46 pages • 1 hour read
David GrannThe Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 4-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Into the Storm”
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary: “Dead Reckoning”
When Cheap assumed command of the Wager, his shipmates were wary of him: “No longer was he one of them; he was in charge of them, responsible for every soul onboard” (61). With Cheap as captain, Anson’s squadron arrived at Drake’s Passage, the name for the sea passage that went to Cape Horn. Geographically situated between South America and Antarctica, Drake’s Passage was notorious for its dangerously strong currents and winds, which were not blocked by any land. The American novelist and one-time sailor Herman Melville compared Drake’s Passage to the “descent to hell in Dante’s Inferno” (62).
Another problem was determining distance through longitude, since in the 18th-century methods of measuring it were unreliable. Cheap and his crew were stuck using “informed guesswork and a leap of faith” (65). Drake’s Passage was also the site of various islands and abandoned settlements where earlier famous explorers like Ferdinand Magellan and Francis Drake had set foot. These sites included places where their mutinous sailors had been executed.
While sailing, the Wager faced a storm. However, Cheap managed to safely navigate the ship through the weather.
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary: “The Storm Within the Storm”
Although the Wager survived the storm, the ship’s crew were hit by freezing temperatures, which caused some of the sailors to develop frostbite. The ship’s crew were also inflicted with scurvy, which killed more sailors than any other disease. At the time, the cause of scurvy—a lack of vitamin C from insufficient dietary raw fruits and vegetables—was still unknown, and there were no effective medical treatments.
From these calamities, the Trial lost “nearly half its crew,” the Severn lost 290 crewmen, and the Wager saw more than 50 deaths (78). The best hope for the crews of the ships was to reach the nearest safe piece of land, the uninhabited Juan Fernández Islands. The islands were famous for being the home of a well-known Scottish castaway, Alexander Selkirk, whose accounts became the basis for the book A Cruising Voyage Round the World (1712). However, the ships’ navigators had miscalculated. They were hundreds of miles away from the Juan Fernández Islands and were still in Drake’s Passage.
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary: “Alone”
Aside from being lost and killed by disease, the ships were getting low on supplies and were hit by another round of severe weather. The ships were suffering extreme damage from the storms and losing more crew while they tried to keep the ships afloat. The Wager “was being devoured even more than the other ships” (86). In the aftermath, the ships became separated. The Wager even lost sight of Anson’s ship, the Centurion. In the end, the Wager was left alone on the ocean.
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “The Gulf of Pain”
Not only was the Wager left alone, but the ship was also badly damaged with a “missing mast, torn sails, and bad leaks” (89). Nonetheless, Cheap planned on following through with Anson’s plan to attack Valdivia, a town on the coast of Chile. He still hoped that, if he pulled off a successful assault with a damaged ship and on limited resources, he could be celebrated as a hero. Even though the ship continued to be hit by storms and his crew was increasingly aggravated, Cheap insisted on sailing for Valdivia. Bulkeley disagreed with Cheap’s decision and urged him to sail back to Europe, but Cheap still followed his orders.
The ship became trapped in the Golfo de Penas, which translates in English to the “Golf of Sorrows” or “the Gulf of Pain” (93), in the region of Patagonia in the southernmost part of South America. The gulf was dangerous to ships because the waters were filled with hazardous rocks. While trying to help his men fix the ship’s rigging during another storm, Cheap fell and broke his left shoulder. As Cheap was recovering under the watch of the ship’s surgeon, the Wager started sinking after hitting an underwater rock. Despite the damage and being hit by more storm-driven waves, the Wager kept sailing “without a mast, without a rudder, without a captain on the quarterdeck” (95). However, the ship hit some more rocks and finally began to sink.
Part 2, Chapters 4-7 Analysis
Grann makes a central point in these chapters: Ships like the Wager were poorly prepared for not only harsh environments in places like Drake’s Passage, but also for the calamities of sea life. The British were not ready to face scurvy, being unaware of its causes and lacking effective treatments. They also lacked reliable methods of navigation and of determining one’s location. Nonetheless, Cheap was strongly motivated to stick to his original orders to attack Spanish colonies in South America. In fact, Cheap continued to harshly drive on his crew despite many fatalities and horrors just for “the honour of our country” (89). As Bulkeley would later argue during the controversy in Britain over the mutiny, Cheap’s leadership was too rigid (239).
Grann draws attention to the contrast between the grim realities of navigating the seas and the Romance of the British Navy. Sailors romanticized life at sea. Even sailors like Bulkeley who were less well-educated were familiar with and made reference to accounts from well-known captains and explorers, like Ferdinand Magellan, Alexander Selkirk, and Sir Francis Drake. Numerous geographical features on the seas, like the Strait of Magellan and Drake’s Passage, still bore these explorers’ names in the English language. This illustrates The Importance of Stories, and how storytelling has the power to influence individuals to the point of encouraging them to sign up for a deadly cause.
However, the crew of the Wager did not find exotic new lands, heroic battles, or life as part of a “band of brothers” (32). Instead, they found tension between members of the crew and with their captain. They also found sickness, hardship, and death.
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