Transcripts For CSPAN3 David 20240703

Tonight, im happy to welcome david grant to the library to discuss his latest book, the wager a tale shipwreck, mutiny and murder. In it, he recounts the fallout of a British Naval shipwreck off the coast of patagonia in the mid 18th century. The survivors of his majestys ship, the wager eventually landed at different locations in south america, roughly 3000 miles from the wreck, with competing stories about the incident that resulted in a Court Martial. David grann, a staff writer at the new yorker, is author of several bestselling books, including the lost city of z and killers of the flower moon, a finalist in the National Award and winner of the Edgar Allan Po ward killer killers of the flower moon is also being adapted into a Martin Scorsese film that will be released this fall. Vanity fair, called the wager genre defying literary naval history, thriller, part master and commander, lord of the flies. In a recent gq profile, wrote that david grann has been your favorite writers writer for decades. And in her review of the book for the last the Angeles Times Pulitzer Prize winning journalist marianne gwinn wrote the story of the wager is, like many of its antecedents, from homers odyssey to mutiny on the bounty, a testament to the depths of human depravity in the heights of human. And you cant ask for better than that from a story. Maybe you get seasick at the thought of a seafaring novel making exception in this case. The wager will keep you in its grip to its head, scratching improbable end. Its my great pleasure to welcome david grant to the library. Its great to be here tonight and to be back at the library. Research can lead you to places never expect. For example, one day several years ago, i found myself in a wood heated boat, a motorboat off chilean coast of patagonia in what is now in an area that is known as the gulf sorrows or some prefer to call it the gulf of pain. It was freezing winter and we were caught. A storm with towering ways that dwarfed the boat. When i looked in front of me, all i could see was a mountain of water. And when i glanced behind me, all i could see was another of water. There was a captain, two crew members, and the boat was tossed about so violently that i sat on the deck in the cabinet and did not stand where i maybe tossed and break limb. And in case you think, i may be taking some literary license. I have some video evidence. So as you can probably tell, im not much of an explorer or an adventurer. And taken every possible remedy of seasickness. But its impossible. I like a laboratory, you know. I was taking those things off. Cable news at 4 a. M. I had a little band, my wrist and a patch behind my ear, and i was about half drunk on dramamine and i had seen another soul or another boat for more for nearly a week. And i kept looking out the porthole, hoping to catch a glimpse of that place that it consume imagination. Ouija island. And deserted island. Head unfolded. One of the most extraordinary and gripping sagas id ever heard of a saga that had influenced philosophers like and voltaire and montesquieu sign artists like Charles Darwin and two of the great novelists of the sea, Herman Melville and patrick obrien. Yet, as the boat rolled further and further over the sea, swallowing the deck, i began to wonder what youre all wondering. Now. What the hell was i doing in the gulf of pain . And my girl good stories. This one began in 1742. It was then that a small battered boat have washed ashore off the coast brazil and on board 30 men. Their bodies almost waist to the bone. One soon gave out his last breath and died. But one of them rose with an extraordinary exertion of will. And he announced that they were the survivors of his majestys ship. The wager, and that they had been shipwrecked on a island for months. And after building this flimsy craft, they traversed. Some 3000 miles. One of the longest castaway voyages ever recorded. And they were hailed for ingenuity and for their courage. Then, several months, another little boat washed ashore off the coast of chile on the other side of south america. This was even smaller, more battered. It was just a dugout with sails stitched together from ripped blankets. On board were three additional survivors, a condition even worse. One of them so delirious he could not recollect his name. But when they recovered they told a very story and they leveled a shocking allegation that those people who had gone brazil were not heroes. They were mutineers. And in the controversy that followed, with charges being lobbed and forth from both sides, it soon became clear that while stranded on that desolate island, these officers and crew, the supposed apostles of western civilization, had slowly descended into a real life lord of the flies, a hobbesian state. Warring factions and mutinies and. Now, back in england. These castaways, the leaders of the two factions, along with many of their allies, were summoned to a Court Martial for their alleged crime on the island. And so many of them published their conflicting accounts of what had happened, which sparked a furious war over the truth. Joan didion famously that we all tell ourselves stories in order to live. Yet in their case, it was quite literally true. If they did not tell a convincing tale, they could be hanged. They defendants had once hoped to return to england based in glory. They had embarked with a squadron of four others for ships. On a secret