If this is the me Eater podcast coming at you, shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear, listencast. You can't predict anything presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear. For every hunt,
First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, Good Lord. David Grant is here staff writer at New Yorker Magazine, number one New York Times bestselling author of, among other books, the book I'm probably most jealous of because it was one of those books you just see so much you get sick of seeing it. The Lost City of z I mean, how what a huge success?
Yes, yeah it was.
It was.
It was a big success. You would have done much better on your journey through the Amazon, and I get that way, Yeah, it would have been a totally different book had you done it.
The Los Cities, the Killers of the Flower Moon, the oce Age Murders, and the Birth of the fbi Ano They're like just huge book, Los Cities. He became a movie, So some people are probably sitting there being like, is that a movie?
There's a movie? Yes?
Yeah, yeah, uh, Killers of Power Moon becoming.
A movie, becoming a movie be out in October.
Perhaps you've heard of uh fellers like Martin Scorsese, Leo DiCaprio, de Niro. I don't know. Maybe those names are ring a bell. These are people who would be affiliated with.
This.
But the one that makes me most jealous is a lot of jealousy in the room today, Stergil Simpson. I didn't know this, ty. I read it in Krin's note.
Yeah, I saw that in there.
What the hell is he doing?
That's you know, Scorsese loves his musicians. So you have and you have Adjason is spell too is another great they're both terrific in it too. And yeah they're they're terrific. I don't know if any of them acted before. They're fantastic.
Oh that's great, man. But what we're here taught about is uh David Grand's latest book, The Wager, the Tail of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. Just as a quick little just a quick little thing that we got. We got to touch on a couple of quick things and we'll come back to you.
I was.
The I could tell this amused you too. I was amused by Uh. Well, first I say, you know, it's a tail of shipwreck, So it involves ships. Obviously. How many things we say today are nautical terms.
Yeah, there there's so many there. It's kind of wonderful. It's like and I had no idea how I did this book. So, I mean, there are just so many ones. There's, for example, scuttle butt, Yeah, scuttle but with this barrel on the ship where the seamen would gather around they get their water rations, what would they do around their breath? They gossip? The other one that really well, there were so many there was like piping hot was the Boson's
whistle for a hot meal. Pipe down was the Bosn's whistle. To quiet down under the weather. Under the weather is the best. I mean, I always just let under the weather. It was this perfect metaphor for sickness, but it turns out it's completely literal. When you were on a ship and you were sick, you could not serve on deck on watch, so you stayed below. You were quite literally
under the weather. And perhaps the most popular one was was to turn a blind eye, which was when Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson wanted to ignore his superior's signal flag to retreat in battle, he took his telescope and he put it up to his blind eye. So that's why we say, to turn a blind die to this thing. Yeah.
Yeah, it's like it's look that it's tied to, it's tied to an actual person.
Yeah yeah.
I Unfortunately, once I knew where they all came from, I felt weird that I use them all without knowing what I'm saying. Yeah, what am I? What was I saying? I don't know, I knew what I meant, But the fact that you could live your whole life with an expression and it never occurs to say when I say that, what am I talking about?
I think that's always just because this is like another example of like how history completely shapes us even more utterly oblivious to it.
Uh someone, Yeah, we're gonna get this story has Oh it's just it just turns into uh, just a sickening just sickening aspects to the story. Heartbreaking. But some people live to tell the tale. So and not only that they live to tell the tale, they live to argue about the tale. And we're gonna get pretty heavy into into this story of the Wager in a couple minutes, so we'll come right back to that. But we got a couple things to hit on in the This is
now the fourth time we've discussed the fifth time. Actually this might be the this might be the end. Yeah, I think you're honest. If you honestly, I don't know.
If I've been in these conversations.
A lot of companies came out and and just and have recently distanced themselves from kangaroo leather. And so we've been talking about where how all this kangaroo leathers generated in Australia and how just the the geopolitics around kangaroo leather. And we were talking, someone was saying that it's not a popular food item, all right.
That was Morgan on the Cape Buffalo.
Yeah he was from That's right. We had a genuine Australian. Yeah, say, it's not a you know, I grew up in Australia. It's not a common food item. This guy says, I am Australian and currently we have kangaroo tenderloins in supermarkets. He eats it every week. He says, one reason why ozies don't eat kangaroos because it's part of our coat of arms. And he tries to equate it to uh, if we were to eat the bald eagle.
Right, we're trying to figure out, you know, like why is it like tainted in people's minds when it's you know potentially I mean the numbers of kangaroo are so so insane.
I mean, yeah, they're like they're for crop damage purposes. This is kind of the crux of what we're talking about. For crop damage Australia is killing millions of kangaroos. You not buying the products has no impact on that. That's happening. Oh the killing of the end, it's like and looking at the issue there and how it's worked and how the government approaches it. That's happening, that will continue to happen. Whether or not they go into a hole in the
ground or not is a completely different issue. But you saying no wor kangaroo leather is not having it's not a social activism. That is that it has consequences on the ground.
I imagine it probably has a pest like uh you know, aura around it, and that probably prevents people from eating it. I mean there's so many just everywhere. He's sort of like, eah, hit him with cars. They're eating your garden and.
They see human advertizing.
People at restaurants. They're also it's served at fine dining establishments in Australia. So we were just trying to figure out, like, what's what the issue is.
The Audubon society. Man, I don't know how. I didn't know. I didn't know as much detail this. I just read Dan Floy's very great book, Wild New World, which is a ecological history of Well, he came on the damn Show, so he wrote an ecological history of the continent. It
where do you begin? He began with the chick Salube strike, which is the asteroid that collided with into the Gulf of Mexico off of tells that place over there off the Yucatan Peninsula, at a angle that he described very eloquently when it struck, I used to think of it. I don't know, I thought of the asteroid. I never
thought of the angle. The impacts of the angle at a very shallow angle, struck the earth and blasted, you know, like the sun died for years, all the dinosaurs, a most all the dinosaurs died, the biggest sort of ecological disaster to ever befall the earth, and then takes it from there. Eventually he gets to this fella Audubon and Audubon and Dan Floyd's Wild New World. Audubon is a somewhat celebrated figure because he he starts to paint all
these these endemics. He starts to paint these beautiful paintings of birds from North America, including the ivory will build woodpecker, which when extinct. He has paintings of the passenger pigeon, and he he he brought them to life. He would paint them in uh, in a sort of context of how they interact with them each other, how they interact with their environment. And so he became synonymous with American wildlife birds in particular. He did not found the Audubon Society.
Later when they when they created the Autobon Society, they named it after this individual who was had such a profound impact on the way people perceive wild birds and celebrate wild birds. Uh. The dude own slaves and the guy he owned slaves, and not only that I don't understand the details of this, but he was rolled into efforts to dig up Native American burial sites. I don't know the details on that. Damn sure own slaves. Was not an abolitionist, and it came up with the Audubon Society.
They conducted this like internal this internal review that recommended that the Audubon Society change its name. The board rejected the recommendation, and now in places where you could picture, places that you could picture just saying we're going to change our name anyway, changing the name anyway. And saw this little fight brewing within the Audubon Society about what does Audubon stand for? Does he stand for his work on behalf of Birds? Does he stand for slavery? I
don't need to. I mean, you know, uh, culturally, we've been talking for a long time and about what one should do about that. The end of this, the end of this conversation Will Will will someday land On, Does Washington, d C. Become something different? And do we throw away the Constitution because of the the what what the people that wrote that were up to? If we throw away the Constitution because it was drafted by people who held slaves, then what framework do we use to have debates about
what's legal? I don't really know. It's very puzzling, It's it's a tremendous intellectual exercise. What do you think, David, just your top bosch shit.
Just hit you with that light.
So that's that's a thing. That's a conversation happening out there in the in the wildlife. Uh, in the wildlife space.
We should give a shout out. I read that article too that Karin has paceded in here. That was a good article.
I thought it was a great Did.
You read it all?
I read the whole thing.
Adam pop Aescu, I don't know how to pronounce his name. Where do you find that article?
