The Wager

David Grann

Simon and Schuster

£10.99

HMS Wager rounded Cape Horn in 1741 as part of an expedition to attack the Spanish and seize a silver-laden galleon. The weather was terrible, the small fleet was scattered and the Wager wrecked on an island off Patagonia. Just over half her crew initially survived but were decimated by starvation, privation and in-fighting. Then there was mutiny as the ship’s gunner challenged the authority and judgement of the captain. Two separate handfuls of men eventually returned to England with conflicting accounts of events.

Patrick O’Brian wrote this story as fiction in The Unknown Shore (1959): David Grann’s book starts slowly, setting the scene, then presents an astonishing history, based on the survivors’ logbooks and subsequent accounts. Deserves its popularity.