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The Wager
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The Wager - March 2024
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For me , the first 1/3 of the book I was confused, all these other ships and details just threw we off. And I couldn’t get to fully learn about the Wager itself. I felt like the author was going back and forth between the Wager and other ships and persons.The 2/3 of the book was interesting, the crew was shipwrecked and I got a chance to get into the story and what they did to survive. This drew me in and I was immersed into the story. And It’s simply amazing the human strength for survival.
In the last 1/3 of the book I felt somewhat lost again. And I wished for more details on the survivors. The trials came and went without fan fare. I guess the authorities didn’t want much of the trial publicized and so there weren’t much detail documented on paper.
I feel if the book was shorter, it would have been more cohesive and overall a much better book.
My hold for this one is still 6-7 weeks away, so I plan to read it but I guess it won't be for a while. :(Cammy, I'm sorry you didn't like it any better. Hopefully, I will enjoy it more but we never know.
I didn’t really enjoy it though fully expected too! I had trouble following what actually wanted to say among all the information given. The audiobook narration was completely annoying, like this was a high fantasy rather than non fiction. Shouldn’t grade the content of the book for the audio narrator but it took away from the whole
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It wasn't bad, I agree with Cammy that the middle third was probably the best (the part where they're actually shipwrecked). I also found the ending a little disappointing - it almost felt...rushed? The beginning was hard to get into, introducing all the characters, and focusing on multiple people and ships in a lot of detail.
I really enjoyed this book! I would agree the middle third was the best, and the ending was abrupt and not what I expected. However, I think it was well told, and I think it's going to make a great movie (albeit, I like Killer of the Flower Moon).The way he writes the narrative, there's really only one redeeming character of all of them, which I'm sure isn't entirely accurate. I was honestly glad at the end, when (view spoiler)
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
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. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death--for whomever the court found guilty could hang.
The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann's recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O'Brian, his portrayal of the castaways' desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann's work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.