mission, which was to try capture a spanish galleon. Feel filled with so much treasure here. The ship was known as the prize of all the oceans. Believe it or not, that was part the mission of their plans. It had a real whiff of piracy about it. In fact, the seamen were given offered a 10th elysian prosper fact, a share of any treasure treasure money that was seized. But before they could embark, they had to get out of the dockyard in england where they had been trapped. This just this map shows where they were heading. And it shows they were supposed to cross the atlantic and sail around cape horn at the tip of south america, then up the coast to, chile and then into the pacific, where they were hoping to intercept the galleon off the coast of the philippines. But they were trapped and marooned at the dockyards. The squadron included four warships, as well as the wage for the flagship was known as the centurion was under the command of the commodore. Who . The leader of the expedition. A man named George George anson. And the task of getting out of these dockers was proving and surmount to all these ships were really the engineering marvels of their time. They were devised to be both murderous instruments, which and also the homes to sailors would live in close quarters for as long as three years at a time. This model the wager, which was a little bit the Ugly Duckling of the squadron because it was a warship that was not born for battle, it had been remade. A battleship from a merchant ship to serve in this war. But even so, it was elegant. It had three mass towering, mass wooden yard arms, which are like booms, which the sails would hang a single like the wager could fly as many as 12 sails. And the larger warships could fly as many as 18. Yet as sophisticated as these ships were, they were also very vulnerable to the elements because they were of perishable materials, which was mostly wood. A single warship. But this is one of those astonishing facts. You come across when youre doing a research. A single warship could take as many as 4000 trees and to construct and these were susceptible to the elements of wind and storm. Little sea worms would burrow holes the ship and termites. And so the squadron was laid up and what was known as rotten row, the dockyards were they had to be essentially remade in many ways and fitted out for the expedition. They required also countless tons of provisions whether or not a single warship could run, could require as as much as 40 miles of rope for. 15,000 square feet of sails in a farm worth of animals, including gold goats and cattle and pig, none of which were very cooperative in getting on board. But most importantly, most importantly, the squadron, in order to operate these five warships, would require mere nearly 2000 men, many of whom needed to be skilled as seamen. The wager, which was the smallest of the warships at about 123 feet long, would require about 250 men, which was nearly twice the number it had been originally designed for because, of the length of the expedition and the military assaults it would require. Yep. Great britain at that time did not have conscription and it had exhausted its of volunteer years. And so what did the british admiralty do . Sent out the press gangs and the press gangs would roam towns and cities and ports looking for any telltale signs of a mariner. The round had or the checkered shirt. They would look at your fingernails and fingertips to see if you had tar. Tar was often used on a ship to make things water resistant. And if you had tar on your fingers, you would be seized. And in effect, kidnaped and dragged down unwillingly to go on this expedition. And yet, even after the press gangs had gone out, the squadron was still of men. And so the admiral took the extreme measure of rounding up 500 soldiers and seamen from a retirement home. Many of these men were in their sixties and seventies, were missing an assortment of and some were so ill they had to be lifted on stretchers onto these ships. One of the things that makes life on board the ships so fascinating is that they were in many ways like a floating town or a floating civilized nation. There were people from all ages, boys as young as six. The cook on the wager was in his, and they came from all walks of life. There were aristocrats and dandies. There were city paupers and free black seamen and professional craftsmen like carpenters. Theres a great quote from a seaman who said. A man of war, which is what a warship was called, made just to be styled an epitome of the world in which theres a sample of every character, some good as as bad among. The latter, he noted, were highwaymen, burglars, the butchers, adulterers, lampoon, ers, impostors, panders, parasites, ruffians, hypocrite hypocrites. And my favorite thread worn bow jack a dandies the british navy was known for its ability to coalesce these fractious individuals into what Horatio Nelson would later dub band of brothers. Yet the challenge on the wager was enormous because so many of the men had been pressed and so many were sick. By september 1740, nearly a year had gone by since the start of the war, and still the wager and the other warships were marooned on the dockyards. But finally, on september 18th, the squadron along with two small cargo ships, which plan to accompany the expedition way set off on perilous voyage. And here can see the expedition as sketched by one of the members on board the flagship, the centurion. Thats