The official chain of command does not always reflect natural leadership.

Grann frames the book’s ongoing power struggle between Captain David Cheap and gunner John Bulkeley as a battle between officially sanctioned authority and natural leadership abilities. As Grann describes it in Part One: The Wooden World, 18th-century ships comprise tightly regimented miniature societies in which each crew member is assigned specific tasks according to title. This strict system of organization is so engrained in the crew that on Wager Island, despite no longer being confined to a ship, the men group their dwellings according to their official rankings. However, Cheap’s high ranking does little to save him from his own incompetence, especially after the Wager wrecks due to his unwillingness to listen to his officers. Bulkeley, by contrast, never intentionally seeks out the position of power that the crewmen end up granting him. Instead, he rises naturally to the top through actions that help the entire community and because of the concern he shows for the group’s survival. This fatal flaw in the official chain of command among the crew mirrors the problems with numerous other artificial hierarchies that structure 18th-century British society.

Throughout The Wager, Grann demonstrates that, as with Cheap’s captainship, many official forms of authority are not based on logic or merit. For example, though citizens of the British Empire believe themselves naturally superior to the Indigenous people they violently conquer, the Wager crew’s interactions with indigenous Patagonians proves this assumption false. Racial hierarchies within British society, too, are shown to be nonsensical through the example of John Duck, a free Black seaman. Duck survives the entire Wager ordeal only to be kidnapped and sold into slavery once he reaches Argentina, which Grann highlights as tragic, unjust, and absurd, but also unavoidable for many Black seamen of the era who are technically free in their native Britain. As a society driven by imperialism, it is essential that England perpetuate the myth that some people are inherently superior to others in order to justify its own self-determined right to rule. However, like the fragility of Cheap’s official authority when faced with unexpected difficulties, Britain’s self-proclaimed superiority does not hold up even under slight scrutiny.

Personal stories can both reveal and shape history.

By combining the different perspectives of a variety of personal accounts, Grann shows the power of personal stories to reveal hidden dimensions of history beyond what is available in official records. Only one official record of the journey of the Wager exists, and that comes from the Admiralty’s court-martial, which ignores nearly every detail of what happened to the ship and its crew. To tell the full story of the Wager, its wreck, and the castaways’ subsequent struggles and triumphs, Grann must tap into numerous unofficial records: the personal, firsthand accounts that many surviving Wager crew members published upon returning to England. Like the official account, these personal records take subjective approaches to storytelling. However, they also offer enough details for Grann to piece together a seemingly more accurate portrayal of what happened aboard the Wager and after its wreck. This shows how valuable personal stories can be, both despite and because of their absence from the official historical record.

To emphasize the power of storytelling, The Wager showcases how personal stories can shape history in addition to recording it. John Narborough’s account of his own 1669–1671 sea voyage to Patagonia plays a pivotal role in the journey of the Speedwell away from Wager Island. John Bulkeley uses the geographical and anecdotal details of Narborough’s personal story to navigate the ship, anticipate obstacles, and even secure food sources along the way. When the surviving castaways of the Wager reach England and begin to publish accounts of their experiences, their conflicting stories of mutiny cause a stir among the public. The leniency of the related court-martial may in part result from this commotion. Because the Wager affair involves accusations of mutiny and murder among supposedly civilized British seamen, it is in the best interest of the Admiralty to suppress these accounts. They accomplish this by ignoring the most controversial details of the story of the Wager. In this way, the personal stories of the ship’s crew lead to their own acquittals for mutiny, murder, and other crimes, thereby altering the historical record.

Nothing in nature is more dangerous than desperate humans.

The Wager repeatedly juxtaposes natural dangers with the uniquely brutal behavior of men in desperate circumstances, showing the latter to be a much more terrifying threat. Before the Wager even sets sail, it already faces risks from the elements due to the ship’s poor condition. From being trapped in the frozen Thames, to unusually violent weather on the way to the already perilous Cape Horn, to a devastating scurvy outbreak, the Wager and its crew must constantly struggle against nature to survive. This pattern continues after the Wager wrecks, stranding its crew on a desolate island that offers even less protection from the elements than the ship. However, fear and dread only truly set in among the crew once they begin turning against one another in their desperation to survive.

Compared to the danger of being harmed by one of their companions, the castaways would much rather take their chances against nature. In Chapter 15, as the tension between Captain David Cheap and the mutineers reaches its peak, an earthquake strikes Wager Island. Grann draws attention to the comparative harmlessness of natural disasters by noting John Byron’s relief to learn that the powerful rumbling he feels all around him is only an earthquake. The British Admiralty, too, understands that human desperation is more dangerous than the elements. This is likely another reason that the court-martial does not address the sailors’ crimes on Wager Island. As the organization responsible for maintaining order, the Admiralty doesn’t want the Wager crew’s disorder to become part of the historical record because it will publicize one of the greatest dangers reluctant sailors face on Navy ships: each other.

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