The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 455: The Wager with David Grann

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

Steve Rinella talks with David Grann, Janis Putelis, and Corinne Schneider. Topics include: All of David Grann's best selling books; when your books get turned into films; the nautical terms we use in daily life; how history shapes us but we're oblivious about it; infighting at the Audubon society over a name change; a great idea for a new book; the last stitch; the prize of all the oceans; building a ship out of 4,000 oak trees; inspecting fingernails for tar; the natural particles of land; scurvy, the great killer of seamen; why you should bring limes to sea; human bodies acting as concave sails; visiting Wager Island; stranded with nothing but wild celery; the Minnesota Starvation Experiment; forced to proceed to extremities; when the manuscript is so old you have to rest it on a pillow; interpretive vs. fact based; and more.  Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light. Go farther, stay longer. Good Lord, David Grant is here. Staff writer at New Yorker Magazine. Number one New York Times best-selling 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 of z I mean how like what a huge success yeah it was it was it was a big success you would have done much better on your journey through the amazon than I did how to be in that way yeah it would have been a totally different book had you done it let me just tell you the lost city is the killers of the flower moon the osage murders and the birth of the fbi another like just huge book um lost city z became a movie so some people are probably sitting there being like isn't that a movie it was a movie yeah yeah uh killers of the flower

moon becoming a movie becoming a movie be out in october um perhaps you've heard of uh fellers like martin scorsese leo dicaprio deniro i don't know maybe those names ring a bell these are people who would be affiliated with um this but the one that makes me most jealous is a lot of jealousy in the room today sturgill simpson i didn't know this till i read it in crin'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 sturgis and set and you have jason isbell too is another great they're both terrific in it too and they're in it yeah they're in it and they're terrific i don't know if any of them enacted before they're fantastic oh that's great man uh but what we're here to talk about is David Graham's latest book, The Wager, A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder.

Just as a quick little thing, then we got to touch on a couple of quick things, then we'll come back to you. I was, I could tell this amused you too. I was amused by, well, first I should say, you know, it's a tale of shipwreck, so it involves ships, obviously. How many things we say today are nautical terms? Yeah, yeah. There's so many. It's kind of wonderful. It's like, and I had no idea until I did this book.

So, I mean, there are just so many ones. There's, for example, scuttlebutt. Yeah. Scuttlebutt was this barrel on the ship where the seamen would gather around, they'd get their water rations. And what would they do around the barrel? They'd gossip. The other one that really, well, there were so many. There was like piping hot was the bosun's whistle for a hot meal.

Pipe down was the bosun's whistle to quiet down. Under the weather. Under the weather is the best. I mean, I always just thought under the weather 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 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 eye to this thing. I just learned seven things. No, that 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 well he's under the weather right now what am i what was i saying i don't know i i knew what i meant but the fact that you could live your whole life with an expression and it never occurs to say what when i say that what am i talking about well 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 so what yeah we're gonna get this story oh it just it just turns into uh just a sickening just sickening aspects to the story yes heartbreaking um but some people live to tell the tale so and and not only that they live to tell the tale they live to argue about the tale.

And we're going to get pretty heavy into this story of the wager in a couple minutes. So we'll come right back to that. But we've got a couple things to hit on. And this is now the fourth time we've discussed. It might be the fifth. The fifth time. Should we put it to bed, actually? This might be the end. The fifth time. Should we put it to bed actually? This might be the end.

Yeah, I think. Giannis, have you... I don't know if I've been in on these conversations. A lot of companies came out and have recently distanced themselves from kangaroo leather. And so we've been talking about how all this kangaroo leather is generated in Australia and how just 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 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 Aussies don't eat kangaroos because it's part of our coat of arms. And he tries to equate it to if we were to eat the bald eagle right so that's i don't know

if i buy that analogy 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 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 animal. Yeah, it's like 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 more kangaroo leather is not having, it's not a social activism that is, that

has consequences on the ground. I imagine it probably has a pest uh like uh you know aura around it and that probably prevents people from eating it if there's so many just everywhere you're sort of like yeah you hit them with cars they're eating your garden and they they've they cease to be appetizing but 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 uh dan flory'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. Where do you begin? He began with the Chicxulub strike, which is the asteroid that collided into the Gulf of Mexico off of... What the hell is that place over there? Off the Yucatan Peninsula that collided with, uh, into the Gulf of Mexico off of, uh,

tells that place over there off the Yucatan Peninsula at a angle that he described very eloquently. Um, 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 most all the dinosaurs died the biggest sort of ecological disaster to ever befall the earth and then takes it from there um eventually he gets this feller audubon and and audubon and dan flory's wild new world audubon is is a somewhat celebrated figure because he he he starts to paint all these these endemic he starts to paint these beautiful paintings of birds from north america um including the ivory will build woodpecker, which went extinct. He has paintings of the passenger pigeon and he, he,

he brought them to life. He would paint them in, 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 audubon 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 owned slaves and the guy, he owned slaves. Not only that, I don't understand the details of this,

but he was, um, rolled into efforts to dig up native American burial sites. I don't know the details on that. Damn sure. Owned slaves was not an abolitionist um and it came up with the audubon society they conducted this like internal um this internal review that recommended that the audubon society change its name the board rejected the recommendation, and now in places that you could picture just saying, we're going to change our name anyway, changing the name anyway.

