The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder

     This was such a good book. Once I got to the point where they crossed Cape Horn, I couldn't put it down and I finished in a day. There are just so many good facts and so many good stories. Like how "A captain might creep up in the fog and steal his opponent's wind by blocking his sails. Or he might feign distress before springing an attack. Or pretend to be a friend, perhaps by beckoning in a foreign language, in order to get within point-blank range." Or press gangs, groups that went and found sailors to impress into service. They would look for sailors out in town based on tattoos, clothing, or tar-stained skin, and basically just arrest them and force them onto a ship. And then they might be on that ship for months if not years.

    The parts about crossing Cape Horn were insane. Grann talks about the pulverizing funnel known as the Drake Passage, with the longest-running, strongest currents on Earth. At the same time, the seabed suddenly shallows from 13,000 feet to just 300, increasing the magnitude of the current further. Waves can reach 90 feet high, and the collision of cold fronts and warm fronts in the area produces "an endless cycle of rain, fog, sleet and snow, thunder and lightning." As the sailors crossed through to the Pacific, they were struck by scurvy, which seemed to kill about a third of the ships' crews. Scurvy was a vitamin deficiency that would cause the body to stop producing collagen, the fiber that holds tissues and joints together. The result was the opening of old scars, with sailors' bodies just falling apart.

    Once the shipwreck occurred, the surviving sailors (about 140) of The Wager lived drama after drama, encountering Kaweskar Indians, battling amongst themselves, and starving the whole time. When about a hundred remained, 80 set out, of whom 29 would survive the journey back around the Cape to Brazil. Another group ventured on to Chile, taking many months longer, with only a handful surviving out of 20 who departed.

    The book culminates in an anti-climactic court-martial, which investigates merely the cause of the sinking and not the chaos that ensued. Even after the court-martial, another group of survivors arrived. I'm not writing a ton about this book, but I'll just finish by saying it was an amazing read.