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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: AudiobookHub Recommendation
Chapter 2: Cheap’s Big Chance—and a War That Would Not Wait
Chapter 3: Jack Byron Finds the World of Wood and Sail
Chapter 4: Bulkeley Arms the Guns—and Balances the Ledger
Chapter 5: Hunting a Prize by Dead Reckoning
Chapter 6: Scurvy Shatters Bodies—and Morale
Chapter 7: A Rock, a Crack, and a Lost Rudder
Chapter 8: Leaving the Ship, Holding to the Rules
Chapter 9: Raising a Navy Amid Wilderness
Chapter 10: The Kawésqar Come—and Then Depart
Chapter 11: Hunger Makes Friends into Enemies
Chapter 12: A Petition, a Gun, and a Mutinous Coup
Chapter 13: Speedwell’s Trial Through the Strait
Chapter 14: Cheap’s Last Effort—and the Hardest Decision
Chapter 15: What the Court Heard—and Overlooked
Chapter 16: Anson’s Galleon and the Stories That Endure
Description
In 1740, a British squadron sailed for the Pacific on a secret mission to cripple Spain’s empire and capture its treasure-laden galleon. Near Cape Horn, the Wager broke from the fleet and descended into chaos: weeks of hurricane-force winds, brutal cold, and a storm within the storm—scurvy ravaging the crew from the inside out. Then the ship struck the rocks of a desolate Patagonian island and shattered. Survival became a new mission.
On land, the Wager’s order crumbled. Captain David Cheap tried to rebuild a Navy inside a wilderness. Gunner John Bulkeley turned his skills—and followers—toward escape. Midshipman John Byron, just sixteen, watched as loyalty cracked, food vanished, punishments grew savage, and lines were drawn that could not be erased. The castaways built shelters, boiled seaweed, learned from Indigenous Kawésqar canoe people—then fractured into warring camps. One path led to a daring, near-impossible voyage in a hand-built longboat across the Strait of Magellan. The other followed the original mission, north toward Spanish waters and a second chance at honor.
Back in England, the survivors’ accounts collided in print and at a court-martial. Cheap faced the shadow of murder; Bulkeley stood accused of mutiny. Above them hovered another story—Commodore George Anson’s own desperate gamble to seize the fabled galleon and redeem the expedition. David Grann brings the whole saga together: the wooden world of the Royal Navy, the storm-scoured edges of South America, and the courtroom theater where narrative is life. It’s a fiercely human study of leadership under duress, the thin line between order and anarchy, and why the version that wins shapes an empire.
Who Should Listen
- Listeners who love true adventure and survival narratives
- Leaders and team-builders curious about decision-making under extreme pressure
- Fans of narrative history who want the human story behind imperial headlines