And so 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 his work on behalf of birds? Does he stand for slavery? I don't need to, I mean, you know, culturally we've been talking for a long time about what one should do about that. the end of this conversation will, will, will someday land on does Washington DC 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 What do you think, David? You just hear talk about shipwrecks. Just hit you with that light. So that's a thing. That's a conversation happening out there in the wildlife space. We should give a shout out. I read that article too

that Corinne has pasted in here. That was a good article. I thought it was a great article. Did you read it all? I read the whole thing. Adam Popescu. I don't know how to pronounce his name. Where do you find that article, Corinne?

Corinne pointed out that the quote she uses from someone defending Audubon and defending the name, they follow up the quote. It's very subtle. It's 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. Are you sure? You know, it's like they were.

Are you sure? It was bizarre because some of the interviews conducted 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 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 uh pull from but it was just kind of like basic plain speak and then qualified with as he nudged 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 um i don't know i just felt a certain way reading that maybe it was right maybe the guy was like I don't know if you asked me it's a bunch of BS and then he just kicked this guy dead cabbage I'm gonna kick he did I mean the first three paragraphs so they're really just three or four sentences but I mean he's talking about

a 76 year old bird watcher at a sewage treatment pond and he goes on to describe this. And he even uses, he says that one guy says, there's this quote, says Almdale, sidestepping a human turd. I mean, I was like, hold on, what are we talking about again here?

This is a story about Audubon, but he's sidestepping human turds. He's painting the picture for where the conversation's taking place. He did a good job of getting me hooked. Yeah. I think that they were like, well, you can come to two events we have.

One is at a sewage facility and one is at a beautiful park. And the writer's like, dude, as one that likes a good metaphor. Oh, here's one. Hold on. That was in the free press, Y yanni just to ask your question answer your question uh uh david graham we almost bumped you for this we got a note that says uh a guy

writes in i could say his name says if you're looking for a podcast guest 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 right there. Bad shit crazy. I laughed so many times at that note because I was kind of like,

well, I'm at, um, is this an exclusive? Well, no, there's more, there's more to it. It could be an exclusive. Uh, all right. Diving in. Uh, 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, I want to go a little bit out of order. Can you explain the, um, the, the, the great details you have about the burial at sea and that you would with the needle. Yeah. Just explain. It is the weirdest thing. Yeah. So when you died at sea is a last. Unfortunately, many people died at sea on this expedition. About nearly 2,000 people went and only about, of them, about more than 1,300 perished.

And many of them were buried at sea. And so 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 some kind of weight, sometimes a cannonball or some other weight in the hammock attached. But before 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, while it sounds absolutely nutty, you know, you do have to realize medicine back then was so primitive that it actually, while it sounds absolutely nutty, 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 could kind of, you know, it's both crude, but yet, yeah, I suspect there probably was some time. I mean, the thing about semen and rituals that they did actually develop for a reason. They wouldn't waste time.

So I suspect there must've been instances. Some story that motivated. Yeah, that motivated to do it because they're not going to waste time sewing something through your nose. But that's what they did. Yeah, there was a couple of successes of medical treatments that were,

that 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 quite surprising. Yeah, there were surgeons on board, but, um, 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 and they had to amputate quickly with no, uh, you know, you had no

anesthesia. Um, you know, they didn't give you booze because it actually would make it more dangerous. And two of your semen would hold you down and they'd 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 suffer 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 stuff and I'm leaving packages at the door

thinking I can't, do I touch the package? Can the package come inside? Is it like 24 hours outside? And, and, you know, these guys are all, you know, there's like, you know, often on the ship, there'd be like 500 people all cloistered together. There's no social distancing. And, you know, these guys are all, you know, there's like, you know, often on the ship, there'd be like 500 people all cloistered together. There's no 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 mal area, bad air.

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. Um, and then get to, well, in order to set the scene,

I want to like begin with a thing that, that seems like a fairy tale. Um, 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, the, 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 1700s.

And they get intel. The English get intel of a gold. It sounds like a set 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 2,000 people in 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. Like, how is it?

