Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: They begin to release their wildly conflicting accounts about what
Speaker 2: had occurred, and they're hoping to save their lives because
Speaker 2: if they don't tell a convincing tale, it could be hanged.
Speaker 2: And so this unleashes this great war of the truth. Here.
Speaker 2: These men have waged the war against the elements, and
Speaker 2: now they're going to wage just war over the truth.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
Speaker 1: true crime podcast Tenfold More Wicked and the co host
Speaker 1: of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. I've traveled
Speaker 1: around the world interviewing people for the show, and they
Speaker 1: are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true
Speaker 1: crime stories, and now we want to tell you those
Speaker 1: stories worries with details that have never been published. Tenfold
Speaker 1: War Wicked presents Wicked Words is about the choices that
Speaker 1: writers make, good and bad. It's a deep dive into
Speaker 1: the stories behind the stories. I love a tale set
Speaker 1: on the high seas. You can't beat a twisty story
Speaker 1: about an eighteenth century mutiny and survival and then conflicting accounts.
Speaker 1: Author David Grant has written about the epic, harrowing saga
Speaker 1: of a ship and its crew in a book called
Speaker 1: The Wager, A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. Let's
Speaker 1: jump into the story of the Wager and what its
Speaker 1: mission was. Where we are in time.
Speaker 2: So in seventeen thirty nine, an imperial war had broken
Speaker 2: out between Great Britain and its imperial rival Spain, and
Speaker 2: the Wager the ship had received orders to set sail
Speaker 2: with a squadron of several other warships on a secret
Speaker 2: mission to try to capture a Spanish galleon filled with
Speaker 2: so much treasure was known as the Prize of all
Speaker 2: the Oceans, I believe it or not. That was part
Speaker 2: of the mission, had a real whiff of piracy about it,
Speaker 2: even though it was a naval mission and it was
Speaker 2: part of the war. So that was the original order
Speaker 2: and kind of what begins this misadventure.
Speaker 1: Anyways, So how many crewmen are we talking about and
Speaker 1: how many officers? What's the hierarchy of the ship as
Speaker 1: far as you knew.
Speaker 2: It, Yeah, so in the squadron entirely there are five warships,
Speaker 2: including the Wager. There's a scouting sloop of smaller ship,
Speaker 2: and there are two tiny cargo ships that are going
Speaker 2: to company that are supposed to the company. The expedition
Speaker 2: partway altogether in the squadron. It would require nearly two
Speaker 2: thousand men and boys to man these ships. And these
Speaker 2: ships were really very complex. They were kind of the
Speaker 2: engineering marvels of their time, and so they required skilled men.
Speaker 2: You know, even before the voyage began, the seeds of
Speaker 2: its destruction were planted. The Wager, which was the smallest
Speaker 2: of the war, it needed about two hundred and fifty men,
Speaker 2: which was nearly double the number it was designed to carry.
Speaker 2: But the British Navy had exhausted its supply of volunteers
Speaker 2: and it did not have a conscription back then. So
Speaker 2: what it did was it sent out these press gangs
Speaker 2: to towns and cities and ports, and they would eyeball
Speaker 2: people who would eyeball men and boys, and they basically say, oh,
Speaker 2: you got this round hat, you got a little checkered shirt.
Speaker 2: They would even inspect your fingertips to see if you
Speaker 2: had a little tar on them, because tar was used
Speaker 2: on ships to make everything water resistant, and if they
Speaker 2: thought so, well, then they would just seize you and
Speaker 2: in effect kidnap you and drag you unwillingly on a
Speaker 2: voyage that might last two to three years. You know,
Speaker 2: no chance to say goodbye or loaded your family. Even then,
Speaker 2: the amilty was sure to mend for this squadron, so
Speaker 2: it took the extreme step of rounding up five hundred
Speaker 2: soldiers from a retirement home. You know, you have to
Speaker 2: have a gallon's humor because it's just so dark. I mean,
Speaker 2: you rounded up these pensioners who were in their sixties
Speaker 2: and seventies. Many were missing an assortment of limbs, and
Speaker 2: some were so sick they had to be lifted on
Speaker 2: stretchers onto these vessels. So that was the beginning. That's
Speaker 2: how it all began.
Speaker 1: From what I know about ships in the seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: they were often filled with the people you're describing. It
Speaker 1: could be criminals, people off the street. You know, they
Speaker 1: were trying to supply the ships with everyone and everything
Speaker 1: they possibly could. The officers sometimes were very unprepared and undertrained,
Speaker 1: and maybe we're just there because you know, they were
Speaker 1: part of high society and this would be an honor
Speaker 1: to head the ship. Is that the case with the squadron,
Speaker 1: Do we have people who really don't belong in high positions?
Speaker 2: The good question. The kind of the expedition who had
Speaker 2: not ever led an expedition or done anything of this sort,
Speaker 2: turns out to be extraordinarily competent and capable. More than competent.
Speaker 2: He has that mysterious qualities that make a great commander,
Speaker 2: which usually not only a master of the wooden world
Speaker 2: of the ship, but he was a master of himself.
Speaker 2: But on these ships you sometimes had aristocratic dandies who
Speaker 2: would be officers. For example, the wage you would eventually
Speaker 2: have a captain who had a very kind of volatile,
Speaker 2: tempestuous personality. And one of the things that makes these
Speaker 2: ships so interesting is that they really were these kind
Speaker 2: of odd, eclectic, floating civilizations. So you would have these
Speaker 2: officers who tended to come from the aristocracy and the nobility.
