A review of the book 'The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder' written by David Grann.
This is an astoundingly and painstakingly well-researched book of historical non-fiction. David Grann has revived the incredible story with his meticulous research. The Wager is an entertaining entry in the robust subgenre of shipwreck literature.
Order links of the book 'The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder' below:
Amazon India:
Paperback
Kindle
Amazon USA:
Hardcover
Kindle
Flipkart:
Paperback
And please don't forget to checkout Historylogy.com for latest book reviews and tidbits from the pages of history.
Please feel free to our social media ID's for latest updates. Links below:
https://www.facebook.com/historylogy/
https://twitter.com/historylogy
https://www.instagram.com/historylogy/
Affiliate Earnings Disclaimer:
This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.
Coming up: A review of the book 'The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder' written by David Grann.
Namaste Friends. My name is 'Shinil Subramanian Payamal' and you are listening to the Historylogy podcast.
Before I proceed, a full disclosure: This book was bought with my own money and not been provided to me by the author or publisher.
Little bit about the author:
David Grann is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of Z. Killers of the Flower Moon was a finalist for the National Book Award and won an Edgar Allan Poe Award. He is also the author of The White Darkness and the collection The Devil and Sherlock Holmes. Grann’s investigative reporting has garnered several honours, including a George Polk Award. He lives with his wife and children in New York.
Let me read what is written on the back cover of the book cover:
QUOTE
From the international bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a mesmerising story of shipwreck, mutiny and murder, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.
On 28 January 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.
Six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen.
It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court found guilty could hang.
The Wager is a grand tale of human behaviour at the extremes told by one of our greatest non-fiction writers. As always with Grann’s work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound. Most powerfully, he unearths the deeper meaning of the events, showing it was not only the Wager’s captain and crew who were on trial ─ it was the very idea of empire.
UNQUOTE
Some of the things I learnt after reading this book:
1. Nautical language. Meaning of phrases/words like: Turn a blind eye, pipe down, toe the line, scuttlebutt, three sheets to the wind, knots, etc…
2. According to tradition, how a body was to be buried at sea.
3. Articles of War—thirty six rules regulating the behaviour of every man and boy onboard the ship.
4. How difficult it was for a ship to pass around Cape Horn, the rocky, barren island marking the southernmost tip of the Americas, especially the funnel known as the Drake Passage.
5. In 1945, in one of the most comprehensive modern studies of human deprivation, known as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, scientists assessed the effects of hunger on a group of individuals.
6. The sailors adage: “Below forty degrees latitude, there is no law, and below fifty degrees there is no God.”
7. Reasons for the Admiralty to want the case to disappear. Ferreting out and documenting all the incontrovertible facts of what had happened on the island—the marauding, the stealing, the whippings, the murders—would have undercut the central claim on which the British Empire tried to justify its rule of other peoples: namely, that its imperial forces, its civilisation, were inherently superior. That its officers were gentlemen, not brutes.
Conclusion:
The book is lavishly illustrated with excellent, helpful maps and 28 other well-chosen pictures. There are portraits of several of the main characters painted during their lifetimes, paintings of the Wager, etchings of the survivor's life on a desolate, remote island, photos of this place in the present and from 1742 and pictures on how to amputate legs and arms.
This is an astoundingly and painstakingly well-researched book of historical non-fiction. David Grann has revived the incredible story with his meticulous research. The Wager is an entertaining entry in the robust subgenre of shipwreck literature. This book is storytelling at its best! Highly recommend it! I give the book 4.75/5. And please check the show notes for the respective buy links and latest prices.
Would like to end by quoting these lines from the book:
QUOTE
“Empires preserve their power with the stories that they tell, but just as critical are the stories they don’t—the dark silences they impose, the pages they tear out.”
UNQUOTE
Last but not the least, thank you for spending your valuable time listening to this book review. Really grateful. Please don't forget to subscribe to the Historylogy podcast on your favourite podcasting app and also feel free to leave a review. Also, please check historylogy.com for all previous episodes. Thanks and looking forward to hearing from you. Take care and bye!