Kri Karinn pointed out that the quote she uses from someone defending Audubon and defending the name. They follow up the quote. It's very subtle, so the writer quotes it's almost like I don't believe it. The writer quotes someone defending Audubon.
And not changing the name, and.
Then it's like they give his quote comma as he nudged a dead catfish with his foot by the side of the pond.
Sure, it was bizarre because some of the interviews canducted for this piece were conducted over the phone and some of them were conducted in person, so you can picture the writer walking and talking and recording and then transcribing
notes from there. But it was the first and I think almost only time in this multi page piece of writing where the quote, this quote was juxtaposed with like a pretty profound, substantial, like well written, uh thought by people who were in favor of changing their Audubon chapter's name,
so juxtaposed with this one quote. I mean, I don't know how much this individual said and how much there was the writer you know, could pull from, but it was just kind of like basic plane speak and then qualified with as he a dead catfish by the end of the pond, And it was just very bizarre. I was like wondering if that was some kind of covert I don't know, I just felt a certain way reading that.
Well, maybe it was right. Maybe the guy was like, yeah, I don't know if he asked me, it's a bunch of bs. And then.
Kick he I mean the first three paragraphs are there really is three or four sentences, but I mean he's talking about a seventy six year old bird watcher at a sewage treatment pond, and he goes on to describe this and he even uses uh he says it one guy uh says there's this quote says on dale side stepping a human turd. I mean, I was I was like hold on, what are we talking about again?
Here?
This is a story about Audubond, but he's side stepping human turns.
He's painting the picture for where the conversation's taking place.
But he did a good job of getting hooked.
No.
I think that they were like, well, you can come to two events. We have one of at a sewage facility and one is at a beautiful park. And the writers like dude as one that likes a good metaphor.
That was in the free press. Yoh, need just to ask your question, answer your question?
Uh uh, data graand we almost bumped you for this. We got a note that says a guy writes in I can tell his name, says, if you're looking for a podcast, guess with a crazy story, I can get you in touch with my brother in law. His wife slowly poisoned him over the course of a year or so. She also poisoned his mom and sisters. She's bad, shit crazy.
That'll be my next book.
There's a title for it there.
I laughed so many times that note, because I was kind of like, oh, I'm it, is this an exclusive figure? Well no, there's more.
There's more to it. It could be an exclusive.
All right diving in. I want I want to I want to make sure we have tons of time to talk about the wager. I want to you know how we talked about the all the terms that came up. I want to want to go a little bit out of order. Can you explain the the great details you have about the burial at sea and that you would with the needle, just explain it is the weirdest thing.
Yeah, So when you when you died at sea is a last Unfortunately, many people died at sea on this expedition, about nearly two thousand people went, and only about of them about more than thirteen hundred parish and many of them were buried at sea. And so when you when you died at sea, they would have a ceremony and they would usually wrap you in a hammock, your hammock, and they would put up some kind of weight, sometimes of cannonball or some other weight in the in the
hammock attached. But before they they would sew you into the hammock, and before they dumped you overboard, they would make sure the last stitch they put through your nose, just to make sure you were actually dead. They didn't want you waking up going down into the ocean with a cannonball, dropping you to the depths of the bottom of the sea. So one of the rituals was they would they would.
Was there ever an account of the last stitch waking someone up?
Well, you know, you do have to realize medicine back then was so primitive that it actually it sounds absolutely naughty. You know, you could seem comatose to somebody. They wouldn't have the mechanisms, so and you know, you're at sea in a storm, so you know, you kind of you know, it's it's both crude. But yet, yeah, I suspect there probably was sometime. I mean, the thing about seamen and rituals that they did actually develop for a reason they
wouldn't waste time. So I suspect there must have been in some story that they had that motivated to do it, because they're not gonna waste time sewing something through your nose. But that's what they did.
Yew.
There was a couple of successes of medical treatments that were you wrote about in the book. And I was surprised to hear that, oh, there's a surgeon on the boat and he actually like had success doing this thing. It was christ surprising.
Yeah, there were surgeons on board, but you know, but you know, the the you know, the key thing that the surgeon had to do was basically amputate. I mean, that was the thing they had to amputate. They had to amputate quickly with no you know, you had no anesthesia. You know, they didn't give you booze because it actually would make it more dangerous and your two of your seamen would hold you down and they chop off your limb. That was usually the main, you know, the main thing
a surgeon did on board. But they did have certain medicines that they would try to give you. But you know, they didn't know what germs were back then. So you know, on this expedition, first they suffered from typhus, and you know they're going around the ship trying to figure out what causes this. And of course this was during COVID too, when I was writing about a lot of this, and I'm leaving packages at the door, thinking I can't do
I touch the package, get the package, come inside. Is it like twenty four hours outside and and you know these guys are all you know, there's like you know, often on the ship to be like five hundred people all cloister together. They're social distancing, and you know they're going around thinking, you know, is it in the air, you know, you know, you know, you know malaria, you talk about words, it's the French or mill area bad ear. So in that day they were thinking, you know, so
they're going around sniffing everything. Is it your breath? What is it? What causes these things?
We should I want to set the scene a little bit and get to well. In order to set the scene, I want to like begin with the thing that that seems like a fairy tale. I want you to talk about the year and who and what and why. But this expedition that we're going to discuss, and the voyage of the Wager and an accompaniment with a bunch of other boats. It seems so crazy to me that here we are in the seventeen hundreds and they get intel,
the English get intel of a gold lace. It sounds like like a like a setup for a pirate movie. They get intel of a gold laden Spanish galleon that will be showing up at such and such time in the Philippines. Yes, let's send a two thousand people and I don't know how many boats to sail across the Atlantic, duck around Patagonia, get up to the Philippines and catch the boat.
Yes, that was like, how is it?
If that wasn't a movie, I would be like, this is a bad setup for that movie. It's so implausible, it's so crazy.
And it's also crazy about it too, is that this was a naval mission, so you know, but it had a complete whiff of pirates. I mean, and I was like, is this part of the naval mission? But that ship was worth you know, it was laid in with treasure plunder taken by the Spanish from Mexico and Peru, and then they would haul it over to the Philippines where they would use that plunder to buy Asian commodities. So that's why it was filled, and that's why they knew it would be going there.
And this is an annual and it's an annual trip to the market.
An annual trip with exactly with lludic gold and silver and jewels and gems. And it was worth about you know, eighty million dollars. Eighty million dollars.
Did you do the did you do that? What that I did?
That little inflation cockcat. What does that mean now, Yeah, no, it's about eighty two million dollars, yeah, by in today's money, my little inflation caculat. But yeah, and the ship was known as the you know, to Europeans, the ship was known as the Prize of all the Oceans. I mean, that's how the seamen referred to it.
Uh, layout who and and and how many ships? Because when I you know, it's it's it. It's about a ship. But there's a there's a narrowing processes where we would end up focusing very intently on this this one. But it's part of a much It's like not even the most impressive ship. Yeah.
No, In fact, it's kind of the ugly duckling of the squadron. I mean, the squadron consisted of five warships, including the Wager and a scouting sloop. The largest ship was the Centurion, which was led by the commodore Georgia Anson and the Wager. Yeah, it was a little bit the ugly duckling of the expedition because it was not unlike the other warships, it wasn't born for battle. It had actually been a merchant ship trading and they needed
ships for the war, so they remade it. It was about one hundred and twenty three feet long, had twenty eight cannons, which made it the kind of lowest rank warship was known as the sixth sixth rate warship in the British Navy, which was the lowest rating, and on board that ship was about two hundred and fifty men.
But even before you know, the squadron sets off, and just just to comment on these ships too, is like they really were these engineering marvels of their time, you know, because they were these instruments designed for battle, yet also these homes, these fortresses where people had lived together for years at a time. They had three masts. The wager could fly about twelve sales. The larger warships could fly
as many as eighteen saals to propel them. But they were also very, very vulnerable to the elements because they were made primarily of wood. A single warship could take as many as four thousand trees oaks, yeah, oaks, hard
oak wood to build. And then the other huge challenge of getting this squadron off, you know, even before we get into the mission, was they also had to find men and boys and the British Navy back then, you know, Great Britain didn't have conscription and they had exhausted their supply of volunteers. So they are going about desperate to find men and boys, you know, demand these complex engineering ships.