Speaker 2: Many of them were quite well educated. You might have dandies,
Speaker 2: you'd have city paulpers, you'd have these press people on
Speaker 2: the ship unwillingly, you'd have free black seamen, and they're
Speaker 2: all kind of thrown together onto one of these ships,
Speaker 2: and they have to be somehow molded into a band
Speaker 2: or brothers.
Speaker 1: So how well does the trip go until it doesn't
Speaker 1: go well? Is everybody getting along or are they staying
Speaker 1: on their mission or are they chasing down the Spanish
Speaker 1: vessels the way they're supposed.
Speaker 2: To the biggest challenge is it takes them a long
Speaker 2: time to get out of the dockyards in England because
Speaker 2: as sophisticated as these ships are with their lethal instruments,
Speaker 2: because they were made for gun battles and also meant
Speaker 2: to be the home for all these seilers living together
Speaker 2: in close quarters, they were also made a very perish materials,
Speaker 2: which was wood, and so the ships have been kind
Speaker 2: of laid up on rotten rode for months and months
Speaker 2: and months waiting to finally get off. And the wager
Speaker 2: is a little bit the ugly duckling of the runt
Speaker 2: of the expedition of the warships, because it had not
Speaker 2: been born for battle. It was remade from a merchant
Speaker 2: ship into warship. It was the lowest ranking warship. It
Speaker 2: was the sixth rate, which mean and had twenty eight cannons.
Speaker 2: It was a little tubby and it kind of doubled
Speaker 2: as a storeship for the expedition. But eventually they finally
Speaker 2: set off nearly a year after they were supposed to,
Speaker 2: and they get across the Atlantic, but almost immediately everything
Speaker 2: begins to go wrong. I mean, the ships are working
Speaker 2: and functioning, and the crews are working, functioning, but pretty
Speaker 2: soon they find they're being chased by a Spanish ramada
Speaker 2: that is larger than their own squadron, so they're trying
Speaker 2: to outrun it, and then they have to sail around
Speaker 2: Cape Horn. And Cape Horn is at the very tip
Speaker 2: of South America, because their mission is to sail around
Speaker 2: Cape Horn and then into the Pacific and try to
Speaker 2: intercept the guy in off the coast of the Philippines
Speaker 2: and Cape Horn. The seas around Cape Horn are among
Speaker 2: the most violent in the world. It is the one
Speaker 2: place on Earth where the seas travel thirteen thousand miles uninterrupted.
Speaker 2: They never get blocked by land, and so because of that,
Speaker 2: they just accumulate enormous force. A Cape Horn roller wave
Speaker 2: could dwarf an ninemy foot mass. There are the strongest
Speaker 2: currents on Earth as they funnel into this passageway between
Speaker 2: the tip of South America and Antarctica. And then there
Speaker 2: are the winds which frequently accelerate the hurricane force. Herman Melville,
Speaker 2: who would later make the journey around the Horn, compare
Speaker 2: it to a descent into Hell and Dante's Inferno. Dramatic, yes,
Speaker 2: very dramatic, and as Velveo is, nobody wrote about the
Speaker 2: sea better. And so immediately they are just battered by
Speaker 2: these storms day and night. The ship's breaking apart, the
Speaker 2: seals blowing out. And at that very point when they're
Speaker 2: going to need every person on board these ships, if
Speaker 2: they're gonna have any chance to persevere, what happens. They
Speaker 2: begin to suffer from a mysterious illness.
Speaker 1: I've read about this illness and it sounds just terrible.
Speaker 1: What is this?
Speaker 2: First they suffered from typhus and have high fevers, and
Speaker 2: several of them die. And then when they reach Cape Horn,
Speaker 2: they are suffering from a new illness, the great enigma
Speaker 2: the sea, which was scurvy. And their teeth begins to
Speaker 2: fall out, and their hair falls out, and their eyes bulge,
Speaker 2: and even the cartilage that seemed to glue together their
Speaker 2: bones is coming undone. There was one semen in one
Speaker 2: of the accounts, described the fractured a limb in a
Speaker 2: battle fifty years earlier fighting in war, and of course
Speaker 2: the fracture of long since heale, but suddenly with this disease,
Speaker 2: it suddenly refractures in the very same place. And something
Speaker 2: I didn't realize about scurvy is that it can affect
Speaker 2: the senses. And one of these even described how the
Speaker 2: disease got into our brains and we went raving mad.
Speaker 2: But they didn't know then was that the cure was
Speaker 2: so simple, that they were suffering from a vitamin C
Speaker 2: deficiency on the ships because they didn't bring fruit vegetables,
Speaker 2: they'd have refrigeration, and that the cure had actually been
Speaker 2: right within the reach when they had stopped at Brazil,
Speaker 2: before they came around the Cape Horn, there were actually
Speaker 2: limes on this island. And of course, later in the century,
Speaker 2: when the British Navy discovers that scurvy could be cured
Speaker 2: with lines, they would carry limes on their ships, and
Speaker 2: of course British svem became known as limeys. But back
Speaker 2: then they didn't know that, and this expedition suffered what
Speaker 2: is considered one of the worst scurvy outbreaks in maritime history,
Speaker 2: and hundreds and hundreds members of this expedition perish. Their
Speaker 2: bodies were just thrown overboard unceremoniously.
Speaker 1: And is this also the time period when they were
Speaker 1: eating bad meat in the ten Cans?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you know the foods that started to
Speaker 2: rock the bread again. You don't have refrigeration on these ships,
Speaker 2: so these little biscuits they have are so hard and
Speaker 2: they're kind of worm eating and when they would hit them,
Speaker 2: they would describe hitting them against the table and they
Speaker 2: would just kind of disintegrate into dust. Some of the
Speaker 2: meat had spoiled on the expedition, so they are suffering
Speaker 2: from poor provisions. And you know, on top of that,
Speaker 2: when they're around Cape Horn, it's so rough. The seas
Speaker 2: are so bad they can't really even use the stove,
Speaker 2: so they often have to eat raw meat.