If that wasn't a movie, I would be like, this is a bad setup for a movie. It's so implausible. It's so crazy. And what's also crazy about it too is that this was a naval mission. So, you know, but it had a complete whiff of piracy. I mean, 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 back. And this is an annual, this is an annual trip to the market. An annual trip. With looted gold. Exactly. With looted gold and silver and jewels and gems. And it was worth about, you know, $80 million.

$80 million. Did you do the, what that means now? I did that little inflation calculator. Yeah, what does that mean now? Yeah. No, it was about $82 million. Okay. In today's money.

I got you. My little inflation calculator. 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 seaman referred to it. Layout, who and how many ships? So it's about a ship, but there's a narrowing process where we end up focusing very intently on this one ship. But it's part of a much broader, 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 George Anson. And the Wager, yeah, 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 123 feet long, had 28 cannons, which made it the kind of lowest-ranked warship. It was known as the sixth-rate warship in the British Navy, which was the lowest rating. And on board that ship was about 250 men. But even before the squadron sets off, and just to comment on these ships too, is like, they really were these engineering marvels of their time, you know, because they

were these murderous instruments designed for battle, yet also these homes, these fortresses, where people would live together for years at a time. They had three masts. The wager could fly about 12 sails. The larger warships could fly as many as 18 sails 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 4,000 trees. Oaks. Yeah. Oaks, hard oak wood to build. And then the other huge challenge to 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 ship's 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 in bootcamp

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, I 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, the ports and anyone coming in and they would basically eyeball you. And if you, you know, had any telltale signs of a mariner, you had like a little checkered shirt or one of these little round hats that seem enough and more. And the thing that also fascinated me is they would inspect your fingernails for tar because tar was used on ships 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 goodbye to your family. You might even be returning from a trading ship, from some long trip to Asia. You've been gone for two years.

You get home and you think, I'm going to go see my family. You're thinking, ain't doing that again. Yeah, I'm coming home. And then you're seized and you're dragged on the ship. And even then they were short of men. I laugh only because you develop a gallows sense of humor when humor when you, when you write about this stuff, but they, they would go to, they went to a retirement home. They went to 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, some were missing a leg. One tried to desert hopping on one leg away. And, 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 this expedition. Yeah. The, what 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 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, or if it was just an anecdote 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. Yeah, I can't get away. And what they would do. I'm stuck on the boat and we're leaving. Yeah, there's a letter from a seaman, because one of the things they would do is they, you know, most seamen back then couldn't swim.

And so they would take the ships and rather than keep them at the dockyard, they would actually anchor them out to sea. So that way you couldn't escape. Oh, that's right. Yeah. He's looking. He's looking out and there's no way for him to get ashore. Yeah.

So the wager had, the total expedition is 2000 people. Yep. And roughly how many boats? There were five warships, a scouting sloop, and then these two little cargo ships that are supposed to accompany them partway. When they set off at that time, do they set off knowing that, hey, we're going to get going and then we're going to start dying from scurvy? No. So it's a surprise every time. It is.

I mean, 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 horrors that they encountered. But walk through the scurvy challenge i get it like you said earlier they people didn't understand infectious disease right yeah um

how does it play out and if you know i can't remember if you talk about in 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 they cross the 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 Armada, 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. 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 amazes me that the cartilage that seemed to glue together the bones seemed to be coming undone within the bodies. There's an account from one seaman who had broken a bone 50 years earlier at a battle and that bone which had obviously long since the fracture suddenly mysteriously breaks in the very same place and and then the other thing i didn't know about scurvy until i researched this story, was how it can affect your senses. One scene we described 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 C in 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 perished, it's considered one of the worst scurvy outbreaks ever recorded in maritime history. Oh, 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 boats. But to your point, the scurvy was known as the great killer of semen. It killed more people than anything else. Other diseases combined, naval battles, shipwrecks. So they did know that scurvy was the great enigma, the age of sale and the great killer. But they had actually stopped in Brazil before the outbreak. And there were all these limes where they had stopped. And they just brought these limes on the ship. And of course, as you said, later, the British Navy would learn about vitamin C cured scurvy, and they would bring

lines, which is another term that we now know, British seamen were known as limeys. Interestingly 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, the Commodore George Anderson. Oh, really? Yeah. 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 the turn of the century the end of the uh 18th century that the british navy and others finally adopted this knowledge um to save human lives when i'm talking with my kids about yeah i i share with them how um my dad was a big smoker. Okay.

And that when my dad was in the war, they would put in your C rations, there were cigarettes in your C rations in bootcamp, you would get a smoke break. Okay. And they're like, Oh my God, that's so stupid.

How could people, and you know, think that. And I said, well, here's, that's so stupid. How could people 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 100 years, your descendants will be having a chuckle about uh if you can identify those that's a great path toward heroism yes yeah like we're like it's 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 experimented with a recipe or remedy being land seems to fix this.

