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| My spring break 2025 book. |
Life in the British Navy in the early 1700s was quite rough—hard work, authoritarian power structure, harsh penalties—and then there are the diseases. Humans packed together in poorly ventilated, unclean conditions lends itself to raging infectious diseases.
And then, months into a slow voyage dependent on the winds blowing your ship, scurvy. An account I read recently vividly describes what scurvy was like, and it was hell.
I’ve long been a fan of Erik Larson and his books based on historic events. He’s a storyteller who uses literary tools to tell truths.
And recently, on the recommendation of my daughter Nina, I’ve read a book by an author who is new to me, who pulls the same magic that Larson does. It’s David Grann, and I just read his 2023 book “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.”
The ship The Wager was a merchant vessel converted to naval use. British sea power would come to rule the world in the next century, but that lay in the future when The Wager left England as part of a squadron that was tasked with attacking Spanish shipping during a war between the U.K. and Spain.
A newly promoted Captain, David Cheap, obtained his first command due to some command shuffles. The ill-fated Wager had trouble staying with its group as the little wooden vessels were pounded by merciless storms as they attempted to pass from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean by sailing around South America.
And the Wager found itself alone, when it also, unfortunately, found rocks off of a desolate island. The ship was pounded by the rocks and damaged beyond sailing, although the wreck, in poor shape, was there on the rocks for some time.
The depleted, demoralized crew were facing winter weather with few provisions and no shelter. On their long journey from England, they had lost many crew members to disease, and most were debilitated by scurvy at the time of the shipwreck. (Desperate, the crew ate wild celery, one of the few foods they found on what they named Wager Island—and, ironically, the fresh vegetable cured their scurvy).
While stranded, the crew broke into factions, some loyal to the captain, others forming their own encampment. They were visited by indigenous people who aided them with food, but they plotted against their helpers, who abandoned them.
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| 1744 painting depicts The Wager. From Wikimedia Commons via Wikipedia. |
So much goes wrong There is so much suffering. As starvation and tensions rise, a misunderstanding leads to the captain shooting and killing a sailor.
Eventually, the crew manages to enlarge and repair some small boats. An attempt to head north and continue the Wager’s original mission doesn’t go well, and after that much of the crew abandons the captain on Wager Island and attempts to head to Brazil, where they could potentially find transport back to England.
When survivors start to show up in England, more troubles await them. The Navy doesn’t treat mutiny lightly, and the long arm of the law has to be contended with. And, months after some survivors reach England, the captain, very much alive, unexpectedly shows up.
The Navy sets a court-martial trial to ascertain the facts. Should the captain be tried for murder? The crew tried for mutiny?
After all the suffering and the time spent trying to get home, it’s almost heartbreaking that home turns out to be filled with different kinds of dangers.
Anyway, I found the book gripping. The needs and ambitions and desires of men lead them to contradictions and difficulties that make one glad to be born in these troubled times rather than those.
The books didn’t have any jump scares, but it did have, like life, lots of unexpected twists and turns. It’s a story that is well told, well worth the read.