the largest ship. And you can see the wager, mark, there. Now, the book focuses on the competing accounts of three men on board the wager. We all impose some coherence, some meaning on the chaotic events of our existence. We like to rummage through the raw images of our memories selecting, burnishing or racing. And i organize the book this way to show each of these men like all of us, tried to shape his story in this case to emerge as the hero. One perspective is that of david, who had recently been promoted, captain of the wager. He was a burly scotsman in his forties with a volatile temperament and obsessive dreams of of glory. Back in scotland, he had been plagued by debts, chased by creditors. But in that wooden world of ship, he found refuge. And on this voyage, he had finally obtained what he had always longed for a chance to captain his own warship and possibly capture a lucrative prize. The other perspective is told a second perspective from john bulkeley, the gunner. We do not know what bulkeley looks because he was born to the lower to middle class. He could not afford to have a portrait made of him. We know his thoughts. His intimate thoughts because he was a compulsive dyer ist. He was in many ways the most skilled seaman on the wager. And he was an instinctive leader. Yet because he was not born into the aristocracy, he knew he would never become a commander of a warship. And the third perspective is told from the perspective and the point of view of john byron, who had been just a 16 year old midshipman on the wager when it set sail. He was born into the nobility and he later became the grandfather of the poet lord byron, whose poetry, including don, was greatly influenced. But he referred to as my great grand adds my great my granddads narrative. Now, unlike many of the people who had set sail on the wager he had volunteered for the mission. And this is a book and a story that is not only about the stories tell, but also the way stories us. And byron had read all these adventure tales. He even brought them with him in his sea chest for the voyage. And he thought he was going to live this great romance. He is in many our bewildering eyes and ears onto this floating, bewildering, floating civilization as a midshipman, he was training to become an officer and he has to learn all the new, mysterious mores of what it was like to a warship, including a secret coded language in which everything on the ship had its own name. And it was only while researching this book that i learned how much of the idioms we use today came from the age of sail. A scuttlebutt does anyone know what a scuttlebutt is . Scuttle boat was a barrel in the middle of the ship filled with water, where the seamen would gather for the water rations. And what would they do around the scuttlebutt. They would gossip, piping, harp as the bosuns whistle for a hot meal. Pipe down was the bosuns whistle. Be quiet under the weather. I always thought that was a great metaphor for sickness. Well, it turns out to be quite literal on ship when a seaman was sick. He did not have to serve on watch. He was kept deck. So he was quite literally under the weather. And perhaps my favorite of these expressions and there are many more, was one that derived came a little bit later in the century from when vice admiral Horatio Nelson wanted to ignore his superior officers flag to retreat in battle. And so what did he do . He took his telescope and he put up to his blind eye, which is why we now say to turn blind eye. Now, one day in the voyage, byron heard the pitch surveying order eventually given to every midshipman in aloft you go. And he had to climb up the main mast, which rose some hundred in the air in order to work the sails. A plunger of such a height, when in kill him after by and managed to reach the peak. Could see the other great ships in the squadron and beyond them the sea a blank expanse on which he was ready to write his own story. But soon everything began to go wrong as the squadron, the atlantic. It found itself being chased by a more powerful spanish armada. Then they faced an even greater the seas around cape horn at the tip of south america. Because these far southern seas are the only waters flow uninterrupted around, the globe unimpeded by any land they accumulate and build the waves over as much as 13,000 piles. The horn rollers, as theyre called when they reach cape horn and follow through that passage, can dwarf a 90 foot mass or the strongest currents on earth. And then the winds frequently accelerate, accelerate to Hurricane Force and can reach as much as 200 miles per hour. Herman melville, who later rounded the horn, compared it to a descent into hell and dantes inferno. And as the men tried around horn, they were battered by storms. Day and night. Byron called it the perfect hurricane. He would steer in all at the waves that broke over the wager, bending it about as if were no more than a pitiful rowboat. Water seeped through virtually every seam. It began get colder and the rain hardened into sleet. Some the men suffered from frostbite. And icicles drip from the lines below 40 degrees latitude. There is no law. A sailors adage went below 50 degrees. There is no god. And they were now in what was known as furious fifties. Captain cheap and, the other officers and commanders knew they were going to need everybody on board their ships. They were to persevere. And yet it was in that very moment when many the men could no longer rise