The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

Loved how the reader was pulled into the story line. The amount of research the author must have completed. Good easy fun read with plenty of trivial facts. Read the book in two days. Hard to put it down.

The Wager was an English ship that set sail from England in 1740 during an imperial war with Spain. It was the mid-1700s, and navigational tools were primitive. Diseases among the seafarers spread rapidly, and I was incredulous, realizing how little they knew about curbing nutritional deficiencies such as scurvy. It seems absurd that in addition to not knowing about the necessity for vitamin C, insufficient levels of niacin were causing psychosis and night blindness resulting from lack of Vitamin A. After shipwrecking on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia, the story is as much about human nature as it is about surviving on an island and attaining its mission against the Spanish. It is fascinating to read about how they discovered new food sources and what they chose to learn and ignore from natives whose cultures had thrived in the areas where the Englishmen became castaways. If they were going to continue to survive and continue their naval mission, they had to build new boats without the technology available in their homeland, and there were myriad disagreements about how to proceed and also about which path to follow when it was time to embark on the dangerous waters again. Disharmony leads some groups to set sail in opposite directions eventually. When the survivors arrived back in England, the accounts of what happened were not in sync.The characters who are historical figures demonstrate the gamut of human emotions and an evolution of social mores. Without describing each character, I’ll point out that we meet a dominating captain with poor leadership traits. And, of course, we meet argumentative underlings who have smug independence. Then, we see ferocious workers and others with inherent leadership skills and charisma. All of the men are familiar with British naval order and ranking conventions. Yet, more hierarchies develop as the men struggle to survive and create social order. As the subtitle suggests, the fight for survival leads to becoming mutinous and murderous. Grann describes the basic human drives and terrors with admirable writing skills.Writing, in the eighteenth century, was an honorable thing to do. The men onboard the Wager kept written logs—some were required, and others were kept to document some of the mutinous decisions. David Grann had copious notes and records to use when piecing this story together. Rousseau and Voltaire cited the Wager’s expedition reports, as did Charles Darwin and Herman Melville. The seafaring journalists quote the Bible, poets, and famous writers. It is incredible how learned they were. Grann uses his well-honed investigative and research skills to weave a beautiful story of what reportedly happened and the eloquent analysis by those who experienced it. Grann’s ability to combine first-person accounts of the expedition with his summation of the events provides fabulous text about the seafarers and their exploits. Each creative, descriptive section title structures the book and shapes the voyage with metaphoric summaries: The Wooden World, Into the Storm, Castaways, Deliverance, and Judgment are the main sections, and Gran used these to develop the book so that it reads like a novel and keeps the reader riveted. I highly recommend this narrative to everyone, even those who prefer fiction to nonfiction.

Although written as a historical account, the author does a good job maintaining the reader’s attention to the main storyline while weaving in facts and quotes which give the reader the necessary context to fully grasp the situations. There are parts of the book so astounding you will hardly believe this isn’t fiction. Yet it is a true, classic tale of the sea!

I absolutely loved The Wager. As my headline suggests, I consider this to be a BigDog book. What constitutes a "BigDog" book? It has to be the right combination of Information, Amusement and Never Being Able to Put it Down. David Grann did all three at a very high level. I think I love this guy, David Grann. He must have worked so damn hard on this book. The amount of scribbles and scrabbles he was probably trying to decipher from these dumb 250 year old ship logs! It must have been so tedious.But Grann did it. He went to work and researched the tits out of this story. And sure, there are certainly holes he must have approached in the story and realized that he would have to creatively fill those in. That, in my opinion, is to be expected. Not only did Grann fill those holes, he did it expertly and seamlessly. Do YOU know why we have the phrase "3 Sheets To the Wind" as a euphemism for being drunk? Well, throughout this history of the British man-o-wars, David Grann teaches you that there's more to being a shipman than knowing a few knots & phrases. It takes guts and sometimes, even honor.I won't spoil the story for you here. I believe the Amazon description above gives you even too much information and "spoils" as the kids say. Speaking of kids, my 14 year old son was watching me devour this book. He was the only one in my family willing to listen to the new things I'd learned about man-o-wars or ancient tribes while we all gathered at the dinner table. "Did you know that the British Navy could just roll up on homies who had abandoned their ships and pretended to be dead so they didn't have to go back to sea? They called these guys 'Press Gangs.'" Only my 14 year old would chirp up and say something positive like, "That's awesome, dad!" Or "Do you think you could be a seaman, dad?" What a nice boy.One day while I was cranking through the part of the book near the end that is sort of the political intrigue portion, my son said "David Grann.""What?" I asked."David Grann. The author." My son was staring at the book jacket cover. "I bet he's a real G."I motioned for the kid to come over and when he sat next to me I said, "A G? You better believe Grann is a G because he did all this freakin' research to make this book come to life. If that's not bein' a G, then I don't know what else is. Plus, take a look at this picture of him inside the book jacket!"He leaned in and looked at this picture of the most G-lookin dude of all time. David Grann, standing there with a polo shirt and jacket on top. Not really smiling, not really frowning. Just a look of a confident son of a bitch. My son was right: Grann is a real G. We looked at the picture and then my son read the little bio below, which is just his bonafides in the literary sense. We would have preferred David give us a little bit more personal stuff. For example, his favorite pizza topping would be a good choice to include. What about HIS favorite books instead of a list of books he wrote? I get it... his publisher only wants to pimp his books instead of other authors'. Still, give me a little flavor with Grann.Under his bio, there is his social media and website listed. Only his Twitter and Facebook handle. No instagram. I found that strange. You'd think there'd be a Wager Instagram handle at least! When I finished the book, I wanted to shout it out on my Instagram Story and let everyone know that David Grann is a G and he wrote a BigDog book. To my surprise, I found that Grann DID have an instagram page! I was shocked. Did one of his kids shame him into doing this? His publisher maybe? Regardless, my dude only has like 8 or 9 posts! And it's just pictures of the hardcopy of The Wager stacked on top of each other. I tagged this sad Instagram account to my hype Story about the book anyway. I thought it couldn't do harm.I recommend this book mightily if you couldn't tell.

Grann provides an excellent look at life on a 18th Century sailing ship, it's hardships and depravations, including the horrors of scurvy. The characters really come to life, and we get a sense of how miserable it must have been to be stranded on the desolate, cold and wet tip of South America.The story itself is a great adventure, but I found it's greatest appeal in Grann's ability to just describe day-to-day experience of these seamen. Quick, page turner of a book.

Nothing not to like! Fast-moving for an historical story, well written, and hard to put down. Didn't give any print errors and the page weights are thick, work a great cover and art included.

Lo compre para mi papá de navidad. Le encanto el libro, es muy buen regalo. Y viene todo bien en relación a las páginas y sin daños.

The Wager is an excellent book. Very well written keeps the reader a captive. Based upon actual events the author shows a master quality for understanding several and rich human qualities.

O livro chegou rapidamente

David Grann offers a fascinating insight to the lives of British seaman during the period where Britain created the foundation of their dominance of the World.His way of telling the story keeps you going; even know the end one still wants to read every page.