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 TimesPulitzer 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 cific, 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 . Th