from their hammocks suffering from a mysterious illness. Their eyes bulged and their teeth fell out. And so did their hair. Even the cartilage that seemed to glue together, the bodies seemed to be coming undone. One man who had fallen in a five decades earlier where he had fractured a bone. Of course, bone and healed over five decades. Its suddenly fractured again in the very same place. And the disease seemed to be affecting their senses. As one seamen put it, it got into our brains and we went raving mad. They were suffering from that great enigma of the of sail scurvy, scurvy kilmore mariners, then all other threats, including other diseases and sea battles combined. No one there knew that it was brought on by a lack of vitamin c and that the cure was so simple more fruit and vegetables in their diet. In fact, the wager in the squadron, its stopped in brazil before they went around the horn and on that island where they start, there were plenty of limes which could have saved their lives. And of course once people understood later in the century what scurvy was by british seamen would carry lines with them, which is the reason we were they were known as limes limes in this case, the men in the squadrons suffered one of the worst outbreaks of scurvy ever recorded in maritime history. Hundreds and hundreds of them perished. Their bodies tossed overboard on ceremoniously as the poet lord byron put it, would later put it without a grave, unconfident an unknown, cheap. And the other captains were increasingly running out of hands to operate their vessels. Some ships cannot even raise sail, and the sails were blowing out in the storm so much that they had to take them down. And one of the commander was and this was just extra ordinary couldnt maneuver the ship without sails there just tossed about so badly. And so he ordered the top men. People climb the mast to scurry up these mass up these rope lines and ratlines to use their bodies as threadbare sails. And so 100 feet in the air, they are clinging to the ropes like spiders. Their bodies concave, holding on as a gale blew against them. It enabled the captain to maneuver the ship somewhat. But one of the men was tossed into the ship as they rocked about five degrees to one side and then 45 degrees to the other. And that man drowned. The ships were desperate to Stay Together because they knew if they were separated, thered be no. One to rescue them. If something. And so how did they communicate. Well, you know, they didnt have iphones, so what did they do . They would fire their guns repeatedly at a single location. But the wind eventually drowned out the booming sound of the guns. And in the mist and the storm and, the giant hollow seas. All the ships scattered. And the wager was separated from the all left alone and to its own destiny. And captain ship was determined to try to get around cape horn to himself, to live up to the secret image he had of himself as a heroic captain. And even though the wager lost one of its mass, he manages to guide them around cape horn and then up coast to chile, where he wants to get to a point where the commodore had told they should rendezvous if they were ever separated. And yet, captain cheap and his other navigators on board like all seamen in that time, were sailing partially blind. They did not know exactly they were on the map. They could determine in their latitude by reading the stars, which was easy. Yet they had no way of knowing their launch too, because that would require clocks and they had not yet been invented. And so they were forced to rely on what known as dead reckoning. And to simplify, it essentially amounted to inform guesswork and a leap of faith. There is a reason why its called dead reckoning. Many seamen ended up on the rocks dead and the wagers navigators estimation of their turned out not only be wrong, but wrong hundreds of miles. And suddenly the ship is in. What would later become known as the gulf of saros or the gulf of payne. And it hits a submerged and rudder, shatters, and a two ton anchor falls through the hull, leaving a gaping hole. And the ship for a moment is teetering on these rocks. And then another enormous wave sweeps the ship. This rocks and its careening through a minefield of rocks. Seal lying without a rudder and water pouring into the hull until a last. It crashes into a cluster of rocks, and the ship begins to break apart. And you have to understand, these ships were their homes, many seamen, most seamen back then do not actually even know how to swim. So you can imagine their terror as the planks shatter the decks cave, the cabins collapse, the mask down. Water is surging up the bottom of the hull. Rats are scurrying upward. Those who have suffering from scurvy have been in their hammocks for months and could not get out drown. Yet the ship did not yet completely sink. It became wedged almost miraculously between a pillar two pillars of rocks. So it did not sink, at least yet completely. And the survivors scurried up onto the remnants of the ship, and they peered into the distance and through the mist. They could see an island and of course, thats where the real hull began. About 145 survivors, including captain and sheep. The gunner, john bulkley, and the young midshipman, john byron, make it ashore, being ferried in a little transport boat, which is like a rowboat. And they hope will maybe this will be ourselves in yet the island turns out to be completely inhospitable. It is cold, the