The Wager

by David Grann

A Review

‘Yet the Pacific did not live up to its peaceful name. As the Wager headed north off the coast of Chile, all the previous storms seemed to have combined into one climatic fury…… Cheap relentlessly drove the men onward – drove them even as they dumped overboard a growing number of corpses.’

Over the centuries, there have been many fine stories of the sea. Moby Dick for one. Then, at the other end of the readership scale, there were those wonderful books for young people by Captain Frederick Marryat, of which Mr Midshipman Easy was only one. However, unlike many of those seafaring novels, The Wager isn’t fiction. The story told here by David Grann in novelistic mode really happened!

In August 1740, after many delays, a squadron of ships under the command of Commodore George Anson left the Thames on a secret mission – to sail to South America, round Cape Horn and engage the Spanish ‘treasure’ ships in the Pacific. Four men-of-war led by the flagship Centurion and a converted merchantman, the Wager, all crewed by a mixture of professional and press-ganged seamen, made their way along the English Channel and into the Atlantic.

The Wager‘s crew numbered around two hundred and fifty, far too many for an old, 120 feet-long ship made of wood and rusty nails that was never intended for battle on the high seas. Less than a month out of England, the ship was on its third captain. He was David Cheap, a veteran officer in the Royal Navy. Among the men were Midshipman John Byron (grandfather of the poet), the competent gunner John Bulkeley and Lieutenant Thomas Hamilton.

‘The temperature kept dropping until the rains hardened into sleet and snow. Cables became encrusted with ice and some of the men suddumber to frostbite.’

Scarcely three months into the expedition, the squadron was struck by its first misfortune – disease – and by December more than sixty-five members of the squadron had been buried at sea. By March 1741, they had reached Terra del Fuego and faced their greatest challenge, the sea itself! Battered by terrifying storms and waves reaching 30 metres, the company rounded the cape into the Pacific. Ships in those days were not built for such conditions, least of all the Wager. Already battling scurvy, which no one understood, and which had already reduced its crew by around 100 – (and many of those already on their last legs) – contending with the horrendous conditions of those seas proved too much for men and ship. In May 1741, overcome by weather and waves, its captain laid low in his cabin with scurvy, the Wager struck rocks and had to be abandoned. The survivors made it to a nearby desert island where amid rumblings of discontent and mutiny they took refuge.

David Grann paints an awful picture of the five months which followed – starvation, sickness (strangely, by eating some native wild greenery, the scurvy abated somewhat), death and mutiny – and which further reduced the Wager crew to around eighty souls. In dubious physical and mental condition, Cheap’s decisions and actions became erratic. He killed a sailor in cold blood. Bulkeley, in his own eyes completely justified, took charge. While Hamilton an Byron prevaricated, he supervised the repair and rebuilding of three boats to take the men off the island. The work completed, Bulkeley and most of the survivors left the island, leaving Cheap, Hamilton and Byron behind.

On January 1742, a ramshackle boat with thirty starving skeletons of men on board made it to Brazil. Welcomed as returnees from the dead, the majority eventually made it back to Britain, where they were courtmartialed. In another twist of fate, Cheap, Hamilton and Byron made it too. And of course, they told a different tale! It really is worth reading the book to find out what happened.

The Wager is the kind of story that will appeal not only to would-be mariners (or perhaps not!) but to lovers of history. Compiled from the official records and from journals of the survivors, it offers a thrilling but scary narrative of what it meant to be aboard ship under sail in the days before steam. While reading, I was continually drawn back to my schooldays and the history class. I recalled hearing about the War of Jenkin’s Ear, which was reaching its final phases while the Wager episode was taking place. Oddly enough, I was also reminded of the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan, which I took part in during my final years at high school. One particular song – though the time period is wrong – kept playing over and over in my head: ‘When Britain really ruled the waves – ‘

Methinks the waves had the last laugh!

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