The way you describe it the ships there, Yeah, it's ready to go. And it's not like like you know, you go to high schools and recruit people and then they enter and boot camp and then they get trained, you know, and then years later they wind up like in combat. It's they're like, we're ready to go. Where's the people. We'll go to the tavern.
Yeah, they go quite literally go to the tavern. They go to the tavern, and they send out the press gangs, and they go to the taverns, and they go to the ports and anyone coming in and they would basically eyebaw you and if you you know, had any telltale signs of a marina you had, like a little check or shirt or one of these little round hats that seeming off of more and the thing that also fascinatings, they would inspect your fingernails for tar because tar was
used on chips to make everything water resistant. And if you had those things. You were basically seized and in effect kidnapped and dragged onto one of these voyages. You wouldn't even have time to say go by to your family. You might even be returning from a trading ship from some long trip to the Asia. You've been gone for two years. You get home and you think, I'm gonna go see my family. Yeah, I'm coming home, and then your your season, your and you're dragged on the ship.
And even then they were short of men, and so they went they I laugh on because you develop a gallows seamen sense of humor when you when you're right about the stuff. But they they would go to they went to a retirement home. They went to a retirement home, and they seized retired soldiers and seamen who were in their sixties and seventies. Many of them were missing an assortment of limbs, you know, one was like you know
something that some were missing a leg. One tried to desert, hopping on one leg away, and and some were so sick they had to be hoisted on stretchers onto these vessels. So the seeds of destruction, which we will get into, i'm sure, but they were planted at the very inception of the sex position.
Yeah, the was the term like gang press, right.
Yeah, yeah, press gangs. Yeah, and they would just press you, Yeah, they would. They would they would roam around, they'd be armed, and they would seize you and take you.
I can't remember if one of the guys you mentioned, if he was on the wager, if it was just an anecd pulled from another ship. But there's a guy that gets press ganged, gang pressed, and he writes a letter to his wife being like, hey, I'm just right down on the shore here, but I'm not going to like it looks like I'm going away for a couple of years.
I can't get away. And what they would do, Yeah, there's a letter from a semen. Because one of the things they would do is they you know, most semen back then could swim, and so they would take the ships and rather than keep them at the dock yard, they would actually anchor them out to see so that way you couldn't escape.
Oh that's right. Yeah, he's looking, he's looking, and.
There's no way for no way for him to get ashore.
Yeah.
Uh.
So the wager had the total expeditions two thousand people, yep, and roughly how many boats there.
Were ship, five warships, a scouting sloop, and then these two little cargo ships that are supposed to company them part way.
When they set off at that time, do they set off knowing that, Hey, we're gonna get going and then we're gonna start dying from scurvy. No, So it's it's a surprise every time it is.
I mean, they they you know, they know this is a perilous expedition, which is why so many people tried to desert. I mean they were all trying, many many of them. Some people volunteered for the mission. Some people thought they were going to come back with plunder. They have, you know, visions of glory and ambition, but I don't think anyone expected the level of hors that they encountered.
But walk through the scurvy challenge, it I get it. Like you said earlier, they people didn't understand infectious disease, right, Yeah, how does it play out? And if you know, I can't know if you talk on your book, how does it play out? And how does someone eventually say I think this might have something to do with vitamin C.
Yeah, So, so they crossed the Atlantic. Everything early on begins to go wrong. First they have a typhus epidemic. They cross the Atlantic, they're being chased by a Spanish or Mada, which is larger. And then get to Cape Horn where they're facing these storms. And it's at that very point where they need every person to persevere, where they begin to grow mysteriously sick. They can many of them could no longer rise from their hammocks. Their skin
is changing texture and color. Then their teeth begin to fall out, then their hair begins to fall out. And then this just amazed me that the cartilage that seemed to glue together the bones seem to be coming undone within the bodies. There's an account from one Semen who had broken a bone fifty years earlier at a battle, and that bone, which had obviously long since haled the fracture,
suddenly mysteriously breaks in the very same place. And then the other thing I didn't know about scurvy until I researched the story was how it can affect your senses. One Semen described to getting into our brains and we went raving mad. And of course, yeah, they did not know that the cure was so simple that all they
needed was more vitamin seeing their diet. Now, these ships did not have refrigerators, so it wasn't common to bring fruits and vegetables on the ship, so their diet completely lacked it, and they didn't know what the cure was, and of course, very tragically before the outbreak in which hundreds of men perish. It's considered one of the worst scurvy outbreaks ever recorded maritime moss.
So that was one of the worst.
Oh, one of the worst.
Yeah, really, I didn't know if they just started to take it as a matter of course that there would be like a high level of attrition due to this weird thing that happens in body.
But to your point, the scurvy was known as the great killer of seamen. It killed more people than anything else, other diseases, combined, naval battles, shipwrecks. So they did know that scurvy was the great enigma of the age of sail and the great killer. But they had actually stopped in Brazil before for the outbreak, and there were all these lines where they had stopped, and they just brought
these lines on the ship. And of course, as you said, you know, later the British Navy would learn about vitamin secured scurvy and they would bring lines, which is another term that we now known. British semen were known as Limey's.
Interesting enough that it was actually after the horrors of this expedition and the scurvy outbreak, there was a scientist who actually conducted one of the earliest kind of controlled experiments, and he dedicated to the commodore of this expedition, to Commodore Georgia, and he did actually learn He didn't know why, but he proved that vitamin C when they were given it helped semen with scurvy. But it would still take
decades more. Really be the end kind of the beginning of the turn of the century, the end of the eighteenth century that the British Navy and others finally adopted this knowledge to save human lives.
When I'm talking with my kids about yeah, I I share with them how my dad was a big smoker, okay, and that when my dad was in the war, they would put in your sea rations, there were cigarettes in your sea rations. In boot camp you would get a smoke break, okay. And they're like, oh my god, that's so stupid. How can people and you know think that,
And I said, well, here's a riddle for you. Right now, today we are using things, eating things, doing things that in one hundred years your descendants will be having a chuckle about if you can identify those. That's a great path toward heroism. Yes, it's perpetual. But this thing that was kind of interesting that you brought in your book was not kind of very interesting. They made the association with being at sea and being at land to the point that for a while they experiment with the recipe
or remedy. Being land seems to fix this. Yes, let's take them ashore and bury them up to their neck and dirt because it must be something about the soil.
Yeah. They basically concluded there was something unnatural for humans to be at sea, and they would obviously realize when they came home and they would begin to change their diet. They didn't connect it. They would get better. And there's a wonderful letter from the lieutenant on this expedition saying there must be something in the natural particles of land and so Yes, one of the cures was they would bury.
There's this description of a seamen describing the strangeness of seeing all these seamen buried in land up to their heads hoping that might cure it.
Wow, lime peels.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The one thing I would say when you read this book you'll get away is just bring lines. You go to sea, just bring a line.
There's so much to cover here. Explain how the the a real shitty part of this boat ride is going around the bottom of Patagonia. So what happens there and how we wind up where your story narrows in on the Wager.
Yeah, So while all these men and boys are dying on these ships, they are encountering and trying to get around Cape Horn, which is a very tip of South America, kind of the farthest landpoint in Ireland. And I always knew it was a place with some of the worst seats in the world, but I never understood why until researching this. And what happens is it's an area where the sea funnel between Antarctica and the tip of South America. It's actually only place on Earth where the seas travel
uninterrupted around the globe without ever hitting land. Oh really, Yeah, so they travel about thirteen thousand miles, accumulating power and force. Similarly, nothing's blocking the winds and then they get funneled into this area where it suddenly shallows dramatically, generating these enormous waves. So you know you will have winds there that will accelerate to hurricane force routinely. You will have the strongest
currents on earth. And then you'll have what is known as the Cape horn rollers, which can dwarf a ninety foot mast on one of these ships. Herman Melville, the novelist, later went around Cape Horny joined that leak club. He compared it to a descent into Hell and Dante's inferno. And so this expedition, this squadron of wooden ships, is smack in that hell. There's just no question. These ships are being bandied about as if they were no more
than rowboats. They can't even fly their sails because they keep blowing out in the storm. At one point, one of the captains can't control the ship because they can't fly sails. So he orders his topmen, which are the
people climb the mass. Ordinarily to work the sails, but he asked them to climb these masks about one hundred feet and to hold on to the rope spider like like in a web, and use their bodies as concave sails, as a gale force wind is blowing into them, and they're about one hundred feet in the.