temperature hovering around 30. It is constantly raining or sleeting. And whats more, they can find virtually no food. They have to eat. They find little bits of seaweed. They eat. Some mussels, though, they gradually exhaust them along the little part of their beach where theyre at. There were no animals on the island other than birds that were flying in the distance. They found some bits of sprouts of celery, which mysteriously to them ended up curing their scurvy. And that was about it. One british officer later described the island as a place where the soul, the man dies in him and this is where the true of their wits began. And that island in many became a kind of laboratory to test the human condition under the most extreme circumstance, answers and inevitably it would reveal their hidden nature, both the good and the bad. Now, i know most of you have not the book, so i will not spoil the unfathomable saga that unfolded on that island. Yet what is so interesting is that while they were there many of the men as they began to starve would hold these great debates about the nature of leadership and duty and loyalty. And then later the prospect of mutiny. They did this as they gradually descended into warring factions in which there were murders and thieves who would try to steal the rations. And they asked the question, who the right to rule over us . Does the captain because he was the captain of the ship by title automatically deserved to be our commander. Or in that democracy suffering, could someone like john bulkeley, though he did not come from the aristocracy, emerged as a captain in his own right. And he would invoke these populist phrases that are resonant with us today. He said such phrases life and. Now as the men were starving on that island, one day, almost amazingly emerges through the mist. A couple of canoes with native patagonia. On board, and they were members of the cara squire Community Group who. The care squire had lived in along the coast of chile 400 years back, and they had adapted to the very extreme conditions, they tended to travel in small, familiar groups. They lived almost exclusively off marine resources. They spent most of their time in canoes. They were so well adapted to the region that nasa later, centuries later, when it was looking into how humans might adapt to the inhospitable elements of space, actually studied the care of squire in the region in the cara squire, for example. They would keep by always keeping a fire going in there, even in their canoes and most importantly, they knew how to find food. They would travel up and down coastline for a hundred miles. They knew where the fish were located and the reefs with sea urchins that could be in where mussels and limpets could be in. And they provided and offered a lifeline to the castaways they went out and actually brought them food. But this is also a story about imperialism and the prejudices that us and many of the castaways blinded by the mistreat the care squire and at that time also casco are looking at the castaways who are spiraling into greater violence and eventually they just pack up and disappear, essentially saying, were out of here, you know . And after that, the castaways on, they descended further into a hobbesian state of deprived depravity. And a few of the men also succumb to cannibalism. Now, incredibly incredibly, several of these castaways make it back to england. And these journeys are on fallible sagas in their own right, evoking the journey for example, of shackleton centuries. And again, i wont spoil what happened in the book, but what is so interesting and fascinates me about the story is not only what happened to these castaways on the island and during their attempts to escape from the two facts, the two members of each faction. But what happened to them after got back to england and as feared they were whole before a military tribunal where they feared they would be hanged for. Their crimes on the island. And so again they publish their accounts and after waging a war all the elements you name it scurvy typhoons tidal waves, icebergs, shipwreck, the violence from their own ship means they now began to wage a furious war over the truth and just today, there were allegations of disinformation and misinformation and fake journals. And i was reaching researching this. I would go to the archives and read old accounts. And then i would come back home and i would flip on the tv or read the newspaper. And what would i hear . Alternative facts or fake news . What is true . I go back to the archive and i be reading about war over who would get to tell this history, who had the right to tell it. And at the same time, there were efforts by those in power cover up the scandalous truth because the admiralty, those in power were listening these warring stories wondering do we actually like any of these stories. They make british officer and crew the vanguard of the empire. Are these suppose that apostles of western civilization looked more like brutes than gentlemen. And so they also attempt to manufacture and tell their own version of the story, their own alternative history, their mythic tale. Now, when i first began researching this story, i did so in a place very suited for my poultry physical attributes, which was in the archives and. And what is amazing is that its a trove of these records, primary materials still exist. You could find journals and logbooks and muster books. Somehow they survived. You