October 9, 2023 • 42 mins
You can’t beat a story about an eighteenth-century mutiny and survival and then conflicting accounts. Author David Grann has written about the epic, harrowing saga of a ship and its crew in a book called The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.
Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/4dsqzI1
Buy my books: katewinklerdawson.com
If you have suggestions for historical crimes that could use some attention, email me: info@tenfoldmorewicked.com
Follow me on social: @tenfoldmore (Twitter) / @tenfoldmorewicked (Facebook and Instagram)
2023 All Rights Reserved
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
They begin to release their wildly conflicting accounts about what
had occurred, and they're hoping to save their lives because
if they don't tell a convincing tale, it could be hanged.
And so this unleashes this great war of the truth. Here.
These men have waged the war against the elements, and
now they're going to wage just war over the truth.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
true crime podcast Tenfold More Wicked and the co host
of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. I've traveled
around the world interviewing people for the show, and they
are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true
(00:57):
crime stories, and now we want to tell you those
stories worries with details that have never been published. Tenfold
War Wicked presents Wicked Words is about the choices that
writers make, good and bad. It's a deep dive into
the stories behind the stories. I love a tale set
on the high seas. You can't beat a twisty story
(01:18):
about an eighteenth century mutiny and survival and then conflicting accounts.
Author David Grant has written about the epic, harrowing saga
of a ship and its crew in a book called
The Wager, A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. Let's
jump into the story of the Wager and what its
(01:40):
mission was. Where we are in time.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
So in seventeen thirty nine, an imperial war had broken
out between Great Britain and its imperial rival Spain, and
the Wager the ship had received orders to set sail
with a squadron of several other warships on a secret
mission to try to capture a Spanish galleon filled with
(02:03):
so much treasure was known as the Prize of all
the Oceans, I believe it or not. That was part
of the mission, had a real whiff of piracy about it,
even though it was a naval mission and it was
part of the war. So that was the original order
and kind of what begins this misadventure.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Anyways, So how many crewmen are we talking about and
how many officers? What's the hierarchy of the ship as
far as you knew.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
It, Yeah, so in the squadron entirely there are five warships,
including the Wager. There's a scouting sloop of smaller ship,
and there are two tiny cargo ships that are going
to company that are supposed to the company. The expedition
partway altogether in the squadron. It would require nearly two
thousand men and boys to man these ships. And these
ships were really very complex. They were kind of the
(02:47):
engineering marvels of their time, and so they required skilled men.
You know, even before the voyage began, the seeds of
its destruction were planted. The Wager, which was the smallest
of the war, it needed about two hundred and fifty men,
which was nearly double the number it was designed to carry.
But the British Navy had exhausted its supply of volunteers
(03:10):
and it did not have a conscription back then. So
what it did was it sent out these press gangs
to towns and cities and ports, and they would eyeball
people who would eyeball men and boys, and they basically say, oh,
you got this round hat, you got a little checkered shirt.
They would even inspect your fingertips to see if you
had a little tar on them, because tar was used
(03:31):
on ships to make everything water resistant, and if they
thought so, well, then they would just seize you and
in effect kidnap you and drag you unwillingly on a
voyage that might last two to three years. You know,
no chance to say goodbye or loaded your family. Even then,
the amilty was sure to mend for this squadron, so
it took the extreme step of rounding up five hundred
(03:52):
soldiers from a retirement home. You know, you have to
have a gallon's humor because it's just so dark. I mean,
you rounded up these pensioners who were in their sixties
and seventies. Many were missing an assortment of limbs, and
some were so sick they had to be lifted on
stretchers onto these vessels. So that was the beginning. That's
how it all began.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
From what I know about ships in the seventeen hundreds,
they were often filled with the people you're describing. It
could be criminals, people off the street. You know, they
were trying to supply the ships with everyone and everything
they possibly could. The officers sometimes were very unprepared and undertrained,
and maybe we're just there because you know, they were
(04:33):
part of high society and this would be an honor
to head the ship. Is that the case with the squadron,
Do we have people who really don't belong in high positions?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
The good question. The kind of the expedition who had
not ever led an expedition or done anything of this sort,
turns out to be extraordinarily competent and capable. More than competent.
He has that mysterious qualities that make a great commander,
which usually not only a master of the wooden world
of the ship, but he was a master of himself.
(05:04):
But on these ships you sometimes had aristocratic dandies who
would be officers. For example, the wage you would eventually
have a captain who had a very kind of volatile,
tempestuous personality. And one of the things that makes these
ships so interesting is that they really were these kind
of odd, eclectic, floating civilizations. So you would have these
(05:27):
officers who tended to come from the aristocracy and the nobility.
Many of them were quite well educated. You might have dandies,
you'd have city paulpers, you'd have these press people on
the ship unwillingly, you'd have free black seamen, and they're
all kind of thrown together onto one of these ships,
and they have to be somehow molded into a band
or brothers.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So how well does the trip go until it doesn't
go well? Is everybody getting along or are they staying
on their mission or are they chasing down the Spanish
vessels the way they're supposed.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
To the biggest challenge is it takes them a long
time to get out of the dockyards in England because
as sophisticated as these ships are with their lethal instruments,
because they were made for gun battles and also meant
to be the home for all these seilers living together
in close quarters, they were also made a very perish materials,
which was wood, and so the ships have been kind
of laid up on rotten rode for months and months
(06:19):
and months waiting to finally get off. And the wager
is a little bit the ugly duckling of the runt
of the expedition of the warships, because it had not
been born for battle. It was remade from a merchant
ship into warship. It was the lowest ranking warship. It
was the sixth rate, which mean and had twenty eight cannons.
It was a little tubby and it kind of doubled
as a storeship for the expedition. But eventually they finally
(06:40):
set off nearly a year after they were supposed to,
and they get across the Atlantic, but almost immediately everything
begins to go wrong. I mean, the ships are working
and functioning, and the crews are working, functioning, but pretty
soon they find they're being chased by a Spanish ramada
that is larger than their own squadron, so they're trying
to outrun it, and then they have to sail around
(07:02):
Cape Horn. And Cape Horn is at the very tip
of South America, because their mission is to sail around
Cape Horn and then into the Pacific and try to
intercept the guy in off the coast of the Philippines
and Cape Horn. The seas around Cape Horn are among
the most violent in the world. It is the one
place on Earth where the seas travel thirteen thousand miles uninterrupted.
(07:24):
They never get blocked by land, and so because of that,
they just accumulate enormous force. A Cape Horn roller wave
could dwarf an ninemy foot mass. There are the strongest
currents on Earth as they funnel into this passageway between
the tip of South America and Antarctica. And then there
are the winds which frequently accelerate the hurricane force. Herman Melville,
who would later make the journey around the Horn, compare
(07:47):
it to a descent into Hell and Dante's Inferno. Dramatic, yes,
very dramatic, and as Velveo is, nobody wrote about the
sea better. And so immediately they are just battered by
these storms day and night. The ship's breaking apart, the
seals blowing out. And at that very point when they're
(08:08):
going to need every person on board these ships, if
they're gonna have any chance to persevere, what happens. They
begin to suffer from a mysterious illness.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I've read about this illness and it sounds just terrible.
What is this?
Speaker 2 (08:20):
First they suffered from typhus and have high fevers, and
several of them die. And then when they reach Cape Horn,
they are suffering from a new illness, the great enigma
the sea, which was scurvy. And their teeth begins to
fall out, and their hair falls out, and their eyes bulge,
and even the cartilage that seemed to glue together their
(08:42):
bones is coming undone. There was one semen in one
of the accounts, described the fractured a limb in a
battle fifty years earlier fighting in war, and of course
the fracture of long since heale, but suddenly with this disease,
it suddenly refractures in the very same place. And something
I didn't realize about scurvy is that it can affect
(09:03):
the senses. And one of these even described how the
disease got into our brains and we went raving mad.
But they didn't know then was that the cure was
so simple, that they were suffering from a vitamin C
deficiency on the ships because they didn't bring fruit vegetables,
they'd have refrigeration, and that the cure had actually been
right within the reach when they had stopped at Brazil,
(09:24):
before they came around the Cape Horn, there were actually
limes on this island. And of course, later in the century,
when the British Navy discovers that scurvy could be cured
with lines, they would carry limes on their ships, and
of course British svem became known as limeys. But back
then they didn't know that, and this expedition suffered what
is considered one of the worst scurvy outbreaks in maritime history,
(09:45):
and hundreds and hundreds members of this expedition perish. Their
bodies were just thrown overboard unceremoniously.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
And is this also the time period when they were
eating bad meat in the ten Cans?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, and then you know the foods that started to
rock the bread again. You don't have refrigeration on these ships,
so these little biscuits they have are so hard and
they're kind of worm eating and when they would hit them,
they would describe hitting them against the table and they
would just kind of disintegrate into dust. Some of the
meat had spoiled on the expedition, so they are suffering
from poor provisions. And you know, on top of that,
(10:22):
when they're around Cape Horn, it's so rough. The seas
are so bad they can't really even use the stove,
so they often have to eat raw meat.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
So the Wager and its ships are battered and the
men are dying and battered, and dead bodies are thrown overboard.