Speaker 1: So the Wager and its ships are battered and the
Speaker 1: men are dying and battered, and dead bodies are thrown overboard.
Speaker 1: But then it gets worse. When does it get worse?
Speaker 1: As if we didn't get worse.
Speaker 2: So the ships are desperate to stay together around Cape
Speaker 2: Horn because they know if they separate, there'll be no
Speaker 2: one there to rescue them if something happens. So what
Speaker 2: do they do? You know, it's kind of interesting you
Speaker 2: learn these things, like how did you communicate back then
Speaker 2: when you didn't have iPhones, You didn't have any telecommunications.
Speaker 2: And so what they would do is they would fire
Speaker 2: blanks in their cannon. So they're firing their cannons repeatedly
Speaker 2: to signal the location. But eventually the blasket drowned out
Speaker 2: and all the ships scattered in the storm. They're all separated,
Speaker 2: and the Wager, as a new commander, relatively new commander,
Speaker 2: man named David Chip, finds himself and his ship all
Speaker 2: alone and left to their own destiny. And he was
Speaker 2: recently promoted to be captain. He had previously been a lieutenant.
Speaker 2: He was somebody who back on land had kind of
Speaker 2: been plagued by debts and frustration and chased by creditors,
Speaker 2: but on a ship he had always found refuge. And
Speaker 2: on this expedition he had finally attained what he had
Speaker 2: always just kind of obsessively longed for, which was this
Speaker 2: chance to captain his own warship. So he's determined to
Speaker 2: prove himself as this new captain, and he does manage
Speaker 2: to steer the Wager around Cape Horn, and he wants
Speaker 2: to meet at a predetermined rendezvous point that they had
Speaker 2: in case they were ever separated off the coast of Chile.
Speaker 2: But he and the other seamen on the wager are
Speaker 2: suffering from another huge challenge, which is they don't know
Speaker 2: precisely where they are on the map. They could determine
Speaker 2: their latitude by reading the stars, but they had no
Speaker 2: way of knowing their longitude because that would require a
Speaker 2: reliable clock, and they hadn't yet been invented, and so
Speaker 2: they're forced to rely on what was called dead reckoning,
Speaker 2: which is essentially informed guestswork an elite of faith. And
Speaker 2: as the wager is coming up the coast to Chile
Speaker 2: off Patagonia through the Pacific, their longitude, their estimation of
Speaker 2: their longitude turns out not only are you wrong, but
Speaker 2: wrong by hundreds of miles, and they suddenly find themselves
Speaker 2: trapped in a gulf known as a golf would a
Speaker 2: pain us, which translates as the golf of sorrows, or
Speaker 2: some seamen would translate as the gulf of pain. And
Speaker 2: there the wager suddenly hits a submerged rock.
Speaker 1: You talk about in the book how blindly they would sail,
Speaker 1: Tell me how they would figure out the depth, because
Speaker 1: I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well even everything. I mean, they would do soundings
Speaker 2: by dropping ropes with weights to try to figure out depths,
Speaker 2: and then they would try to measure their speed by
Speaker 2: having knots in the rope, and then they would count
Speaker 2: the knots, which is why in nautical miles they refer
Speaker 2: to knots. You know, so many of these things derived
Speaker 2: from the sea the way they counted their speed, and
Speaker 2: these were kind of rough estimations, and you know, instead
Speaker 2: of clocks, they had hour glasses, so you know, everything
Speaker 2: they had to do was often estimating, so they were
Speaker 2: sailing partially blind. So they hit the submerged rock. The
Speaker 2: wage was about one hundred and twenty three feet three
Speaker 2: masted ship, as were other warships. And what's really important
Speaker 2: to understand is that these were buoyant castles. They were
Speaker 2: the homes for these seamen. You know, this is where
Speaker 2: they were going to live for years at a time,
Speaker 2: and most seamen back then didn't know how to swim,
Speaker 2: so you could imagine they're terror They hit the submerged
Speaker 2: rock and a part of the world none of them
Speaker 2: ever been to. They have no idea where they are
Speaker 2: exactly the rudder shatters a two ton anchor. I imagine
Speaker 2: the weight of that. A two ton anchor falls, It rattles,
Speaker 2: breaks loose, it falls, and it plunges through the hull,
Speaker 2: leaving a hole. And there the ship is kind of
Speaker 2: teetering for a moment, and then another mountainous wave comes
Speaker 2: and it sweeps the wager off these rocks, and the
Speaker 2: ship is creaming through this gulf and through this minefield
Speaker 2: of rocks with no rudder to stare by water surging
Speaker 2: into the hole, through the hole, until at last it
Speaker 2: crashes into a cluster of rocks, and there the ship
Speaker 2: finally begins to completely rip apart. The planks are shattering,
Speaker 2: the decks are caving in, cabins are collapsing, water is
Speaker 2: surging through the bottom of the hull. Rats are scurring upward.
Speaker 2: The seamen who have been suffering from scurvy, who were
Speaker 2: below in their hammocks and were unable to get out
Speaker 2: in time, they drown. But the ship did not yet
Speaker 2: completely sing. It became wedge between these two pillars of rocks,
Speaker 2: and so the survivors kind of climb up onto the
Speaker 2: rendants of the ship, and there they look at in
Speaker 2: the distance and through the mists they see a desolate island.
