Wager
author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on the Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire. On January 28, 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 the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as "the prize of all the oceans," it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes. But then... six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes - they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen.
Stats for nerds
7recommend
9mentions
8people
2023–2025years
89% recommend11% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- My favorites this year, be genre:
Sci-fi: Exiles by Mason Coile.
Fiction (Fantasy): The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman.
Fiction (post-apocalyptic / zombie): One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford.
Non fiction: The Wager by David Grann.
- I really enjoyed The Wager by David Grann about this story. Grann was also the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, which was made into the movie of the same name by Martin Scorsese, and Scorsese is now making The Wager into a film, although I don't think they've even settled on a release year yet.
- The Wager by David Grann, about a disastrous British maritime voyage in the 18th century that involved shipwreck, surviving castaways, multiple distinct routes back to Britain, then fighting over the story when different parties got back.
None of this hagiographic bollocks.
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55. Fall of Carthage by Adrian Goldsworthy - Punic Wars and Carthage's fall.
56. Making PCR - The story of polymerase chain reaction development.
57. Moonwalking with Einstein - Memory training and championship.
58. The Rickover Effect by Theodore Rockwell - First nuclear-powered submarine.
59. The Idea Factory - Bell Labs and American innovation.
60. Hackers by Steven Levy - History of computer hackers.
61. Fire in the Valley - Personal computing revolution.
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69. Skunk Works - Lockheed's F-117 and SR-71 programs.
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71. The Wager by David Grann - 18th-century British maritime disaster.
72. Caro's LBJ Series - Biography of Lyndon B. Johnson.
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- The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann.
When worlds were conquered through brute force and wooden ships, it is crazy to imagine how pivotal vitamin C was.
