The Wager was a boat that took off from England in 1740 in a flotilla of about five boats when England and Spain were at war. They planned on sailing around Cape Horn in South America and attacking various Spanish ships along the way.
But things did not go as planned. The weather and waves around Cape Horn were awful. Two boats turned around, and soon The Wager lost sight of the Centurion (the lead boat carrying the Commodore). Although they eventually managed to make it around Cape Horn by themselves, they were too far East and crashed against rocks in the middle of a storm in 1742. What happened next is somewhat disputed by all those who were there, but it was a desperate situation. The men were already starving, and they did not have the knowledge or means to support themselves. The weather was horrible, and the men were desperate.
With desperate, starving men, chaos seemed to reign. Captain David Cheap was not a great leader under these circumstances. Bulkeley appeared to be a more instinctive leader, and most of the men followed him, but he was not one of the higher officers. In addition, there was a small group of men who rebelled and went off on their own.
After Captain Cheap shot a midshipman in the head without any real provocation, Bulkeley decided that Cheap was not fit to lead. He maneuvered the second in command and most of the men to force Cheap to give up his command. He ended up leaving Cheap and about ten other loyal men on the island while they tried to sail home with their small boats. By the end of the book, it felt like there were men from the Wager left all over South America. Amazingly, a number of them made it home to England. With all of them accusing each other of capitol crimes, things were looking pretty grim. In the end the British Navy decided to sweep everything under the rug because it would have been too embarrassing for them to dig into everything that had actually happened.
Although I felt the ending was a little bit of a letdown because I was expecting more to happen, Grann makes a number of points about the British Empire (and empires in general) with this book. First, the bad planning and eagerness to jump into war with Spain caused an incredible amount of suffering and death of those on board. They manned the ships by kidnapping able-bodied sailors, and they even took old men from a veteran's hospital and forced them on board. Second, even though the British were keen on labeling the indigenous people as uncivilized brutes, it was the Europeans who were often acting like brutes.
This book felt like a never ending discussion of suffering. Nothing about the journey seemed remotely appealing. From typhus to scurvy, even in calm waters, the smell and the suffering was overwhelming. Many, many people died on this voyage, but I'm honestly surprised that anyone survived. Even when they were on the island and starving, the Captain punished people who stole food with 600 lashes. They spread it out over 3 days, but the punishment was basically a death sentence. Many of the survivors went on to sail again, but I don't think I would ever get on a boat for the rest of my life. One fascinating fact was that Lord Byron's grandfather was a midshipman on this voyage. He was only sixteen when he set sail, and Grann shows how some of Lord Byron's writings were influenced by his grandfather.
This was a book I probably would not have found on my own. It was very interesting, and I learned a lot. However, it was sometimes no fun to read about such constant death and suffering.
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