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Summary and Reviews of The Wager by David Grann

The Wager by David Grann

The Wager

A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

by David Grann
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • Readers' Rating (21):
  • First Published:
  • Apr 18, 2023, 352 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Feb 2025, 432 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

Winner: BookBrowse Nonfiction Award 2023

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning 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.

On 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 reader spellbound.

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    BookBrowse Awards
    2023

Reviews

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Winner: BookBrowse Nonfiction Award 2023

I found this book to be well-researched, well-written and extremely easy to read. It was actually quite a thrilling read to be honest. It felt more like I was reading an adventure book than a nonfiction book (Tara T). Although the subject matter was not of great interest to me when I started reading the book, my opinion quickly changed when more of the narrative was developed. The author takes a maritime scandal and engulfs the reader in a suspenseful historical thriller! (Dan W). It's a riveting, page-turning adventure, complete with shipwreck, mutiny and murder (Lois K)...continued

Full Review (651 words)

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Beyond the Book



Cape Horn

Black-and-white photographic image taken from a ship sailing near Cape Horn during a storm, tilted and partially submerged in waves David Grann's The Wager is a nonfiction book about events surrounding the 1741 wreck of the British ship the HMS Wager, which met its doom while rounding Cape Horn, a rocky headland at the southernmost tip of the Chilean archipelago Tierra del Fuego, where the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans meet. With this book, Grann sheds light on one relatively little-known historical incident, but Cape Horn is infamous for shipwrecks. Its treacherous waters are estimated to have claimed more than 800 ships and 10,000 lives.

So why exactly is rounding Cape Horn so dangerous? One reason for this is a sharp rise in the ocean floor that occurs southwest of the cape. This rise, combined with strong winds caused by the area's southerly latitude (where...

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Read-Alikes

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  • Book Jacket
    The Wager
    by David Grann
    From the bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a gripping story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.

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