know, the storms, the perfect hurricane. Some came back even from the shipwreck. And it took me a while to read these documents can also speak to you in very unexpected ways. For example, i pulled the master books, some of the ships in the squadron, a master book is simply almost like a list of when somebody comes on board a ship, their name is listed the time they arrived. The rank officer, whatnot. But there were an abbreviation, a little column of abbreviated symbols next to them. And at first when i looked at these, it must have books they look just like gibberish to me. And they really i thought all these are dont tell you anything, but i was informed by a British Naval historians that no, you have to look at those abbreviations. And i kept noticing these symbols next, so many members of the it kept saying after their name. Dee dee dee dee. Keep going down. Dee dee. Dee dee. On and on. Dee dee dee dee. What did he do . Stand for discharged, dead. These people are all die during voyage. And so these seemingly arcane and a dying record, roads that were crumbling for the 18th century, they revealed the true horrific toll, the sex issue. Nearly 2000 people went and more than 1300 perished. Shocking death rate even for a voyage like this. But after about two years of doing research in the archives, i began to be gnawed by that doubt. That sometimes hits you as a researcher, fearing there was still more. I needed to know and that i might never able to fully understand what. The castaways had undergone on and experience on that island unless i went there myself. And so thats when i decided to do something foolish. And i told my wife, im going to go to wager island. And i found the chilean captain who could take me there. He had sent me picture of the boat when i was in new york. And from the picture of the boat, look really big and formidable. Like some Jack Cousteau vessel. And i thought, okay, no problem. I got this. It took me about four days to eventually fly. We were going to leave from chiloe island, which is off the coast of chile, which about 350 miles north of what is now known as wager island. And i had to fly from to florida, then to santiago. And then i flew south. And then i took a car and then i took a ferry. Eventually i get to the boat in chile island. After several days, i take one look at the boat. I see that doesnt look like boat in the picture, alex. Pretty darn small. And were supposed to leave righaw. But it was so rough t couldnt embark and so we were trapped in this port. One day passed, and then another day. Coast guard wouldnt let any boats in out and the captain just kept saying, i just need, you know, a few hours to get across this gulf of good weather. And finally, on the fourth or fifth day, the coast guard, yes, you can leave. And we slipped out at dawn. Here you can see my very glorious. I got the best captain on the best captain on the boat. And for those of you whove been to patagonia, i had never been there. You know, its amazing. The coastline looks like you took a plate or a glass and you just shattered it. And there are all these is slits all these little islands. So if you weave them, you can actually be shielded from ocean and wine through these misty passageways that are relatively calm. And again, i thought, oh, i got and we would stop the captain the boat was heated by a woodstove. It was wintertime. It was heated by wood stove. So wed stop at the little is lets pull the boat and the captain here would go off and cut would bring him on the ship. And thats how we stayed warm. We would also hook up a hose up to the glacial streams, and thats how we would get water for the boat. Let me just tell you, that was cold. The shower ive ever taken 15 seconds. And you were awake for a week and. But eventually, after about five days, the captain came to me and said, well, now you know, if were going to get to wager on them, were going to have to go out into the open ocean now. And thats when we headed out into those seas and for a little refresher course here, i was back on that ship sitting on the floor. You could any you couldnt stand. And so i had to figure out a way to pass the time and so what foolish thing that i decide to do. I had on my iphone a recording of moby. And so i listened to moby for 10 hours a day. Well, i tried not to be seasick. And let me just set up a novel. Absolutely. Recommend it perhaps not the most soothing thing to do when youre in tumultuous seas, but captain was very skilled and i dont describe the voyage, the book im telling you about it because it was so informative and it breathed life into my descriptions of my understanding. I couldnt have written the book without going. Captain was, very skilled. He leads us around the headlands and into the gulf of saros or as i like to call it, the gulf of payne. And there are references on the map to this day, to this old chapter of history that is bewildering to most contemporary seamen. And at one point, my captain pointed on our map to several islands which had names like smith and hobbs and waller. And i thought, well, these are such curious sounding english names, and they seem kind of familiar to me. And i had brought with me some of the cast copies of the castaways journals, and sure enough, i found the names in them that was where when some of the castaway came from, some one of the factions had tried to escape from wager island and to tiny little boats. One of the boats had sank and they had not enough room