The only impartial witness was the sun. For days it watched this strange object rise and fall in the ocean, at the mercy of wind and waves. Several times it almost crashed into a reef, which could have ended our story prematurely. But somehow—whether by fate, as some later claimed, or by dumb luck—it drifted into a bay off the southeastern coast of Brazil, where a few locals took notice.
The boat, over fifteen meters long and over three meters wide, looked as if it had been cobbled together from scraps of wood and cloth and then destroyed. The sails were frayed, the boom broken. Seawater was pouring in through the leaky hull, and there was a terrible stench inside. The gathering gawkers heard disturbing sounds – it turned out that thirty men with extremely emaciated bodies were crowded on board. Their clothes had largely fallen apart, and their faces were covered with hair, matted and salted like seaweed.
Some were so weak that they could not stand. One of them breathed his last shortly afterwards. The person who was probably in command, with an extraordinary effort of will, rose and announced that they were castaways from His Majesty’s ship Wager, a British warship.
When the news reached England, it was received with disbelief. In September 1740, during the conflict with Spain, the Wager, with about two hundred and fifty men on board, set out with a whole squadron from Portsmouth on a secret mission to capture a treasure-laden Spanish galleon, known as the “prize of all the oceans.” Near Cape Horn, at the tip of South America, the squadron encountered a hurricane. It was generally believed that the Wager had sunk and that none of the crew had survived. However, two hundred and eighty-three days after the ship was last seen, the men miraculously appeared in Brazil.
They were shipwrecked on a remote island off the coast of Patagonia. Most of the officers and men were killed, but eighty-one survivors carried on in a makeshift boat, partly cobbled together from the wreck of the Wager. Packed so tightly together that they could barely move, they sailed through fierce winds and waves, ice storms, and earthquakes. More than fifty men lost their lives during the arduous voyage, and the few survivors covered more than twenty-five thousand nautical miles—one of the longest voyages of a castaway on record. They were lavished with praise for their ingenuity and courage. As the leader of the group observed, it was hard to believe that “human nature could have endured the misfortunes we endured.”
Half a year later, another boat came ashore – this time on the southwestern coast of Chile. It was even smaller, a wooden canoe powered by a sail sewn together from scraps of blankets. There were three survivors on board, whose condition seemed even more appalling than that of their former companions. They were half-naked and emaciated, and their bodies were covered in swarms of insects. One of the men was so dazed that, as his companion put it, “he lost himself completely, […] He didn’t remember our names…or even his own.”
After recovering and returning to England, the men made a shocking accusation against their comrades who had appeared in Brazil. They claimed that they were not heroes, but mutineers. Later accusations and counter-accusations from both sides revealed that after landing on the island, Wager’s officers and men had struggled to survive in extreme conditions. Facing starvation and freezing temperatures, they had set up an outpost and tried to restore maritime order. But as the situation worsened, these self-styled apostles of enlightenment fell into a Hobbesian state of nature. They formed warring factions, abandoned their comrades, and committed murder. There were even a few acts of cannibalism.
Back in England, the ringleaders of each group and their allies were put on trial before a military court, a trial that threatened to expose the true nature not only of the accused but of the entire empire whose supposed mission was to spread civilization.
Several of the accused published sensational—and contradictory—accounts of what one of them called a “dark and intricate” affair. The accounts of the expedition influenced philosophers such as Rousseau, Voltaire, and Montesquieu, and later Charles Darwin and two great naval novelists, Herman Melville and Patrick O’Brien. The main goal of the suspects was to convince the admiralty and the public of their case. One survivor produced a chronicle that he called “a faithful narrative.” He maintained:
I have been meticulous and careful not to include even one word of falsehood in my account. For falsehood of any kind would be highly absurd in a work that is intended to defend the author.
In turn, the leader of the other side of the conflict claimed in his own chronicle that his enemies had presented “an imperfect account of events” and “slandered us with the worst slanders”. He declared: “We will preach the truth to the end; if it does not help us, then truly nothing will.”
We all try to make sense of the chaotic events of our existence. We sift through the raw images of our memories, cherry-picking the most important ones, recording some, erasing others. We present ourselves as the heroes of our stories, allowing ourselves to live with what we have done—or not done.
But in this case, all the survivors knew that their lives depended on the stories they told. They knew that if they weren’t convincing enough, they could be hanged from the yardarm.
Wager’s Case WAB promotional materials
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
