Cheap lacked the ability to cajole, sympathize, keep people together and inspire.īulkeley was not from the aristocracy, more likely he was lower-middle class, and he could never rise to captain of a ship because of the class system. But he lacked the instinctive abilities of leadership in these situations. Had fate dealt him a different hand and put him on another voyage he could have been fine. So when I was with David Cheap, with all his churning ambitions and insecurities and rigidness.īack on land, his life was filled with frustrations and disappointment and this was his chance to prove himself to the world that he was worthy and a great leader. When you’re writing from someone’s perspective, even when they do something shockingly bad, you hear them justifying and explaining their actions and you feel for them on some level. I’m not trying to absolve anyone, just to understand them. I structured it from the perspective of these three main figures – the captain David Cheap, the gunner, John Bulkeley, and the midshipman, John Byron – to show how each is shading the story to try and emerge as the hero. Could you relate to each of the main players? This interview has been edited for length and clarity. (For example, sick seamen don’t serve on deck, but are sent below to get out of the elements and rest so they are literally “under the weather.”)

He recounts and analyzes the politics on land and onboard the ships as well as the dangers of the journey and how the vocabulary of sailing has permeated the language. Grann, who recently spoke by video surrounded by his voluminous notes and a model of The Wager, dives deep into the maritime world of that era. Related: Sign up for our free newsletter about books, authors, reading and moreĪs David Grann recounts in his gripping new book, “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder,” neither group expected to see the other alive – and their competing stories created a new round of complications. Then, astonishingly, another three men turned up alive, including the captain and a young man whose grandson, the poet Lord Byron, would write about these exploits in “Don Juan.” It got worse from there: scurvy, typhoons, a shipwreck, murder and cannibalism and mutiny.Įventually, 81 men set out from where the crew had been stranded on a makeshift ship for a 3,000-mile journey that killed nearly two-thirds of them their survival was hailed as a miracle. Things went awry before they even left as the ships had trouble finding willing and able men. In 1740, a warship called The Wager left England as part of a fleet looking to make war with Spain in South America and capture a galleon holding millions in treasure.

The Wager by David Grann