The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder - David Grann

[holyzombiejesus]

Fuck! This is ace! Just came out in paperback this week (I think).

Guardian review said "There's an expectation, in reviewing a book like The Wager, to balance its strengths with some discussion of its flaws. But The Wager is one of the finest nonfiction books I've ever read. "

Another review says "In his new book, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder Grann picks up a tale set in the 1740s, a decade when Spain and England—vying to subject native peoples, control the world's mineral riches and bank the wealth produced by enslaved laborers—sent shiploads of men to square off on the high seas. Those imperial encounters boiled over when a Spanish officer boarded a British brig, accused the captain of smuggling sugar and cut off his ear, launching the conflict known as the War of Jenkins' Ear—a bit of pub trivia that also left us, Grann writes, "one of the longest castaway voyages ever recorded."

The Wager was a royal navy vessel manned with 250 officers and crew and carrying munitions for a squadron of six warships. It set sail from Portsmouth in September 1740.  Bad weather and bad decisions chased the ships around Cape Horn, and the Wager wrecked on an island off the coast of Chile in May 1741. Everyone assumed the men and their boat were lost. But almost nine months later, a remnant of the crew staggered ashore in Brazil. Several months after that, more of the crew appeared in Chile. Those survivors had stories to tell—and to sell. "

[AngryGazelle]

Have ordered this from the library. Thanks for the recommendation.

[Famous Mortimer]

Sounds right up my street. Trying to remember the title of the fascinating piracy book I read a few years ago - "Villains Of All Nations" maybe?

[holyzombiejesus]

Have ordered this from the library. Thanks for the recommendation.

Ah, excellent. Please let us know what you think when you've read it.

[Mobius]

Sounds interesting will check it out. Must be good if Dion Graham narrates the audiobook!

[Famous Mortimer]

I had a birthday pressie gift voucher for the local independent bookshop, so went and bought it yesterday. Looking forward to reading it, cheers for the recommendation.

[holyzombiejesus]

Be warned that the book is about 100 pages shorter than it may appear due to the copious amounts of notes at the back. It's so ace, incredible narrative drive for a 'factual' book. Got about 30 pages left so hope to finish it tonight. Anyone read anything else by Grann (KotFM aside)?

[FalseRodHull]

Only read the Lost City of Z but it was exactly as you describe The Wager. Plus it had lots of gruesome descriptions of all the things in the jungle that are out to get you, like cyanide squirting millipedes.

Definitely worth going in blind if you haven't heard of Percy Fawcett (or seen the film).

[Peacock Johnson]

Definitely sounds interesting, will hunt it down.

Sounds like if you like this you will like  Batavia's Graveyard by Mike Dash - similar kinda mutiny/shipwreck/grimness/survival thing, great book

[Senior Baiano]

We think of gambling sponsorship permeating every facet of life as being a modern phenomenon, but

[AngryGazelle]

Read the first chapter on the bus this morning -- great stuff so far.

[non capisco]

This sounds excellent - have placed a reservation at my local library, cheers!

[AngryGazelle]

Finished this the other day and thought it was really bloody good! Held my attention throughout, which can be hard sometimes.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[Norton Canes]

Rattling through this, great stuff. Love a bit of meticulously-detailed C18th naval hardship. Particularly loved the description of a typical ship's crew, quoted from a contemporary source, as a mixture of "highwaymen, burglars, pickpockets, debauchees, adulterers, gamesters, lampooners, bastard-getters, imposters, panders, parasites, ruffians, hypocrites [and] threadworn beaux jack-a-dandies".

Always seen myself as something of a threadworn beaux jack-a-dandy.

[Norton Canes]

Reminds me of the books of historian Roger Crowley, whose volumes on mediaeval maritime conflict around the Mediterranean (the 1565 Siege of Malta, the fall of Constantinople, how Venice ruled the seas) are written with the same sense of historical flavour, page-turning excitement and just enough well-informed embellishment to keep them on the right side of speculative adventure.

[notjosh]

This is very much up my street, and I enjoyed The Lost City of Z, so will add to my list, after Killers of the Flower Moon.

In a similar vein, I really loved Hampton Sides' In The Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette, about a doomed expedition to the North Pole with all kinds of lurid and heartbreaking details. Also lots of interesting stuff about the Open Polar Sea theory which formed the basis for their voyage, and newspaper owner Gordon Bennett (supposedly THE Gordon Bennett).

[touchingcloth]

Rattling through this, great stuff. Love a bit of meticulously-detailed C18th naval hardship. Particularly loved the description of a typical ship's crew, quoted from a contemporary source, as a mixture of "highwaymen, burglars, pickpockets, debauchees, adulterers, gamesters, lampooners, bastard-getters, imposters, panders, parasites, ruffians, hypocrites [and] threadworn beaux jack-a-dandies".

Always seen myself as something of a threadworn beaux jack-a-dandy.

Also rattling through it, it's good stuff.