Speaker 1: How do we get to the island? Are these kinds
Speaker 1: of ships equipped with buiz or Dinghey's or or what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they didn't carry life boots back then, but
Speaker 2: they did carry three or four transport boats. And these
Speaker 2: were usually boats that could be rowed, and they could
Speaker 2: also you could put a little sail on them sometimes
Speaker 2: to propel them. But they were relatively small and they
Speaker 2: were really used to kind of ferry people ashore or
Speaker 2: sometimes take supplies if you were going ashore. One of
Speaker 2: the largest of the transpert boats actually is cracked and
Speaker 2: they can't use that, but they do get a couple
Speaker 2: of these small transport boats eventually off the boat and
Speaker 2: they ferry them men back and forth onto the island,
Speaker 2: and about one hundred and forty five of them eventually
Speaker 2: make it to the island. Of course, that's where the
Speaker 2: real help began.
Speaker 1: So these one hundred and forty five men land on
Speaker 1: this island. What if they initially see they must just
Speaker 1: be grateful to be on land.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So at first they're hoping they might find their salvation.
Speaker 2: You know, they get to this island of the journey's
Speaker 2: been hell already and they think, well, okay, well maybe
Speaker 2: we got here, we're still breathing, and maybe this blazel,
Speaker 2: you know, have sustenance and a way to get home.
Speaker 2: And you know, at first they're not even sure if
Speaker 2: they're on an island or on mainland. That's how bewildered
Speaker 2: they are. But the island turns out to be wind
Speaker 2: sweat and barren and mountainous. The temperature hovers around freezing
Speaker 2: or there in the wintertime, and it's really damp. It
Speaker 2: it's always there's so much precipitation, so it's always raining
Speaker 2: or sleeping. And worst of all, they could find virtually
Speaker 2: no food. There are some clams and snails that can
Speaker 2: find along a little beach hut, but they soon exhaust those.
Speaker 2: They find the little sprouts of celery, which mysteriously cures
Speaker 2: they're scurvy, mysteriously to them. I had somebody seeing it.
Speaker 2: But they don't find any animals on the island. And
Speaker 2: there's some birds kind of flying tantalizingly off.
Speaker 1: In the distance, amazing, And they can't fish. I'm assuming
Speaker 1: they're just not equipped.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't have any equipment for fish, and because
Speaker 2: it's so rough around there and the waves crashing. They
Speaker 2: were just shocked to discover they didn't really see any
Speaker 2: fish even close, you know, coming in ever close to
Speaker 2: the shore.
Speaker 1: So how do they survive? Are they at least able
Speaker 1: to build some sort of shelter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So first they try to build an encampment. Captain
Speaker 2: David che tries to basically build an imperial outpost, and
Speaker 2: he believes they should be governed, you know, by the
Speaker 2: same rules that it existed on the ship, and the
Speaker 2: only way they going to survive is if they maintain cohesion,
Speaker 2: okay exactly, and they should be governed by the same
Speaker 2: hierarchical system. So he would still be in charge. And
Speaker 2: they start to you know, pull together bits of shelter,
Speaker 2: and so they start to build some homes. They start
Speaker 2: to figure out how to collect some water. They are
Speaker 2: then begin to pretty you know, ingeniously and dangerously try
Speaker 2: to do kind of a salvage operation to go out
Speaker 2: to the wreck of the Wagers that's sinking further and
Speaker 2: further into the sea to see what supplies they can
Speaker 2: poke out of there and dig out of there, and
Speaker 2: what provisions. So they start to collect so they get
Speaker 2: some flower and some other provisions a little bit of
Speaker 2: meat and they set up a store tent with rations.
Speaker 2: But gradually as they begin to starve and they descend
Speaker 2: into these warring camps.
Speaker 1: So they are now starting to separate. Are we seeing
Speaker 1: leaders emerge on these camps or is David Chap just
Speaker 1: desperately trying to stay in charge of everyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are three factions. One faction the other seamen
Speaker 2: referred to as the Seceeders, and they are simply like
Speaker 2: a pack of pillaging marauders who break off and roam
Speaker 2: the island threateningly committing crimes. And they're kind of like
Speaker 2: a terror to everyone, and they are kind of set apart.
Speaker 2: And then in the main encampment there are two main factions.
Speaker 2: One faction is led by Captain Cheap and his loyal followers,
Speaker 2: though they are dwindling in number. And then there is
Speaker 2: a gunner from the ship named John Bulkeley. We don't
Speaker 2: know what John Bulkeley looked like because he could not
Speaker 2: afford to have had a portrait made of him. He
Speaker 2: came from the lower to middle classes, but he was
Speaker 2: very literate. He was a compulsive dier, so we know
Speaker 2: what he thought. He had been. In many ways, the
Speaker 2: most skilled semen on the wager and he was an
Speaker 2: instinctive leader, but on a ship he knew. Because of
Speaker 2: his station during those times of very rigid class structures,
Speaker 2: it was unlikely that he would ever be the commander
Speaker 2: of a warship. But suddenly, on this island, all his
Speaker 2: skills start to manifest themselves, and he's very capable, cunning,
Speaker 2: and genius, and he's kind of the most active and
Speaker 2: kind of pulling them in together desperate to get off
Speaker 2: the island. And so the men begin to have these
Speaker 2: philosophical debates on the island even while they are starving.
Speaker 2: You know, what is the nature of leadership? Should Sheep
Speaker 2: remain the leader because he'd been their leader inship? Or
Speaker 2: in what Bulkley described, did this state of nature? Did
Speaker 2: they need new rules and new regulations? And could somebody
Speaker 2: like him who had not been from the aristocracy suddenly
Speaker 2: become a commander in his own right.
Speaker 1: Was everyone convinced that they absolutely had to leave the
Speaker 1: island there was no choice, or were there a faction
Speaker 1: that just said, we're never getting off this island and
Speaker 1: we have to make the best of what we have
Speaker 1: and maybe we can figure out how to fish later.