But then it gets worse. When does it get worse?
As if we didn't get worse.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
So the ships are desperate to stay together around Cape
Horn because they know if they separate, there'll be no
one there to rescue them if something happens. So what
do they do? You know, it's kind of interesting you
learn these things, like how did you communicate back then
when you didn't have iPhones, You didn't have any telecommunications.
And so what they would do is they would fire
blanks in their cannon. So they're firing their cannons repeatedly
(11:02):
to signal the location. But eventually the blasket drowned out
and all the ships scattered in the storm. They're all separated,
and the Wager, as a new commander, relatively new commander,
man named David Chip, finds himself and his ship all
alone and left to their own destiny. And he was
recently promoted to be captain. He had previously been a lieutenant.
(11:23):
He was somebody who back on land had kind of
been plagued by debts and frustration and chased by creditors,
but on a ship he had always found refuge. And
on this expedition he had finally attained what he had
always just kind of obsessively longed for, which was this
chance to captain his own warship. So he's determined to
prove himself as this new captain, and he does manage
(11:47):
to steer the Wager around Cape Horn, and he wants
to meet at a predetermined rendezvous point that they had
in case they were ever separated off the coast of Chile.
But he and the other seamen on the wager are
suffering from another huge challenge, which is they don't know
precisely where they are on the map. They could determine
(12:08):
their latitude by reading the stars, but they had no
way of knowing their longitude because that would require a
reliable clock, and they hadn't yet been invented, and so
they're forced to rely on what was called dead reckoning,
which is essentially informed guestswork an elite of faith. And
as the wager is coming up the coast to Chile
off Patagonia through the Pacific, their longitude, their estimation of
(12:31):
their longitude turns out not only are you wrong, but
wrong by hundreds of miles, and they suddenly find themselves
trapped in a gulf known as a golf would a
pain us, which translates as the golf of sorrows, or
some seamen would translate as the gulf of pain. And
there the wager suddenly hits a submerged rock.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
You talk about in the book how blindly they would sail,
Tell me how they would figure out the depth, because
I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, well even everything. I mean, they would do soundings
by dropping ropes with weights to try to figure out depths,
and then they would try to measure their speed by
having knots in the rope, and then they would count
the knots, which is why in nautical miles they refer
to knots. You know, so many of these things derived
from the sea the way they counted their speed, and
these were kind of rough estimations, and you know, instead
(13:24):
of clocks, they had hour glasses, so you know, everything
they had to do was often estimating, so they were
sailing partially blind. So they hit the submerged rock. The
wage was about one hundred and twenty three feet three
masted ship, as were other warships. And what's really important
to understand is that these were buoyant castles. They were
(13:46):
the homes for these seamen. You know, this is where
they were going to live for years at a time,
and most seamen back then didn't know how to swim,
so you could imagine they're terror They hit the submerged
rock and a part of the world none of them
ever been to. They have no idea where they are
exactly the rudder shatters a two ton anchor. I imagine
the weight of that. A two ton anchor falls, It rattles,
(14:08):
breaks loose, it falls, and it plunges through the hull,
leaving a hole. And there the ship is kind of
teetering for a moment, and then another mountainous wave comes
and it sweeps the wager off these rocks, and the
ship is creaming through this gulf and through this minefield
of rocks with no rudder to stare by water surging
(14:29):
into the hole, through the hole, until at last it
crashes into a cluster of rocks, and there the ship
finally begins to completely rip apart. The planks are shattering,
the decks are caving in, cabins are collapsing, water is
surging through the bottom of the hull. Rats are scurring upward.
(14:51):
The seamen who have been suffering from scurvy, who were
below in their hammocks and were unable to get out
in time, they drown. But the ship did not yet
completely sing. It became wedge between these two pillars of rocks,
and so the survivors kind of climb up onto the
rendants of the ship, and there they look at in
the distance and through the mists they see a desolate island.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
How do we get to the island? Are these kinds
of ships equipped with buiz or Dinghey's or or what.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, so they didn't carry life boots back then, but
they did carry three or four transport boats. And these
were usually boats that could be rowed, and they could
also you could put a little sail on them sometimes
to propel them. But they were relatively small and they
were really used to kind of ferry people ashore or
sometimes take supplies if you were going ashore. One of
(15:40):
the largest of the transpert boats actually is cracked and
they can't use that, but they do get a couple
of these small transport boats eventually off the boat and
they ferry them men back and forth onto the island,
and about one hundred and forty five of them eventually
make it to the island. Of course, that's where the
real help began.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
So these one hundred and forty five men land on
this island. What if they initially see they must just
be grateful to be on land.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, So at first they're hoping they might find their salvation.
You know, they get to this island of the journey's
been hell already and they think, well, okay, well maybe
we got here, we're still breathing, and maybe this blazel,
you know, have sustenance and a way to get home.
And you know, at first they're not even sure if
they're on an island or on mainland. That's how bewildered
they are. But the island turns out to be wind
(16:27):
sweat and barren and mountainous. The temperature hovers around freezing
or there in the wintertime, and it's really damp. It
it's always there's so much precipitation, so it's always raining
or sleeping. And worst of all, they could find virtually
no food. There are some clams and snails that can
(16:48):
find along a little beach hut, but they soon exhaust those.
They find the little sprouts of celery, which mysteriously cures
they're scurvy, mysteriously to them. I had somebody seeing it.
But they don't find any animals on the island. And
there's some birds kind of flying tantalizingly off.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
In the distance, amazing, And they can't fish. I'm assuming
they're just not equipped.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Yeah, they don't have any equipment for fish, and because
it's so rough around there and the waves crashing. They
were just shocked to discover they didn't really see any
fish even close, you know, coming in ever close to
the shore.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
So how do they survive? Are they at least able
to build some sort of shelter.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah, So first they try to build an encampment. Captain
David che tries to basically build an imperial outpost, and
he believes they should be governed, you know, by the
same rules that it existed on the ship, and the
only way they going to survive is if they maintain cohesion,
okay exactly, and they should be governed by the same
(17:46):
hierarchical system. So he would still be in charge. And
they start to you know, pull together bits of shelter,
and so they start to build some homes. They start
to figure out how to collect some water. They are
then begin to pretty you know, ingeniously and dangerously try
to do kind of a salvage operation to go out
(18:08):
to the wreck of the Wagers that's sinking further and
further into the sea to see what supplies they can
poke out of there and dig out of there, and
what provisions. So they start to collect so they get
some flower and some other provisions a little bit of
meat and they set up a store tent with rations.
But gradually as they begin to starve and they descend
(18:30):
into these warring camps.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
So they are now starting to separate. Are we seeing
leaders emerge on these camps or is David Chap just
desperately trying to stay in charge of everyone.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah, there are three factions. One faction the other seamen
referred to as the Seceeders, and they are simply like
a pack of pillaging marauders who break off and roam
the island threateningly committing crimes. And they're kind of like
a terror to everyone, and they are kind of set apart.
And then in the main encampment there are two main factions.
(19:04):
One faction is led by Captain Cheap and his loyal followers,
though they are dwindling in number. And then there is
a gunner from the ship named John Bulkeley. We don't
know what John Bulkeley looked like because he could not
afford to have had a portrait made of him. He
came from the lower to middle classes, but he was
very literate. He was a compulsive dier, so we know
(19:25):
what he thought. He had been. In many ways, the
most skilled semen on the wager and he was an
instinctive leader, but on a ship he knew. Because of
his station during those times of very rigid class structures,
it was unlikely that he would ever be the commander
of a warship. But suddenly, on this island, all his
skills start to manifest themselves, and he's very capable, cunning,
(19:48):
and genius, and he's kind of the most active and
kind of pulling them in together desperate to get off
the island. And so the men begin to have these
philosophical debates on the island even while they are starving.