Yes. Let's take them ashore and bury them up to their neck in 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 a 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 semen describing the strangeness of seeing all these semen buried in land up to their heads hoping that might cure it. Wow. Bury them in lime peels. Yeah. Yeah, the one thing I would say when you read this book, you'll get away is just bring lime when you go to sea. Just bring a

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you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. 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 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 the very tip of South America, kind of the farthest land point and island. And I always knew it was a place with some of the worst seas in the world, but I never understood why until researching this. And what happens is it's an area where the sea funnels between Antarctica

and the tip of South America. It's actually the only place on Earth where the seas travel uninterrupted around the globe without ever hitting land. Oh, really? Yeah. So they travel about 13,000 miles accumulating power and force. Similarly, nothing's blocking the winds. Huh. 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 90-foot mast on one of these ships. Herman Melville, the novelist later, went around Cape Horn. He joined that elite club. He compared it to a descent into hell in Dante's Inferno. And so this expedition, this squadron of wooden ships is smack in that hell. I mean, 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 he can't fly sails.

So he orders his top men, which are the people who climb the mast ordinarily to work the sails, but he asks them to climb these masts about 100 feet and to hold on to the ropes 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 100 feet in the air. And that would actually change the course of the boat.

They hope that would change the course of the boat. And just one other thing to remember, they're also in waves so that the ship is rocking about 45 degrees to one side and 45 degrees to 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 drowned and his companions could describe him desperately 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 uh yeah it'd be especially bad when you fell and hit your head on a cannon yes barrel that would be the end um

but oh it's just like, so he falls off, the wind's blowing the ship and they just stand. There's no way to go back. There's no way to go back. You can't throw her in reverse. No. And, and just, he's swimming and swimming and swimming and then he's not swimming anymore.

Yeah. Until he disappears. Oh, it's just like. 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 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 their location. But eventually the sea and the sound of the, you know, the wind and the waves 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, suddenly finds itself all alone and left to its own destiny. Did they have any, like,

not that they would have prior knowledge, but was there any accounts before they went through there that would give them some idea of what to expect so they did you know one of the things they would do they were fairly uncharted realms there were not a lot of people a british seaman who got around cape horn but they did have some accounts that they would bring and they would actually bring the books with them to hopefully give them some sense and also use 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 them in Magellan, had done that for ages. But they had no way of knowing their precise longitude because that would require a 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, to simplify, 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 side of Patagonia, 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 El Golfo de Penas, which translates as the Gulf of Sorrows, or 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 got to imagine the level of terror. This is their home. 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 and it sweeps the wager, this 123-foot wooden vessel, off the rocks. So suddenly the ship, their home, is careening through this mine full of rocks, but they have no rudder to steer by, And water is pouring through this hole.

Killing people right in their place. Oh yeah. Drowning people instantly. And then lastly 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 masts 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 drown. Rats are scurrying upward.

But fortuitously, 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 mist this desolate island yeah i didn't i assumed you did i didn't know that you did uh until i saw the 60 minutes bit you did 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 nausea. You as a writer, like, can I really understand what it was like on that island? So I found this Chilean captain off an island off Chile who said he could take me there. It was about 350 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 Jacques Cousteau 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.

It's kind of like you living off the land here, you know? It was completely, you know, I had a stove. It was wintertime, heated by a stove. It was so tempestuous. The weather was so bad that we 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.

Nobody could leave the port. And after four days, the port down. They just would not let you leave. 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 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 to Patagonia? I've boated down that coast.

Okay. Not that far. Yeah, yeah. Out of south of Santiago. And then we went a couple hundredated down that coast. Okay. So yeah. Not that far. Yeah, yeah. Out of, you know, south of Santiago. And then we went a couple hundred miles down the coast. Okay. So, you know, like there's a lot of islands and, you know, it's like the, and the coastline is very shattered.

It's like, it's all these islets. And so you can weave behind these islands and stay pretty sheltered. So that's what we did for the first several days. We didn't see another soul for days. No other boats. Oh yeah. 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 stove. Oh, no kidding. Really? 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 was the coldest shower I ever had.

Two seconds, I was awake for a week. But, and then after about five days of this, the captain comes to me and he says, I don't know you guys, they didn't get that

level of detail, but that's crazy. You guys would like stop and split stove wood. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're getting your water. I mean, that's how we got water to drink by and to keep the boat going.

And then after five days, the captain says, all right, well, you know, now if we're going to get the wager on, we have to go out into the ocean. And so, yeah, that's when I got my first glimpse of the seas. I mean, it was just a fraction of what the wager saw. We get out there.

