The Wager by David Grann

Join us for an informal and relaxed discussion of David Grann's The Wager. Copies are available at the Munster branch.

Summary: "January 28, 1742: A vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men: survivors of His Majesty's Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain.

While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as "the prize of all the oceans," it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing 2500 miles of storm-wracked seas.

Six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they had a very different story to tell: the sailors who landed in Brazil were mutineers.

Grann shows that, as countercharges and accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial-- and the stakes were life-and-death."