You know, what is the nature of leadership? Should Sheep
remain the leader because he'd been their leader inship? Or
in what Bulkley described, did this state of nature? Did
(20:10):
they need new rules and new regulations? And could somebody
like him who had not been from the aristocracy suddenly
become a commander in his own right.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Was everyone convinced that they absolutely had to leave the
island there was no choice, or were there a faction
that just said, we're never getting off this island and
we have to make the best of what we have
and maybe we can figure out how to fish later.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
I think for the most part, they all wanted to
get off the island. I mean, the seceeders are kind
of a crazed pack, but for the most part, everybody
is desperate to get off the island because they don't
know how to survive in that place. So if they
had a will to live, they wanted to find a
(20:52):
way off. But they're visions of what they should do
when they get off the island fuel this kind of
titanic battle between Captain Cheap and the gunner John Bulkeley.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Are they going to try to use these transport boats?
Is that their idea to literally sail thousands of miles
to get back home.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah, So eventually they have a couple of the small
transfer boats. The carpenter. There's a carpenter on the ships,
and the carpenter was actually a very talented carpenter, is
by the most talented carpenter in the expedition. He's also
John Bulkeley's closest friend. And he comes up with this
idea that if they could salvage what was known as
the longboat, which was the larger of these transfer boats,
which was all kind of shattered on the on the vest,
(21:33):
if they could salvage it, then they could try to
rebuild it and expand it into a large enough vessel that,
along with the two other couple other tiny transfer boats,
they might be able to get off this island. And
so for a brief moment they're actually united around this scheme.
The two factions in the main camp working day and
night to try to build this craft. But eventually they
(21:55):
have two very different ideas of how that vessel that
has slowly emerged urging should be used. Captain Sheep, who
is very dutiful and stubborn, is desperate almost for a
bit of redemption, is determined to take this craft and
believes they should sail northward towards the closest Spanish settlement,
(22:16):
who again they were at war with Spain at that time,
and they try to seize the ship some kind of
trading vessel, and to try to meet up with the
leader of their own expedition, the squadron again and go
on their way continue on the expedition. Bulkley thinks this
is nots and thinks, you know, we've had enough and
(22:36):
this war has been a disaster, and this expedition has
been a disaster, and it's time to just try to
get home. So he comes up with a separate planet's
also very daring and dangerous in some ways. In terms
of distance cover would be even more formidable. He wants
to take the boat, and he thinks if they sail
north into the Spanish, they're just going to get decimated.
(22:58):
So how can we as starving Castell's fight to Spanish.
So he wants to go south, travel southward, then through
the Strait of Magellan, which is a kind of winding
passage at the tip of South America or near the
South America treacher sies, and then sealed northward to Brazil.
Brazil was Portuguese, so it wasn't a war with England.
That whole trip, though was some three thouurs of miles.
(23:19):
It would have been one of the longest castaway voyages
ever carried out.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
So we have these two factions with two very different
points of view. How is the tension manifested between them
before we really start to break apart. Are they sabotaging
each other? Or is this a war of words? At
this point if we take out the other group of
more orders.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It's simmering and it keeps kind of building. It's kind
of building over time. Then it might calm down a
little bit, but then it's gradually simmering more and more.
You know, at some point they become so antagonized that
they are sending messengers back and forth between each group. Wow,
and they're only separated. I mean, I don't know the
distance twenty yards maybe, but they know some of the
(24:00):
leaders will no longer speak. So there's something like diplomats
back and forth, and they're having kind of wars of words.
And then at one point there is increasing violence and
they begin to spiral into more violence. At one point,
the captain, who is kind of desperate to hold on
to his command and sees his power dwindling around him.
As Bulkley stirs the men with talk. He actually uses
(24:24):
afraid life and liberty, and he starts to have the
men signed petitions. Aliott salvaged a paper and pens, and
so it's kind of this political battle and a class
struggle playing out on this island. The island in many
ways became this laboratory to test the human condition under
extreme circumstances, and it slowly begins to reveal each person's nature,
both the good and the bad. And so you see
(24:47):
this kind of growing battle, and then at one point
Captain Cheap, fearing that one man was committing mutiny, bursts
out of his tent, takes his gun and places the
barrel right against the man's head, and without any questions
or any proceedings, he pulls the trigger and the man
had been unarmed. And for a moment this kind of
(25:08):
quiets things, but gradually it only increases the resentment of
the other faction, and so in their way, it ends
up dwindling and diminishing, like Captain's authority.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
So there are people who are moving over to vocally side.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
I'm assuming yes, his side is growing by the day.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
How are we doing with nutrition and food at this point,
because we're a couple of months into it, right when
this tension is growing.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah, they are starving more and more. A number of
them had died, I'm buried in the shallow graves on
the island.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
They had tried to come up with all sorts of
ways to try to find food. They even built these
kind of little rafts that they would kind of try
to flow around the coast, but really with limited success.
So they're beginning to starve. It's increasing their paranoia and
no doubt, the starvation is increasing. You know, starvation has
not only physical effects as real psychological effects. I mean,
(26:14):
it's just a gnawing prefaceive force. So that's also augmenting
the tensions and the memo no doubt, also suffering from hypothermia.
You know, they only had scraps of clothing and it
was always wet and cold, so you know, it's a
real battle for their wits at this moment.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
When is the next big event?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
So well, what eventually happens is they begin to talk
about this taboo of mutiny, and they know that a
full blown mutiny the kind that they are contemplating could
be a hanging offense. And as they're discussing this, they
eventually do decide to cross that threshold. And early one morning,
a ragtag army of starving men, armed with whatever tools
(26:55):
and instruments they had, burst into Captain cheaps dwelling and
they seize him and they tie him up.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Do they have help from the marauders or is that
group staying out of it?
Speaker 2 (27:07):
The Marauders are still kind of roaming. They do eventually
seek the alliance of one marauder who was a very
good carpenter who could help build a ship, but for
the most part, the marauders are still just pillaging, doing
their own crime separately.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Okay, so what happens next?
Speaker 2 (27:21):
They decide to die at the captain, and the thought is, well,
maybe will they bring the captain with them back to England.
They think they can use the shooting that Sheep had
done to justify arresting him. Cheap believes they're just using
that as a justification, and ultimately the faction led by
Bulkeley leaves the island and in the most stunning development,
(27:42):
they leave Captain Sheep behind. And it's a little bit
murky about exactly what transpired to do that, but she
was proud. According to Bulkeley, he did not want to
go back with them if he was going to remain
a prisoner. But there was also a spoken and even
spoken a desire that if Captain Sheep came back with them,
(28:04):
he would tell an alternative story. So by leaving Captain
Sheep and his followers behind on the island, the hope
is that there will be only one story to prevail
if they ever make it back to England and never
have to face the court martial.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
But did they leave that other transport boat for them
to at least have a chance.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
They did, but it was all kind of broken up.
There was very little expectation that they would ever get
off the island. You know. One of the things that
the other faction does throughout is they know that if
they ever get back to England, they're going to likely
be hauled before a military tribunal. So even while they're
on the island, they had salvaged some paper and quills,
and they are writing contemporaneous documents. Bolkals, keeping a diary,
(28:46):
They're signing petitions. They are essentially trying to create contemporaneous
evidence so that they can create an unassailable story of
the sea that will withstand the scrutiny of a public trial.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
How many men are we talking about who are on
this boat with Bocley at this point.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Initially there are over eighty, but some would turn back
to rejoin the captain because when they realized the captain
has been abandoned, they just think that's a step too far.
So a small group does eventually turn back, but the
rest continue on. In this vessel. They are packed so
tightly together that they cannot even stand. They have virtually
(29:26):
no provisions and they begin this three thousand mile journey.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Now we know that weather plays such a big part
in these seafaring stories and the timing of it. Do
they encounter terrible weather I imagine over this time or
is it smooth sailing?
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Oh no, it's not smooth. No, not smooth. The Straight
of Magellan is notorious for its sudden swalls. There was
a reason why shifts, the larger vessels back then avoided
that winding channel and chose to try to round the
Cape Horn with its violence. Sees, because the Straight of
Magellan presented its own challenges. You know, they didn't have
(30:05):
a map, but what they had was they didn't have
a reliable map or a detail. But what they had
was an earlier account of a seamen who had gone
through a British semen had gone through the Strait of Magellan.
Bulkeley is using this to navigate by, and it's really
one of the more extraordinary feats of navigation. He's kind
of reading this log book and then he would try
to eyeball things to match them up so that he
(30:27):
would know where they were. You know, at one point
they're going through the Strait of Magellan and all the
other crew you know, they're starving, they have to throw
people overboard, and some of the other castaways think he's
gone the wrong way, and so he agrees to turn
back and he'd actually been right, which only adds more
time to their voyage. But on these expeditions, they were
enormously challenged and they cause men sometimes to be abandoned.