"Yet, even for young nobles drawn to a life at sea, their sudden change in circumstances could be shocking. "Ye gods, what a difference!" one such midshipman recalled. "I had anticipated a kind of elegant house with guns in the windows; an orderly set of men; in short, I expected to find a species of Grosvenor Place, floating around like Noah's ark." Instead, he noted, the deck was "dirty, slippery and wet; the smells abominable; the whole sight disgusting; and when I remarked the slovenly attire of the midshipmen, dressed in shabby round jackets, glazed hats, no gloves, and some without shoes, I forgot all the glory...and, for nearly the first time in my life, and I wish I could say it was the last, took the handkerchief from my pocket, covered my face, and cried like the child I was."

Never seen Master and Commander, eh?

"Robert Walpole, the country's first prime minister, warned that the dearth of crews had rendered a third of the Navy's ships unusable. "Oh! seamen, seamen, seamen!" he cried at a meeting.

I bet he fucking did.

[Blinder Data]

this was ace. they were certainly made of strong stuff in the 18th century. if you liked the 2018 tv series 'the terror', you'll love this.

not surprised scorsese and dicaprio bought the rights, but i would prefer a tv adaptation. when the going got tough, there was enough grim and dramatic material in each paragraph to last an episode.

the image of sailors left to die on remote islands when the castaways' ship was too small, shouting "god save the king", positively brimmed with pathos

[BritishHobo]

Loved this. Zipped through it. I love stuff about the echoes of humans on landscape, and the way stuff fades with time, and this is full of that shit. All the names given to bits and pieces of this random, weatherbeaten place in the middle of nowhere, marking something that was enormously meaningful in their scramble for survival, but is ultimately tiny. Little scraps of shipwrecked wood frozen in the rivers. Along the lines of what Blinder Data mentioned, glimpses of abandoned sailors disappearing into the mist as we sail away, them disappearing from history forever.

Life is so fucking cheap in this story, it's astonishing how often hundreds of men simply disappear in the space of a sentence. There's something existentially terrifying about the fact that our protagonists are only such because of pure luck. Any tiny twist in fate and they could have wasted away either on the island or the horrendous sea journeys home, with three or four different people being the ones whose stories survived.

I was a bit wary at first that

Spoiler alert

the blurb's promise of a big battle for truth in the court, ultimately led nowhere. But actually the way it petered out ended up much more fascinating. These events that were a relentless, never-ending life-and-death war for survival - events which would haunt you for the rest of your life - ultimately didn't matter, and were met with a shrug by their country. Did you all do your best to avoid the ship being wrecked in the first place? Yes? Great, crack on with your lives then.

[close]

[Norton Canes]

Life is so fucking cheap in this story, it's astonishing how often hundreds of men simply disappear in the space of a sentence

Equally terrifying that the navy would dispatch thousands of men on huge voyages, knowing that a significant proportion of them would quite likely die of malnutrition and disease even if they avoided battle casualties and their ships remained seaworthy. And all in what prided itself as a civilised age.

Yes, definite shades of The Terror.

[touchingcloth]

A significant proportion of those men being pressed, some of those being army and navy veterans who were recovering in hospital from wounds and lost limbs received fighting for cunt and country.

[touchingcloth]

The more I read about the reality of sailing for months before slowly developing scurvy before being trapped on an island before attempting to escape from the island with whatever floating objects you can find before deciding that you should probably try getting back to the island, the less fun it sounds.

It's amazing how intense the oceans in the south sound. I've experienced choppy crossings on the Channel and Irish Sea, but not to the point of the boat rolling 90 degrees from upright.

[touchingcloth]

Loved this, it's only real weakness was at the very end when he weighed in with his personal opinion that empires are racist and racism is bad. Not a wrong opinion, it was just a slightly jarring shift from the author's voice not being present prior to that.

My version didn't have footnotes embedded in the text, which was a shame because the appendices seem like they're full of interesting bits of information, but I'll almost certainly never get round to reading them and trying to remember what was happening in the chapters they refer to.

[BritishHobo]

This video seems to be the only footage online of Wager Island itself. An extremely brief watch, but still a bit surreal to actually (purportedly) see it:

[touchingcloth]

I've just looked up David Grann, and he looks like one of us. Disturbingly bald.

Sounds like Lost City of Z is more of the same from what the balds in this thread have said? I'll be adding that to my list if so. Anyone read the Flower Moon one?

[Norton Canes]

Be warned that the book is about 100 pages shorter than it may appear due to the copious amounts of notes at the back

Yeah there are the acknowledgements, then the notes, then the bibliography, then the index, then my edition has the entire first chapter of Killers of the Flower Moon!

@touchingcloth the longer notes are worth reading even without reference to the text, as it usually pretty clear which ideas they expand on. 

[touchingcloth]

Thanks @Norton Canes - I have a flight tomorrow so I might read those notes during it. Bloody good writer, I'm impressed.

[Peacock Johnson]

Finished this and enjoyed it so thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I would reiterate my upthread recommendation of Batavia's Graveyard if you enjoyed this...

[touchingcloth]

I'm now powering through The Lost City of Z, and would like to know when @holyzombiejesus' next book club for us all is.

[iamcoop]

Finished this and enjoyed it so thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I would reiterate my upthread recommendation of Batavia's Graveyard if you enjoyed this...

Aye, Batavia's Graveyard is a great book, I got that a few years ago as someone on here recommended it in a 'most disturbing books you've ever read' thread.

Anyway I got this off Vinted for £2 and am looking forward to getting stuck in. Bleak shit happening at sea is a favoured genre of mine.