Book Review From Rick’s Library: The Wager by David Grann

4 min read

Hi everyone, I’m Rick Barron, your host, and welcome to my podcast, That’s Life, I Swear

In 1740, during war with Spain, the British ship, Wager, was en-route from England on a mission to capture a Spanish galleon loaded with silver. Instead, the crew encountered an intense storm resulting in the ship crashing against rocks. 

Two years later, a raft washed up on Brazil’s shores, carrying only 30 of the original 250 crew members from the Wager. Their story was of survival against all odds: illness, shipwreck, starvation on a desolate island. Six months later, three more survivors turned up on the coast of Chile, but their version of what happened was very different.

Let’s jump into this.

Ok, let’s talk about the book

The book, by David Grann, covers the true story of a British warship that sank off the coast of Chile, leaving its survivors marooned on a lonely island, where they descended into chaos, starvation, sedition and murder. The boat and its crew were on a mission to seize a treasure-filled Spanish galleon in 1740.

Author-David Gann. Courtesy of: UPROXX

The book has gone viral book and now heading to Hollywood. It is being adapted into a feature film by the director Martin Scorsese and the actor Leonardo DiCaprio — who also teamed up on a forthcoming movie based on Grann’s book “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

So, let’s talk about the author 

David Grann is an American journalist, author, and staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. He was born on March 10, 1967, in New York City, and grew up in a suburb of White Plains, New York. Grann graduated from Connecticut College with a degree in English and from Columbia University with a master's degree in International Relations.

Grann started his career in journalism as a police reporter for The Hill, a small newspaper in Washington, D.C. He then worked as a general reporter at The New Republic and as a senior editor at The Hill. In 2003, he joined The New Yorker magazine as a staff writer.

Grann's first book, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, is a collection of his magazine articles. It was published in 2010 and was a New York Times bestseller. His second book, “The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon”, was published in 2009 and was also a New York Times bestseller. It was adapted into a movie in 2016. Grann's third book, “Killers of the Flower Moon”: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, was published in 2017 and was also a New York Times bestseller. It was awarded the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime, the Anthony Award for Best Nonfiction Book, and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

In addition to his book awards, Grann has also received numerous journalism awards, including the George Polk Award, the Selden Ring Award, and the Overseas Press Club Award.

Yep, guess you can say David knows a thing or two about writing.

He lives with his wife and children in New York.

What drew my interest in reading this book? [The Wager]

David has a meticulous approach to weaving a story, but it’s his unbelievable manner of investigation and taking copious notes on the characters of his stories and in particular this book. His written visual representation of what the crew encounters at sea, stuck on land for months, and their eventual journey back to England, only to face another nightmare.

1805 engraving of the Wager shipwreck. Courtesy of: Michael Blyth/Doubleday

What hooked me about this book was not what happened on the island and the surviving crew members making it back to England; but when you thought their struggles with waging war with the elements from being ship wrecked, they now find themselves confronted with the maritime court system.

There’s that expression ‘going down a rabbit’s hole. That would be Grann, as he will go through great lengths gathering facts. The man does his research, as he does for all his writings. 

While gathering material for the book, “The Wager”, he immersed himself in going through ship logbooks, correspondence, journals, records from the court-martial hearings, newspaper reports, sea ballads and accounts published by survivors. His office is cramped with files, crowded bookshelves, and piles of manila note folders. Walking in his office without stepping on something would be a bit of a challenge.

While writing the book Mr. Grann relied heavily on the perspective of the ship’s gunner, John Bulkeley, who kept a daily record of events. Here’s a little factoid. John Bulkeley would later write a book about the story of what took place on the voyage.

Murderous violence erupted among the Wager’s castaways, as depicted in this 1745 engraving.
Courtesy of: British Library, London

Another aspect about my draw to this book, his Grann’s reputation for being a tedious and , tireless writer who will travel the oceans or go deep into the jungle to track down the perfect details for a story…literally.

A case in point is when he wrote the book, “The Lost City of Z,” about the British explorer Percy Fawcett, who journeyed in 1925 to find a lost city in the Amazon. Grann traveled to some of the same locations, such as the upper Xingu River region in the rainforest of Brazil to meet with members of the Kalapalo tribe.

Grann did the same for his book, The Wager, when in the summer of 2019, he traveled to Chiloé Island, off the country’s west coast, and hired a captain to take him on a 350-mile journey by sea to Wager Island. 

After six years of research, including his own harrowing journey to the inhospitable island where the castaways washed up, he completed the book.

What can we learn from this story? What's the take away?

When confronted with utter chaos and unexpected happenings, you see the unraveling of human beings in this book. Their wills and emotions are turned upside down and turned into knots. They are tested beyond what any human being should have to go through, but made it, some did. 

The book is a testament to the depths of human depravity and the heights of human endurance

In short, David Grann has proven he’s a master in storytelling. 

Well, there you go. That’s life, I swear.

For further information regarding the material covered in this episode, I invite you to visit my website which you can find on either Apple Podcasts/iTunes or Google Podcasts, for show notes calling out key pieces of content mentioned and the episode transcript.

As always, I thank you for listening. 

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