The Wager Book PDF Free Download

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The Wager: A Tale Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder Book By David Grann PDF Free Download, Overview, Summary, Reviews, Get book, More By Author, Quotes.

The Wager Book PDF Free Download

Guaranteed Preventa Price. Detalles A Page-turning Narrative Of Disaster, Survival, And Brutality, Culminating In A Court Martial That Unveils A Terrible Reality, From The #1 New York Times Bestselling Author Of Killers Of The Flower Moon. The Compelling Tale Explains The Underlying Significance Of The Events Aboard The Wager, Demonstrating That Not Only The Captain And Crew Were Put On Trial, But The Fundamental Concept Of Empire.

The Wall Street Journal Called It “A Tour De Force Of Narrative Nonfiction.”

On January 28, 1742, A Ramshackle Vessel Of Patched-together Wood And Cloth Washed Up On The Coast Of Brazil, Containing Thirty Emaciated Men Who Were Barely Alive And Had An Extraordinary Story 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, Chasing A Spanish Treasure-filled Galleon Known As “The Prize Of All The Ocean

But Then… Six Months Later, Another, Even More Dilapidated Craft Landed On The Coast Of Chile, Carrying Only 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.

The Wager Is A Grand Tale Of Human Behaviour At Its Extremes Told By One Of Our Greatest Nonfiction Writers. Grann’s Recreation Of The Hidden World On A British Warship Rivals Patrick O’brian’s Work, His Portrayal Of The Castaways’ Desperate Straits Rivals Survival Writing Classics Such As The Endurance, And His Account Of The Court Martial Has The Savvy Of A Scott Turow Thriller.

Synopsis Of The Wager Book

Typhoons. Scurvy. Shipwreck. Mutiny. Cannibalism. A Battle For The Truth And The Right To Write History. All Of These Factors Come Together In David Grann’s New Book, “The Wager: A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny, And Murder,” Which Relates The Amazing Story Of The Commanders And Crew Of The Wager, A British Navy Cruiser That Went Down In 1741 Off The Chilean Coast Of Patagonia. The Guys Become Deadly Anarchists After Being Stranded On A Barren Island. Years Later, Many Survivors Returned To England, Where, Facing A Court-martial And Eager To Preserve Their Own Lives, They Provided Radically Contradictory Accounts Of What Had Occurred. They Were All Attempting To Conceal A Scandalous Truth—to Erase History. The British Empire Did As Well.

Grann, A Staff Writer At The Magazine And The Author Of “Killers Of The Flower Moon” And “The Lost City Of Z,” Discovered An Eyewitness Account Of The Trip By John Byron In 2016, When He Was A Sixteen-year-old Midshipman Aboard The Wager At The Time. (Byron Was The Grandfather Of The Poet Lord Byron, Who Drew In “Don Juan” On What He Called “My Grand-‘narrative.’ Dad’s “) Grann Set Out To Reconstruct What Really Happened, And Spent More Than A Decade Combing Through The Archival Debris: The Washed-out Logbooks, The Mouldering Correspondence, The Partly Truthful Journals, The Surviving Court-martial Records. He Travelled There In A Tiny, Wood-heated Boat To Better Appreciate What The Castaways Had Undergone On The Island, Which Is Located In The Gulf Of Sorrows—or, As Some Like To Call It, The Gulf Of Pain.

Grann Introduces David Cheap, A Muscular, Impetuous British Navy Officer, In This Sample From The Book’s Prologue And First Chapter. During The Tumultuous Trip, He Was Appointed To Captain Of The Wager And, For The First Time, Realised His Ambition Of Being A Ruler Of The Sea—until The Disaster.

The Sun Was The Sole Unbiased Witness. It Stood There For Days, Watching The Weird Item Heave Up And Down In The Water, Thrashed Violently By The Wind And Waves. The Ship Almost Collided With A Reef Twice, Which May Have Ended Our Tale. Yet, Whether By Fate, As Some Would Later Say, Or By Chance, It Floated Into An Inlet Off The Southern Coast Of Brazil, Where Numerous Locals Saw It.

It Was A Boat Of Some Type, More Than Fifty Feet Long And Ten Feet Broad, But It Seemed To Have Been Stitched Together From Bits Of Wood And Fabric And Then Pummelling Into Oblivion. Its Sails Had Been Torn, And Its Boom Had Been Splintered. Seawater Crept Through The Hull, Emitting A Foul Odour. When The Onlookers Got Near, They Heard Unsettling Noises: Thirty Guys Were Crowded On Board, Their Bodies Emaciated Practically To The Bone. Their Garments Had Mostly Destroyed. Their Hair Was Knotted And Salty Like Seaweed Around Their Faces.

Several Others Were So Feeble That They Couldn’t Even Stand. One Of Them Perished Shortly After Taking His Last Breath. Nevertheless, A Person Who Looked To Be In Command Stood Up And Proclaimed That They Were Castaways From His Majesty’s Ship The Wager, A British Man-of-war.

