I am also indebted to the numerous archivists who made this book possible, including at the British Library, the British National Archives, the National Library of Scotland, the Oregon Historical Society, the University of St. Andrews Library’s Special Collections, and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

  Several individuals were particularly invaluable to the project. Len Barnett tirelessly assisted in finding and copying naval records. Carol McKinven was a wunderkind with genealogical research. Cecilia Mackay tracked down numerous photos and illustrations. Aaron Tomlinson sharpened several of my photographs of Wager Island. Stella Herbert kindly shared with me information about her ancestor Robert Baynes. And Jacob Stern, Jerad W. Alexander, and Madeleine Baverstam—all gifted young reporters—helped locate numerous books and articles.

  I can never thank David Kortava enough. An extraordinary journalist, he not only relentlessly fact-checked the book but was an endless source of insight and support. I asked, as always, too much of my friends and fellow writers Burkhard Bilger, Jonathan Cohn, Tad Friend, Elon Green, David Greenberg, Patrick Radden Keefe, Raffi Khatchadourian, Stephen Metcalf, and Nick Paumgarten.

  Every page benefited from the wisdom of John Bennet, an editor and a friend, who tragically died, in 2022. I will never forget the lessons he imparted to me as a writer, and I hope this book will stand as a small part of his vast legacy.

  Ever since I joined The New Yorker, in 2003, I’ve been blessed to work with Daniel Zalewski, an editor revered among writers. Without his advice and friendship, I would feel marooned, and he gave this book his magical touches, burnishing sentences, removing infelicities, and sharpening my thoughts.

  In a sometimes-turbulent industry, I’ve been steadied by my agents, Kathy Robbins and David Halpern, at the Robbins Office, and Matthew Snyder, at CAA. They have been at my side for decades, guiding and supporting me. I’m also so lucky to have the backing of Nancy Aaronson and Nicole Klett-Angel at the Leigh Bureau.

  There’s been no greater leader to follow than Bill Thomas, my longtime publisher and editor at Doubleday. He made this book, and all my books, possible. Uncannily smart and unwavering in his backing, he has helped me not only to find the right stories but how to best tell them. He and Maya Mavjee, the president and publisher of the Knopf Doubleday Group, and Todd Doughty, my publicist extraordinaire, are a writer’s gift, and so is the entire team at Doubleday. I especially want to thank John Fontana, who designed the book’s cover; Maria Carella, who did the interior design; the copyeditor Patrick Dillon; the managing editors Vimi Santokhi and Kathy Hourigan; the production editor Kevin Bourke; the assistant editor Khari Dawkins; Jeffrey L. Ward, who made the maps; and the incredible marketing force of Kristin Fassler, Milena Brown, Anne Jaconette, and Judy Jacoby.

  Nina and John Darnton remain the most loving in-laws. They read each rough chapter, showing me ways to improve it and giving me the encouragement to forge on. John’s brother, Robert Darnton, who is among the greatest historians, took time to read the manuscript and make wonderful suggestions. My sister, Alison, and my brother, Edward, are my anchors, as is my mother, Phyllis, who, more than anyone, stirred my love of reading and writing. My father, Victor, is no longer alive, but this book was inspired by our many wondrous sailing adventures together. He was always a captain of grace and kindness.

  Finally, there are the three people who are everything to me: Kyra, Zachary, and Ella. No words can express my gratitude to them, and for once, as a writer, I must end in awed silence.

  Notes

  A NOTE ON THE SOURCES

  One day several years ago, I made a visit to the British National Archives, in Kew, where I put in a request. Hours later, I received a box; inside was a dusty, moldering manuscript. To avoid damaging it further, I gently pried open the cover with a paper marker. Each page was arranged in columns, with such headings as “month and year,” ship’s “course,” and “Remarkable Observations and Incidents.” The entries, composed with a quill and ink, were now smudged, and the writing was so small and squirrely that I strained to decipher it.

  On April 6, 1741, with the ship trying to round Cape Horn, an officer wrote under observations, “All the sails and rigging was bad and men very sickly.” Several days later, the officer noted, “Lost sight of the Commodore and all the squadron.” With each passing day, the notes grew bleaker—the ship was breaking apart, the men were running out of drinking water. On April 21, the entry read: “Timothy Picaz, seaman, departed this life…Thomas Smith, invalid, departed this life…John Paterson, invalid, and John Fiddies, seaman, departed this life.”

  The book was just one of the many harrowing logs that had survived from the expedition led by George Anson. Even after more than two and a half centuries have passed, there is a surprising trove of firsthand documents, including those detailing the Wager’s calamitous wreck on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. These records include not only logbooks, but also correspondence, diaries, muster books, court-martial testimony, Admiralty reports, and other government records. Added to them are numerous contemporaneous newspaper accounts, sea ballads, and sketches made during the voyage. And, of course, there are the vivid sea narratives that many of the participants themselves published.