Air, and that would actually change the course of the boat.
That would they hope that would change the course. And just one other thing to remember. They're also in waves, so that the ship is rocking about forty five degrees to one side and forty five degrees the other, so you're on a complete pendulum, hanging onto a rope. And in fact it did enable the captain to maneuver the ship a little better. But one seaman was cast into the sea and around and his companions could describe him. It was just the most heartbreaking scene.
That is one of the more you talk about cases in which people would fall to their death from the mast. Yes, it'd be especially bad when you fell and hit your head on a cannon.
Yes that would be the end.
But oh, it's just like soul. He falls off the winds blowing the ship and they just stand there's no way to go back, there's no way to go you can't reverse now, and just he's swimming and swimming and swimming, and then he's not swimming anymore.
Yeah, until it's completely heartbreaking, and so you know, they're in these circumstances and the ships are desperate to stay together. You know, you appreciate some of the technological advances when you read about this stuff. So for example, the ships, you know, you just take communication for granted. You know, they could have the only way they could shout to each other, but in a storm, you can't you can't
get that close in those waves anyways. And so what they would do is they were desperate to stay together because they knew if one ship, if the ships got separated, there'd be no one to save them if something went wrong. And so they would fire their cannons, just you know,
blasting to signal of the location. But eventually the sea and the sound of the you know, the wind and the ways just drowns out that sound, and all the ships get scattered in the storm, and the Wager, which is under a new commander, David cheap It suddenly finds itself all alone and left to its own destiny.
Did they have any like now that they would have prior knowledge? But was there any any accounts before they went through there that they would give them some idea of what to expect.
So they did you know, one of the things they would do, they say, were fairly uncharted realms that were not a lot of people of British seemen who have gotten around Cape Hoorn. But they did have some accounts that they would bring and they would actually bring the books with them to hopefully give them some as sense and also used for mapping, because they didn't have any detailed charts for this area. What's more, they never knew
exactly where they were precisely on the map. They could determine their latitude easily, they would just read the stars, see men Magellan had done that for ages, but they had no way of knowing their precise longitude because that would require reliable clock which had not yet been invented, and so they had to essentially rely on what was known as dead reckoning. That's where that phrase comes from, and that the simplifier was essentially informed guesswork and a
leap of faith. And so when the wager it gets around the horn, it's coming up the Chilean inside of Patagonia, they they not only miscalculate their longitude, they miscalculate it by hundreds of miles, and suddenly they are in this bay which is now known as a Golf of the Painos, which translates as the Golf of Sorrows, where some prefer to call it the Gulf of Pain. And that's when it first hits a.
Submerged rock and demolishes it.
Yeah, it's crazy. So again, these ships are wooden. You gotta imagine the level of terror. This is their home, many of them, most of them can't swim. First they hit one submerged rock, the rudder shatters, an anchor which weighed two tons, falls and plunges through the hull, leaving a gaping hole. Then another huge wave comes in. It sweeps the wager, this one hundred and twenty three foot wooden vessel, off the rocks. So suddenly the ship, their home,
is careening through this mindful of rocks. But they have no rudder to stare by, and water is pouring through this.
Hole, killing people right in their place.
Oh yeah, drowning people instantly. And then at last they smash into more rocks, and that's when the ship completely begins to shatter. You know, the wooden planks are all breaking apart, the decks are caving in, the mass are coming down. All this water is surging upward through the bottom of the ship. Many of the men who have been suffering from scurvy, they can't get out of their hammocks in time. They drowned. Rats are scurrying upward, but fratuitously,
if you can call it that. The one bit of fortune they have is that the ship gets wedged between these rocks and so it does not yet completely sink. And the survivors climb upon the remnants of the wreck and they peer out, and that's where they see through the mists, this desolate island.
Yeah, I didn't. I assumed you did. I didn't know that you did, And so I saw the sixty minutes bit you did. Yeah, you went, you went and visited where they landed.
I did. I did not. One of the smarter things I've done. Yes, Yeah. I spent the first two years doing research on this, just in archives. And then after about two years, I was like, I just started to have that doubt that gnaws that you was a writer, Like, can I really understand what it was like on that island. So I found this Chilean captain in an island off Chile who said he could take me there. It was about three hundred and fifty miles south to get to
Wager Island. He had initially sent me a photograph of the boat, and I thought, oh, this looks good. This looks like a Jack Gustav vessel. I'll be good, no problem here. And then of course it took me days to get there. I finally get to this island and I see the boat and it's this kind of small wood it's a wood heated vessel. You know, it's kind of like you living off the land here. You know, it was like it was, it was completely it was you know, I had a stove. It was wintertime, heated
by stove. It was so tepestuous, the weather was so bad. They were supposed to leave right away, and we couldn't even leave the port. The coast guard had closed the port down. They just would not let you leave the wind. Nobody could leave the port. And after four days I started wondering if I was ever going to get there. And then finally the coast guard they lift the their blockade or whatever it was, and they say you can go out. And initially we go in between these channels.
I don't know how many people have been down to Patagonia, but have you ever been a.
Patagonia, I've bolted down that cochd okay, so yeah, not that far. Yeah yeah, out of the south the Santiago, and then we went a couple hundred miles down the coach okay.
So you know, like there's a lot of islands, and you know, it's like the end the coastline is very shattered. Its like it's it's all these is lits, and so you can weave behind these islands and stay pretty sheltered. And so that's what we did for the first several days. We didn't see another soul for days. No other boats, oh nobody. It was just desolate out there. We would stop at these little islands to chop down wood, to get the wood to bring it onto the boat so
we could heat our stoves. Yeah yeah, and then we would get our water. We would take a hose and we would hook it up to the glacial stream. So that's how we got water. Let me just tell you it's the cold shower I ever had. Two seconds. I was awake for a week. But and then after about five days of this, the captain comes in and he says, okay.
But I don't know you guys, they didn't get that level of detail.
But yeah, no, I don't know.
You guys would like stop and split stove with.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's yeah, yeah great, yeah yeah. And you're getting your water. I mean that's how we got water to drink, lie and and to and to keep the boat going. And uh and then a five days the captain says, all right, well, you know, now if we're going to get to wage On, and we have to go out into the ocean and and so yeah, that's when I got my first glimpse of the seas. I mean it was just a fraction of what the wagress saw. We get out there. This boat was really
designed for the channels. It was not designed for the ocean. And uh, we are just getting pitched and rocked. So you just I had to sit on the on the deck. You could in the cabin. You could not stand. If you stood, you were going to get chucked. I mean you you just you held on. I had about every seasickness sickness medicine going to Humankind. I was like a
little experiment, you know. I had like the I had the you know, dramamine and the thing on my ear and I'm used to seas I don't get seasick, but I was like, I need everything for this one, and and uh, you know, we're just bouncing about. And then I also made the mistake because I'm not the smartest adventure I was like, all right, I got it. Distract myself. And the one thing I had you couldn't read because your eyes would, you know, going up and down. But I had my phone with me, and I had an
audible recording of Moby Dick. So I put that movie deck, which really, in retrospect, was the stupidest thing because it's completely unsothing, you know, so they have. But any case, it's a very long story to tell you. We did eventually go get across. We got out. The captain was very skilled. We get through. We go through the Gulf of Pain. We get to this island where these castaways went and just as they they thought it might be their salvation. And it is a place a complete wild desolation.
The trees are all bent at forty five degree angles because the winds. It was winter when they were there, it was winter when I was there. Uh so the temperature hovers about freezing, very heavy precipitation. It rains or sleets every day. And worst of all, like the castaways, the worse for them. I brought food. They could find virtually no food on they could have really used you guys, I mean.
I just.
