Im the manager of author and speaker engagement at the pratt library. Thank you all for coming this evening. Its greatly appreciated. And davids to come out and speak for about 45 minutes. He has a powerpoint. Youll be able to see everything off screen right there. And hell take your questions. Youll know about 15 minutes for your questions. We do have a virtual of this program like we do for all of programs. So if you wouldnt mind bringing questions to that mike or to that mike, the folks back home can hear them. I want to thank our onsite bookseller, ivy bookshop for being here. If you havent purchased a book yet, please do so. Join me to the joke. Okay. I spot a Library Books from a mile away, so dont to get one signed. Okay. If it didnt land, see she loves that one. We have a lot of great programs in may and june coming up as our new campus newsletter out there, theres a please grab your way out. I promise. Theres something there for everybody tonight. Im happy. Welcome david graham to the library to discuss his latest book, the wager a tale of 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. The incident that resulted in a Court Martial, david grann, a staff writer at the new yorker, is the author of several bestselling, including the lost city of z killers of the flower moon, a finalist for the National Book award and winner of the Edgar Allan Poe award, killer killers of the flower moon is also being adapted, a Martin Scorsese film that will be released this fall vanity fair called the wager, a defying literary naval history thriller, part master and commander, part of the flies, in a recent gq profile, wrote that david has been your favorite writers, favorite writer for decades. And in her review of the book for the los angeles times, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist marianne gwin wrote, the story of the wager is, like many of its antecedents, from homers odyssey to mutiny on bounty, a testament to the depths of human depravity in the heights of human endurance. And you cant ask for better than that from a story. Maybe you get seasick at the thought of a seafaring novel make an exception 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 pratt library. Its great to be here tonight and to be back at the library. Research can you to you never expect for example one day several years ago i found myself in a small wood heated boat, a motorboat off the chilly coast of patagonia in what is now an area that is known as gulf of saros, as some prefer to call it the gulf of payne. It was freezing winter and we were caught in a storm with towering waves that dwarfed the boat when i looked in front of me, all i could see was a mountain of water. And when glanced behind me, all i could see another mountain of water. There was captain and two crew members and the boat was being tossed about so violently that i sat on the deck the cabinet, and did not dare where i maybe tossed and break a limb and in you think i may be taking some literary i have some video evidence. So as you can probably. Im not much of an explorer or or an adventurer and i taken every possible remedy of seasickness better possible i was 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 hadnt seen another or another boat for more for nearly a and they kept looking out the porthole, hoping catch a glimpse of that place. It consumed my imagination. Ouija island on that Deserted Island had unfolded one of the most extraordinary and gripping sagas id ever heard of a saga that had philosophers like and voltaire and montesquieu, saint, just like Charles Darwin and of the great novelists of the sea, Herman Melville and patrick obrien. Yet as the boat rolled further and over the seas, swallowing the deck, i began to wonder what youre probably 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 then that a small battered boat washed ashore off the coast of brazil and on board were 30 men. Their bodies wasted to the bone. One soon gave out as the last breath and but one of them rose with an extraordinary exertion of and he announced that they were the of his majestys ship. The and that they had been shipwrecked a desolate island for months and after building this flimsy craft they traverse. Some 3000 miles one of the longest castaway voyages ever recorded and were hailed for their engines, witty and for their courage. Then several months later, another little boat washed ashore off the coast of chile. On the other side, south america. This boat was even 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, could not recollect his name. But when they recover, ld a verd they leveled a shocking allegation that those people had gone to brazil, were not heroes, they were mutineers. And in the controversy that followed with charges being lobbed back and forth from both, it soon became that while stranded on that desolate island, these officers and crew, the supposed that apostles of western had slowly into a real life lord of flies, a hobbesian state with warring factions and mutinies and murder. Now back in england. These castaways, the leaders of the two factions, along with many of their allies, were summoned to face a Court Martial for. Their alleged crimes on the island. And so many them published their conflicting account of what had happened, which sparked a furious war over the truth. Joan didion famously said that we all tell ourselves stories in order to live, get in their place. It was quite literally true. If they did not tell a convincing tale, they could be hanged. These defendants once hoped to return to england, basked in glory. They had embarked with a squad in a four other four other ships. On a secret mission, which was to try to capture a spanish galleon, feel filled with so much treasure. 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 of piracy about it. In fact, the seamen were given offered a tantalizing prospect a share of any treasure treasure money that was seized. But before they could embark, they had to get out of the dockyard raids in england where they had been trapped. This just this map shows where they were heading. And it shows were supposed to cross the atlantic and sail around cape horn, the tip of south america, then up 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, marooned at the dockyards. The squadron included four warships, as well as the major. The flagship was as the centurion was under the command and of the commodore who the leader of the expedition a man named george anson. And the task of getting out of these dockers was proving insurmountable all these ships were really the engineering marvels of their time. They were devised to be both murders instruments, cannons and also the homes to sailors would live in close quarters for as long as years at a time. This model of 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 into a battleship from a merchant ship to serve in this war, but even so was elegant. It had three mass towering mass, a wooden yard arms, which are like booms from which the sails would hang a single ship, like the wager could fly as many as 12 sails. And the larger warships fly as many as 18, yet as sophisticated as these ships were, they were also vulnerable to the elements because they were made of perishable material, which was mostly wood, a single warship, but was one of those astonishing facts come across when youre doing a research, a single warship could take as many as 4000 trees to construct. And these were susceptible to the elements of wind and storm. Little sea worms would burrow holes into ship and termites and. So the squadron was laid up and what was known as rotten row, the dockyards where they had to be essential early remade in many and fitted out for the expedition ocean that 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,. 