![]() ![]() Questions like these have long animated Grann’s writing. The result: a genre-defying literary naval-history thriller, part Master and Commander, part Lord of the Flies. ![]() Drawing from ship logs, survivor accounts, and court records-with context and color from the works of Lord Byron, Charles Darwin, and Herman Melville- The Wager zeroes in on the experiences of a handful of central figures, from Captain David Cheap to a 16-year-old midshipman named John Byron (the poet’s grandfather). In The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder (Doubleday), David Grann untangles the dueling narratives, bringing a nearly 300-year-old drama to life. Six months later, three more survivors turned up on the coast of Chile, with an accusation of mutiny. They told a heroic story of survival against all odds: illness, shipwreck, starvation on a desolate island. ![]() Two years later, a glorified raft washed up on Brazil’s shores, carrying only 30 of the original 250-odd crewmen. In 1740, amid an imperial war with Spain, the Wager-a tricked-out merchant ship-set sail from England on a mission to capture a Spanish galleon laden with silver. ![]()
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