This boat was really designed for the channels. It was not designed for the ocean. And we are just getting pitched and rocked. So you just, I had to sit on the on the deck you couldn't in the cabin you could not stand if you stood you were going to get chucked i mean you you just you held on um i had about every seasickness sickness medicine going to humankind i was like a little experiment you know i had like i had the you know dramamine and the thing on my ear and,

and I'm used to seas. I don't get seasick, but I was like, I need everything for this one. And, and, you know, we're just bouncing about. And then I also made the mistake because I'm not the smartest adventurer. I was like, all right, I got to 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 on Moby Dick, which really in retrospect was the stupidest thing to do because it's completely unsoothing. You know, some may have.

But in 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 thought it might be their salvation, and it is a place of complete wild desolation. The trees are all bent at 45-degree angles because of the winds.

It was winter when they were there. It was winter when I was there. So the temperature hovers about freezing, very heavy precipitation. It rains or sleets every day. And worst of all, like the castaways, but worse for them, I brought food. They could find virtually no food. They could have really used you guys. I mean, i'm just i disagree because when i was down there one of the things that the the lack of um there's a real lack of land mammals no animals on that

island yeah and you spent a lot of time you're like there is a wild celery and and you you couldn't believe it and you went look there's not rats there's not some kind of rodent nothing 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 uh birds but they stayed off the coastline, made it very hard for the castaways to ever be able to hunt them. There were some mussels along one of the beaches, but they gradually exhausted that supply. They did eat celery, which I tasted when I was there.

It was kind of dry and salty and a little bitter. They would kind of mix it with stuff to cook. But the any case, but the thing for them actually, which was really life-saving was that they didn't know why, but the celery cured their scurvy. It cured their scurvy because it had some vitamin C in it and they had no idea why, but they ate the celery. 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 that 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 show some real ingenuity. They build little shelters and hamlets and whatnot.

And they set up a little irrigation system so they can collect fresh water. Sorry, how many at this point? 145. not only set up a little irrigation system so they can get fresh, collect fresh water, but. Sorry, how many at this point? 145, about 145, including the captain, David Cheap,

the gunner, a guy named John Bulkley, who plays a very key role on the Island and a midshipman named John Byron, who had been only 16 years old when the voyage set sail. And if the name is familiar at all to the listeners or sounds familiar, it's because he would later go on to become the grandfather of the poet, Lord Byron. And Lord Byron's poetry is greatly influenced actually by John Byron, the midshipman's account.

Oh. Yeah. And a father, son. Father, son. That's another heartbreaker. And a cook who was in his eighties. A cook who was in his eighties that survives the wreckers on 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. Like, doesn't it be that he's not in charge anymore? And 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 if they ever get back to England. Because if they mutiny, they'll get hanged. So they're very conscious. They're like, well, have we found a loophole? Have we found a loophole? So would this justify us?

No, it's great. You can picture them lawyering it out. But I'm not on pay. Like, the boat's gone. The boat's gone. And then, you know, what's a counter-amendment? 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 are the rules.

And then there's like an amendment to the rule, actually. So in the rules at the time, it 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 can just see the lawyering going on, like which amendment do we follow? And they, uh, 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 and the the book spends a lot of energy um on the i don't know what he could like the 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 yeah 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 does hunger affect the human body and the psyche and there was an experiment actually done in Minnesota in the 1940s. It's now known as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, where they cut over several months the people who had volunteered for this experiment. They were all pacifists, interestingly enough. And they cut their caloric intake by about half. And they studied what happened this experiment would never

happen today yeah the ethics department of the atomic yeah yeah this one now it got past the lawyers um but in 1940 it got past the lawyers and so and they would study what happened you know with half caloric intake you know they described how the people became just increasingly obsessed with food many of them who had volunteered for the experiment thought because they were kind of spiritual they were pacifists they thought well maybe this would give them a deeper can you just explain uh pacifism yeah yeah they were just basically conscientious objectors they didn't believe in violence they didn't believe in fighting um and so that's in that sense that's why they were pacifists. So they were like stack of the deck.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Instead of just going and getting something. Like, I want the bar fight. Yeah. No, no. Yeah.

No. They took the people. Right. And instead, you know, just with even half the caloric intake over a period of time, you know, they watch how these guys, 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 says no actually i want to kill you

and this same person was actually began to fantasize about cannibalism he was removed from the experiments um but it just gives you a window in and i think also a deeper understanding of how you know the body and 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 interest, and yet you are starving and consumed

also with your own self-interest. And it has some factionalism. Oh, yeah. They splinter. They splinter initially into three groups. One group, the others refer to as the seceders. The seceders are basically, they're like the bar fighters. 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 was suspected of 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 and regulations. Another group is increasingly drawn to John Bulkley, who was the gunner on

the wager. And he's an interesting guy. He was devout, and he was in many ways the most skilled seaman 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 more, he's very self-sufficient. He knows how to survive.

