Book Discussion- The Wager: Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny & Murder

The Wager:
Tale of
Shipwreck,
Mutiny &
Murder
David Grann

Lead by Brad Pendleton

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. 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. 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.