Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsDisappointing book by a first-time author of maritime history
Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2024
The world of maritime and naval lore has been graced with prolific authors such as Joseph Conrad, Patrick O’Brien, Frederick Marryat, Nordhoff and Hall, Eric Newby and C.S. Forester. Unfortunately, for best-selling author David Grann in his recent book The Wager: a tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Adventure, which aspires to be another maritime classic, he flounders on the literary rocks of nautical history.
A non-fiction book in a long series stretching back to 1743 of historical and semi-fictional accounts of HMS Wager, a 28-gun converted East Indiaman merchantman who sailed with a small British naval squadron commanded by the future legendary admiral George Anson on a secret mission during “War of Jenkins’ Ear” with Spain in 1742. It is a story rife with exploration, disaster, mutiny, and the limits of human endurance. Captained by Anson-protégé George Cheap in his first command, with 250 souls on board, Wager survives a harrowing transit around the treacherous Cape Horn, becomes separated from Anson’s fleet only to wreck off the desolate coast of modern-day Chile. Cheap, like William Bligh of HMA(rmed) V(essel) Bounty (erroneously referred to on p. 235 as HMS Bounty) 47 years later, exerts his Admiralty commission to build shelter, hunt for sustenance, fend off mutinous sailors, and organize plans for a return to civilization in territory controlled by a hostile Spain.
Unfortunately, Grann turns this gripping tale into a summer beach read aimed for young students striving to complete their between-semester reading quotas. Despite the hype in the book jacket that The Wager lifts the author to the rank of Patrick O’Brien, late of the Jack Aubrey Napoleonic War naval series, Grann is but an unworthy usurper. Many critics and fans, in fact liken O’Brien as a modern-day Jane Austen. To appreciate the gap in erudition and writing style between Grann and The Wager with O’Brien’s classic works, one need only read the latter’s semi-fictional early novels The Golden Oceans and The Unknown Shore, which first chronicle Commodore Anson’s ill-fated voyage around the globe in 1740, followed by the account of Jack Byron (grandfather of the future poet Lord Byron) aboard the Wager.
While Grann does a passible job of taking the reader through the ordeal of the Wager’s castaways and their return to civilization, he glaringly stumbles on nautical esoterica. He distracts readers early on, seemingly for his own edification, to parenthetically explain nautical terms. As examples, he often incorrectly refers to Marines on board Wager as “soldiers”: any Marine today would bristle at the moniker. On p. 38, Grann describes the so-called “lubber hole” on the ‘fighting top’ (platforms), usually 2 or 3 per the mast strictly for “cowards”: not a fair characterization, they were also employed to allow sailors to walk out on the yardarms to trim or take in sails, and to station armed Marines during ship-to-ship combat. Hardly cowards, they. Then this passage: “Unless Byron wanted to be ridiculed for the rest of the voyage …he had to go around the rim of the platform by holding onto cables [not an appropriate nautical descriptor] known as futtock shrouds. These cables were slanted [downward] on an angle, and as he shinnied along them his body would tilt farther and farther until his back was nearly parallel to the deck. Without panicking, he had to feel with his foot for a ratline [connecting to the bottom of the futtock shrouds] and pull himself onto the platform.” This passage ignores the practiced habit that a sailor climbing the ratlines towards the platform would usually ascend the windward side ratlines, so that with any force of wind, the ship would be heeled over enough to allow the sailor an easier climb up the short futtock shrouds. Then, Grann errs on p. 64 in describing ‘Latitude’ calculating by ascertaining the ship’s position only to the stars, when in fact it is also determined during daylight hours by “shooting” the angle of the sun to earth with an instrument known as a sextant.
And then of course, few modern historians can resist the temptation of bashing England’s colonial past. Grann certainly cannot -- “London was the pulsing heart of an island empire built on the toll [should be 'toil'] of seaman and slavery and colonialism” (p. 228)-- notwithstanding the fact that imperial Spain was bent on conquering and plundering the Americas rather than building lasting, civilized settlements on the English model. And ignore that England was one of the first European powers to abolish slavery. Also, characterizing Anson's capture of the Spanish galleon as a piratical act of thievery, despite it occurring while England was at war with Spain.
Finally, rather than periodically interrupting his narrative with sidebars explaining naval terminology, the author could have – as so many maritime authors have done - added a glossary of ship terminology. Again, this book appears unintentionally intended for readers with little or no knowledge of ships and the sea. In addition to The Unknown Shore, those seeking a richer tale of mutiny in the age of sail are advised to take in the Bounty Trilogy by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall- an absolute classic! For a shorter and equally absorbing read, pour yourself a glass of Maderia and get lost in the superb Hornblower and the Hotspur by C. S. Forester.