(30:52):
Bulkeley was an extremely religious person, but it raised the question,
you know, is it a sin to want to live?
And how far would you go to one on them?
By the time that one boat reaches Brazil after some
three thousand miles, they're only twenty nine survived, including John
bulk Leave, the gunner.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
What is the reaction when they reach Brazil? Was there
even news? How would even anyone know about this wreckage
to begin with? And that's a question, why have a
cover story when there's no witnesses?
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Well, I think the hope there was there was not
going to be witnesses. You know, they would have to
explain why they were there. Came back and there was
no captain with him, and what had happened to the captain.
So when they get to Brazil, though, they're initially gaded
with great curiosity, and they are healed and commended for
their ingenuity and the bravery, because this was nobody can
(31:47):
believe that anyone made this journey in their condition, in
this tiny, battered boat. And as you mentioned, it would
take a long time for news to eventually reach England.
I mean, you know, you're not talking about money. Months
and months and months, and it would take them a
long time to head back. But eventually several of this
group do return to England are able to share their story,
(32:07):
and at that point there's still no news from Captain
Sheep and the other faction, so there's only really one
story to prevail.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
What is happening that we know of David Sheep and
his crew, and of course the marauders who are left
behind on the island.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Some of the marauders are kind of uncontrolled and some
even trying to make their miskiven die, but the bulk
of them, this kind of group of seceedars, do end
up joining up with Cheap and John Byron, the midshipman,
is present. He was not a marauder, but he had decided,
after a lot of soul searching and kind of uncertainty,
decided to stay with Captain Sheep that he thought it
(32:44):
was wrong to leave him to die, and so he
stays with Sheap and there are a couple others and
they eventually kind of fix their little crafts. They try
to get off the island, but they failed to They
can't get through the Gulf of Sorrows or the Golf
of Pain, and eventually they returned to the island and
again after there's Field attempts to leave it a month
later and they basically go back there to die. And
(33:08):
it's then that almost miraculously, a group of Native Patagonians
arrive in a couple of canoes and ultimately helped save
a few of the castaways, end up leading them on
a long journey to Chillaway Island, which is a Spanish settlement,
which is where she wanted to get to. But then
(33:29):
once they're there, they're actually taken prisoners, which is what
and they end up being in prison, so months and
months go on again after everything they've been through, they're
put in the condemned hole. You know, it would take
some of them close to six years since they had
left England to finally return. Byron, who had left England
(33:50):
at the age of sixteen, would return at the age
of twenty two and he was unrecognizable to his family.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Who comes back to England and what do they say
once they're there six years later, so you.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Know, Captain Sheep emerges and Captain Sheep is burning for
vengeance for having been abandoned. He believes he was abandoned
to die. He believes these others where he referred to
the other group as my mutineers, and he is ready
for a court martial on a showdown, and.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
I'm assuming the Crown is shocked that he's there and says,
we've heard news that this happened, but there's a band
of heroes who were in Brazil and what actually happened here.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah, so there's someone to go on this court martial.
Bulkley and his group are certain they're going to be
hanged and they are praying before the trial. Meanwhile, they
have charged Cheap with the most serious offense possible, which
was homicide. They're alleging that the captain and kills him,
which under naval regulations back then, was the one charge
(34:54):
that left no room for kind of wiggle room in
terms of the punishment was a hanging of fence.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Who has the most reliable narrative here. Do you think
it has to be cheap? You would think, right.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Well, Sheep had a certain standing and he had more
of the backing of the Admiralty and the officers and
the powers that be, and he is contending that he
was kind of undermined by many of them menerally on,
you know, and Bokeley comes from a different station. But
Bokeley has created perhaps the most persuasive story. He got
back to England first, he got his story on the
(35:26):
record first. He has a fair amount of public sympathy.
So it's quite a standoff. But what really happens is,
you know, these two sides are lobbing their stories back
and forth to see who would win, and they both
can make some valid points. But the British Empire and
the authorities are listening to these stories and they kind
(35:48):
of seem to, you know, based on their actions, they
seem to kind of come to the conclusion that, you
know what, we like any of these stories. They don't
make us look very good. You know, they are undercutting
the central claim of the British Empire used to justify
as ruthless expansion and conquests of other peoples, which is
that their civilization was somehow superior to others. And yet
(36:11):
here on this island, our officers and crewe, these supposed
apostles of Western civilization, the vanguard of the Empire, have
behaved more like brutes than like gentlemen. And so they
suddenly have an interest in maybe telling a third version
and an alternative history and their own mythic tale to see.
So this is a story not only about the way
(36:32):
we tell stories to serve our self interest, but it's
also the way nations that especially empires, tell stories to
serve their self interests and to preserve their powers.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
So how is the Crown reframing the narrative of the
Wager at this point when you're looking at all these
people who probably technically should be hanged.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Yeah, So they come into the court martial, and to
their surprise and pleasant surprise for their point of view,
none of the defendants are actually asked about it, any
of the alleged crimes on the island. Nothing. Instead, they're
simply the court martial simply focuses on what it caused
the wreck of the Wager, you know, before they even
got to the island. And it would be the equivalent
(37:13):
of stopping a car in which the officers, you know,
the police find a dead body in the trunk, but
they only asked the driver about a bus to tailight.
And in the end they let everybody go. They just
let everybody go free. And there are no other proceedings,
in no other trials. And so you know this because
of the kind of fear of what this story said,
(37:36):
because these stories did not make the Empire look good,
because it showed the kind of really many ways disastrous
natures of the war and what it transpired during the
war and what had become a bloody stalemate. This became
as one British naval story and called it the Mutiny
that never was, And instead the British Navy seizes on
(38:00):
another story, which is that one of the ships from
the squadron, led by Commodore George Anson, he was down
to one ship from this big expedition that had started
out with nearly two thousand men and five warships. He's
down a one warship, a ragtag group. He managed to
get around the Horn and into the Pacific, and through
(38:21):
a great deal of skill and talent on his part,
he was in many ways a remarkable commander. He ends
up seizing the galleon and capturing this treasure. He captures
the prize of all the oceans. And that is the
story that the authorities decide to tell and trumpet and share,
leaving out and you know, or overlooking or underplaying all
(38:45):
these disasters that had taken place, and that's kind of
the mythic tale that gets passed down.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
And the press doesn't get a hold of it, or
is it just totally squashed.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
You know, the press initially seizes on the wager affair
because it's such a scandalous truth and what it says,
but eventually the story of ants and captioning the galleon
is the one that will be celebrated in stories. When
they returned to England, they were paraded through the streets
where their wagons filled with treasure. At that point at
(39:17):
the war, thousands and thousands of people had died both,
you know, throughout different expeditions. It kind of become a
bloody steelmate and so there was such a longing for
a victory. So here at last was news of a victory.
It wasn't going to change the course of the war,
nor was the treasure seized. It was only a fraction
of what had been squandered and wasted on this work.
(39:41):
Yet it gave them a story. It gave the news
of a victory. That is the story that will we
celebrated in sea ballance and poems and will eventually overshadow
the disastrous nature of this expedition, overlooking the fact that
of nearly two thousand people gone, more than thirteen hundred
of perish this mission.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Well, just to tie a little not on this story,
what happens with Bokeley and Cheap do they just sort
of ride off separately into the sunset and live quiet
lives After this is all done, Fat.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
And Cheap, still burning with his obsessive dreams of glory,
goes back to sea, and it shows, you know, in
a different world, in a different place, fate can be
very cruel and in a different way. On a different ship,
on a different mission, he might have had more success.
And he goes off on a ship and he helps
capture actually a Spanish ship that has a large, you know,
(40:33):
fairly large prize. And then he retires afterwards from ill health.
But he's always stained, He's always remembered, if he's remembered
at all, by the stain of what had happened on
the island and John Bulkeley with somebody who kind of
burst into history with almost no past. You know, we
don't have records of you know, much about him before this.
(40:54):
He kind of bursts into history and then later he
leaves and he goes to we know he went to Philadelphia,
into the colonies, into that hotbed feature hopbed of rebellion,
and there eventually he disappears from history.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. This has been an exactly
right production. Our senior producer is Alexis M. Morosi. Our
associate producer is Alex Chi. This episode was mixed by
John Bradley. Curtis heath is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga.
(41:40):
Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgariff and Danielle Kramer.
