Join us as we discuss The Wager by David G rann. \; According to www.goodread s.com:
\nOn January 28\, 1742\, a ramshackle vessel of patched-t ogether wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirt y emaciated men\, barely alive\, and they had an extraordinary tale to tel l. They were survivors of His Majesty's Ship the \;Wager\, a British v essel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the \;Wager \;had been chasing a Spanish tr easure-filled galleon known as "the prize of all the oceans\," it had wrec ked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men\, after being marooned for months and facing starvation\, built the flimsy craft and sa iled for more than a hundred days\, traversing nearly 3\,000 miles of stor m-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.
\nBut then . . . six mo nths later\, another\, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chi le. This boat contained just three castaways\, and they told a very differ ent 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 becam e 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 co urt martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-a nd-death--for whomever the court found guilty could hang.
\nThe Wage r \;is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of o ur greatest nonfiction writers. Grann's recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O'Brian\, his portrayal of th e castaways' desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writi ng 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 inc redible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.
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