I disagreed because when I was down there. One of the things that the lack of there's a real lack of land.
Mammals, no animals on that island.
Yeah, and you spend a lot of time You're like, there is a wild celery, yes, and you you couldn't believe it, and you went and looked. There's not rats, there's not some kind of rodent. There's not a bunch of shore nesting birds because the shores are just wave battered rocks. It's just there's not.
There's nothing to eat. I mean, there was, there's some you know, there were some birds, but they stayed off the coastline, you know, off the you know, made it very hard for the castways to ever be able to hunt them. There were some muscles along one of the beaches, but they gradually exhausted that supply. They did eat celery, which I tasted when I was there, was kind of dry and salted a little bitter, And didn't you know
they would kind of mix it with stuff cook. But any case, the thing for them actually, which was really life saving, was that they didn't know why, but the celery cured their scurvy. Oh it cured they'ir scurvy because it had some vitamin seeing it and they had no idea why. But they ate the cellar you so, but so, yeah, so they are they begin to starve, they are. They they try to build a settlement on the island, an
imperial outpost. You know. The captain wants to set up He wants it to be governed by the same rules that had existed on the ship, and the same regiment they do early on shore, some real ingenuity. They build little shelters and hamlets and whatnot. Only set up a little irrigation system so they can get fresh collect fresh water.
But sorry, how many at this point.
Of forty five, about one hundred and forty five, including the captain, David Cheap, the gunner, a guy named John Bulkeley who plays a very key role on the island, and a midshipman named John Byron who had been only sixteen years old when the voyage sets sail. And if the name misfamiliar at all to listeners or sounds familiar because he would later go on to become the grandfather the poet, Lord Byron, and Lord Byron's poetry is greatly influenced actually by John Byron, the Midshipman's Oh yeah.
And a father son father son, that's another heartbreaker.
And a cook who's in his eighties. A cook who's in his eighties. It survives the records. I'm that. And there are boys as well.
There's a you get into an interesting little intellectual exercise. They get into where I can't remember at what point it happens, but at a point it comes to be that the ship's gone, you are no longer on payroll. If I'm not on payroll and the ship's gone, why do I have to listen to the captain? Yes, but doesn't it be that he's not in charge anymore? Yeah, and it was.
It was a bit of a murky and yeah, they would hold that debate. So some of the people who are like sick of the captain and want to go on their own, they're like, well, do we have to follow them? They're always very conscious of the rules and what might happen to if they ever get back to England, because if they mute me, They'll get hanged. So they're very country. They're like, well, have we found a loophole? Have we found a loophole? So would this justify it?
It's like you can picture that, you can picture them lawyering it out, but I'm not on pay, Like the boat's gone.
The boat's got and then you know, what's a counter amendum. So you know what's so interesting too, is that there was then a like there was like you know, you know these bureaucratic rules, so like the rules of the rules, and then there's like an amendment to the rule. Actually, so in the rules at the time, he said, if you were actually still getting any provisions off the ship, you were then still actually under naval command. So they are trying to send out some salvage expeditions to see
if they can fish out of the wreck anything. So the fact that then food. So you just see the lawyering going on, like which amendment do we follow?
And they u talk about that that the Minnesota starvation experience because you can see where this is going. Yeah, this becomes a tale of great starvation and desperation. Yes, And the book spends a lot of energy on the I don't know what do you call like the soul like sort of the social cultural decay? I don't know.
The Yeah, what happens to human dynamics in society under that kind of stress? You know, I mean the ship is a floating civilization with its rules and order and regiment, and what happens when that world disintegrates and then when you're under the pressure of starvation. So I was very interested in how this hunger affect the human body and the psyche. And there was an experiment actually done in Minnesota in the nineteen forties, it's now known as the
Minnesota Starvation experiment, where they cut over several months. The people had volunteered for this experiment. They were all pacifist, interestingly enough, and they cut their caloric intake by about half,
and they studied what happened. This experiment would never happen today. Yeah, yeah, this would not have gone past the lawyers, but in nineteen forty it got past the lawyers and so, and they would study what happened, and you know, with half clark intake, you know, they described how the people became just increasingly obsessed with food, many of them who had volunteer for the experiment thought because they were kind of spiritual,
they were pacifist. The thought, well, maybe this would give them a deep part.
You just explain pacifism.
Yeah. Yeah, they were just basically conscientious objectors. They didn't believe in violence, they didn't believe in fighting, and so that's in that sense, that's what they were pacifist.
So they were like stack of the deck. Yeah yeah, right, instead of just going getting something they want the bar fight.
No no, yeah, no, theyk they took the people right and and instead, you know, just with even half the clerk intake. Over a period of time, you know, they watch how they got. They just become increasingly obsessed with food. They become more and more irritable, they begin to fight. One of the people in the experiment eventually says I want to kill myself, and then he turns to the one of the doctors or medics who's overseeing and says, no, actually, I want to kill you. The same person as actually
began to fantasize about cannibalism. He was removed from the experiments. But it just gives you a window in and I think also a deeper understanding of how you know the body and how much food can affect it. And of course on that island they were suffering far greater nutritional deficiencies than they did in that experiment. And how would that affect them? How do you maintain social order? How
do you work with each other? Because working with each other is in your interests, and yet you are starving and consumed also their own self.
Interest and they have some factionalism.
Oh yeah, they splinter. They splinter initially into three groups. One group, the others referred to as the Seceeders. The Seceeders are basically they're like the barfighters. They break off and they're like marauders, kind of roaming the island, pillaging, and everyone's afraid of them. And the leader of that group had allegedly respective murdering at least two people and stealing what food and rations that person had. So that's one group. And then in the main settlement there are
two main factions. One remains loyal to the Captain David Cheap and it's his loyal followers, and Captain Cheap is speaking about notions of duty and patriotism and order and naval rules of regulations. Another group is increasingly drawn to John Bulkley, who was the gunner on the wager, and he's interesting guy. He was devout and he was in
many ways the most skilled seamen on the wager. But because he did not come from the aristocracy in those days, he knew he was never going to become a commander of a warship. Yet suddenly, in these circumstances, you know what I describe as almost this democracy of suffering, he begins to emerge as a commander in his own right and more. And where he's very self sufficient, he's he knows how to survive and so and many of the people gravitate to them. And he would stir the people.
This is before the American Revolution, but he would stir his followers with the phrase life and liberty. So these are the factions. I mean, it's amazing. At the camp, they're separated by about you know, they don't describe it exactly, but it's probably like fifty one hundred feet or maybe more, maybe two hundred feet, and yet they have to send it some points. They have to send emissaries back and
forth to communicate negotiation. Yeah, it's to negotiating because they won't speak to each I mean, it's like it's their becoming warning campments.
The you touched on this, but I think it warrants a little revisit. Uh. While this is going on, you know, people argue about whether capital punishment is a deterrent or not. In those days, it's like they're thinking about how do I like everybody's dying, and it gets down to where it gets down to whatever number than one hundred and forty, and then it gets down to like a very very small handful of people, but a lot of their actions are governed by whatever I do to get out of this.
Can't be such that I get hung. Yeah, that's great, And they like they've they've like these people in their career, they have seen people hung from the mast. Yeah, and it's like you're not like, hey, no, when I get home, I don't care what no punishment be bad?
Is this?
You're calculating it, Like, at at a point, I got to start thinking about how I'm going to explain this because they're going to hang me.
Yes they are.
And if I survive, it's almost like that almost makes me guilty.
Yeah, they are so conscious. It's so interesting. You know, they're thousands of miles away from from from England and yet there's this eye of the Admiralty always kind of peering down upon them, like the eye of God, and they're deeply conscious of it. And so yes, they are
so conscious of having to justify their actions. And they was amazing they were able to salvage paper and ink, you know, the writing with a quill and with ink and a container, and they're you know, and they're creating documents and contemporaneous evidence so that they can present if they get back to England, you know, present this. They are basically trying to create an unassailable story that could withstand the attrition of public scrutiny. And at Marshall, yeah.
Like regardless of what Bob might.
Say, and we didn't talk about it, but at a certain point during this where they have to abandon some people and they would literally they would have them sign a document basically saying this indemnifies I mean they used the word indefy.
