The Wager
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4.3 • 65 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER
*LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION*
'The beauty of The Wager unfurls like a great sail... one of the finest nonfiction books I’ve ever read' Guardian
‘The greatest sea story ever told’ Spectator
'I cannot think of anyone who would not love this book . . . It is an extraordinary true story, beautifully written' Richard Osman
‘A cracking yarn… Grann’s taste for desperate predicaments finds its fullest expression here’ Observer
From the international bestselling author of KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE LOST CITY OF Z, a mesmerising story of shipwreck, mutiny and murder, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.
On 28th 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 chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon, the Wager was wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The crew, marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing 2,500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.
Then, six months later, another, even more decrepit, craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways and they had a very different story to tell. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with counter-charges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous captain and his henchmen. 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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
David Grann’s jaw-dropping historical narrative is part Lord of the Flies, part Mutiny on the Bounty. In 1740, a ship called the Wager sailed out of Portsmouth, England, on a covert, government-sanctioned agenda of international piracy. Shipwrecked on a forbidding island, some of the Wager’s sailors fashioned a makeshift boat and miraculously made it 3,000 miles to Brazil, while others eventually arrived in Chile on a rickety raft, accusing the first group of mutiny. As usual, Grann—author of the bestselling Killers of the Flower Moon—did a massive amount of research to draw us into this true tale of murder and betrayal on the high seas and the subsequent military trial. His gripping storytelling makes The Wager read like the most exciting work of fiction. Centuries later, no one has been able to definitively say what really happened, but Grann’s exciting book lets you judge for yourself.
Customer Reviews
The Wager
Another excellent book from a great researcher and writer. He has a way of making you fully experience the characters feelings and emotions.
Why
The authors constant substitution of ‘people’ for ‘men’ is jarring and a shameful inclusion of contemporary gender and identity politics.