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Part Four: Deliverance

In Part Four: Deliverance, as the two parties made up of the remaining crew of the Wager go their separate ways, Bulkeley’s navigation of the Speedwell reveals another dimension of the importance of stories. As with the entirety of their journey, nothing is simple about the return home, neither for the Speedwell crew nor for Captain Cheap and his small group of companions still on Wager Island. Though Bulkeley makes a point of consulting with Lieutenant Baynes and the carpenter Cummins to show how different he is from Cheap, he soon experiences unrest among his crew brought on by the dire and cramped conditions aboard the ship. Circumstances force the Speedwell to deposit small groups of its men on desolate shores along their journey. Cheap, meanwhile, leads with renewed vigor back on Wager Island now that he no longer has to contend with the majority of his men. Bulkeley finds inspiration in the past by using an old, published expedition account to guide his navigation. In contrast, Cheap’s party blames its own past for the seemingly endless misfortune they experience, believing themselves to be haunted by the ghost of one of James Mitchell’s unburied murder victims.

Read more about the importance of stories as a Main Idea (#2).

Though John Byron seems to have made his choice in Chapter 15 when he sides with the mutineers, in Chapter 17: Byron’s Choice, his doubts lead him back to Cheap’s side on Wager Island. Byron’s actions, like Cheap’s, are driven in part by a desire to live up to his own image of himself, in this case as a loyal and honorable British seaman. Bulkeley disparagingly attributes this motivation to Byron’s aristocratic background, but he agrees to turn the Speedwell around to restock supplies and allow anyone who has changed his mind to rejoin Cheap. Byron, Cheap, and the 17 others remain on Wager Island at this point, working toward Cheap’s plan to meet up with Anson. In Part Three of The Wager, Byron’s starry-eyed romanticism leads him to compare his fellow castaways to the fictional title character in Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe.

The Wager crew’s diverse interactions with Sir John Narborough’s book about his 1669–1671 Patagonian expedition reveal that stories have the power to, variously, pacify, inspire, and drive people to action. Byron borrows Cheap’s copy of Narborough’s book to escape into a story of adventure that is similar to his own. In contrast, Bulkeley borrows the book to study, using Narborough’s account as a practical means of navigating the Speedwell away from Wager Island nearly 100 years later. In this case, Narborough’s story even provides enough concrete information that it gets rewritten into a new history, that of the Speedwell. Grann notes whenever the ship’s steadily diminishing crew reaches various landmarks documented by Narborough. For example, the Speedwell finds a specific bay that Narborough had written was near an island populated by seals. Thanks to this piece of information, the crew is able to hunt the seals, illustrating that not only did Narborough’s narrative assist Bulkeley with navigation, but it also helped the crew find sufficient food for the first time in months. While Byron’s imagination is fed by stories, the crew of the Speedwell more literally finds sustenance from them.

Read about how nothing in nature is more dangerous than desperate humans as a Main Idea (#3).

Meanwhile, Cheap, Byron, and the others on Wager Island build a barge to accomplish Cheap’s original assignment of meeting up with Anson on the island of Chiloé off the coast of Chile. Once they set sail, Cheap’s remaining loyal crew faces difficulties that are extreme even compared to the ship’s usual bad luck. After spending six weeks on the rough sea failing to navigate back around Cape Horn in a small barge, the men are starving and tempted to indulge in cannibalism. Believing this terrible temptation is due to what Cheap and the men regard as a haunting, the group sails the two weeks back to Wager Island, determined to bury the body of the crewmate whom James Mitchell murdered months earlier. Grann positions this decision as a desperate act to reduce their suffering, illustrating that the men regard their treatment of each other with grave seriousness. They believe they are on the cusp of committing the terrible crime of cannibalism because of their callous treatment of their companion. To prevent this, they must correct their first cowardly act.

Bulkeley’s crew on the Speedwell, too, is gravely concerned with their treatment of one another, particularly as they must repeatedly abandon men along their journey. The initial abandonment of Cheap and his companions on Wager Island already has Bulkeley worried about how a future court-martial may judge him as a mutineer, and his subsequent abandonments of multiple crew members have him worried about how God will judge him. The Speedwell is forced to leave around 20 crew members, including midshipman Isaac Morris and free Black seaman John Duck, on two different uninhabited shores. In an attempt to quell what he fears may be imminent mutiny on the Speedwell, Bulkeley also threatens to leave the ship himself in Chapter 18: Port of God’s Mercy. However, Bulkeley is a leader in more than just name, and his crew understands that they wouldn’t survive without him, so his threat effectively calms them down. Finally, on January 28, 1742, the 30 remaining men of the Speedwell arrive at Rio Grande, Brazil, where they are taken in and their ship is hauled onto land to become a tourist attraction.

Read an important quote about natural leadership abilities.

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