  The book you are holding is drawn extensively from these rich materials. My descriptions of Wager Island and the surrounding seas were further enhanced by my own three-week journey there, which provided at least a glimpse of the wonder and terror that the castaways experienced.

  To depict life inside the wooden world during the eighteenth century, I also relied on both published and unpublished journals of other mariners. And I benefited from the work of several superb historians. Glyn Williams’s book The Prize of All the Oceans remains invaluable, as does his edited collection of primary records, Documents Relating to Anson’s Voyage Round the World. Other essential sources included Daniel Baugh’s groundbreaking British Naval Administration in the Age of Walpole; Denver Brunsman’s illuminating history of impressment, The Evil Necessity; Brian Lavery’s brilliant studies of shipbuilding and naval life, among them The Arming and Fitting of English Ships of War, 1600–1815 and his edited collection of primary documents, Shipboard Life and Organisation, 1731–1815; and N. A. M. Rodger’s monumental The Wooden World. Rear Admiral C. H. Layman has also reprinted several key records in his edited collection of primary documents, The Wager Disaster. In addition, I relied on many extensive interviews with these and other experts.

  In the bibliography, I have delineated any important sources. If I was especially indebted to a book or article, I tried to cite it in the notes as well. Anything that appears in the text between quotation marks comes directly from a journal, log, diary, letter, or some other source. For clarity, I have modernized archaic spellings and punctuation, such as the random capitalization of words and the use of the f-like version of s that was common in the eighteenth century. Any quotations are cited in the notes.

  ARCHIVAL AND UNPUBLISHED SOURCES

  BL British Library

  ADD MSS Additional Manuscripts

  ERALS East Riding Archives and Local Studies

  HALS Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, Hertfordshire

  JS Joseph Spence papers in the James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

  LOC Library of Congress, Washington, DC

  NMM National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

  ADM B Letters from the Navy Board to the Admiralty

  ADM L Admiralty: Lieutenants’ Logs

  HER Heron-Allen Collection, containing letters and engraved portraits of naval officers

  HSR Manuscript documents

  JOD Journals and diaries

  LBK Letter books of naval officers

  PAR/162/1 Personal collection of Sir William Parker, Admiral of the Fleet, 1781–1866

  POR Portsmouth Dockyard letters and reports

  NLS National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

  NRS National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh

  CC8 Wills and testaments

  JC26/135 Court records

  SIG1 Land records

  OHS Oregon Historical Society, Portland

  TNA The National Archives, Kew, Surrey

  ADM 1 Admiralty official correspondence and papers

  ADM 1/5288 Admiralty court-martial records

  ADM 3 Admiralty board minutes

  ADM 6 Admiralty service records, registers, returns, and certificates

  ADM 8 Admiralty list books

  ADM 30 Navy Board: Navy Pay Office

  ADM 33 Navy Board pay books for ships

  ADM 36 Admiralty muster books for ships

  ADM 51 Admiralty captains’ logs

  ADM 52 Admiralty masters’ logs

  ADM 55 Admiralty supplementary logs and journals of ships on exploration

  ADM 106 Navy Board: in letters

  HCA High Court of Admiralty records

  PROB 11 Copies of wills from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury

  SP Records assembled by the State Paper Office, including papers of the Secretaries of State

  RLSA Rochdale Local Studies and Archive, Rochdale, England

  SL State Library of New South Wales, Australia

  USASC University of St. Andrews Special Collections, Scotland

  WSRO West Sussex Record Office, England

  PROLOGUE

  the strange object: My description of the arrival of the vessels is drawn largely from the survivors’ journals, dispatches, published accounts, and private correspondence. For more information, see John Bulkeley and John Cummins’s A Voyage to the South Seas; John Byron’s The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron; Alexander Campbell’s The Sequel to Bulkeley and Cummins’s “Voyage to the South Seas”; C. H. Layman’s The Wager Disaster; and records in TNA-ADM 1 and JS.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “human nature”: Bulkeley and Cummins, A Voyage to the South Seas, xxxi. John Cummins, the carpenter on the Wager, is listed as coauthor of the journal, but Bulkeley was the one who actually wrote it.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “quite lost himself”: Byron, The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron, 170.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “dark and intricate”: Bulkeley and Cummins, A Voyage to the South Seas, xxiv.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “faithful narrative”: Campbell, The Sequel to Bulkeley and Cummins’s “Voyage to the South Seas,” cover page.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “I have been”: Ibid., vii–viii.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “imperfect narrative”: Bulkeley and Cummins, A Voyage to the South Seas, 72.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “blackened us”: Ibid.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “We stand”: Ibid., xxiv.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  CHAPTER 1