It's dudes on the beach, yeah, yeah, one.
Yeah, just could you sign this so that when I get back to England, I've been indemnified. So they are very they are, they are very conscious that. But you know what is interesting is when they're even in that state of starvation and descending into murderous anarchy. They do hold these like really interesting philosophical debates, you know, about the nature of leadership and duty and patriotism and loyalty.
It's almost a weird sense of optimism that they think that, oh, well, we're in hell, but obviously we're going to make it back to England, sometimes not too long.
That's why I feel like I would get to a point where, you know, I would quickly get to a point where that just whatever was going to happen back there was like completely beside the point, like it just wasn't you were never gonna come up. Yeah, you would think, Uh, there's a When I say this, I don't mean to detract from the story, but uh, I've I've long been a fan of shipwreck stories, typically in the Arctic, so
the other bad area. There's a part I like, and it's and it's it comes up so much in these maritime disasters is the indigenous people show up and here you have all these trained here, you have all these trained men equipped from the like the the most powerful imperial force on the planet. They have hierarchy, right, career warriors, and and they're just dying every imaginable way. But then here lo and behold, one day comes a family in
a boat. Yeah, who's just fine with with all homemade material everything they're wearing their boat, everything is made from the same pool of resources. They've been there thousands of years. They have children with them, and they come and be
like what has come over these people? And they often have like there's often this sense on them being like, I don't know that I need to get involved with these these people eating each other stuff, like a great reticence to engage, but also sort of a moral like a little bit of a you you get into it, you send it, like a little bit of a Now that I found these people, like, I probably try to do something for them, but I don't trust them. You know.
The people that initially merge out of the mist, you know, while they're starving and fighting, are a group known as the Karrasquar and the Kearra Squar. As you said, they had lived in that region for ages. They had adapted to that region over time. They lived almost exclusively off marine resources, and they spent much of their time in canoes. They usually traveled in small kind of familiar groups. They had learned where to find the food because it was
hard to find food. But they knew all the places along the coastline.
Would hunt sea lions.
Yeah, they knew how to hunt sea lions, where to find sea urgeons. The women would dive down in the cold water and be able to withstand it and get these se urgeons and bring them up.
And because the detail you talked about two that I really liked is that they in their canoes they would keep a fire kindled. The fire was like such a great little like it's like a great image and something I hadn't heard of before, but they like they have a campfire going in a canoe.
They learned how to stay warm. I mean they they were no is the nomads of the sea, or they sometimes called that. And they had adapted so well to the environment that Nassau, when they were considering putting humans in space, actually study the care square. They went to try to figure out how had they adapted to their environment this kind of seemingly inhospitable place that they had seemed to be fine it.
And they coat their bodies with oil.
Yeah, they would, Yep, they could take a blubber, you know, from even from a seal and that would help them stay warm. So you know, all these little things just to basically stay alive and live and have you know, a society. And and so they come and you know, they're actually they go out and they actually are like, oh my god, these kind of these hairy castaways, and they're all starving. So they're actually they go out and
they go bring them back food. They go out and they get them food, they bring them back.
But there in their memorialized by as these crazy savages.
Yes, yeah, in their journal as they describe them as. And some of and some of the castaways mistreat them and you know, they think their civilization must be superior and think and we don't get to see it because we don't have a recording from the Carroscuar's point of view, but we can see it from the at least in
the journals of the castways. And John Byron describes as very well on his account, you know, he's so Saturday, at a certain point, the caris guard basically they are looking at them and watching the spiral into islands and being mistreated and they're just like, you know what, we're out of here. And they disappear and and that's and and then the castaways only just send further into their spiral of violence at Hobsey and State, and some of them are succumbing to cannibalism at that point.
How many people, uh, and this is by no means synonymous, would survive? How many people get off the island.
So there are a couple different attempts to flee the island, and in one group there are about eighty or so try to go pack together in a little castaway boat. So you have to imagine you have survived going around Cape Horn, you survived scurvy, you survived the shipwreck, you survived the violence on the island, you survived intense, excruciating starvation, and now you're going to get in a little castaway boat. They're packed so tightly together they can't stand. And they're
at least for this castaway boat. They're hoping to travel three thousand miles three thousand miles all the way from the coast of Chile down south through the Straight of Magellan, which is really rough to has lots of squalls, and then up the coast to Brazil. And that group about thirty make it, and they're just basically almost wasted to the bone, but they do make it, and most of them then return to England. And then they're about another little castaway.
Well, return to England, but considerable delay.
Oh, yes, with considerable delay. Yes, yes, so in that group, with considerable lay. And then there's another little group that eventually another little boat that eventually, well, let me just step back for one second. This little boat washes off the coast of Brazil and on board of these thirty men, almost wasted to the bone, and they announce that they are the survivors of His Majesty Shift the wager, And at first nobody can believe it how far they've gone.
And they're initially greeted, you know, his heroes, and celebrated for their ingenuity. But then several months later, another little castaway boat will wash ashore, this time on the other side of South America, on the Chilean side. This one is just like a dugout. It has a seal which is stitched together from blankets. On board are just three men, including the captain David Cheep, who is so delirious he
can't even recollect his name. But after they begin to recover, they then tell a very different story than those people who have gone to prision and they say those people aren't actually heroes, they were mutineers. And it takes a long time because there's lots of mishats, people end up in prison all these things, but eventually they do could make it back to England.
There's a two you're right. I mean, there's so much we're missing out on, skipping over so much, but there's two little stunning things about the escape. Is that there's a he's not a slave on the there's a former slave on the wager or was he a slave on the wager?
No, he was a free black seaman on the wager. He was from London. He was a freeman, so I hadn't been born into slavery to the best. We don't know, to be honest, we don't know because we don't know that about his past, but we know he was a free black seaman when he was on the wager.
Yeah, this guy lives through all of this and then just gets kidnapped by people that could find a black man kidnap him and it's almost a slave. Yeah, it's like, oh my god, like what.
A I know, it's just terrific. And he you know, he is somebody who had survived all those things we've described, and he survived that castaway voyage. And then yeah, and and and one of this. You know, the themes of the book Stories Survive on Venture may all these kind of different theme society, leadership, but it's also about the way we tell stories and the way we shape our stories,
but also some of the stories we can't tell. And as a historian who's trying to research these stories and tell them, you know, this free black seaman, his name was John Duck. He's one of the stories I couldn't tell because we don't know what happened, and we don't know there's no record of his face.
Yeah.
Yeah, so he's he's somebody whose story isn't shared. You know, he can't be told other than the fact that that's what we that's what we know.
The real fighting begins when everybody gets home. Yes, it's like when my reminds me of you know, my kids come in the house and they're both crying. You're like, what happened? One of them is like hey, she like it becomes a but in this case, it becomes like a national inquirers sort of public fixation.
Yeah, yeah, it's a scandal. I mean, it becomes a scandalous story, you know, because.
Sorry, real quick, how many years have gone by since they left and then everybody's back and start fighting.
It's a really good question. So some will make up back to you know, England in about three years, but some of them, and like John Byron and the Captain David Cheap, it's six years before they get back to England. John Byron left England when he was six sixteen years old. He returns to England he is twenty two. He goes to First of all, he can't find where his family lives anymore. He's like looking from where he's trying to
find his sister. He finally finds his Sister's sister doesn't recognize him and had presumed he was dead, and there he is dressed as a pauper, and she realizes that this is her long lost brother come back to life.
So he's six years and then they are summoned to face a court martial for their alleged crimes on the island, and so this generates the scanon so here these people had waged his furious war against the elements all these years, and now they get back to England, and they begin to wage this furious war over the truth, you know, with each offering their version of story, and they're so afraid to be hanged, so they they begin to publish
their accounts. And there are these people known as grub Street hacks, which is like the early kind of professional scribblers in the media, from grouvestry to a generating you know who sees on this story. It's a big thing.
You know, this is the National inquir getting hold of this, and and they're all releasing their testimony and giving their testing and so there's this kind of warring story and they're each trying to emerge as the hero of their own story to kind of live what they have done or they haven't done, but also quite literally, to save their lives. There's a great line by Joan Diddy and the writer who said, you know, we all tell ourselves stories in order to live. And yet in this case
it's quite literal. They have to tell their stories.
