Book Review - The Wager

Contains spoilers for The Wager

Summary

Almost everyone has heard the story of the Bounty. A band of sailors overthrow their tyrant captain, William Bligh, and set him afloat in the middle of the Pacific from where throws thousands of miles until he reaches land and brings revenge upon the mutineers.
Less known, but equally suspenseful, is the story of the Wager. Part of a Royal Navy squadron, that had set out from England in 1740 to attack Spanish ships on the western coast of South America, it's voyage seemed ill-fated from the beginning. Because of a lack of able-bodied and willing men, some of the sailors were literally plucked off the street and forced into service.

After peaceful efforts to man the fleet failed, the Navy resorted to what a secretary of the Admiralty called a more violent strategy. Armed gangs were dispatched to press seafaring men into service - in effect, kidnapping them. The gangs roamed cities and towns, grabbing anyone who betrayed the telltale signs of a mariner: the familiar checkered shirt and wide-kneed trousers and round hat; the fingers smeared with tar, which was used to make virtually everything on a ship more water-resistant and durable.

Soon after starting the voyage, a large number of the seamen became sick and many died. The disease, which we today call scurvy, was caused by a lack of vitamin C and could have been easily cured had the root been known.
The Wager's first captain Dandy Kidd died before the ship reached Cape Horn and replaced by the inexperienced but determined David Cheap. After narrowly making the passage through the "blind Horn's hate", the ship runs aground on an inhospitable island off the coast of what is today Chile. The sailors that made it to shore soon start scavenging supplies from the partly-submerged Wager and built shelters as protection from the elements. Cheap, even though formally still in power, starts to lose grasp of his crew, part of which breaks off to form their own town on the other side of the island. The remaining seamen start to form factions, many of which are critical of captain Cheap's decisions. Food gets stolen repeatedly and talk of mutiny arises. The tensions escalate when Cheap fatally shoots Midshipman Henry Cozens, after he had hurled drunken insults at his superior.

From this point on, order disintegrates further. Some seamen decide to attempt to extract several small boats, which had been submerged with the wreck of the Wager to attempt to flee the island. The gunner Bulkeley, a highly capable and respected man, draws up a plan to circumnavigate Cape Horn again in the other direction and try to reach the safety of Brazil. Cheap, however, wants to stick the original plan of seizing a Spanish trading vessel off the South American eastern coast, even though their ship, cannons and a large number of men had been lost.

Weeks pass and none of the factions steps down. Finally, talk of mutiny arises.

Bulkeley argued to the others that they would be justified in rising up. He believed that, as castaways, "the rules of the Navy are not sufficient to direct us." In this state of nature, there was no written code, no preexisting text, that could fully guide them. To survive, they needed to establish their own rules. He self-consciously invoked the rights to "life" and "liberty" that British subjects, at certain times in history, had sounded when attempting to restrain an overweening monarch. But Bulkeley, recognizing that he was part of a naval apparatus, an instrument of the state itself, made a more radical argument. He suggested that the real source of chaos on the island, the one really violating the ethos of the Navy, was Cheap himself, as if he were the true mutineer.

This was dangerous. Even if they survived the passage back to England, overthrowing a captain was a crime punishable by death, as some of the survivors of the Bounty would find out more than 50 years later. Yet, their alternative seemed equally dreadful. Attempting to capture a Spanish ship with a crew of sick and undernourished sailors, a barely seaworthy boat and without any large weapons.
After days of deliberation, they make their decision and arrest Cheap for the death of Cozens and prepare themselves for the voyage.
Like their original journey, this one proves to be hard and hazardous. Eleven men, having lost hope, soon ask to be left on a desolated coast - never to be seen again. The rest of the men manage to find the Strait of Magellan, natural passage between the South American mainland the island of Tierra del Fuego, which is shorter and more sheltered than their original route. Finally, after more than three months at sea and eight months after the sinking of the Wager, the group of barely alive people in their nutshell reach the safety of Brazil and, some time after, England.

Even though they are back in their homeland, they are still at danger of dying - not from drowning or starvation but from being executed by the state for disobeying and leaving behind their captain. This captain now emerges again. Along with some loyalists, Cheap had attempted to sail north, but after abandoning the plan due to roughness of the seas, turned around and were only saved by a group of indigenous people, who guided them north to a Spanish settlement. There, they were locked up but then repatriated back to England in a prisoners's exchange.

At this point in the book, the reader expects the tensions that were built up over 200 pages to culminate. Someone has to die, either Bulkeley and his crew for mutiny or Cheap for the killing of Cozens. However, there is no grand finale. There is court-martial in both sides state that the other behaved impeccably and the only punishment, a mere reprimand, was received by an officer who had not informed Cheap that land had been sighted shortly before the Wager ran aground. The reason for that are unclear. The author suggest that there was a backroom deal between the court and the British government, which wanted to avoid embarassment of having the story of a their "civilized" people falling into anarchy retold.

Thoughts

In the last months, starting with Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air I have read myself through an arsenal of adventure stories. The Wager was the first one where I knew neither the author nor the story beforehand and also the first one that played out primarily at sea. It was a good and quick read, although I still prefer diving into a story that plays amid cliffs and snowstorm than one that plays among waves.