Follow Wicked Words on Instagram and Facebook at tenfold more
Wicked and on Twitter at tenfold more. And if you
know of a historical crime that could use some attention
from the crew at tenfold more, Wicked, email us at
info at Tenfoldmorewicked Dot com. We'll also take your suggestions
(42:01):
for true crime authors for wicked words
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
They begin to release their wildly conflicting accounts about what
had occurred, and they're hoping to save their lives because
if they don't tell a convincing tale, it could be hanged.
And so this unleashes this great war of the truth. Here.
These men have waged the war against the elements, and
now they're going to wage just war over the truth.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
true crime podcast Tenfold More Wicked and the co host
of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. I've traveled
around the world interviewing people for the show, and they
are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true
(00:57):
crime stories, and now we want to tell you those
stories worries with details that have never been published. Tenfold
War Wicked presents Wicked Words is about the choices that
writers make, good and bad. It's a deep dive into
the stories behind the stories. I love a tale set
on the high seas. You can't beat a twisty story
(01:18):
about an eighteenth century mutiny and survival and then conflicting accounts.
Author David Grant has written about the epic, harrowing saga
of a ship and its crew in a book called
The Wager, A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. Let's
jump into the story of the Wager and what its
(01:40):
mission was. Where we are in time.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
So in seventeen thirty nine, an imperial war had broken
out between Great Britain and its imperial rival Spain, and
the Wager the ship had received orders to set sail
with a squadron of several other warships on a secret
mission to try to capture a Spanish galleon filled with
(02:03):
so much treasure was known as the Prize of all
the Oceans, I believe it or not. That was part
of the mission, had a real whiff of piracy about it,
even though it was a naval mission and it was
part of the war. So that was the original order
and kind of what begins this misadventure.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Anyways, So how many crewmen are we talking about and
how many officers? What's the hierarchy of the ship as
far as you knew.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
It, Yeah, so in the squadron entirely there are five warships,
including the Wager. There's a scouting sloop of smaller ship,
and there are two tiny cargo ships that are going
to company that are supposed to the company. The expedition
partway altogether in the squadron. It would require nearly two
thousand men and boys to man these ships. And these
ships were really very complex. They were kind of the
(02:47):
engineering marvels of their time, and so they required skilled men.
You know, even before the voyage began, the seeds of
its destruction were planted. The Wager, which was the smallest
of the war, it needed about two hundred and fifty men,
which was nearly double the number it was designed to carry.
But the British Navy had exhausted its supply of volunteers
(03:10):
and it did not have a conscription back then. So
what it did was it sent out these press gangs
to towns and cities and ports, and they would eyeball
people who would eyeball men and boys, and they basically say, oh,
you got this round hat, you got a little checkered shirt.
They would even inspect your fingertips to see if you
had a little tar on them, because tar was used
(03:31):
on ships to make everything water resistant, and if they
thought so, well, then they would just seize you and
in effect kidnap you and drag you unwillingly on a
voyage that might last two to three years. You know,
no chance to say goodbye or loaded your family. Even then,
the amilty was sure to mend for this squadron, so
it took the extreme step of rounding up five hundred
(03:52):
soldiers from a retirement home. You know, you have to
have a gallon's humor because it's just so dark. I mean,
you rounded up these pensioners who were in their sixties
and seventies. Many were missing an assortment of limbs, and
some were so sick they had to be lifted on
stretchers onto these vessels. So that was the beginning. That's
how it all began.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
From what I know about ships in the seventeen hundreds,
they were often filled with the people you're describing. It
could be criminals, people off the street. You know, they
were trying to supply the ships with everyone and everything
they possibly could. The officers sometimes were very unprepared and undertrained,
and maybe we're just there because you know, they were
(04:33):
part of high society and this would be an honor
to head the ship. Is that the case with the squadron,
Do we have people who really don't belong in high positions?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
The good question. The kind of the expedition who had
not ever led an expedition or done anything of this sort,
turns out to be extraordinarily competent and capable. More than competent.
He has that mysterious qualities that make a great commander,
which usually not only a master of the wooden world
of the ship, but he was a master of himself.
(05:04):
But on these ships you sometimes had aristocratic dandies who
would be officers. For example, the wage you would eventually
have a captain who had a very kind of volatile,
tempestuous personality. And one of the things that makes these
ships so interesting is that they really were these kind
of odd, eclectic, floating civilizations. So you would have these
(05:27):
officers who tended to come from the aristocracy and the nobility.
Many of them were quite well educated. You might have dandies,
you'd have city paulpers, you'd have these press people on
the ship unwillingly, you'd have free black seamen, and they're
all kind of thrown together onto one of these ships,
and they have to be somehow molded into a band
or brothers.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So how well does the trip go until it doesn't
go well? Is everybody getting along or are they staying
on their mission or are they chasing down the Spanish
vessels the way they're supposed.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
To the biggest challenge is it takes them a long
time to get out of the dockyards in England because
as sophisticated as these ships are with their lethal instruments,
because they were made for gun battles and also meant
to be the home for all these seilers living together
in close quarters, they were also made a very perish materials,
which was wood, and so the ships have been kind
of laid up on rotten rode for months and months
(06:19):
and months waiting to finally get off. And the wager
is a little bit the ugly duckling of the runt
of the expedition of the warships, because it had not
been born for battle. It was remade from a merchant
ship into warship. It was the lowest ranking warship. It
was the sixth rate, which mean and had twenty eight cannons.
It was a little tubby and it kind of doubled
as a storeship for the expedition. But eventually they finally
(06:40):
set off nearly a year after they were supposed to,
and they get across the Atlantic, but almost immediately everything
begins to go wrong. I mean, the ships are working
and functioning, and the crews are working, functioning, but pretty
soon they find they're being chased by a Spanish ramada
that is larger than their own squadron, so they're trying
to outrun it, and then they have to sail around
(07:02):
Cape Horn. And Cape Horn is at the very tip
of South America, because their mission is to sail around
Cape Horn and then into the Pacific and try to
intercept the guy in off the coast of the Philippines
and Cape Horn. The seas around Cape Horn are among
the most violent in the world. It is the one
place on Earth where the seas travel thirteen thousand miles uninterrupted.
(07:24):
They never get blocked by land, and so because of that,
they just accumulate enormous force. A Cape Horn roller wave
could dwarf an ninemy foot mass. There are the strongest
currents on Earth as they funnel into this passageway between
the tip of South America and Antarctica. And then there
are the winds which frequently accelerate the hurricane force. Herman Melville,
who would later make the journey around the Horn, compare
(07:47):
it to a descent into Hell and Dante's Inferno. Dramatic, yes,
very dramatic, and as Velveo is, nobody wrote about the
sea better. And so immediately they are just battered by
these storms day and night. The ship's breaking apart, the
seals blowing out. And at that very point when they're
(08:08):
going to need every person on board these ships, if
they're gonna have any chance to persevere, what happens. They
begin to suffer from a mysterious illness.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I've read about this illness and it sounds just terrible.
What is this?
Speaker 2 (08:20):
First they suffered from typhus and have high fevers, and
several of them die. And then when they reach Cape Horn,
they are suffering from a new illness, the great enigma
the sea, which was scurvy. And their teeth begins to
fall out, and their hair falls out, and their eyes bulge,
and even the cartilage that seemed to glue together their
(08:42):
bones is coming undone. There was one semen in one
of the accounts, described the fractured a limb in a
battle fifty years earlier fighting in war, and of course
the fracture of long since heale, but suddenly with this disease,
it suddenly refractures in the very same place. And something
I didn't realize about scurvy is that it can affect
(09:03):
the senses. And one of these even described how the
disease got into our brains and we went raving mad.
But they didn't know then was that the cure was
so simple, that they were suffering from a vitamin C
deficiency on the ships because they didn't bring fruit vegetables,
they'd have refrigeration, and that the cure had actually been
right within the reach when they had stopped at Brazil,
(09:24):
before they came around the Cape Horn, there were actually
limes on this island. And of course, later in the century,
when the British Navy discovers that scurvy could be cured
with lines, they would carry limes on their ships, and
of course British svem became known as limeys. But back
then they didn't know that, and this expedition suffered what
is considered one of the worst scurvy outbreaks in maritime history,
(09:45):
and hundreds and hundreds members of this expedition perish. Their
bodies were just thrown overboard unceremoniously.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
And is this also the time period when they were
eating bad meat in the ten Cans?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, and then you know the foods that started to
rock the bread again. You don't have refrigeration on these ships,
so these little biscuits they have are so hard and
they're kind of worm eating and when they would hit them,
they would describe hitting them against the table and they
would just kind of disintegrate into dust. Some of the
meat had spoiled on the expedition, so they are suffering
from poor provisions. And you know, on top of that,
(10:22):
when they're around Cape Horn, it's so rough. The seas
are so bad they can't really even use the stove,
so they often have to eat raw meat.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
So the Wager and its ships are battered and the
men are dying and battered, and dead bodies are thrown overboard.