Speaker 2: I think for the most part, they all wanted to
Speaker 2: get off the island. I mean, the seceeders are kind
Speaker 2: of a crazed pack, but for the most part, everybody
Speaker 2: is desperate to get off the island because they don't
Speaker 2: know how to survive in that place. So if they
Speaker 2: had a will to live, they wanted to find a
Speaker 2: way off. But they're visions of what they should do
Speaker 2: when they get off the island fuel this kind of
Speaker 2: titanic battle between Captain Cheap and the gunner John Bulkeley.
Speaker 1: Are they going to try to use these transport boats?
Speaker 1: Is that their idea to literally sail thousands of miles
Speaker 1: to get back home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So eventually they have a couple of the small
Speaker 2: transfer boats. The carpenter. There's a carpenter on the ships,
Speaker 2: and the carpenter was actually a very talented carpenter, is
Speaker 2: by the most talented carpenter in the expedition. He's also
Speaker 2: John Bulkeley's closest friend. And he comes up with this
Speaker 2: idea that if they could salvage what was known as
Speaker 2: the longboat, which was the larger of these transfer boats,
Speaker 2: which was all kind of shattered on the on the vest,
Speaker 2: if they could salvage it, then they could try to
Speaker 2: rebuild it and expand it into a large enough vessel that,
Speaker 2: along with the two other couple other tiny transfer boats,
Speaker 2: they might be able to get off this island. And
Speaker 2: so for a brief moment they're actually united around this scheme.
Speaker 2: The two factions in the main camp working day and
Speaker 2: night to try to build this craft. But eventually they
Speaker 2: have two very different ideas of how that vessel that
Speaker 2: has slowly emerged urging should be used. Captain Sheep, who
Speaker 2: is very dutiful and stubborn, is desperate almost for a
Speaker 2: bit of redemption, is determined to take this craft and
Speaker 2: believes they should sail northward towards the closest Spanish settlement,
Speaker 2: who again they were at war with Spain at that time,
Speaker 2: and they try to seize the ship some kind of
Speaker 2: trading vessel, and to try to meet up with the
Speaker 2: leader of their own expedition, the squadron again and go
Speaker 2: on their way continue on the expedition. Bulkley thinks this
Speaker 2: is nots and thinks, you know, we've had enough and
Speaker 2: this war has been a disaster, and this expedition has
Speaker 2: been a disaster, and it's time to just try to
Speaker 2: get home. So he comes up with a separate planet's
Speaker 2: also very daring and dangerous in some ways. In terms
Speaker 2: of distance cover would be even more formidable. He wants
Speaker 2: to take the boat, and he thinks if they sail
Speaker 2: north into the Spanish, they're just going to get decimated.
Speaker 2: So how can we as starving Castell's fight to Spanish.
Speaker 2: So he wants to go south, travel southward, then through
Speaker 2: the Strait of Magellan, which is a kind of winding
Speaker 2: passage at the tip of South America or near the
Speaker 2: South America treacher sies, and then sealed northward to Brazil.
Speaker 2: Brazil was Portuguese, so it wasn't a war with England.
Speaker 2: That whole trip, though was some three thouurs of miles.
Speaker 2: It would have been one of the longest castaway voyages
Speaker 2: ever carried out.
Speaker 1: So we have these two factions with two very different
Speaker 1: points of view. How is the tension manifested between them
Speaker 1: before we really start to break apart. Are they sabotaging
Speaker 1: each other? Or is this a war of words? At
Speaker 1: this point if we take out the other group of
Speaker 1: more orders.
Speaker 2: It's simmering and it keeps kind of building. It's kind
Speaker 2: of building over time. Then it might calm down a
Speaker 2: little bit, but then it's gradually simmering more and more.
Speaker 2: You know, at some point they become so antagonized that
Speaker 2: they are sending messengers back and forth between each group. Wow,
Speaker 2: and they're only separated. I mean, I don't know the
Speaker 2: distance twenty yards maybe, but they know some of the
Speaker 2: leaders will no longer speak. So there's something like diplomats
Speaker 2: back and forth, and they're having kind of wars of words.
Speaker 2: And then at one point there is increasing violence and
Speaker 2: they begin to spiral into more violence. At one point,
Speaker 2: the captain, who is kind of desperate to hold on
Speaker 2: to his command and sees his power dwindling around him.
Speaker 2: As Bulkley stirs the men with talk. He actually uses
Speaker 2: afraid life and liberty, and he starts to have the
Speaker 2: men signed petitions. Aliott salvaged a paper and pens, and
Speaker 2: so it's kind of this political battle and a class
Speaker 2: struggle playing out on this island. The island in many
Speaker 2: ways became this laboratory to test the human condition under
Speaker 2: extreme circumstances, and it slowly begins to reveal each person's nature,
Speaker 2: both the good and the bad. And so you see
Speaker 2: this kind of growing battle, and then at one point
Speaker 2: Captain Cheap, fearing that one man was committing mutiny, bursts
Speaker 2: out of his tent, takes his gun and places the
Speaker 2: barrel right against the man's head, and without any questions
Speaker 2: or any proceedings, he pulls the trigger and the man
Speaker 2: had been unarmed. And for a moment this kind of
Speaker 2: quiets things, but gradually it only increases the resentment of
Speaker 2: the other faction, and so in their way, it ends
Speaker 2: up dwindling and diminishing, like Captain's authority.
Speaker 1: So there are people who are moving over to vocally side.
Speaker 3: I'm assuming yes, his side is growing by the day.
