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The Wager by David Grann tells the story of doomed 18th-century British naval warship the Wager, exploring the relationship between personal stories and history. During a mission in the War of Jenkins’ Ear, fought between the British and Spanish Empires, the Wager seemingly disappears, although it has actually wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia at the southern end of South America. The prologue gives an account of the surviving crew members of the Wager, who arrive six months apart in Brazil and Chile, after most of the events of the text have already taken place. Once they return to England, it becomes clear to British authorities that the two groups of survivors have conflicting stories. Throughout the text, Grann uses a variety of firsthand personal accounts to turn the British Admiralty’s vague official records about the Wager into a three-dimensional narrative with multiple perspectives and interpretations of events. Along the way, The Wager raises questions about the validity of the official chain of command, the fragility of social order, and how imperial powers rewrite and erase history to justify their right to rule.

Part One: The Wooden World introduces many of the book’s central figures and the conditions that 18th-century British sailors face aboard naval ships. David Cheap, who is promoted to captain of the Wager by the end of Chapter 3, begins Chapter 1 as Commodore George Anson’s first lieutenant on the Centurion, the state-of-the-art warship that leads the squadron that includes the Wager. Grann emphasizes that Cheap and Anson have contrasting leadership styles and temperaments. Cheap’s hotheaded egotism and dreams of personal glory are juxtaposed with Anson’s stoicism and frequent mentorship of younger sailors. Chapters 2 and 3 introduce two of the book’s most prominent recordkeepers: the hardworking, no-nonsense gunner John Bulkeley, and the young aristocratic midshipman John Byron (and future grandfather of famed English poet Lord Byron). Bulkeley’s community-mindedness and distaste for the official chain of command set him apart from Cheap and will pave the way for Bulkeley’s eventual leadership of the mutiny against Cheap. While Cheap, Anson, and Bulkeley are all seasoned career seamen, Byron’s youth, naivety, and low rank aboard the Wager offer a glimpse into the brutal “wooden world” of life on a ship through fresh eyes. 

At the time of the journey of the Wager, sailors serve in horrific conditions on chronically understaffed ships that are often in disrepair and plagued by epidemics of typhus and scurvy. The Wager began its life as a merchant ship and faced numerous delays and struggles before even setting sail. However, these difficulties allow David Cheap to fulfill a career-long dream when he is promoted to captain of the Wager after one of the squadron’s captains deserts and another dies. The ship’s struggles get even worse, and tensions grow among the crew in Part Two: Into the Storm. Over the course of the ship’s ill-fated journey, Captain Cheap shows himself to be arrogant and unwilling to listen to input from his officers. Though this attitude increasingly frustrates Bulkeley and the rest of the crew, Cheap shows skill as a captain and gains respect when he successfully navigates the Wager around the perilous Cape Horn on the southern tip of South America. Unfortunately, a devastating epidemic of scurvy breaks out among the fleet soon after, debilitating the crew and heightening the tensions aboard the Wager. Finally, the Wager wrecks on a Patagonian island after Cheap refuses to listen to warnings from his crew that the ship has gotten too close to land.

Following the ship’s wreck on what the castaways dub “Wager Island,” social order quickly begins to break down, leading to distrust, violence, and mutiny. Part Three: Castaways details the five months the crew spend on the island, from May to October 1741. Captain Cheap’s paranoia is already mounting from the moment the Wager wrecks because he is worried that he will be blamed for the disaster, which was indeed in large part his fault. This attitude contrasts with the actions of many other castaways including Bulkeley and carpenter John Cummins, who prioritize the wellbeing of the community over their own interests. While Cheap becomes increasingly secluded and insecure over the course of the crew’s time on the island, Bulkeley finds ways to build secure dwellings for the men, and Cummins builds a new boat, the Speedwell, out of the wreckage of the Wager. In the meantime, other more dangerous factions also form, most notably James Mitchell’s lawless gang of “seceders” who murder at least two sailors. Despite Cheap’s continued insistence that the naval chain of command still applies after the ship has wrecked, he is poorly suited to lead his men under these new circumstances.

The castaways struggle not to freeze or starve to death, and they are shocked to encounter the Kawésqar, a nomadic Patagonian people who have intimate familiarity with Wager Island and its surroundings. The Wager crew’s interactions with the Kawésqar are emblematic of Great Britain’s general behavior toward the Indigenous people it conquers. Though the Kawésqar provide the Wager crew with nutritious food and set up camp nearby to help, some of the sailors mistreat them until they are forced to leave for their own survival. Not long after, conditions grow more dire among the castaways, and the tensions between Cheap and his crew reach a breaking point. Mistakenly believing that his midshipman, Henry Cozens, is shouting about mutiny, Cheap shoots and kills Cozens. Ironically, this spurs Bulkeley and most of the other men to begin plotting mutiny in earnest. As Cummins and others finish building a new ship, the Speedwell, Bulkeley uses a copy of John Narborough’s account of his 1669–1671 Patagonian voyage to navigate a route to neutral Brazil. Obsessed with his own ambitions, Cheap stubbornly refuses to give up on his hopes of meeting Anson in Chile and completing his ship’s original mission.

After five grueling months spent on Wager Island, Bulkeley’s party of mutineers departs on the Speedwell toward Brazil in Part Four: Deliverance. Byron, who originally chose to side with the mutineers, has second thoughts and returns to Wager Island out of loyalty to Captain Cheap. Conditions on the Speedwell are even more nightmarish than on the Wager, and Bulkeley soon faces challenges from his crew just as Cheap did. However, Bulkeley makes a point of consulting with the other men, differentiating his leadership style from Cheap’s. When there are stirrings of mutiny, Bulkeley threatens to abandon ship and the men realize his value and give up their thoughts of revolt. Meanwhile, Cheap’s much smaller party struggles to leave the island in their small barge, spending weeks on failed attempts. Finally, believing themselves to be haunted by the unburied body of one of Mitchell’s murder victims, they find their dead crewmate and bury his remains. The Speedwell arrives in Brazil in January 1742 with 30 Wager survivors, while only three from Cheap’s party, including Cheap himself and Byron, make it back to England by way of Chile.

Part Five: Judgment tells of the surviving castaways’ return to England and narrates both their conflicting stories and the British Empire’s attempt to cover up the incident. After Lieutenant Robert Baynes accuses Bulkeley and Cummins of being the ringleaders of the mutiny, Bulkeley publishes his journals to gain public support. In 1746, when Cheap returns to England after having spent years as Spain’s captive, the court-martial that the crew of the Wager has been dreading arrives. However, though both sides of the Wager mutiny publicly accuse each other of grave crimes on Wager Island, the Admiralty only questions them about the wreck itself, and no one faces significant consequences. In Grann’s view, this puzzling and anticlimactic turn of events points to Great Britain’s need to justify its right to rule the territories it has conquered around the world. If the unruly and lawless behavior of its naval officers makes it into the official historical record, Britain’s claims of innate superiority will be jeopardized. In the end, Britain suppresses the story of the Wager in service of its imperial ambitions.

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