The Wager: A Story of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Homicide

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the writer of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a courtroom martial that reveals a stunning reality. The highly effective narrative reveals the deeper which means of the occasions on The Wager, exhibiting that it was not solely the captain and crew who ended up on trial, however the very thought of empire.

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“Riveting…Reads like a thriller, tackling a multilayered historical past—and imperialism—with gusto.” —Time

“A tour de drive of narrative nonfiction.” —The Wall Avenue Journal

On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wooden and fabric washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside have been thirty emaciated males, barely alive, and so they had a unprecedented story to inform. They have been survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission throughout an imperial battle with Spain. Whereas the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon generally known as “the prize of all of the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The boys, after being marooned for months and dealing with hunger, constructed the flimsy craft and sailed for greater than 100 days, traversing practically 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They have been greeted as heroes.

However then … six months later, one other, much more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained simply three castaways, and so they informed a really completely different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil weren’t heroes – they have been mutineers. The primary group responded with countercharges of their very own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It turned clear that whereas stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions combating for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and homicide flew, the Admiralty convened a courtroom martial to find out who was telling the reality. The stakes have been life-and-death—for whomever the courtroom discovered responsible may cling.

The Wager is a grand story of human conduct on the extremes informed by considered one of our biggest 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’ determined straits stands as much as the classics of survival writing akin to The Endurance, and his account of the courtroom martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As all the time with Grann’s work, the unbelievable twists of the narrative maintain the reader spellbound.

From the Writer

Writer ‏ : ‎ Doubleday; First Version (April 18, 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0385534264
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0385534260
Merchandise Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 kilos
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.4 x 1.3 x 9.5 inches