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 the factions i mean what's amazing at the camp they're separated by about you know i don't they don't describe it exactly but it's probably like 50 100 feet or maybe more maybe 200 feet and yet they have to send at some points you have to send emissaries back and forth to communicate negotiate yeah to

negotiate because they won't speak to each i mean it's like it's they're becoming ward encampments um the you touched on this but i think it it warrants a little revisit uh while this is going on um 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 140. 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 a crazy. 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 would be bad as this. You're calculating it. Like 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.

They're thousands of miles away 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 what was amazing, they were able to salvage paper and ink.

You know, they're writing with a quill and with ink in a container a in a container and they're you know and they creating documents a contemporaneous evidence so that they could 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 a court-martial. Yeah, like regardless of what Bob might say. Well, we didn't talk about it, but at a certain point during this period, they have to abandon some people. And they would literally, they would have them sign a document basically saying this

indemnifies. I mean, they use the word indemnify. Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, it's like an insurance. They got to leave dudes on the beach. Yeah, yeah. And then. Yeah, it's like an insurance. They gotta like leave dudes on the beach. Yeah, yeah, they have to leave people. One last thing. Yeah, just could you sign this

so that when I get back to England, I've been indemnified. So they are very conscious of 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 gonna make it back to england sometime yeah not too long no 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, it was never going to come up. Yeah, you would think. There's a, when I say this, I don't mean to detract from the story,

but 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 comes up so much in these maritime disasters, is the indigenous people show up. And here you have all these trained men equipped from the most powerful imperial force on the planet. They have hierarchy, right? Career warriors. And they're just dying every imaginable way but then here lo and behold one day comes a family in a boat yeah it's who's just fine yeah 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 yeah yeah they had 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 and stuff yeah yeah like a great reticence to engage but also sort of a moral like a little bit of a you you you you get into it you sense it like a little bit of a now that i found these people like i probably tried to do something for them but i don't trust them you know yeah the the people that uh initially emerge out of the mist, you know, while they're starving and fighting are a group known as the Karasquar.

And the Karasquar, 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 familial 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 urchins. The women would dive down in the cold water and be able to withstand it and get these sea urchins and bring them up. And, uh, and. There's a detail you talk about too that I really liked is that they, in their canoes, they would keep a fire kindled. Yeah. Get the fire going.

Which is like such a great little, like, it's like a great image. It's something I hadn't heard of before, but they like, they have a campfire going in a canoe. They, they learned how to stay warm. I mean, they, they were known as the nomads of the sea or they're sometimes called that and they had adapted so well to the environment that NASA,

when they were considering putting humans in space, actually studied the Karasquara. 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 in. They'd 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 so they come and, you know, know they're actually they go out and they actually like oh my god these kind of these hairy castaways and they're like 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 you know and they're memorialized by uh as these uh crazy savages yes yeah in their journals they describe them and some of. And some of the castaways mistreat them.

And, you know, they think their civilization must be superior. And we don't get to see it because we don't have a recording from the Karisquare's point of view. But we can see it from the, at least in the journals of the castaways. And John Byron describes this very well in his account. You know, he's so sad. And at a certain point, the carisquare basically are looking at them and watching the spiral into violence and being mistreated and they're just like you know what we're out of here and they disappear and uh and that's and and then the

castaways only descend further into their spiral of violence and hobbsian state and and some of them are succumbing to cannibalism at that point. How many people, and this is by no means synonymous with 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 80 or so who 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 at least for this castaway boat, they're hoping to travel 3,000 miles. 3,000 miles all the way from the coast of Chile down south through the Strait of Magellan, which is really rough too too has lots of squalls and then up the coast to brazil and that group about 30 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 but with considerable delay oh yes with considerable delay yes Oh, yes, with considerable delay. Yes, yes. So in that group with considerable delay. 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 are these 30 men almost wasted to the bone. And they announce that they are the survivors of His Majesty's ship, the Wager.

And at first, nobody can believe it, how far they've gone. And they're initially greeted, you know, as 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 Sheep, 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 had gone to Brazil. And they say those people weren't actually heroes. They were mutineers. And it takes a long time because there's lots of mishaps. People end up in prison, all these things.

But eventually, they do make it back to England. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

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As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. There's 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. 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 free man. So hadn't been born he was from london he was a free man so 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 sell him as 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 is the story of survival and adventure, all these kind of different themes, 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, 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 his, we don't, there's no record of his face. Is that right? 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. Um, the real fighting begins when everybody gets home. Yeah. It's like when my,

uh, reminds me of, you know, my kids come in the house and they're both crying. And you're like, well, what happened? One of them's like, he, she, like it becomes a, uh, but in this case it becomes a, uh, like a national inquirer sort of public fixation. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a scandal. I mean, it becomes a scandalous story. Um, 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, it's a really good question. So some will make it back to, uh, 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 16 years old he returns to england he is 22 he goes to first of all he can't find where his family lives anymore. That's right. I forgot. He's in London. He goes there. They're not there. Yeah. He's like looking for where – he's trying to find his sister. He finally finds his sister. His 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 six years. And then they are summoned to face a court-martial for their alleged crimes on the island. And so this generates a scandal. So here these people had waged this 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 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 Grub Street. Yeah, from Grub Street who are generating, you know, who sees on this story. It's a big thing. You know, this is the National Enquirer getting hold of this. And they're all releasing their testimony, giving their testimony.

