Summary of The Wager

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. On January 28, 1742, a ragged vessel made of patched wood and cloth washed ashore on the Brazilian coast, carrying thirty emaciated men barely alive. They were survivors of His Majesty's Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had set out in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. The Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-laden galleon, known as "the prize of all the oceans," when disaster struck: the ship wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. After months of starvation and hardship, the crew built a makeshift boat and embarked on a harrowing journey across 3,000 miles of storm-battered seas. They were welcomed as heroes upon reaching Brazil. However, just six months later, a second, even more dilapidated craft arrived on the Chilean coast. This boat carried only three survivors, and their story was drastically different. The men who had landed in Brazil were not heroes—they were mutineers. The second group accused them of mutiny and murder, claiming they had been oppressed by a tyrannical officer. The battle of accusations soon escalated into a full-blown conflict, revealing a fractured, anarchic crew who fought for control of the barren island. The situation became so dire that the Admiralty called for a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. For the men involved, the stakes were life or death—those found guilty faced execution.