Speaker 1: How are we doing with nutrition and food at this point,
Speaker 1: because we're a couple of months into it, right when
Speaker 1: this tension is growing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they are starving more and more. A number of
Speaker 2: them had died, I'm buried in the shallow graves on
Speaker 2: the island.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: They had tried to come up with all sorts of
Speaker 2: ways to try to find food. They even built these
Speaker 2: kind of little rafts that they would kind of try
Speaker 2: to flow around the coast, but really with limited success.
Speaker 2: So they're beginning to starve. It's increasing their paranoia and
Speaker 2: no doubt, the starvation is increasing. You know, starvation has
Speaker 2: not only physical effects as real psychological effects. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just a gnawing prefaceive force. So that's also augmenting
Speaker 2: the tensions and the memo no doubt, also suffering from hypothermia.
Speaker 2: You know, they only had scraps of clothing and it
Speaker 2: was always wet and cold, so you know, it's a
Speaker 2: real battle for their wits at this moment.
Speaker 1: When is the next big event?
Speaker 2: So well, what eventually happens is they begin to talk
Speaker 2: about this taboo of mutiny, and they know that a
Speaker 2: full blown mutiny the kind that they are contemplating could
Speaker 2: be a hanging offense. And as they're discussing this, they
Speaker 2: eventually do decide to cross that threshold. And early one morning,
Speaker 2: a ragtag army of starving men, armed with whatever tools
Speaker 2: and instruments they had, burst into Captain cheaps dwelling and
Speaker 2: they seize him and they tie him up.
Speaker 1: Do they have help from the marauders or is that
Speaker 1: group staying out of it?
Speaker 2: The Marauders are still kind of roaming. They do eventually
Speaker 2: seek the alliance of one marauder who was a very
Speaker 2: good carpenter who could help build a ship, but for
Speaker 2: the most part, the marauders are still just pillaging, doing
Speaker 2: their own crime separately.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what happens next?
Speaker 2: They decide to die at the captain, and the thought is, well,
Speaker 2: maybe will they bring the captain with them back to England.
Speaker 2: They think they can use the shooting that Sheep had
Speaker 2: done to justify arresting him. Cheap believes they're just using
Speaker 2: that as a justification, and ultimately the faction led by
Speaker 2: Bulkeley leaves the island and in the most stunning development,
Speaker 2: they leave Captain Sheep behind. And it's a little bit
Speaker 2: murky about exactly what transpired to do that, but she
Speaker 2: was proud. According to Bulkeley, he did not want to
Speaker 2: go back with them if he was going to remain
Speaker 2: a prisoner. But there was also a spoken and even
Speaker 2: spoken a desire that if Captain Sheep came back with them,
Speaker 2: he would tell an alternative story. So by leaving Captain
Speaker 2: Sheep and his followers behind on the island, the hope
Speaker 2: is that there will be only one story to prevail
Speaker 2: if they ever make it back to England and never
Speaker 2: have to face the court martial.
Speaker 1: But did they leave that other transport boat for them
Speaker 1: to at least have a chance.
Speaker 2: They did, but it was all kind of broken up.
Speaker 2: There was very little expectation that they would ever get
Speaker 2: off the island. You know. One of the things that
Speaker 2: the other faction does throughout is they know that if
Speaker 2: they ever get back to England, they're going to likely
Speaker 2: be hauled before a military tribunal. So even while they're
Speaker 2: on the island, they had salvaged some paper and quills,
Speaker 2: and they are writing contemporaneous documents. Bolkals, keeping a diary,
Speaker 2: They're signing petitions. They are essentially trying to create contemporaneous
Speaker 2: evidence so that they can create an unassailable story of
Speaker 2: the sea that will withstand the scrutiny of a public trial.
Speaker 1: How many men are we talking about who are on
Speaker 1: this boat with Bocley at this point.
Speaker 2: Initially there are over eighty, but some would turn back
Speaker 2: to rejoin the captain because when they realized the captain
Speaker 2: has been abandoned, they just think that's a step too far.
Speaker 2: So a small group does eventually turn back, but the
Speaker 2: rest continue on. In this vessel. They are packed so
Speaker 2: tightly together that they cannot even stand. They have virtually
Speaker 2: no provisions and they begin this three thousand mile journey.
Speaker 1: Now we know that weather plays such a big part
Speaker 1: in these seafaring stories and the timing of it. Do
Speaker 1: they encounter terrible weather I imagine over this time or
Speaker 1: is it smooth sailing?
Speaker 2: Oh no, it's not smooth. No, not smooth. The Straight
Speaker 2: of Magellan is notorious for its sudden swalls. There was
Speaker 2: a reason why shifts, the larger vessels back then avoided
Speaker 2: that winding channel and chose to try to round the
Speaker 2: Cape Horn with its violence. Sees, because the Straight of
Speaker 2: Magellan presented its own challenges. You know, they didn't have
Speaker 2: a map, but what they had was they didn't have
Speaker 2: a reliable map or a detail. But what they had
Speaker 2: was an earlier account of a seamen who had gone
Speaker 2: through a British semen had gone through the Strait of Magellan.
Speaker 2: Bulkeley is using this to navigate by, and it's really
Speaker 2: one of the more extraordinary feats of navigation. He's kind
Speaker 2: of reading this log book and then he would try
Speaker 2: to eyeball things to match them up so that he
Speaker 2: would know where they were. You know, at one point
Speaker 2: they're going through the Strait of Magellan and all the
Speaker 2: other crew you know, they're starving, they have to throw
Speaker 2: people overboard, and some of the other castaways think he's
Speaker 2: gone the wrong way, and so he agrees to turn
Speaker 2: back and he'd actually been right, which only adds more
Speaker 2: time to their voyage. But on these expeditions, they were
Speaker 2: enormously challenged and they cause men sometimes to be abandoned.