  David Cheap: Little has previously been published about Cheap’s background, and my portrait of him is drawn mostly from unpublished records. They include his family’s papers, his private correspondence, and his logbooks and dispatches. I’ve also drawn from several of the journals and accounts composed by his friends and enemies. For more information, see records at JS, TNA, NMM, USASC, NLS, and NRS. Also see Bulkeley and Cummins’s A Voyage to the South Seas; Byron’s The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron; Campbell’s The Sequel to Bulkeley and Cummins’s “Voyage to the South-Seas”; and Alexander Carlyle’s Anecdotes and Characters of the Times.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Cheap: The traditional spelling of his surname was Cheape. But in both contemporaneous and modern accounts of the voyage, it is generally spelled Cheap, and I’ve used that spelling throughout to avoid confusion.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  George Anson: My portrait of Anson is drawn from the unpublished written records he has left behind, including his correspondence with the Admiralty and the logbooks from his voyages. I’ve also relied upon descriptions of him in letters, diaries, and other writings composed by his family members, fellow seamen, and contemporaries. Moreover, I benefited from several published accounts. These include Walter Vernon Anson’s The Life of Admiral Lord Anson: The Father of the British Nav, 1697–1762; John Barrow’s The Life of Lord George Anson; N. A. M. Rodger’s entry about Anson in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as well as in Precursors of Nelson, edited by Peter Le Fevre and Richard Harding; Andrew D. Lambert’s Admirals: The Naval Commanders Who Made Britain Great; Brian Lavery, Anson’s Navy: Building a Fleet for Empire 1744 –1763; Richard Walter’s A Voyage Round the World; S. W. C. Pack’s Admiral Lord Anson: The Story of Anson’s Voyage and Naval Events of His Day; and Glyn Williams’s The Prize of All the Oceans. Finally, I’m grateful to the historian Lavery, who shared with me an unpublished essay he had written about Anson.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  did not wield: Although Anson didn’t carry the sort of family connections that greased the rise of many officers, he was not totally devoid of them. His aunt was married to the Earl of Macclesfield. Later, through his meritorious naval service, he also developed several influential backers, including Philip Yorke, the first Earl of Hardwicke.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  propelled many officers: A letter one captain sent to a colleague perfectly captures how this patronage, or “interest,” worked in the Navy. “I must beg you will now use all your interest with your great and noble friends that I may at this time be promoted to a Flag Officer,” the captain wrote.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “Anson, as usual”: Quoted in Barrow, The Life of Lord George Anson, 241.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “He loved reading”: Quoted in Rodger, “George, Lord Anson,” in Precursors of Nelson, ed. Le Fevre and Harding, 198.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “round it”: Ibid., 181.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “He had high”: Ibid., 198.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “act up to”: Thomas Keppel, The Life of Augustus, Viscount Keppel, Admiral of the White, and First Lord of the Admiralty in 1782–3, vol. 1, 172.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “No man will”: Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, 338.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “The sooner he”: Unpublished autobiography of Andrew Massie, which I had translated from Latin into English, NLS.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “unhappy fate”: Report from Cheap to Richard Lindsey, Feb. 26, 1744, JS.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  few pirates: One captain under whom Cheap served had written an account describing how a band of pirates had stormed his ship in the Caribbean. “The enemy came in furiously with their lances and cutlasses and fell cutting me and my people in a most barbarous manner,” the captain reported, adding, “Besides two musket balls which I received in the middle of the action through my right thigh, I was cut in three places of my head.”

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “vaporing manner”: Carlyle, Anecdotes and Characters of the Times, 100.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “a man of”: Ibid., 99.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  The conflict: For more information on the war, see Craig S. Chapman, Disaster on the Spanish Main, and Robert Gaudi, The War of Jenkins’ Ear: The Forgotten War for North and South America.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  pickled in a jar: The poet Alexander Pope further enshrined the story, writing that “the Spaniards did a waggish thing” when they “cropt our ears, and sent them to the King.”

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “my cause”: Quoted in Philip Stanhope Mahon, History of England: From the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles, vol. 2, 268.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  round Cape Horn: The instructions also mentioned alternatively going through the Strait of Magellan, a treacherous passageway between the end of the South American mainland and Tierra del Fuego. But Commodore Anson planned to round Cape Horn.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “taking, sinking, burning”: Instructions to Commodore Anson, 1740, printed in Glyndwr Williams, ed., Documents Relating to Anson’s Voyage Round the World, 35.