But then it gets worse. When does it get worse?
As if we didn't get worse.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
So the ships are desperate to stay together around Cape
Horn because they know if they separate, there'll be no
one there to rescue them if something happens. So what
do they do? You know, it's kind of interesting you
learn these things, like how did you communicate back then
when you didn't have iPhones, You didn't have any telecommunications.
And so what they would do is they would fire
blanks in their cannon. So they're firing their cannons repeatedly
(11:02):
to signal the location. But eventually the blasket drowned out
and all the ships scattered in the storm. They're all separated,
and the Wager, as a new commander, relatively new commander,
man named David Chip, finds himself and his ship all
alone and left to their own destiny. And he was
recently promoted to be captain. He had previously been a lieutenant.
(11:23):
He was somebody who back on land had kind of
been plagued by debts and frustration and chased by creditors,
but on a ship he had always found refuge. And
on this expedition he had finally attained what he had
always just kind of obsessively longed for, which was this
chance to captain his own warship. So he's determined to
prove himself as this new captain, and he does manage
(11:47):
to steer the Wager around Cape Horn, and he wants
to meet at a predetermined rendezvous point that they had
in case they were ever separated off the coast of Chile.
But he and the other seamen on the wager are
suffering from another huge challenge, which is they don't know
precisely where they are on the map. They could determine
(12:08):
their latitude by reading the stars, but they had no
way of knowing their longitude because that would require a
reliable clock, and they hadn't yet been invented, and so
they're forced to rely on what was called dead reckoning,
which is essentially informed guestswork an elite of faith. And
as the wager is coming up the coast to Chile
off Patagonia through the Pacific, their longitude, their estimation of
(12:31):
their longitude turns out not only are you wrong, but
wrong by hundreds of miles, and they suddenly find themselves
trapped in a gulf known as a golf would a
pain us, which translates as the golf of sorrows, or
some seamen would translate as the gulf of pain. And
there the wager suddenly hits a submerged rock.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
You talk about in the book how blindly they would sail,
Tell me how they would figure out the depth, because
I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, well even everything. I mean, they would do soundings
by dropping ropes with weights to try to figure out depths,
and then they would try to measure their speed by
having knots in the rope, and then they would count
the knots, which is why in nautical miles they refer
to knots. You know, so many of these things derived
from the sea the way they counted their speed, and
these were kind of rough estimations, and you know, instead
(13:24):
of clocks, they had hour glasses, so you know, everything
they had to do was often estimating, so they were
sailing partially blind. So they hit the submerged rock. The
wage was about one hundred and twenty three feet three
masted ship, as were other warships. And what's really important
to understand is that these were buoyant castles. They were
(13:46):
the homes for these seamen. You know, this is where
they were going to live for years at a time,
and most seamen back then didn't know how to swim,
so you could imagine they're terror They hit the submerged
rock and a part of the world none of them
ever been to. They have no idea where they are
exactly the rudder shatters a two ton anchor. I imagine
the weight of that. A two ton anchor falls, It rattles,
(14:08):
breaks loose, it falls, and it plunges through the hull,
leaving a hole. And there the ship is kind of
teetering for a moment, and then another mountainous wave comes
and it sweeps the wager off these rocks, and the
ship is creaming through this gulf and through this minefield
of rocks with no rudder to stare by water surging
(14:29):
into the hole, through the hole, until at last it
crashes into a cluster of rocks, and there the ship
finally begins to completely rip apart. The planks are shattering,
the decks are caving in, cabins are collapsing, water is
surging through the bottom of the hull. Rats are scurring upward.
(14:51):
The seamen who have been suffering from scurvy, who were
below in their hammocks and were unable to get out
in time, they drown. But the ship did not yet
completely sing. It became wedge between these two pillars of rocks,
and so the survivors kind of climb up onto the
rendants of the ship, and there they look at in
the distance and through the mists they see a desolate island.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
How do we get to the island? Are these kinds
of ships equipped with buiz or Dinghey's or or what.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, so they didn't carry life boots back then, but
they did carry three or four transport boats. And these
were usually boats that could be rowed, and they could
also you could put a little sail on them sometimes
to propel them. But they were relatively small and they
were really used to kind of ferry people ashore or
sometimes take supplies if you were going ashore. One of
(15:40):
the largest of the transpert boats actually is cracked and
they can't use that, but they do get a couple
of these small transport boats eventually off the boat and
they ferry them men back and forth onto the island,
and about one hundred and forty five of them eventually
make it to the island. Of course, that's where the
real help began.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
So these one hundred and forty five men land on
this island. What if they initially see they must just
be grateful to be on land.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, So at first they're hoping they might find their salvation.
You know, they get to this island of the journey's
been hell already and they think, well, okay, well maybe
we got here, we're still breathing, and maybe this blazel,
you know, have sustenance and a way to get home.
And you know, at first they're not even sure if
they're on an island or on mainland. That's how bewildered
they are. But the island turns out to be wind
(16:27):
sweat and barren and mountainous. The temperature hovers around freezing
or there in the wintertime, and it's really damp. It
it's always there's so much precipitation, so it's always raining
or sleeping. And worst of all, they could find virtually
no food. There are some clams and snails that can
(16:48):
find along a little beach hut, but they soon exhaust those.
They find the little sprouts of celery, which mysteriously cures
they're scurvy, mysteriously to them. I had somebody seeing it.
But they don't find any animals on the island. And
there's some birds kind of flying tantalizingly off.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
In the distance, amazing, And they can't fish. I'm assuming
they're just not equipped.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Yeah, they don't have any equipment for fish, and because
it's so rough around there and the waves crashing. They
were just shocked to discover they didn't really see any
fish even close, you know, coming in ever close to
the shore.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
So how do they survive? Are they at least able
to build some sort of shelter.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah, So first they try to build an encampment. Captain
David che tries to basically build an imperial outpost, and
he believes they should be governed, you know, by the
same rules that it existed on the ship, and the
only way they going to survive is if they maintain cohesion,
okay exactly, and they should be governed by the same
(17:46):
hierarchical system. So he would still be in charge. And
they start to you know, pull together bits of shelter,
and so they start to build some homes. They start
to figure out how to collect some water. They are
then begin to pretty you know, ingeniously and dangerously try
to do kind of a salvage operation to go out
(18:08):
to the wreck of the Wagers that's sinking further and
further into the sea to see what supplies they can
poke out of there and dig out of there, and
what provisions. So they start to collect so they get
some flower and some other provisions a little bit of
meat and they set up a store tent with rations.
But gradually as they begin to starve and they descend
(18:30):
into these warring camps.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
So they are now starting to separate. Are we seeing
leaders emerge on these camps or is David Chap just
desperately trying to stay in charge of everyone.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah, there are three factions. One faction the other seamen
referred to as the Seceeders, and they are simply like
a pack of pillaging marauders who break off and roam
the island threateningly committing crimes. And they're kind of like
a terror to everyone, and they are kind of set apart.
And then in the main encampment there are two main factions.
(19:04):
One faction is led by Captain Cheap and his loyal followers,
though they are dwindling in number. And then there is
a gunner from the ship named John Bulkeley. We don't
know what John Bulkeley looked like because he could not
afford to have had a portrait made of him. He
came from the lower to middle classes, but he was
very literate. He was a compulsive dier, so we know
(19:25):
what he thought. He had been. In many ways, the
most skilled semen on the wager and he was an
instinctive leader, but on a ship he knew. Because of
his station during those times of very rigid class structures,
it was unlikely that he would ever be the commander
of a warship. But suddenly, on this island, all his
skills start to manifest themselves, and he's very capable, cunning,
(19:48):
and genius, and he's kind of the most active and
kind of pulling them in together desperate to get off
the island. And so the men begin to have these
philosophical debates on the island even while they are starving.