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 Didion, the writer, who said, you know, we all tell ourselves stories in order to live. And yet in this case, it's quite literal., we all tell ourselves stories in order to live. And yet in this case, it's quite literal. They have to tell their stories in order to live. There's a lot of stuff we haven't

gotten into today. I mean, on this island, on the ships, there's shootouts or there's gunplay. 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 um so reminiscent of the way that you might play a public sentiment campaign today yes very much so are, I mean, it's crazy because, you know, there are, you know, there's disinformation, there's misinformation, there are 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 and being published.

So people are figuring out what is the truth. And your version of the truth will kind of depend on what you read. And so, yeah, it is. And there are these campaigns. Without getting into the trial and where guilt lies and all that, explain who the sort of primary factions are. The people that want to spin narratives, they're divided in a way. Yeah. There are really two principal groups. 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 Bulkley and those who had abandoned their captain on the island, who believe they were justified in their actions and are spinning their own version of the truth. And of course, they're leveling one of the more, they're leveling charges of homicide against the other side. So they had good reason to fear they were going to get hanged. And John Bokeley and his group are praying uh before they go into the court martial you know uh one of the craziest things the like structurally it's it's such a great element of of the story is you know we start with these 2 000 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 kind of forget like at least i did as a reader you forget that what all these other people were doing and i couldn't believe toward 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 i was like oh shit i forgot about all that yeah it's that weird that's that thing like that that way you know you're saying like this sounds like a 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 survives.

Only one ship of the squadron. Like not even fully manned. And they're like, holy shit, it's the Spanish galleon. And they actually get the Spanish galleon

and then come back to England and they have these wheelbarrows with the treasure being brought through the streets. It's just, it's kind of, it's brought through the, through the streets. It's just, it's kind of, it's almost hard to believe.

It is. It's, it was so that what, as you explain it and how it occurs, it's so ridiculously tidy that it, again, you feel like you're watching a pirate movie. Yeah.

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 the perspective of three people are always fighting in their own account. So John Byron, the Captain David Cheap, and John Bulkley. So you get to see how each of them are shaping their stories along the way. And what's interesting is they never outright lie. They're not, they're not, 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 like.

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. Sounds like something out of like World War II, right? I was forced to proceed to extremities. That's what he writes the Amity to in his account. And then John Byron, the boy on the island, he says, oh, no, yeah, he shot him right in the head and the guy bled out of 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 paratic mission succeeds and they capture this galleon and they come back, the war had gone disastrously.

But here is this great victory. And so the Hudson 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, our 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.

There's two points I was going to make. One was when you were saying, what did the guy use? He's forced to proceed to extremities. Yeah. You probably know the writer, Ian Frazier. Oh 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 like radar like it like it me like he's like okay now we're entering into like a like something that may or may not be true and then i proceeded to uh the other point is one of my favorite books of all time um is called son 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 the Little Bighorn when Custer was killed. 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's 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 yeah yeah and 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 uh yeah it's the very very same very nature uh in this case as well uh did you you you've had great success in finding uh stories that um are going to make great movies. Do, do, uh,

at first it was probably a surprise. Maybe. Was it a surprise at first? Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. If anyone ever thinks or thinks it's going to be a movie, I would tell you delusion.

Even now they've made so much. Even now, if I think so, it's going to be a movie. I think I'm deluded. So that's what I was going to ask is has, um, as you work now,

uh, are you, are, are you in writing a script to in the back of your head, are you, are you writing a script too in the back of your head? Are you, are you like making a story that'll 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, oh, I'm kind of interested in mutinies. You know, that's kind of an interesting form of rebellion. And then I came upon an, 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, you know, nobody looking at this thing would think it would be a movie. It's written in this stilted prose. You know, the S's are printed as F's. That's kind of tangled in that 18th 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 scribes like Cape Horn is the perfect hurricane. He used that phrase. And then he's like, and he's describing the madness and the scurvy. And then he describes the cannibalism, which he refers to simply. He doesn't like to call it cannibalism. He just refers to that last extremity.

Which can be read two ways. Yes, yes. And then we ate the last extremity. Yeah, exactly. So, and so, you know, I don't, no, 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. I swear to God, like you inhale a cloud of dust. I saw that you had 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 damage, 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 them. I used a magnifying glass. I would spend years studying these documents. Never in my right mind would I think somebody's going to come along and want to make a movie out of this stuff. You got to 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 cinematic 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, you know, you suddenly see a recreation of things that you just had in your imagination based on words.