Speaker 2: Bulkeley was an extremely religious person, but it raised the question,
Speaker 2: you know, is it a sin to want to live?
Speaker 2: And how far would you go to one on them?
Speaker 2: By the time that one boat reaches Brazil after some
Speaker 2: three thousand miles, they're only twenty nine survived, including John
Speaker 2: bulk Leave, the gunner.
Speaker 1: What is the reaction when they reach Brazil? Was there
Speaker 1: even news? How would even anyone know about this wreckage
Speaker 1: to begin with? And that's a question, why have a
Speaker 1: cover story when there's no witnesses?
Speaker 2: Well, I think the hope there was there was not
Speaker 2: going to be witnesses. You know, they would have to
Speaker 2: explain why they were there. Came back and there was
Speaker 2: no captain with him, and what had happened to the captain.
Speaker 2: So when they get to Brazil, though, they're initially gaded
Speaker 2: with great curiosity, and they are healed and commended for
Speaker 2: their ingenuity and the bravery, because this was nobody can
Speaker 2: believe that anyone made this journey in their condition, in
Speaker 2: this tiny, battered boat. And as you mentioned, it would
Speaker 2: take a long time for news to eventually reach England.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, you're not talking about money. Months
Speaker 2: and months and months, and it would take them a
Speaker 2: long time to head back. But eventually several of this
Speaker 2: group do return to England are able to share their story,
Speaker 2: and at that point there's still no news from Captain
Speaker 2: Sheep and the other faction, so there's only really one
Speaker 2: story to prevail.
Speaker 1: What is happening that we know of David Sheep and
Speaker 1: his crew, and of course the marauders who are left
Speaker 1: behind on the island.
Speaker 2: Some of the marauders are kind of uncontrolled and some
Speaker 2: even trying to make their miskiven die, but the bulk
Speaker 2: of them, this kind of group of seceedars, do end
Speaker 2: up joining up with Cheap and John Byron, the midshipman,
Speaker 2: is present. He was not a marauder, but he had decided,
Speaker 2: after a lot of soul searching and kind of uncertainty,
Speaker 2: decided to stay with Captain Sheep that he thought it
Speaker 2: was wrong to leave him to die, and so he
Speaker 2: stays with Sheap and there are a couple others and
Speaker 2: they eventually kind of fix their little crafts. They try
Speaker 2: to get off the island, but they failed to They
Speaker 2: can't get through the Gulf of Sorrows or the Golf
Speaker 2: of Pain, and eventually they returned to the island and
Speaker 2: again after there's Field attempts to leave it a month
Speaker 2: later and they basically go back there to die. And
Speaker 2: it's then that almost miraculously, a group of Native Patagonians
Speaker 2: arrive in a couple of canoes and ultimately helped save
Speaker 2: a few of the castaways, end up leading them on
Speaker 2: a long journey to Chillaway Island, which is a Spanish settlement,
Speaker 2: which is where she wanted to get to. But then
Speaker 2: once they're there, they're actually taken prisoners, which is what
Speaker 2: and they end up being in prison, so months and
Speaker 2: months go on again after everything they've been through, they're
Speaker 2: put in the condemned hole. You know, it would take
Speaker 2: some of them close to six years since they had
Speaker 2: left England to finally return. Byron, who had left England
Speaker 2: at the age of sixteen, would return at the age
Speaker 2: of twenty two and he was unrecognizable to his family.
Speaker 1: Who comes back to England and what do they say
Speaker 1: once they're there six years later, so you.
Speaker 2: Know, Captain Sheep emerges and Captain Sheep is burning for
Speaker 2: vengeance for having been abandoned. He believes he was abandoned
Speaker 2: to die. He believes these others where he referred to
Speaker 2: the other group as my mutineers, and he is ready
Speaker 2: for a court martial on a showdown, and.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming the Crown is shocked that he's there and says,
Speaker 1: we've heard news that this happened, but there's a band
Speaker 1: of heroes who were in Brazil and what actually happened here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's someone to go on this court martial.
Speaker 2: Bulkley and his group are certain they're going to be
Speaker 2: hanged and they are praying before the trial. Meanwhile, they
Speaker 2: have charged Cheap with the most serious offense possible, which
Speaker 2: was homicide. They're alleging that the captain and kills him,
Speaker 2: which under naval regulations back then, was the one charge
Speaker 2: that left no room for kind of wiggle room in
Speaker 2: terms of the punishment was a hanging of fence.
Speaker 1: Who has the most reliable narrative here. Do you think
Speaker 1: it has to be cheap? You would think, right.
Speaker 2: Well, Sheep had a certain standing and he had more
Speaker 2: of the backing of the Admiralty and the officers and
Speaker 2: the powers that be, and he is contending that he
Speaker 2: was kind of undermined by many of them menerally on,
Speaker 2: you know, and Bokeley comes from a different station. But
Speaker 2: Bokeley has created perhaps the most persuasive story. He got
Speaker 2: back to England first, he got his story on the
Speaker 2: record first. He has a fair amount of public sympathy.
Speaker 2: So it's quite a standoff. But what really happens is,
Speaker 2: you know, these two sides are lobbing their stories back
Speaker 2: and forth to see who would win, and they both
Speaker 2: can make some valid points. But the British Empire and
Speaker 2: the authorities are listening to these stories and they kind
Speaker 2: of seem to, you know, based on their actions, they
Speaker 2: seem to kind of come to the conclusion that, you
Speaker 2: know what, we like any of these stories. They don't
Speaker 2: make us look very good. You know, they are undercutting
Speaker 2: the central claim of the British Empire used to justify
Speaker 2: as ruthless expansion and conquests of other peoples, which is
Speaker 2: that their civilization was somehow superior to others. And yet
Speaker 2: here on this island, our officers and crewe, these supposed
Speaker 2: apostles of Western civilization, the vanguard of the Empire, have
Speaker 2: behaved more like brutes than like gentlemen. And so they
Speaker 2: suddenly have an interest in maybe telling a third version
Speaker 2: and an alternative history and their own mythic tale to see.