You know, what is the nature of leadership? Should Sheep
remain the leader because he'd been their leader inship? Or
in what Bulkley described, did this state of nature? Did
(20:10):
they need new rules and new regulations? And could somebody
like him who had not been from the aristocracy suddenly
become a commander in his own right.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Was everyone convinced that they absolutely had to leave the
island there was no choice, or were there a faction
that just said, we're never getting off this island and
we have to make the best of what we have
and maybe we can figure out how to fish later.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
I think for the most part, they all wanted to
get off the island. I mean, the seceeders are kind
of a crazed pack, but for the most part, everybody
is desperate to get off the island because they don't
know how to survive in that place. So if they
had a will to live, they wanted to find a
(20:52):
way off. But they're visions of what they should do
when they get off the island fuel this kind of
titanic battle between Captain Cheap and the gunner John Bulkeley.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Are they going to try to use these transport boats?
Is that their idea to literally sail thousands of miles
to get back home.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah, So eventually they have a couple of the small
transfer boats. The carpenter. There's a carpenter on the ships,
and the carpenter was actually a very talented carpenter, is
by the most talented carpenter in the expedition. He's also
John Bulkeley's closest friend. And he comes up with this
idea that if they could salvage what was known as
the longboat, which was the larger of these transfer boats,
which was all kind of shattered on the on the vest,
(21:33):
if they could salvage it, then they could try to
rebuild it and expand it into a large enough vessel that,
along with the two other couple other tiny transfer boats,
they might be able to get off this island. And
so for a brief moment they're actually united around this scheme.
The two factions in the main camp working day and
night to try to build this craft. But eventually they
(21:55):
have two very different ideas of how that vessel that
has slowly emerged urging should be used. Captain Sheep, who
is very dutiful and stubborn, is desperate almost for a
bit of redemption, is determined to take this craft and
believes they should sail northward towards the closest Spanish settlement,
(22:16):
who again they were at war with Spain at that time,
and they try to seize the ship some kind of
trading vessel, and to try to meet up with the
leader of their own expedition, the squadron again and go
on their way continue on the expedition. Bulkley thinks this
is nots and thinks, you know, we've had enough and
(22:36):
this war has been a disaster, and this expedition has
been a disaster, and it's time to just try to
get home. So he comes up with a separate planet's
also very daring and dangerous in some ways. In terms
of distance cover would be even more formidable. He wants
to take the boat, and he thinks if they sail
north into the Spanish, they're just going to get decimated.
(22:58):
So how can we as starving Castell's fight to Spanish.
So he wants to go south, travel southward, then through
the Strait of Magellan, which is a kind of winding
passage at the tip of South America or near the
South America treacher sies, and then sealed northward to Brazil.
Brazil was Portuguese, so it wasn't a war with England.
That whole trip, though was some three thouurs of miles.
(23:19):
It would have been one of the longest castaway voyages
ever carried out.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
So we have these two factions with two very different
points of view. How is the tension manifested between them
before we really start to break apart. Are they sabotaging
each other? Or is this a war of words? At
this point if we take out the other group of
more orders.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It's simmering and it keeps kind of building. It's kind
of building over time. Then it might calm down a
little bit, but then it's gradually simmering more and more.
You know, at some point they become so antagonized that
they are sending messengers back and forth between each group. Wow,
and they're only separated. I mean, I don't know the
distance twenty yards maybe, but they know some of the
(24:00):
leaders will no longer speak. So there's something like diplomats
back and forth, and they're having kind of wars of words.
And then at one point there is increasing violence and
they begin to spiral into more violence. At one point,
the captain, who is kind of desperate to hold on
to his command and sees his power dwindling around him.
As Bulkley stirs the men with talk. He actually uses
(24:24):
afraid life and liberty, and he starts to have the
men signed petitions. Aliott salvaged a paper and pens, and
so it's kind of this political battle and a class
struggle playing out on this island. The island in many
ways became this laboratory to test the human condition under
extreme circumstances, and it slowly begins to reveal each person's nature,
both the good and the bad. And so you see
(24:47):
this kind of growing battle, and then at one point
Captain Cheap, fearing that one man was committing mutiny, bursts
out of his tent, takes his gun and places the
barrel right against the man's head, and without any questions
or any proceedings, he pulls the trigger and the man
had been unarmed. And for a moment this kind of
(25:08):
quiets things, but gradually it only increases the resentment of
the other faction, and so in their way, it ends
up dwindling and diminishing, like Captain's authority.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
So there are people who are moving over to vocally side.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
I'm assuming yes, his side is growing by the day.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
How are we doing with nutrition and food at this point,
because we're a couple of months into it, right when
this tension is growing.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah, they are starving more and more. A number of
them had died, I'm buried in the shallow graves on
the island.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
They had tried to come up with all sorts of
ways to try to find food. They even built these
kind of little rafts that they would kind of try
to flow around the coast, but really with limited success.
So they're beginning to starve. It's increasing their paranoia and
no doubt, the starvation is increasing. You know, starvation has
not only physical effects as real psychological effects. I mean,
(26:14):
it's just a gnawing prefaceive force. So that's also augmenting
the tensions and the memo no doubt, also suffering from hypothermia.
You know, they only had scraps of clothing and it
was always wet and cold, so you know, it's a
real battle for their wits at this moment.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
When is the next big event?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
So well, what eventually happens is they begin to talk
about this taboo of mutiny, and they know that a
full blown mutiny the kind that they are contemplating could
be a hanging offense. And as they're discussing this, they
eventually do decide to cross that threshold. And early one morning,
a ragtag army of starving men, armed with whatever tools
(26:55):
and instruments they had, burst into Captain cheaps dwelling and
they seize him and they tie him up.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Do they have help from the marauders or is that
group staying out of it?
Speaker 2 (27:07):
The Marauders are still kind of roaming. They do eventually
seek the alliance of one marauder who was a very
good carpenter who could help build a ship, but for
the most part, the marauders are still just pillaging, doing
their own crime separately.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Okay, so what happens next?
Speaker 2 (27:21):
They decide to die at the captain, and the thought is, well,
maybe will they bring the captain with them back to England.
They think they can use the shooting that Sheep had
done to justify arresting him. Cheap believes they're just using
that as a justification, and ultimately the faction led by
Bulkeley leaves the island and in the most stunning development,
(27:42):
they leave Captain Sheep behind. And it's a little bit
murky about exactly what transpired to do that, but she
was proud. According to Bulkeley, he did not want to
go back with them if he was going to remain
a prisoner. But there was also a spoken and even
spoken a desire that if Captain Sheep came back with them,
(28:04):
he would tell an alternative story. So by leaving Captain
Sheep and his followers behind on the island, the hope
is that there will be only one story to prevail
if they ever make it back to England and never
have to face the court martial.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
But did they leave that other transport boat for them
to at least have a chance.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
They did, but it was all kind of broken up.
There was very little expectation that they would ever get
off the island. You know. One of the things that
the other faction does throughout is they know that if
they ever get back to England, they're going to likely
be hauled before a military tribunal. So even while they're
on the island, they had salvaged some paper and quills,
and they are writing contemporaneous documents. Bolkals, keeping a diary,
(28:46):
They're signing petitions. They are essentially trying to create contemporaneous
evidence so that they can create an unassailable story of
the sea that will withstand the scrutiny of a public trial.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
How many men are we talking about who are on
this boat with Bocley at this point.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Initially there are over eighty, but some would turn back
to rejoin the captain because when they realized the captain
has been abandoned, they just think that's a step too far.
So a small group does eventually turn back, but the
rest continue on. In this vessel. They are packed so
tightly together that they cannot even stand. They have virtually
(29:26):
no provisions and they begin this three thousand mile journey.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Now we know that weather plays such a big part
in these seafaring stories and the timing of it. Do
they encounter terrible weather I imagine over this time or
is it smooth sailing?
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Oh no, it's not smooth. No, not smooth. The Straight
of Magellan is notorious for its sudden swalls. There was
a reason why shifts, the larger vessels back then avoided
that winding channel and chose to try to round the
Cape Horn with its violence. Sees, because the Straight of
Magellan presented its own challenges. You know, they didn't have
(30:05):
a map, but what they had was they didn't have
a reliable map or a detail. But what they had
was an earlier account of a seamen who had gone
through a British semen had gone through the Strait of Magellan.
Bulkeley is using this to navigate by, and it's really
one of the more extraordinary feats of navigation. He's kind
of reading this log book and then he would try
to eyeball things to match them up so that he
(30:27):
would know where they were. You know, at one point
they're going through the Strait of Magellan and all the
other crew you know, they're starving, they have to throw
people overboard, and some of the other castaways think he's
gone the wrong way, and so he agrees to turn
back and he'd actually been right, which only adds more
time to their voyage. But on these expeditions, they were
enormously challenged and they cause men sometimes to be abandoned.
(30:52):
Bulkeley was an extremely religious person, but it raised the question,
you know, is it a sin to want to live?
And how far would you go to one on them?
