The Wager

by David Grann

Published 2023

If you were to read this book with no other obvious hints, you might very well conclude that it's fiction.

I say that for two very different reasons: first, because the story itself is so adventurous and interesting it seems unlikely to be anything but invented; second, because it often seems as if the writer is trying to make a case using a story.

A number of years back I read and reviewed the same author's Lost City of Z, a non-fiction adventure that was made into a movie starring Charlie Hunnam. It was, for me, both a fascinating book and a fun and lively film.

I would probably have gone with the same opinion about this story, as well, as all the elements for a great adventure read are present: a dangerous expedition, a horrible complication, a descent into terror and ruin, a sad and memorable resolution. This time, rather than men adventuring into the jungle in search of a lost city, the story focuses on the real events of The Wager Mutiny, which "took place in 1741, after the British warship HMS Wager was wrecked on a desolate island off the south coast of present-day Chile.

"The Wager was part of a naval squadron bound to attack Spanish interests in the Pacific. She lost contact with the squadron while rounding Cape Horn, ran aground during a storm and wrecked on what would become known as Wager Island. The main body of the crew mutinied against their captain, David Cheap, abandoned him and a group of loyal crew members on the island, and set off in a modified schooner (named Speedwell - ironically the same ship name as one that accompanied The Mayflower to North America) via the Strait of Magellan to Portuguese-administered Rio de Janeiro. Most of the mutineers either died or were abandoned on shore during the journey, but the survivors eventually returned to England." (Wikipedia)

We meet the players in the first chapters as the ships are fitted out for their adventure, sailors and supplies are gathered, the ship's complement is padded with impressed seamen, and the ships are organized from "fist-rate" to "sixth-rate," informing this reader at least about the nautical origin of yet another term we used in everyday life. (On a quick side note, I just discovered a book I will likely have to get called Jackspeak: A Guide to British Naval Slang and Usage by Rick Jolly, which details the many, many expressions, words, and phrases that began life on board often British ships, and evolved into slang and everyday usage for modern English speakers. A fun example: a "crank" is a ship that heeled abnormally - hence our "cranky" when someone is out of sorts!)  

As summer looms the squadron ships attempt to round Cape Horn, and as Grann's exciting and detailed description has it, this is a feat as dangerous as almost any that could have been undertaken at the time. Unopposed currents, massive waves, dangerous rocks and shallows, and impending "summer" in the lowest latitudes, all conspired to make this adventure only for the most stalwart of sailors.

They finally make it, but the Wager, in dire straits due to its relatively poor size and condition, and the fact that a scurvy outbreak has weakened its crew, eventually shipwrecks, and then the real trouble begins - starvation, power struggles, and eventually a mutiny.

Grann, all considered, is a genuinely expert author. He has done enormous research, going so far as to quote the material left to history by the ships' logs, subsequent mutiny trial and written recollections, in many cases putting the "words" of these bits of history into the mouths of the characters almost as dialogue - and in other cases, describing the action of the scenes as if they were, in fact, passages in a fictional story. They are that compelling, exciting, and narrative.

His detailed description of the ships, daily life, the food, the conditions, the interactions of the personalities that lead up to the mutinous climax, based on actual records, is fascinating and keeps the reader thoroughly engaged, wanting both to learn more and to "see how the story ends."

And here I have to insert what ended up being a nearly deal-breaking question and critique. There are a variety of genres associated with "history." An actual, factual history - be it a people, a time period, a war, a plague, or other event, and rightfully so the events described here have been the subject of a number of basic histories. 

There are commentaries and essay type investigations of an event, often when the material at hand has moral or philosophical overtones worthy of digging into. In these types of works, the author is specifically commenting on the forces that drove the actions, whether, as in this case, it be the impressment of sailors, the Spanish vs. the British, the British Navy's aspirations, encounters with the New World and its people, and on and on. 

Finally there is historical fiction, in which characters are placed in a period in time, and set to action within the limits and expressions of that time - sometimes merely "of the time," others actually reacting to real events that took place.

Grann's narrative, on more than one occasion, crosses a line that made me stop and reflect.

Writing, for example, about the ships sailing toward South America, and eventually around it, and encountering some tribal people who lived there, Grann makes comments about the purpose and intent of the British sailors as being "imperialists." In one such passage he notes that Magellan, recording his trip to Tierra del Fuego, encounters people he describes as being very tall, with enormous feet - hence the term "Patagonia," "pata" meaning "paw" in Spanish. Grann's aside is: "By portraying the natives as both magnificent and less than human, Europeans tried to pretend that their brutal mission of conquest was somehow righteous and heroic."

This sort of commentary, and there are many such dotted throughout the book, accomplishes two things: it pulls the reader out of the flow of the narrative which Grann has so successfully woven. Second, it imputes a motive to the record-keeping of the European adventurers that they may or may not have shared. This story takes place in 1741. Magellan was sailing roughly more than 200 years before this voyage. While certainly Magellan was looking to make a name - and doubtless a fortune - for himself, and discoveries for Portugal, at least some of his mission was to find ways to make trade routes to the east, particularly as at the time, Spain and Portugal were re-adjusting following the expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian peninsula. 

All of which isn't to say the writer isn't far more competent to recount the history than the vast majority of his readers. And there is no doubt that his style, in general, is as good as many a best-selling novelist. And that, minor complaints aside, I wouldn't still highly recommend the book.

But it's also the case, at least for this reader, that when reading along, happily engaged with the story, the characters, the events, the writing - and something, a word, a sentence, an idea, and particularly a commentary, pulls the reader up short, it is either the best part of the book, or the worst. In this case, I'm going for the latter.