Format in which I consumed this book: audiobook
Did I like it/love it/hate it? Liked it
What’s it about? In the 1740s, a British ship sets sail to try to capture a Spanish galleon filled with treasure. They fail, and become shipwrecked on an island near Argentina and Chile. In the months that follow, the crew and leadership divide into factions and struggle to survive.
They manage to scavenge items from their ship and the author sort of makes it seem like they had a not-all-that-difficult time of it at first. Then when food has run out– both a little surprising and also not– their island is visited by people native to the area and experienced in traversing the seas. These people help the shipwrecked men, who (and here is the not surprising part) assume the indigenous people are inferior and insult/harass them. What could have turned into a rescue instead sees the indigenous people disappearing during the night.
A group of the men build a small vessel, leave the captain and a few of his officers behind, and make it to Brazil. Six months later, the captain and officers also manage to build a flimsy vessel and land in Chile. From there, the men go back to England and face a trial to figure out if anyone should be hanged for mutiny.
My thoughts: A few things that intrigued me:
1) how the captain of the Wager became the captain,
2) how insistent he was on maintaining social hierarchy once they became stranded and how that lead to his being left behind while others escaped,
3) how racism caused them to be stranded months longer than was necessary, and
4) how much the trial relied on journals men on the island kept at the time and how they mananged to keep those journals intact during their escape (both of which I suppose are highly questionable)
Would I recommend this to my sister? Yes, I think so.
