THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER *LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR
NON-FICTION* ' The beauty of The Wager unfurls like a great sail... one of the finest
nonfiction books I’ve ever read' Guardian ‘The greatest sea story ever told’ Spectator
‘A cracking yarn… Grann’s taste for desperate predicaments finds its fullest expression here’
Observer From the international bestselling author of KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE
LOST CITY OF Z a mesmerising story of shipwreck mutiny and murder culminating in a court
martial that reveals a shocking truth. On 28th January 1742 a ramshackle vessel of
patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated
men barely alive and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were 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 chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon the Wager
was wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The crew marooned for months and
facing starvation built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days traversing 2
500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes. Then 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 thirty sailors who landed in Brazil
were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with counter-charges of their
own of a tyrannical and murderous captain and his henchmen. While stranded on the island the
crew had fallen into anarchy with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren
wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew the Admiralty convened a court martial
to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court
found guilty could hang.
