A court martial was convened to sort out the competing stories.Īfter defying death in stormy seas and on a cold island, Bulkeley and his mates faced the possible threat of the hangman’s noose.Cheap knew that unity was paramount to their survival, intuiting a principle that science would later demonstrate. The story might have ended there, except Cheap and a two other bedraggled souls washed up on the coast of Chile six months later.Ĭheap denounced Bulkeley’s party as mutineers. Bulkeley’s party of barely-alive men landed on the coast of Brazil in January 1742. After the shipwreck, he wrote in his journal that if the captain had only conferred with his officers they “might probably have escaped our present unhappy condition.”īulkeley led the group of mutineers off the island, leaving Cheap behind with a small group of loyalists. His vainglorious manner and “stubborn defiance of all difficulties” grated on the crew, most notably gunner John Bulkeley.īulkeley, a sailor to his bones, was highly competent and increasingly doubtful of Cheap’s judgment as their mission to the Pacific progressed. Cheap, new to command, was an authoritarian with a relentless drive to prove his worthiness to superiors.
Louis prosecutor dies in car crashĪt the helm is David Cheap, who became the ship’s captain after a death at sea. Journal entries made on the voyage gave Grann a window into their thoughts and fears.Īssistant St.
He manages to wring maximum drama out of the events and sketch out nuanced portraits of key players on the doomed ship. Grann, the author of the acclaimed “Killers of the Flower Moon,” tells it with style. The story of the shipwreck and its aftermath features scenery-chewing characters, unexpected twists and an almost unimaginable amount of human misery. Mutineers abandoned their captain on the island after he fatally shot an unruly crew member in the head. Crew members blamed their imperious captain for their fate and rigid naval order broke down. Stranded on a cold, deserted island, shipwreck survivors scraped seaweed off rocks to boil and eat.
Sailors on a secret wartime mission had already dealt with typhus, lice, blinding squalls, frostbite, worm-eaten biscuits, scurvy and the death of comrades since they set sail months earlier. The Wager, a British war ship, crashed onto rocks amid stormy seas off the coast of Patagonia in 1741. “The Wager: A Take of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder,” by David Grann (Doubleday) This cover image released by Doubleday shows "The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder" by David Grann.
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