50, 18,000 square feet of sails sails in a farms worth of animals, including goats, goats and cattle and pig. None of which were very cooperative in getting board the most importantly most the squad and in order to operate these five warships would require for nearly 2000 men, many of whom needed be skilled as seamen. The wager, which was the smallest of the warships at about 123 feet long, would require about 250 men, which nearly twice the number it had originally designed for because of the length of the expedition and the military assaults it would require. Yep. Great britain at that time not have conscription and it had exhausted its supply by of volunteers. And so what did the british admiralty do it 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 even look at your fingernail eels and fingertips to see if you had torn or 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. Yet even after the gangs had gone out, squadron was still short of men. And so the admiralty took, the extreme measure of rounding 500 soldiers and seamen from a retirement home many of these men were in 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 is that they were in many ways like a floaty town or a floating civilization. They were people from all ages, boys as young as six. The cook on the wager was in his eighties and they came from all walks of life there were aristocrats and dandy geese. There were city paupers, free black seamen and craftsmen like, carpenters. Theres a great quote from a seaman who said 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 well as bad. Among the latter, he noted, were burglars. Pickpockets the butchers, adulterers, gangsters, lampoons, imposters, panders parasites, ruffians, hypocrite, hypocrite is my favorite thread worn bow jack a dandy the navy was known for its ability to coalesce these fractious individual wills into what Horatio Nelson would later dub a band of brothers. Yet the challenge on wager was enormous because so many of the men had been pressed and so many were sick. By september 1740, nearly year had gone by since the start 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 the perilous voyage. And here can see the expedition as sketched 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, a three men on board the wager we all impose some cahir some meaning on the chaotic events of our existence. We like to rummage the raw images of our memories selecting burnishing a racing and eye. Organize the book this way to. Show how 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 sheep, who had recently promoted to captain of the wager, he was a burly scotsman in, his forties with a volatile temperament and obsessive dreams of glory. Back in scotland. He had been plagued by debts, chased by creditors. But in that wooden world of a ship he fell and 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 like because he was born to the lower to middle class. He cannot afford to have a portrait made of. But we know his thoughts. His intimate thoughts because he was a compulsive diarist. He was in many ways the most skilled seaman on the wager. And he was instinctive leader. Yet, because he was not born into the aristocracy, he knew that would never become a commander of a warship. And the third perspective is told from the perspective and the point of view of jim 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 june, was greatly influenced. But he referred as my great granddads, my great my granddads narrative. Now, unlike 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 we tell, but also the way stories shape 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 in many ways, ah, 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 be 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 use today came from the age of sail. A scuttlebutt. Does anyone know what a scuttlebutt is . Scuttlebutt was a barrel in the middle of the ship filled with water where the seamen would gather for water rations. And what would they around the scuttlebutt . They would gossip. Piping hot was bosuns whistle for a hot meal. Pipe down was the bosuns to be quiet under the weather. I always thought that was a great for sickness. Well, it turns out to be quite literal on a 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 derive came a little bit later in the century from when vice admiral horatio wanted to ignore his superior officers flag to retreat battle. And so what did he do . He took his telescope and he put it up to his blind eye, which is why we now say turn a blind eye now. One day in the voyage, byron heard, the pitch of order eventually given to every midshipman. Aloft you go. And he had to climb up the main mast, which rose some hundred feet in the air, in order to work the a plunge from such a height when undoubtedly kill him after managed to reach the peak. He could see the other great ships in 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 crossed, the atlantic. It found itself chased by a more powerful spanish armada. Then they faced an even greater threat. The seas around cape horn at the tip. South america. Because these far southern are the only waters flow uninterrupted around globe, unimpeded by any land they accumulate and build waves over as much as 30,000 piles. The cape horn rollers, as theyre called, they reach cape horn and follow through that passage can dwarf a 90 foot mass or the strong currents on earth. And then the which frequently accelerate, accelerate to Hurricane Force and can reach as much 200 miles per hour. Herman melville, who later rounded horn, compared it to a descent into hell in dantes inferno. And as the men tried to round the horn, they were battered by storms day and night. Byron called it the perfect. He would steer 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 to get colder and the rain hardened into sleet. Some the men suffered from frostbite and icicles drip from the lines below 40 degrees. Lot tude. There is no law a sailors adage went below 50 degrees. There is no. And they were now in what was known as the furious fifties. Captain cheap and the other officers and commanders knew they were going to need everybody on board their ships if they were to persevere. And yet it was in that very moment when of 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 body seemed to be coming undone. One man who had fallen in a battle five decades earlier where he had fractured a bone. Of course that bone and healed over five decades. It suddenly again in the very same place. And the disease seemed to be affecting senses. As one seaman put it, it got into our brains and we went raving mad. They were suffering from that great enigma of the age of sail, scurvy, scurvy kilmore mariners. Then all other threats, including other and sea battles, combine. No one then knew that it was brought on by lack of vitamin c and that the cure was so simple. More fruit and in their diet. In fact, the wager in the squadron it stopped in brazil before they went around the horn and on that island where they stopped. There were plenty of limes which could have saved their lives. And of course once people understood later in the century scurvy was caused by british seamen would carry lines with them, which is the reason we were. They were known as limes. In this case, the men in the squadrons suffered one of the worst outbreaks the scurvy ever recorded in maritime history. Hundreds and hundreds of them perished. Their bodies tossed overboard. Unserem tony eastley as the poet lord byron put it, would later put it without grave unconfined, an unknown, cheap. And the other captains were increasingly running out of hands to operate their vessels. Some ships cannot even raise a sail and seals were blowing out in the storm. So much that they had to take them down. And one of the commanders and this was just. Couldnt maneuver the ship without sails were just being tossed about so badly. And so we ordered the top men, the climbed the mass to scurry up these mass up these rope lines and ratlines to their bodies as threadbare sails. And so 100 feet in the air,