When The News Reached London, It Was Met With Scepticism. During An Imperial Conflict With Spain, The Wager, Carrying Approximately 250 Officers And Crew, Had Embarked From Portsmouth In A Squadron On A Secret Mission: To Capture A Treasure-filled Spanish Galleon Known As “The Prize Of All The Oceans.” The Squadron Had Been Engulfed By A Hurricane Near Cape Horn, At The Tip Of South America, And The Wager Was Believed To Have Sunk With All Its Souls. Yet, Two Hundred And Eighty-three Days After The Ship Was Last Seen, These Guys Suddenly Reappeared In Brazil.

They’d Been Shipwrecked Off The Coast Of Patagonia On A Barren Island. The Majority Of The Commanders And Crew Had Died, But Eighty-one Survivors Had Started Away In An Improvised Boat Made Partially From The Debris Of The Wager. They Travelled Through Dangerous Gales And Tidal Surges, Ice Storms, And Earthquakes, Packed So Closely On Board That They Could Hardly Move. More Than Fifty Men Perished Along The Trip, And By The Time The Few Survivors Arrived In Brazil Three And A Half Months Later, They Had Travelled Almost Three Thousand Miles—one Of The Longest Castaway Expeditions Ever Recorded. They Were Praised For Their Inventiveness And Boldness. As The Party’s Head Put It, It Was Difficult To Imagine That “Human Nature Could Ever Accept The Tragedies That We Have Undergone.”

Six Months Later, Another Boat Washed Ashore, This Time In A Snowstorm Off Chile’s Southwest Coast. It Was Much Smaller—a Wooden Dugout Driven By A Sail Made From Blanket Scraps. There Were Three More Survivors On Board, And Their Situation Was Significantly Worse. They Were Half Nude And Malnourished, And Mosquitoes Swarmed Over Them, Eating On The Flesh That Remained. One Guy Was So Crazy That He’d “Completely Lost Himself,” As One Buddy Described It, “Not Remembering Our Names.” . . Or Maybe Even His Own.”

Upon Their Recovery And Return To England, These Guys Made A Terrible Accusation Against Their Comrades Who Had Emerged In Brazil. They Were Not Heroes; Instead, They Were Mutineers. In The Ensuing Discussion, With Allegations And Countercharges From Both Sides, It Became Evident That The Wager’s Commanders And Crew Had Battled To Endure While Stuck On The Island. Faced With Famine And Subzero Conditions, They Established An Outpost And Attempted To Restore Naval Order. Nevertheless, As Their Condition Worsened, The Wager’s Captain And Crew—those Purported Enlightenment Apostles—descended Into Hobbesian Depravity. There Were Rival Groups, Marauders, Abandonments, And Killings. Cannibalism Claimed The Lives Of A Number Of The Guys.

The Wager Book Reviews

The Bestselling Author Of Killers Of The Flower Moon And The Lost City Of Z Returns With A Gripping Tale Of A Maritime Scandal.

During England’s War With Spain In 1741, The British Warship The Wager Was Shipwrecked In A Storm Off The Coast Of Patagonia While Hunting A Silver-laden Spanish Galleon. While Formerly Part Of A Fleet, The Wager Stood Alone At The Time Of The Catastrophe, And Many Of Her 250 Crew Men Had Already Died From Injuries, Disease, Famine, Or Drowning.

More Than Half Of Those Who Survived The Crash Were Trapped On A Barren Island. Grann Mounts A Harrowing, Lively Tale Of A Dreadful Maritime Disaster And Its Dramatic Aftermath, Drawing On A Collection Of Eyewitness Accounts—logbooks, Letters, Diaries, Court-martial Evidence, And Admiralty And Government Archives. David Cheap, Who By Chance Became Captain Of The Wager; Admiral George Anson, Who Had Made Cheap His Protégé;

Powerful Gunner John Bulkeley; And Midshipman John Byron, Grandfather Of The Poet, All Central To His Teeming Cast Of Seafarers. As Grann Demonstrates, Life On Board An 18th-century Ship Was Dangerous. Wild Weather, Hostile Fire, Scurvy And Typhus, Insurgency, And Even Mutiny Were All Threats. Cheap Fought To Retain Power On The Island As Factions Formed And Violence Raged, Until A Handful Of Survivors Fled—without Cheap—in Crude Handmade Boats.

29 Castaways Eventually Washed Ashore On The Coast Of Brazil, Where They Were Kept In Spanish Captivity For More Than Two Years; And Three Castaways, Including Cheap, Landed On The Coasts Of Chile, Where They, Too, Were Held In Spanish Captivity For Years.

Each Party Of Survivors Subsequently Returned To England, Where They Told Dramatically Different Stories About What Had Happened;

Most Alarmingly, Each Accused The Other Of Mutiny, A Felony Punishable By Hanging. Grann Portrays The Wager Story In The Context Of European Empire As Much As The Wrath Of The Sea, Recounting The Stormy Events In Agonising Detail.

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