And there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff we haven't gotten into today. I mean, on this island, on the ships, there's there's shootouts or there's gunplay, there's can't there's a lot to hash out back home, who did what? And what was whose idea and who last saw who? And and uh, and it was just it's so reminiscent of so reminiscent of way that you might play a public sentiment campaign.
Today, Yes, very much so. And there are I mean it's crazy because you know there are you know, there's disinformation, there's misinformation, their allegations of quote unquote fake journals, and some people like sometimes they would have takes an authentic journal and then someone would rewrite it and kind of skew it so that the actually the person who wrote it will then look bad. I mean, the original author
will look bad. These kind of fake journals are kind of proliferating them being published, and like you know, people are like figuring out like what is the truth? How to and and your version of the truth will kind of depend on what you read. And so yeah, it is and there are these like the are these campaigns.
Without without getting into the the trial and and and where guilt wise and all that, what, uh explain who the sort of primary factions are the people that want to spin narratives. They're they're divided in a way.
Yeah, there are really two principal groups. There's there's Captain Cheap who is determined to have what he calls my mutineers hanged and he is burning for vengeance. And then there is the side of John Bulkeley and those who had uh abandoned their captain on the island, who believe they were justified in their actions and are spinning their
own uh version of the truth. And of course they're leveling one of the more you know, they're leveling charges of homicide against the other side, so you know, they had good reason to fear they were going to get hanged. And you know, John Buckley and his group are praying before they go into the court martial.
You know. One of the craziest things the like structurally, it's it's such a gray element of the story is you know, we start with these two thousand people and all these ships, and then this becomes uh, it gets whittled down so it's a known boat and then it gets whittled down. So it's like this known handful of you know, co conspirators against this other handful, and you kinda forget, like at least I did as a reader. You forget that what all these other people are doing
and I couldn't believe. Towards the end of the book, it was like they I mean they find the gold, they find the gold bearing vessel.
Yes, they get it's like it.
I was like, oh, sh I forgot about all that.
Yeah, it's that weird. That's that thing like that. You know, you're saying like this sounds like an up movie. That wouldn't be true. And that's the part that I could see them going out after it. But then after everything they've been through this squadron, there is one ship that survived, only one ship of the squadron.
Like not even fully male, Like holy shit, it's the Spanish GID.
And they actually get the Spanish guy in and then come back to England and they have these wheelbarrows with the treasure being brought through the through the streets. It's just it's kind of it's almost hard to believe it is.
It was so that what as you explain it and how it occurs, it's so ridiculously tidy that again you feel like you're watching a pirate movie. Yeah, it's like how ridiculously tidy it is.
Yeah. And then the other crazy thing is just that you know there are this is a battle over stories. So the book is really narrated between the primarily with the perspective of three people are always fighting in their own accounts, so John Byron, the Captain, Davy Cheap, and John Bulkeley. So you get to see how each of them are shaping their stories along the way. And it's
interesting is they never outright lie. They're not they're not they but they tell stories the way we often have a tendency to do, which is like kind of leave out certain parts that they might not lie, and they kind of emphasize other parts they may like. The most vivid example of this is one of them would say in his account on the island, I was forced to proceed to extremities. That's like, so we got to like world War two, right, I was forced to proceed to extremity.
That's what he writes to amiralty do in his account. And then John Byer and the boy on the island, he says, oh no, yeah, he shot him right in the head and the guy bled out in my arms. And so you get to see how they're each doing it. But then we also get to see how history gets written because you know, once this paradic mission succeeds and
they capture this galleon and they come back. The war had gone disastrously, but here is this great victory, and so some power like, can we just tell this story? Do we have to tell this other story about what happened on the island because when we were on the island are officers of the empire. They look more like brutes than like gentlemen. And so it's also a battle, you know, kind of shows how both people tell stories, but also how nations tell stories.
Yeah, you don't. You leave a lot of the you let a lot of the different competing narratives play out. I was laughing that. There's two points I was gonna make. One was when you were saying, what did the guy.
Use force to proceed to extremities?
You probably know the writer Ian Frasier.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He was talking about when he's doing an interview with someone and the minute they say and then I proceeded to his his internal like radar like me like he's like, okay, now we're entering into like a like something that may or made a with you. And then I proceeded to Uh. The other point is one of my favorite books of all time, it's called the Sun of the Morning Star, and it gets in it's about the events that played out, and it's about the events that played out around the
Battle of a Little Big Horn when when Custer was killed. Ah. And he does a similar thing with what people put in what they leave out. And there's this great anecdote early in the book where there's a physician who just keeps meticulous notes of what he saw that day. This is this is the people that fought that the first soldiers that come across the battlefield, and what he saw
and who did what, what did what not? In his journal is an observation by another person about something the physician did, which he went into a teepee and tried to remove the moccasin of a warrior who had been killed days before. It was very hot, and the warrior's skin slipped and he was trying to so he's trying to loot a body, and then he gets physically ill. And the writer points out that did not make the journal of the physician, who is otherwise quite meticulous.
Yeah, and you could see that here. I mean, you get to see it as each one and you get a sense of human character from each one. What we leave out what we leave in, And yeah, it's a very very same, very nature in this case as well.
Uh, did you you've had great success in finding uh stories that are gonna make great movies? Do you? At first? It was probably a surprise? Maybe was it a surprise at first?
Yeah, one hundred percent. If anyone ever thinks of things is gonna be a movie? I would tell you a delusion. Even now they've made some much Even now, if I think so there's gonna be a movie, I think I'm diluted.
So that's what I was gonna ask, is has as you work now?
Uh?
Are you are you in writing a script too? In the back of your head? Are you are you like making a story that will work as a script or have you not allowed that to come in?
You know, I try never to let that come in, And in part because I never actually i've never tried a screenplay. And also I'm really just I'm seized by curiosity. And so, for example, how did I come across the wager? I was like, I'm kind of interested in mutinies, you know, that's kind of an interesting form of rebellion. And then I came upon an eight. It was actually online. It was a digital copy, but it was you know, it was in its old English of John Byron's account and
the Midshipman on the Wager. And I start reading this thing and like, I don't think you know, nobody looking at the thing that think would be a movie. It's written in this stilted prose. You know, the s's are printed as f's, and it's kind of tangled in that eighteenth century language. And I'm just kind of reading. But then I just like there's these little descriptions that just
like get their hooks into me. It's like describes like Cape Horn is the perfect hurricane, used that phrase, and then he's like he's describing the madness and the scurvy. And then he describes the cannibalism, which he refers to simply it doesn't like to call it cannibals, and versus that last extremity, which ways, yes, yes, uh we ate the last yeah exactly.
So uh.
And so you know, I don't know, I know, you'd have to be nuts if you would look at that journal and be like, no, I just like, this is crazy,
this is so interesting. And then you know, I go to these archives and you know, you start going in these boxes and you can pull out these primary materials that went around the world, and so you know, you you know, I can read the log books from these ships and diaries and you know, you go to England and you pull them out of these boxes like you and heal a cloud of dust.
I thought that you had to you have to place it on a pillow.
Yeah, you got to place it on a pillow, or you know, the binding is disintegrating. You have to, you know, you have like watchers because you don't want to do anything. You're like, you're terrified, like you'll be the last to damn it. You don't want to damage these these these these you know, last records and so you know, but you know you can read these things. You got to use some I used the magnifying glass. I would spend
years studying these documents. Never in my right mind when I think somebody's gonna come along and want to make a movie out of this stuff, you gotta be nuts. But I do think there is something in the stories. I suppose like that do grip me that I think, you know, if you get the right story, I think the themes kind of resonate and they can be told in different mediums, and the only thing I try to do, the only thing I really think about because my process
is so different. You know, I'm just working with documents or interviews and words, and I'm just so I'm just trying to create visual images through words, and so I hopefully it has a cinemaonic quality, but it's very different
than cinema. I always find it so strange when they make a movie of one of my books and I'll go to the set for a few days, so my kids will think I'm cool, and I'll go to the set and and you know, you suddenly see a recreation of things that you just had in your imagination based on words. You suddenly see these people who you've written about and known through you know, years of research and
records are something walking towards you. Yeah, You're just like, and then they're like smiling or winking or or and you're just like, and they're suddenly, you know, deeping into a conscious level of these people. So it's to me, it's just totally surreal. So no, I never think about it, you know, I try not to think about it.
