Readers are influenced by book covers, it’s only natural. And before I say anything else about The Wager, its cover is spectacular.

With a plot featuring typhoons, Spanish galleons, shipwreck, mutiny, cannibalism and more, the story more than fulfils the promise of its cover.

The Wager is an epic saga made doubly thrilling because it comes from the pages of history. David Grann has resurrected an all but forgotten episode that took place in 1741 during the farcically named ‘War of Jenkins’ Ear’ between Britain and Spain. HMS Wager, a patched-together merchant ship, was the ‘bastard of the fleet’ in a squadron of battleships commissioned by the British Navy to sail across the Atlantic around the fearsome Cape Horn in pursuit of a Spanish galleon reputed to be crammed with treasure. Doomed from the start, The Wager, after becoming separated from the rest of the fleet, was swept up in a violent storm off the coast of Patagonia, where it was smashed apart by rocks. From here, the story takes a Robinson Crusoe like turn when the surviving crew, including the captain, become castaways on an uninhabited island. Starvation, hypothermia, disease and desperation provoke an inexorable descent into anarchy, the perfect recipe for mutiny and ultimately murder.

In reconstructing the evidence of this ignoble saga, Grann spent years ‘combing the archival debris’, much as a salvage team might dissect the remains of a shipwreck. His aim was to present a truthful unbiased account, which he’s achieved. More than this, however, he’s written an unputdownable tale of intrigue, chicanery, and high seas adventure to rival those of Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad or Patrick O’Brian.

Reviewed by Anne Green