And you suddenly see these people who you've written about and known through, you know, years of research and records. They're suddenly walking towards you. They're like, oh, that's what he's like. Yeah, and you're just like, and then they're like smiling or winking or, and you're just like, and they're suddenly walking towards you. They're like, oh, that's what he's like. Yeah, and you're just like, and then they're like smiling or winking and you're just like,

and they're suddenly, you know, deeping into a conscious level of these people. So 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.

I help in the sense of just as a resource. Sure. Just want to help out and especially because they're so historical, provide documents, answer questions, point them in directions and help that way. So you have a lot of coverage. 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 it kind of totally separate. If you could have it be, um, if you had to choose, you did the same work, but at the end of the work, there was a film or there was a book. Book.

Okay. 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. So I would lose that street cred. But, you know, that's always kind of what I've been.

And, yeah, so I think for me it would be the book. 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 it's like a different almost a different mindset like you know and i 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 you know god i wish i had some more dialogue in that scene but yeah they can they can build background and the actor in

his mind has created a family history and has created like a psychology yeah like a like a freudian analysis so you could even so you could delve in so yes i'm sometimes i'm sometimes that part i'm sometimes jealous of but yes I just stick to what I've got. Yeah, yeah. 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 um 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 are you kind of like dipping into the psychology

that you think may have been there for each character? Yeah. So I think it's less projecting. You have to do some level of interpretive. You don't really so much imagine, but you do have to make analytical judgments or, you know, but you're basing that based on what they write. So, you know, you can make, you know,

John Bulkley, interestingly enough, writes exactly the way his personality is. So you're reading his text and he writes in the, you know, for an early 18th century writer, first of all, he didn't come from the upper crust of the fact that he can write so well, it's is 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 know that's a good point you know yeah and so you don't actually i i don't ever i don't know if i even make that

observation in the book, but you, you, you, 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, and so you, but my, what I really try to do is do enough research and find everything I can about the person. Like I'm always just trying to understand that. 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 at sea.

And I mean, at land. And he was kind of an embittered person. On a ship, 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, 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, and, and dialogue that they spoke or wrote so that you could kind of find your judging.

And you do benefit in a case like this in 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 Bulkley is saying about the cat, what the Admiralty is saying about what George Anson, the governor. And so that's how you kind of build it out and then you try to show it but you are making certain

interpretive decisions or things you want to highlight about their character yeah yeah 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 me some yeah i need a new one yes do you do the way in in your head do you have um in your head do you have uh like more than you'll ever get to kind of feeling or do you have like you got to hunt them down you got to hunt them down you got to hunt them down it's interesting when i was primarily just a magazine work i had more than i could tell is that right yeah that's what it felt like yeah because i, there were 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 characters? Because it takes me five years. Five years. What's the longest you ever went down a path and then realized it wasn't there? I'm always so terrified of 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 you're clearly you're going to find out so much more on the path but you need to 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. Are these other,

are these other accounts? Um, then I found the other accounts. I read some of these other accounts. I go, 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, 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 onto like a dog or a lemon. I don't know what the right phrase is for a bad story. You know, you know, you're, and because at a, 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, this is my last one for you, my last craft question and we'll wrap up, but do you like to,

at the end of that couple months or when you do your feasibility study, do you need to get to a point where you're like thinking to yourself, I will add, 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 you know not not a regurgitation not just a regurgitation i mean um so i think that is what's important that you feel like whatever it is you, 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 find 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 Lost City of Z, I remember there's about a British explorer disappeared in the Amazon in the early 20th 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. I kid you not, you talk about like weird, like things that you're like, I can't believe there was a chest. I think it was on the floor. And she opened it up. And inside were all these old books. And they were kind of somewhere held together by ropes or little locks. And they were water-stained and grimy.

I said, what are those? She said, well, those are my grandfather's log books and diaries. And she 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, um, you know, just more than the feasibility and more, what are you going to be doing? It's just like, are you obsessed with it? Cause if you're not obsessed, you gotta,

you, you gotta be able to walk away and then a couple 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. Yeah. Fantastic book. The Wager, a tale of shipwreck mutiny and murder all three he got them all and they all happened we didn't even get to the mutiny again david grand the wager uh a Tale of Shipwreck, 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 going to have another success with this one

or are having another success with this one. So congratulations, and thanks for coming and joining us. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Oh, ride on, ride on, let it fly on. I want to see your gray hair shine like silver in the sun Ride on Ride on Ride on

Sweetheart We're done beat this damn Horse to death So take your new one And ride on We're done beat this damn horse to death. So take your new one and ride on.

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