangs were were dispatched to press seafaring men into service – in effect, kidnapping them. The gangs roamed cities and towns, grabbing anyone who betrayed the telltale signs of a mariner: the familiar checkered shirt and wide-kneed trousers and round hat; the fingers smeared with tar, which was used to make virtually everything on a ship more water-resistant and durable.

It took a little to get into the rhythm of the book, as the various characters and their backgrounds were introduced, just as the ship HMS Wager delayed leaving British shores due to setbacks, both human and due to adverse weather conditions. Once they set sail, on August 23, 1740 and with the help of route maps on the inside front and back flaps, the story became more captivating.

Hidden Histories in the Archives, Disrupting the Historical Narrative

It is a fascinating account that David Grann became aware of upon visiting the UK National Archive in Kew, reading an ancient logbook of one of the crew of the ship, which then lead him to other accounts of the adventures of those onboard, in particular, rival perspectives on what happened after HMS Wager was shipwrecked on May 14, 1741 off the southern coast of Patagonia, Chile.

The time survivors spent on Wager Island is reminiscent of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. As Captain David Cheap tries to keep order and calm, as food sources they manage to salvage deplete and disagreements increase, men become desperate, divisions occur, loyalties waver.

When the Captain crosses a serious line, his authority and ability to stay in charge decline, causing a major rupture in support for the direction they plan to take.

Indigenous Intuition, Avoiding the Real Savagery

One of the more interesting parts of their land based story, given how difficult it was for them to survive and the factions that develop as the group splits loyalties, was the arrival of a group of Kawésqar indigenous people, who pretty much live in their canoes circumnavigating the coast, living off the land, sea and foreshore.

These people helped the castaways by obtaining meat and seafood for them, quickly and adeptly building dwellings and then would leave (they knew not to trust these pale faced marauders). Witnessing the insidious tensions mounting among the castaways, one morning they would awake to discover them, their canoes and dwelling all gone, never to return.

Aware of how helpless the Englishmen were, the Kawésqar would regularly venture out to sea and then magically return with nourishment for them. Byron saw one woman depart with a companion in a canoe and , once offshore, grip a basket between her teeth and leap into the freezing water. “Diving to the bottom,” Byron wrote, she “continued under water in an amazing time.” When she emerged, her basket was filled with sea urchins – a strange shellfish, Byron wrote, “from which several prickles project in all directions.”

Logbooks of Seafaring Adventures Can Be Important Navigation Tools

Eventually the castaways would rebuild from what they had been able to salvage, another sailing vessel and one group who disagreed with the Captain which route to take would depart in one direction and the rest, some months later in the opposite direction.

Cheap’s plan, meanwhile, was taking on new, hidden dimensions. Poring over charts, he began to believe that there was a way to not only preserve their lives but also fulfill their original military mission. He calculated that the nearest Spanish settlement was on the island of Chiloé, which was off the Chilean coast and some 350 miles north of their present location.

Bulkeley, on the other hand, borrowed the 16-year-old midshipman John Byron’s copy of Sir John Narborough’s chronicle of sea tales exploring the Patagonia region, believing it may contain critical clues for navigating a safe passage away from Wager Island. He would use this reference to take his group of men through the tricky Strait of Magellan, thus avoiding Cape Horn.

After a voyage, the captain of a ship turned over the requisite logbooks to the Admiralty, providing reams of information for building an empire – an encyclopedia of the sea and of unfamiliar lands.

Anson and his officers would frequently consult the journals of the few seamen who had ventured around Cape Horn.

Moreover, these “logbooks of memory”, as one historian coined them, created a record of any controversial actions or mishaps that occurred during a voyage. If need be they could be submitted as evidence at courts-martial; careers and lives might depend on them.

Who Is Actually On Trial Here, Man or An Empire?

The trip culminates in some survivors return to England and various allegations against different people, threat of imprisonment or hanging. A trial will be held.

In the meantime the stories and individual accounts captured the imagination of ‘Grub Street hacks’ and others who profited by publishing narratives of the high sea and inhospitable island adventures, in an era that ironically resembled the ‘fake news’ era of our own time. Due to the sheer number of differing accounts, perceptions of the Wager affair varied from reader to reader.

Once the broadsheet newspapers and periodicals were filled with breathless reports, book publishers competed to release first-hand accounts from the former castaways.

Though few of those narratives survived today, plenty of archive material made it possible for David Grann to put together an interesting account of an inconclusive British imperial adventure that may have lost the nation more than just men and a ship, but much credibility for the human and financial cost of their exploits, all in the name of retaining their perception as being a superior imperial power.

Author, David Grann

David Grann is an American journalist, a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of Killers of the Flower Moon, The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of an Edgar Allan Poe Award for best true crime book. He also wrote The Lost City of Z, A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, also adapted into a critically acclaimed film directed by James Gray.

Grann’s investigative reporting has accumulated several honours, including a George Polk Award. He lives with his wife and two children in New York.