46 pages • 1 hour read
David GrannThe Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Imperialism and Colonialism
Although The Wager focuses on shipwreck, the experiences of survivors, and the court martial in England, it illustrates several much wider historical issues. Its most important historical topic is that of imperialism and colonialism. War between the European powers was motivated by the need to control and expand colonies and “Britain’s imperial interests” (250). This incites the Wager to set sail in the first place. Additionally, imperialism inspired people like Captain David Cheap and John Byron to join the navy. Imperialism also leads the judges in the court martial case involving the survivors of the Wager to dismiss all charges.
The experience and behavior of the Wager’s survivors was an uncomfortable reminder that, in certain circumstances, “civilized” men, even naval officers, were not above violent and selfish behavior. It also brought attention to the fact that, without outside support, Europeans could be completely helpless in the very environments they sought to colonize.
The lure of the imperial, nationalist cause attracted many men, especially those from upper-class families but without any definite prospects, to become sailors. Accounts by the Wager survivors rarely, if ever, depicted their authors as operating within the imperial system. Still, “thousands and thousands of ordinary people” served or even died for “a system many of them rarely question[ed]” (248). The costs of imperialism are shown by the remnants of failed colonial experiments and examples of “imperial hubris” like the so-called Port Famine, a failed Spanish colony where settlers died (193). The imperial project is not just one that calls for sacrifices in the form of the victims of its wars and subjugation of foreign lands, but from its own people.
David Grann describes how the wealth of the British Empire came from colonialism and slavery (228). He makes it clear that colonialism was not just a system of exploitation, but a mindset—the belief that European, and especially British, civilization was “inherently superior” (242), and that it was worth spreading to places outside Europe (13). Grann illustrates how these attitudes caused the desperate survivors of the Wager to distrust, look down upon, and consider ways to betray Indigenous peoples, despite the fact Indigenous peoples had clearly adapted to their environments and developed sophisticated ways to survive where Europeans could not. The colonial point of view justified the abuse and exploitation of non-European peoples, whether it was the enslavement of Indigenous people to serve on a Spanish warship (246-48) or the Black sailor John Duck getting sold into slavery (248).
The Importance of Stories
Grann discusses stories and memory in The Wager mainly in two ways. The first is related to imperialism. Stories are an important part of how empires function and win recruits into their armies. Samuel Pepys, an English naval administrator and diarist, tried to make a naval career attractive to young men from aristocratic families, despite the stigma attached to naval service. Such propaganda worked on John Byron, who decided on a naval career partly because of romantic stories about sea life like those of English explorer Sir Francis Drake (29).
Logbooks and travelogues became the basis for bestselling books in Britain. They spread stories about adventures, other peoples, and naval battles on the seas or in foreign lands. Such literature “stoked the fervid imaginations of youths like Byron” (48), encouraging recruitment into the navy; in a sense, this kind of literature inspired the British public to become invested in the British Empire. Grann theorizes that the survivors of the Wager were absolved of any crimes in court partially due to such public perceptions. Conviction would have been a story of failure, undermining claims over the superiority of both the British Empire and the British way of life.
Instead, what the government wished to promote and what the public wanted was a “mythic tale of the sea” (251). The story of George Anson’s successful voyage and battle with the Spanish navy near the Philippines became promoted and remembered, while the story of the Wager and the castaways on Wager Island was forgotten.
The story of Robert Jenkins was also important for the cause of British imperialism. Grann describes how the War of Jenkins’ Ear, which supposedly began when an English captain had his ear cut off by a Spanish official, did not start with that actual accident. Instead, the war was simply a result of Britain and Spain having competing colonial interests. The story about the ear “provided a righteous sheen to their scheme” (243).
In The Wager, Grann raises broader questions of how memory and narratives affect self-perception. As Grann writes: “We emerge as the heroes of our stories, allowing us to live with what we have done—or haven’t done” (5). The question of how much an individual’s memories can reflect the truth is a key problem faced by the survivors of the Wager and by the authorities who tried the court martial and sought to determine the truth of what caused the Wager’s crash and what happened on Wager Island. John Bulkeley’s argument against the testimony of Lieutenant Baynes was based on his assertion that Baynes’ “story drawn from memory […] had less probative value than one written contemporaneously” (202-03).
In contrast, Bulkeley was a prolific recorder of events as they occurred. His journal was presented as the genuine truth of what happened on the voyage and Wager Island. Nonetheless, some viewed Bulkeley’s account as unreliable because he was a “mere gunner” (204), and not the sort of educated, upper-class officer who usually kept logbooks on voyages. Bulkeley argued that education and background did not make a difference. He asserted that his account presented “what we actually know to be true” (205).
The Romance of the British Navy
Grann illustrates the influence the British navy had on England’s culture. As an island with colonies, British military power depended on its navy. The navy had a romantic pull over individuals like John Byron. Grann argues this influence can be seen even in the English language. Common slang still often used today has nautical origins, like “turn a blind eye” and “pipe down” (35). Grann suggests that Byron’s difficult and traumatic experiences inspired many scenes from the poems of his grandson, Lord Byron.
There was a sigma against men from the British aristocracy joining the navy (29). Still, even the sons of the aristocracy like David Cheap and John Byron were drawn to a naval career—not just by their need to have careers as the younger sons of aristocracy, but by the call of adventure and romance on the sea.
The need to preserve this appeal of the sea affected how the tragedy of the Wager was remembered. The castaways’ experiences stripped away any romance from the experience of being a member of the British navy. A story about British sailors rebelling against an inept captain went against the narratives of the British navy and of the rightfulness of British dominance. Such stories could only be “threatening to the established order” (243), and therefore weren’t promoted.
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