By the time that one boat reaches Brazil after some
three thousand miles, they're only twenty nine survived, including John
bulk Leave, the gunner.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
What is the reaction when they reach Brazil? Was there
even news? How would even anyone know about this wreckage
to begin with? And that's a question, why have a
cover story when there's no witnesses?
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Well, I think the hope there was there was not
going to be witnesses. You know, they would have to
explain why they were there. Came back and there was
no captain with him, and what had happened to the captain.
So when they get to Brazil, though, they're initially gaded
with great curiosity, and they are healed and commended for
their ingenuity and the bravery, because this was nobody can
(31:47):
believe that anyone made this journey in their condition, in
this tiny, battered boat. And as you mentioned, it would
take a long time for news to eventually reach England.
I mean, you know, you're not talking about money. Months
and months and months, and it would take them a
long time to head back. But eventually several of this
group do return to England are able to share their story,
(32:07):
and at that point there's still no news from Captain
Sheep and the other faction, so there's only really one
story to prevail.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
What is happening that we know of David Sheep and
his crew, and of course the marauders who are left
behind on the island.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Some of the marauders are kind of uncontrolled and some
even trying to make their miskiven die, but the bulk
of them, this kind of group of seceedars, do end
up joining up with Cheap and John Byron, the midshipman,
is present. He was not a marauder, but he had decided,
after a lot of soul searching and kind of uncertainty,
decided to stay with Captain Sheep that he thought it
(32:44):
was wrong to leave him to die, and so he
stays with Sheap and there are a couple others and
they eventually kind of fix their little crafts. They try
to get off the island, but they failed to They
can't get through the Gulf of Sorrows or the Golf
of Pain, and eventually they returned to the island and
again after there's Field attempts to leave it a month
later and they basically go back there to die. And
(33:08):
it's then that almost miraculously, a group of Native Patagonians
arrive in a couple of canoes and ultimately helped save
a few of the castaways, end up leading them on
a long journey to Chillaway Island, which is a Spanish settlement,
which is where she wanted to get to. But then
(33:29):
once they're there, they're actually taken prisoners, which is what
and they end up being in prison, so months and
months go on again after everything they've been through, they're
put in the condemned hole. You know, it would take
some of them close to six years since they had
left England to finally return. Byron, who had left England
(33:50):
at the age of sixteen, would return at the age
of twenty two and he was unrecognizable to his family.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Who comes back to England and what do they say
once they're there six years later, so you.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Know, Captain Sheep emerges and Captain Sheep is burning for
vengeance for having been abandoned. He believes he was abandoned
to die. He believes these others where he referred to
the other group as my mutineers, and he is ready
for a court martial on a showdown, and.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
I'm assuming the Crown is shocked that he's there and says,
we've heard news that this happened, but there's a band
of heroes who were in Brazil and what actually happened here.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah, so there's someone to go on this court martial.
Bulkley and his group are certain they're going to be
hanged and they are praying before the trial. Meanwhile, they
have charged Cheap with the most serious offense possible, which
was homicide. They're alleging that the captain and kills him,
which under naval regulations back then, was the one charge
(34:54):
that left no room for kind of wiggle room in
terms of the punishment was a hanging of fence.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Who has the most reliable narrative here. Do you think
it has to be cheap? You would think, right.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Well, Sheep had a certain standing and he had more
of the backing of the Admiralty and the officers and
the powers that be, and he is contending that he
was kind of undermined by many of them menerally on,
you know, and Bokeley comes from a different station. But
Bokeley has created perhaps the most persuasive story. He got
back to England first, he got his story on the
(35:26):
record first. He has a fair amount of public sympathy.
So it's quite a standoff. But what really happens is,
you know, these two sides are lobbing their stories back
and forth to see who would win, and they both
can make some valid points. But the British Empire and
the authorities are listening to these stories and they kind
(35:48):
of seem to, you know, based on their actions, they
seem to kind of come to the conclusion that, you
know what, we like any of these stories. They don't
make us look very good. You know, they are undercutting
the central claim of the British Empire used to justify
as ruthless expansion and conquests of other peoples, which is
that their civilization was somehow superior to others. And yet
(36:11):
here on this island, our officers and crewe, these supposed
apostles of Western civilization, the vanguard of the Empire, have
behaved more like brutes than like gentlemen. And so they
suddenly have an interest in maybe telling a third version
and an alternative history and their own mythic tale to see.
So this is a story not only about the way
(36:32):
we tell stories to serve our self interest, but it's
also the way nations that especially empires, tell stories to
serve their self interests and to preserve their powers.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
So how is the Crown reframing the narrative of the
Wager at this point when you're looking at all these
people who probably technically should be hanged.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Yeah, So they come into the court martial, and to
their surprise and pleasant surprise for their point of view,
none of the defendants are actually asked about it, any
of the alleged crimes on the island. Nothing. Instead, they're
simply the court martial simply focuses on what it caused
the wreck of the Wager, you know, before they even
got to the island. And it would be the equivalent
(37:13):
of stopping a car in which the officers, you know,
the police find a dead body in the trunk, but
they only asked the driver about a bus to tailight.
And in the end they let everybody go. They just
let everybody go free. And there are no other proceedings,
in no other trials. And so you know this because
of the kind of fear of what this story said,
(37:36):
because these stories did not make the Empire look good,
because it showed the kind of really many ways disastrous
natures of the war and what it transpired during the
war and what had become a bloody stalemate. This became
as one British naval story and called it the Mutiny
that never was, And instead the British Navy seizes on
(38:00):
another story, which is that one of the ships from
the squadron, led by Commodore George Anson, he was down
to one ship from this big expedition that had started
out with nearly two thousand men and five warships. He's
down a one warship, a ragtag group. He managed to
get around the Horn and into the Pacific, and through
(38:21):
a great deal of skill and talent on his part,
he was in many ways a remarkable commander. He ends
up seizing the galleon and capturing this treasure. He captures
the prize of all the oceans. And that is the
story that the authorities decide to tell and trumpet and share,
leaving out and you know, or overlooking or underplaying all
(38:45):
these disasters that had taken place, and that's kind of
the mythic tale that gets passed down.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
And the press doesn't get a hold of it, or
is it just totally squashed.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
You know, the press initially seizes on the wager affair
because it's such a scandalous truth and what it says,
but eventually the story of ants and captioning the galleon
is the one that will be celebrated in stories. When
they returned to England, they were paraded through the streets
where their wagons filled with treasure. At that point at
(39:17):
the war, thousands and thousands of people had died both,
you know, throughout different expeditions. It kind of become a
bloody steelmate and so there was such a longing for
a victory. So here at last was news of a victory.
It wasn't going to change the course of the war,
nor was the treasure seized. It was only a fraction
of what had been squandered and wasted on this work.
(39:41):
Yet it gave them a story. It gave the news
of a victory. That is the story that will we
celebrated in sea ballance and poems and will eventually overshadow
the disastrous nature of this expedition, overlooking the fact that
of nearly two thousand people gone, more than thirteen hundred
of perish this mission.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Well, just to tie a little not on this story,
what happens with Bokeley and Cheap do they just sort
of ride off separately into the sunset and live quiet
lives After this is all done, Fat.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
And Cheap, still burning with his obsessive dreams of glory,
goes back to sea, and it shows, you know, in
a different world, in a different place, fate can be
very cruel and in a different way. On a different ship,
on a different mission, he might have had more success.
And he goes off on a ship and he helps
capture actually a Spanish ship that has a large, you know,
(40:33):
fairly large prize. And then he retires afterwards from ill health.
But he's always stained, He's always remembered, if he's remembered
at all, by the stain of what had happened on
the island and John Bulkeley with somebody who kind of
burst into history with almost no past. You know, we
don't have records of you know, much about him before this.
(40:54):
He kind of bursts into history and then later he
leaves and he goes to we know he went to Philadelphia,
into the colonies, into that hotbed feature hopbed of rebellion,
and there eventually he disappears from history.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. This has been an exactly
right production. Our senior producer is Alexis M. Morosi. Our
associate producer is Alex Chi. This episode was mixed by
John Bradley. Curtis heath is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga.
(41:40):
Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgariff and Danielle Kramer.
Follow Wicked Words on Instagram and Facebook at tenfold more
Wicked and on Twitter at tenfold more. And if you
know of a historical crime that could use some attention
from the crew at tenfold more, Wicked, email us at
info at Tenfoldmorewicked Dot com. We'll also take your suggestions
(42:01):
for true crime authors for wicked words
Host
Kate Winkler Dawson
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!