them on the other boat. So these four men were abandoned on this little group of islands and this is why they are named after them. This is their only epitaph. And the captain didnt know why. He just knew those were the names. We also went by a canal cheap and byron island and eventually we got to wager island. And at dawn, after sleeping the island at dawn the next morning we got into a little zodiac. Im going to show you a photograph because i look so good in it. I share this photograph, the wishes of my wife, just to show you, how bundled up i was, i had all these layers. A war hat, long johns and yet i was still really cold. And so i suddenly understood why in the journals the castaways kept describing using the term saying were freezing. But now i really understood that they were no doubt suffering from hypothermia from me. They only had scraps of clothing, much of which had disintegrated on the island. And eventually we got to the island and we were able to explore it. The castaways so described how hard it was to walk the island. And sure enough, it really impossible to walk not only because its so mountainous, but its in this dense foliage and boggy ground. So its like pushing through hedges after going about 25 yards, you just exhausted and we explore the area where the encampment where the castaways built their encampment centuries ago like them could find no animals on the island other than the birds flying in the distance we saw some mussels along the shore i found some of the kind of see us some of the kind of celery which they had eaten. And i could now begin to understand why they had descended into a lord of the flies and why that british officer had the island as the where the soul, the man dies in him, and at one point a member of our group called down and pointed to an icy stream saying, look, look over here. And i looked at the icy stream and there just beneath the surface, i could see some planks of timber, about five yards long from, an 18th century warship believed to be from his majestys ship. The wager were we knew what they were because a joint british and chilean expedition had discovered them about a decade earlier. And here you can see a video we took of those planks planks. And nothing else remains of that furious that once took place there or the ravaging dreams of empire and after all the time of documenting all warring stories and the battle over history, the battle over survival, evil, all the sound and fury i just stood there listening to the eternal hush of the sea be happy to answer any questions. You have. We have about 15 minutes for your question. Again, if you could bring your questions to the microphone, to the folks back home for your question. Thank you. Thank you to you and the Enoch Pratt Free Library for this im honored to be in the same room as you you wrote mine and my wifes Favorite Book of all time. I suspect this might become my new all time favorite. Thank so much. What was it like as a writer to go between the two books and how did you land on is your next one . Yeah. So after killers of the flower moon, i was deeply interested in why certain parts of our history are told and other parts get left out. Of course, of the flower moon was about one of the worst racial injustices and one of the more monstrous crimes in american history, which was the systematic killings of members of the osage nation for their oil in the early 20th century in oklahoma, and yet, while the osage knew their history, so many others, the osage nation and i include myself among them, had never been taught that history. We, in effect, excised it from our consciousness. And i wondered, why was certain histories get told and others dont. And this story, when was doing research, really seemed like a perfect illustration of how that happens. And i first came across the story when i was doing research on mutinies. Mutinies was a subject i was also interested in. I was always interested in that kind of rebellion that takes place a military organization, because these are instruments of the state to impose order and what causes them to suddenly disorder. Are they extreme outlaws or was there something unjust . The system that justified rebellion . Its a reason why i think mutinies fascinate us in literature and film for so long. Its why mutinies are so brutally quashed, often by the state because they pose such a threat. And when i was doing that research, i came across that 18th century count by john byron. And let me just say the account was written in this stilted english. The fs were printed as essays. I mean, the essays were printed as fs and and it was kind of written this convoluted prose. And im thinking how what is this . What is this . But i kept pausing over these arresting passages, the perfect hurricane scurvy madness, shipwreck, cannibalism. Although he only describes it as that last extremity and and i realized that this account held the clues to one of the more extraordinary sagas of survival and adventure that ever come across. And then, as i did, more, i began to see those other dimensions to the story that this was story about the search for truth, about the nature of truth, the nature of leadership, about imperialism, and and also about the way we tell history. And so thats what drew me to it. Thank. Mr. Grand. Yes. The stories you tell, places you go, and the way that caught danger. I wondered whether or not, you were still married, so you so you did answer that question. And she must be a very special woman. Shes the thing i ever got. Oh, right. But i wanted to know whether or not your research captured any of the narratives of the free men of color that was on the boat and. And and very briefly, i wonder about marshal merritts time law that would give the British Government jurisdiction over what happened on the island. Thank you to two great questions. Im going to do the last question. First, the so. Yes, it actually raised the question and some of the seamen tried to find some of the alleged mutineers try to use that as a loophole because. It was not explored licit in the rules. So could they you did they have jurisdiction over them if the british navy wanted to have jurisdiction over with them they could have easily just asserted it later, though they would change the rules to make it abundantly clear that if was a shipwreck, the captains power extended onto land and it came directly out of what happened on this island island. There was a free black seaman that we know who is on the wager. His name was john doug. He is mentioned in in some of the accounts by other seamen and. He was somebody who had survived. He was from london. He went on this voyage, had survived, going around cape horn. He survived the storm arms, the tempest, the scurvy outbreak and the shipwreck. He then survived one of these unbelievably long casts, two voyages. And yet, unlike and this is specifically to your question unlike some of the other survivors, he did not have an opportune party to share his testimony or story and. The reason was that he was seized and kidnaped and sold into slavery, which was a fear and a threat that often loomed over black seamen at that time and his is one of the many stories that cannot be told and one of the points i tried to emphasize in the book is how empire preserve their power, not only by stories they tell, but also by the stories they dont tell. By those parts they leave out the pages torn out of the history books and this is one of them. Two more questions. One here. Thank you for your amazing work. Thank you. So im curious how this works at the new yorker. So do say to david rudnick, ill be gone for a few years. Just send the paycheck here. Im not going to answer this question. Im going to get in trouble, come out of the cameras. If he doesnt notice, it doesnt happen. But but seriously, i mean, this so hes a reporter, hes dodgy. Hes coming back at me. No, a new yorker fan. And im curious how it goes. So i obviously spent many, many years devoting my resources and time specifically the new yorker writing magazine pieces, several each year. And then for a while i would of go off in the books and i would juggle and i remember i worked on the last city z. Like it was like i would try to juggle, get book leave, but then i was trying to juggle the magazine stuff, which was really hard and as i focus more on books, im little like an emiratis is that the word professor who disappears . The books take me so long. Killers of the flower moon took me half a decade. The wager took me half decade and the intensity of the research is so obsessive. I wish i was quicker and i wish i was more talented to be able to do both. But i found i really cant and my wife is the most patient understanding person in the world. And second to that would be david remnick. I, i was thinking another new yorker writer while you were speaking, thats john mcphee. He gets awfully close to his subject, too. How would you compare your approach to his approach . Yeah. I mean, hes an inspiration, you know, as a writer, you read other writers to learn how you do this thing. Mcphees been doing this a lot longer than have and has really mastered the form and so for ill give you two examples of how this can happen and play out. For example, the first two chapters of the book are kind of set up. I have to kind of build the world, the wooden world of a ship so that you understand, the floating civilization that will slowly then deteriorate. You have to know the world. You can understand what happens when it breaks apart. And so one of the books i looked at was by david mccullough, the brooklyn bridge, i remember reading that years earlier, and as it got, he always made engineering so exciting. And so i read that book. None of its in my book, but it was just an inspiration. Thats how you do this. Thats how you write about construction and building, and you make it vivid and, exciting and come alive for the people. And there was a passage voyage, a very specific passage in the wager. So im glad you asked this question. Where i was quoting the journals. And i kept to saying, oh, theyre hungry, theyre hungry. And suddenly i thought, how would mcphee do this . Because the hunger was getting repetitive. How would mcphee handle this . And i knew exactly what he would do, he would just take the frag mints from the journals. This kind of obsessive repetition and quote from them. So you just keep hearing and suddenly you it through their eyes. You recognize the pain, as opposed to saying, oh, theyre hungry, theyre hungry again. You just hear their obsessive mind going food. I look for food. I found no food. The call hunger. The hunger is calling again. Where is food . Where is food . And was again just the direct inspiration thought, how will mcphee do that . And thats why i did that. So you try to learn from the masters as much you can. Thank you. I want to take this opportunity to thank peter grand for his time. Thank you all so much