Abandoning his comfort zone, author David Grann ventures to inhospitable island off the coast of Patagonia. He explains to Jon Wertheim how and why he followed in the footsteps of castaways.
"Even today, life at sea is not easy. Back in the 1700s, life at sea bordered on the extreme of hardship, where living conditions for the crew, even in fair seas, regularly contravened minimum requirements of the modern Geneva Convention."
In 1740, the 28-gun ship HMS Wager was wrecked off the coast of an uninhabited island in South America. Its crew turned to in-fighting and cannibalism as they tried to survive.