Do you actually write the script when this process happens.
No, Now, I help in the sense of just as a as a as a resource. Sure, just want to help help out. And especially because they're so historical documents, answer questions, point them in directions, and help that way. So you have a lot of sometimes actors who are real kind of method actors will want to call you and ask you questions about the part they're playing. So and I always find it really interesting, but I consider kind of totally separate.
If you could have it be, if you had to choose, you did the same work, but at the end of the work there was a film or was a book. Book.
I figured, yeah, book for me, I mean my you know, my kids won't think I'm cool. I'll go just revert back to being, you know, the dorky writer in his office with lots of archival materials drowning under them. Uh so I would lose that street cred. But you know that's always kind of what I've been and uh yeah, so I think for me it would be the book. And but but also just because they're very different, you know,
they're very different. You know, a film is interpretive and I'm really fact based, so I am it's like a different almost a different mindset. Like you know, and I sometimes envy actually the filmmakers because you know, I might just have one or two letters from that person I'm writing about, and yet you know, they can imagine and go deeper and I'm stuck, like I got I wish I had some more dialogue in that scene.
But yeah, they can build background and the actor in his mind has created a family history and this created like a psychology, like.
A Freudian analysis delve in. So yes, sometimes sometimes that part of sometimes jealous of, but yes, I've just stick to what I've got on that.
I just have a question about your character development process because you're based on the documents that you have, journal entries, et cetera. In order to build them up in your work, there is an additive imaginative process that must take place in that. So as you're are you are you? Is there an element of like projecting onto who these people might have been? Or are you letting your interpretation of their writing knowing that they, you know, maybe haven't divulged
everything right? How How are you kind of like dipping into the psychology that you think may have been there for each character?
So I think it's less projecting you you have to do some level of interpretive. You don't really so much imagic, but you do have to make analytical judgments or or or or you know, but you're basing that based on what they write, so you know, you can make you know, John Bulkeley interesting enough, writes exactly the way his personality is.
So you're reading his text and he writes and he you know, for eight early eighteen cents, you write, first of all, he didn't come from the upper crest of the fact that he can write so well, was it remarkable? But the second thing is he writes in a modern direct language. It's like verb object action. And he said, that is the way he is. And then you'll yeah, and so you don't actually I don't ever, I don't know if I even make that observation in the book,
but you get something like that. You're getting to know someone based on the way they write and the way they think, and even the way they make jokes and so you but my what I really try to do is do enough research and find everything I can abound
the person. I'm always just trying to understand them. So even somebody like Captain Cheap, who's a very flawed commander, you know I could read, I could learn how he was kind of plagued by debts on this at sea and I mean at land, and he was kind of an bitter person and at a ship he had always that he had always dreamed of becoming a captain, and then on this trip he finally got it. And so when others are describing his kind of insecurity about losing
this crown, you can understand it. So but mostly you are just trying to show. I really just try to show and let you interpret actions and dialogue that they spoke or wrote so that you could kind of find your judgment. And you do benefit in a case like this that you have multiple layers of commentary, so you
can have that person's perspective. So it's kind of less, but I can have what John Byron is saying about this captain, and what John Buckley is saying about the what the Admiralty is saying about of what George ants and the coven, And so that's how you kind of build it out. And then you try to show up, but you are making certain interpretive decisions or things you want to highlight about their character, but you don't really so much imagine.
Uh have you have you started cranking on a new project.
I need a new one. Any give I need a new one? Yes?
The way in your head do you have in your head? Do you have uh like more than you'll ever get to kind of feeling or do you have like you gotta hunt them down.
You gotta hunt them down, you gotta hunt them down. It's interesting when I was primarily just did magazine work, I had more than I could tell, Is that right? Yeah? Yeah, because I could there was just so many. But for a book, you know, these books, they take me, like to get to your question, how do you know the character? Because it takes me five years?
Five years? What's the longest you ever went down a path and then realized wasn't there?
Always so terrified to that, so I will spend I'll do an early early, like just intensive couple months of research before I'll ever commit to a book, got it, because I'm terrified that two years I'll wake up and be like what whoa what about?
What did I do? And in that phase, you're you're like a summary, You're like you're trying to examine the whole what's known, what might be found out exactly?
And you need to hear. You're clearly you're going to find out so much more on the path, but you need to know, for example, for the wager, before I committed to the wager, well, what's in the archives? You know, I have John Byron's account or these other are these
other accounts? And then I found the other accounts. I read some of these other kinds like oh, okay, this is interesting, and then I thought, oh wow, that's a really interesting theme about this war over the truth, which is something kind of we having in our own society. It's like, oh, that's an interesting theme to be able to play with. So you're starting to say okay, okay, okay, so you get there, but yes I am, but you
want to be kind of ruthless. I knew no writers, and I probably did when I was younger, make a mistake where you're just kind of holding on to like a dog or a lemon. I don't know what the right phrases for a bad story. You know, you know you're because at a certain level, if you if you don't have the right story, there's only so much you could do.
Do you do you like to as my last one for you on my last craft question, and will wrap up. But do you like to at the end of that couple of months or when you do your do your like feasibility study, do you need to get to a point where you're like thinking to yourself, I will add, I will my research will add to the story. I mean, I will find out things and deliver things to the reader that has not been discussed by another writer.
Yes, I think you want to feel like whatever you're doing has not been done the way you are hoping to do. It doesn't mean yours will be better, but that your vision, your approach, the research you may find is gonna be a contribution in some ways. It you know,
not a regurgitation, not just a regurgitation. I mean, so I think that is what's important that you feel like whatever it is you know, there can be people have written about a subject, but for whatever it is, your approach, the things you're thinking about, that you're going to bring something new, and then inevitably you do fine stuff you just you do and in some cases you're just like you just you just never know. I mean, when I
did The Last City of Zea, I remember trying. There's about a British explorer disappeared in the Amazon in the early twentieth century, and I went to his granddaughter's house. She lived in Wales, and I remember chatting with her and she said, well, do you really want to know what happened to my grandfather? And I said, well, yeah, sure,
you know, if that's possible. And she then led me into this back room and there was a chest, like could you not you talk about like weird like things that you're like, I can't believe that there was a chest I think it was. It was on the floor and she opened it up and inside were all these old books and they were kind of somewhere like held together by ropes or a little locks or water stained and grinding me. I said, what are those? She said, well,
those are my father's log books and diaries. And she'd let me look at them and gave me access to them.
So sometimes you just never know. So these things are The research is its own odyssey, it is its own little quest, and I think the most important thing to get to the craft question is I think the most important thing for me though, is not whether it's going to be something you know, just more than the feasibility and more you're gonna be doing, just like are you obsessed with it, because if you're not obsessed, you gotta
you've got to be able to walk away. And then a couple of days later, shoot, I'm thinking about that again. Oh shoot, I can't you know, I want to know. I got these questions. And then you know, then you're boarding a boat and going to Wager Island like you just need that, you need that because otherwise you're not going to do something, you know, hopefully good.
No, uh, fantastic book. The Wager, A Tale of shipwreck, mutiny, and murder.
All three, you got them all and they all We didn't even get to the mutiny.
Again. David Grant The Wager, A Tale of shipwrecked, mutiny and Murder, author of The Lost City of z Killers of the Flower Moon. Good luck, man, I have no doubt that you're gonna you're you're gonna have another You're gonna have another success with this one, or are having another success to this one. So congratulations and thanks for coming and joining us.
That's my pleasure. Thank you so much for shaw.
Ride on Seal Gray shine like silver in the sun, right.
Right on alone, sweet with done this damn horse to death.
So taking a new one and ride away. We're done beat this damn horse today, MH.
So take a new one and ride on.