Synopsis:
\n\nOn January 28\, 1742\, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up o n the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men\, barely alive\, a nd they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Maje sty'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 bee n 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 t he flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days\, traversing 2500 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 had a very diff erent story to tell. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not hero es - they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own\, of a tyrannical and murderous captain and his henchmen. It be came clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anar chy\, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderne ss. As accusations of treachery and murder flew\, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were lif e-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. \;
\nhttps://lacountylibrary.libnet.info/event/ 13446818 URL;VALUE=URI:https://lacountylibrary.libnet.info/event/13446818 ATTACH:https://static.libnet.info/images/events/lacountylibrary/The_Wager. jpg END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR