The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

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1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a
thrilling story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court-
martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the
deeper meaning of the events on the Wager, showing that it was not only the
captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire.A Best
Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker,
TIME, Smithsonian, NPR, Vulture, Kirkus Reviews“Riveting…Reads like a
thriller, tackling a multilayered history—and imperialism—with gusto.”—Time”A
tour de force of narrative nonfiction.”—The Wall Street JournalOn January 28,
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.But then…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 behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest
nonfiction writers. Grann’s recreation of the hidden world on a British
warship rivals the work of Patrick O’Brian, his portrayal of the castaways’
desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The
Endurance, and his account of the court-martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow
thriller. As always with Grann’s work, the incredible twists of the narrative
hold the listener spellbound. Read more

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