Speaker 2: So this is a story not only about the way
Speaker 2: we tell stories to serve our self interest, but it's
Speaker 2: also the way nations that especially empires, tell stories to
Speaker 2: serve their self interests and to preserve their powers.
Speaker 1: So how is the Crown reframing the narrative of the
Speaker 1: Wager at this point when you're looking at all these
Speaker 1: people who probably technically should be hanged.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they come into the court martial, and to
Speaker 2: their surprise and pleasant surprise for their point of view,
Speaker 2: none of the defendants are actually asked about it, any
Speaker 2: of the alleged crimes on the island. Nothing. Instead, they're
Speaker 2: simply the court martial simply focuses on what it caused
Speaker 2: the wreck of the Wager, you know, before they even
Speaker 2: got to the island. And it would be the equivalent
Speaker 2: of stopping a car in which the officers, you know,
Speaker 2: the police find a dead body in the trunk, but
Speaker 2: they only asked the driver about a bus to tailight.
Speaker 2: And in the end they let everybody go. They just
Speaker 2: let everybody go free. And there are no other proceedings,
Speaker 2: in no other trials. And so you know this because
Speaker 2: of the kind of fear of what this story said,
Speaker 2: because these stories did not make the Empire look good,
Speaker 2: because it showed the kind of really many ways disastrous
Speaker 2: natures of the war and what it transpired during the
Speaker 2: war and what had become a bloody stalemate. This became
Speaker 2: as one British naval story and called it the Mutiny
Speaker 2: that never was, And instead the British Navy seizes on
Speaker 2: another story, which is that one of the ships from
Speaker 2: the squadron, led by Commodore George Anson, he was down
Speaker 2: to one ship from this big expedition that had started
Speaker 2: out with nearly two thousand men and five warships. He's
Speaker 2: down a one warship, a ragtag group. He managed to
Speaker 2: get around the Horn and into the Pacific, and through
Speaker 2: a great deal of skill and talent on his part,
Speaker 2: he was in many ways a remarkable commander. He ends
Speaker 2: up seizing the galleon and capturing this treasure. He captures
Speaker 2: the prize of all the oceans. And that is the
Speaker 2: story that the authorities decide to tell and trumpet and share,
Speaker 2: leaving out and you know, or overlooking or underplaying all
Speaker 2: these disasters that had taken place, and that's kind of
Speaker 2: the mythic tale that gets passed down.
Speaker 1: And the press doesn't get a hold of it, or
Speaker 1: is it just totally squashed.
Speaker 2: You know, the press initially seizes on the wager affair
Speaker 2: because it's such a scandalous truth and what it says,
Speaker 2: but eventually the story of ants and captioning the galleon
Speaker 2: is the one that will be celebrated in stories. When
Speaker 2: they returned to England, they were paraded through the streets
Speaker 2: where their wagons filled with treasure. At that point at
Speaker 2: the war, thousands and thousands of people had died both,
Speaker 2: you know, throughout different expeditions. It kind of become a
Speaker 2: bloody steelmate and so there was such a longing for
Speaker 2: a victory. So here at last was news of a victory.
Speaker 2: It wasn't going to change the course of the war,
Speaker 2: nor was the treasure seized. It was only a fraction
Speaker 2: of what had been squandered and wasted on this work.
Speaker 2: Yet it gave them a story. It gave the news
Speaker 2: of a victory. That is the story that will we
Speaker 2: celebrated in sea ballance and poems and will eventually overshadow
Speaker 2: the disastrous nature of this expedition, overlooking the fact that
Speaker 2: of nearly two thousand people gone, more than thirteen hundred
Speaker 2: of perish this mission.
Speaker 1: Well, just to tie a little not on this story,
Speaker 1: what happens with Bokeley and Cheap do they just sort
Speaker 1: of ride off separately into the sunset and live quiet
Speaker 1: lives After this is all done, Fat.
Speaker 2: And Cheap, still burning with his obsessive dreams of glory,
Speaker 2: goes back to sea, and it shows, you know, in
Speaker 2: a different world, in a different place, fate can be
Speaker 2: very cruel and in a different way. On a different ship,
Speaker 2: on a different mission, he might have had more success.
Speaker 2: And he goes off on a ship and he helps
Speaker 2: capture actually a Spanish ship that has a large, you know,
Speaker 2: fairly large prize. And then he retires afterwards from ill health.
Speaker 2: But he's always stained, He's always remembered, if he's remembered
Speaker 2: at all, by the stain of what had happened on
Speaker 2: the island and John Bulkeley with somebody who kind of
Speaker 2: burst into history with almost no past. You know, we
Speaker 2: don't have records of you know, much about him before this.
Speaker 2: He kind of bursts into history and then later he
Speaker 2: leaves and he goes to we know he went to Philadelphia,
Speaker 2: into the colonies, into that hotbed feature hopbed of rebellion,
Speaker 2: and there eventually he disappears from history.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Speaker 1: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. This has been an exactly
Speaker 1: right production. Our senior producer is Alexis M. Morosi. Our
Speaker 1: associate producer is Alex Chi. This episode was mixed by
Speaker 1: John Bradley. Curtis heath is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga.
Speaker 1: Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgariff and Danielle Kramer.
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