A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder
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Who is David Grann and what is his book The Wager about?
This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. Our guest today is bestselling author and New Yorker magazine staff writer David Graham. Gran has a knack for finding little-known stories from history and turning them into books that are page-turners. His non-fiction book The Wager, now out in paperback, is no exception. It's about a shipwreck and mutiny in the 1700s. Martin Scorsese plans to adapt it into a film. Scorsese already adapted another of Gran's books into a movie, Killers of the Flower Moon. An earlier Gran book, The Lost City of Z, also was adapted for the movies. Our producer, Sam Brigger, spoke with David Gran in 2023. Here's Sam.
At the bottom of the world, below the tip of South America, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans converge to form one of the most dangerous places to find yourself in a boat, the Drake Passage. In the mid-18th century, a squadron of British warships made the journey through the passage in the worst weather imaginable, suffering terrible damage to their ships. One man of war called the Wager went missing and wrecked upon the rocks of a desolate island off Patagonia. At first, the castaways maintained the naval laws and discipline of the British Empire under their captain, but that unraveled under the hardships they endured, including poor shelter, punishing weather, and starvation. There was murder and cannibalism, and the captain lost the respect of his crew, especially after killing one of the sailors by shooting him. Eventually, the majority of the men mutinied and sailed away on a makeshift craft, leaving behind their captain and a small band loyal to him. They sailed nearly 3,000 miles to rescue in Brazil, but only 29 of the 81 survived the journey.
Miraculously, the captain survived as well. The leaders of the mutineers and the captain were reunited in England at a court-martial hearing to decide whether they were guilty of the crimes of mutiny and murder. David Grand writes about this harrowing journey in his new book, The Wager, a tale of shipwreck, mutiny, and murder. Well, David Grand, welcome back to Fresh Air.
What was the secret mission of the British warships in the 1740s?
Oh, it's so great to be back on the program. So your book takes place in the 1740s when the British Empire went to war against its rival, Imperial Spain. And the war was called the War of Jenkins' Ear, and we can leave that to readers to find out why it had that name. But there was a secret mission that a squadron of five British warships took. Tell us about that mission and where they were going. Yeah, so they were given a secret mission to try to intercept and capture a Spanish galleon filled with so much treasure, it was known as the prize of all the oceans. And so they were going to sail across the Atlantic, around the violent seas of Cape Horn, into the Pacific, and then try to intercept the ship somewhere off the coast of the Philippines.
Believe it or not, that was part of the mission and there was a real whiff of piracy to it all. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like a heist movie, but isn't this piracy? Isn't this almost illegal during that time? It wasn't illegal. It was actually part – it was the end of a certain era of buccaneering. But in that period, seamen were offered a tantalizing prospect, which was a share of the prize money. So, yes, it – There really was a piratical element to this secret mission. And can you set this conflict in the larger context? Like what were Britain and Spain fighting about? Yeah, so Great Britain was seeking, this was the kind of terrible age of empires, and Great Britain was seeking to expand its empire into Latin America and break its rival Spain's hold over that region. And so this war was sparked by imperialists who were hoping to break that Spanish hold over this region.
And as I said in the introduction, even today, rounding Cape Horn is considered very dangerous. What makes it so tricky?
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Chapters
9 chapters
1
Who is David Grann and what is his book The Wager about?
0:10–2:20
2
What was the secret mission of the British warships in the 1740s?
2:20–7:13
3
Why is rounding Cape Horn so dangerous?
7:13–10:24
4
What were the British warships like and how were they crewed?
10:24–16:59
5
What was life like on board these 18th-century warships?
16:59–23:20
6
Who were the key figures on the Wager and what were their roles?
23:20–26:03
7
What diseases threatened the sailors and how did it affect the voyage?
26:03–33:28
8
How did the voyage around Cape Horn unfold and what were the challenges?
33:28–36:16
9
How does David Grann describe his own approach to researching The Wager?
36:16–46:20
Speakers
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