Scenic from a distance but you wouldn't want to spend the night. A spit of inhospitable land, hugging the Pacific coast. This is Wager Island, named for the ship that washed up 300 years ago. Grann and his crew endured the moody waters over a 10-day journey.ĭavid Grann: I had to sit on the floor hunkered down. Author David Grann takes harrowing journey to inhospitable island to tell story of shipwreck and mutinyĭavid Grann: It was truly terrifying- or at least for me.And then there's sort of point where the captain says to me 'All right now- now we gotta go out into the open sea if we're gonna get to Wager Island.' And that was my first glimpse of these terrifying seas. We kind of stay originally through these channels that are sheltered in Patagonia. This is gonna be- it's gonna be, like, a Jacques Cousteau expedition. So in 2019, Grann flew to Chile and chartered a 52-foot vessel…ĭavid Grann: The boat looked- you know, it looked pretty big. And so it was then that I decided to try to make this trip. There's always a moment where something gnaws at you, something unknown. But there came a point where I began to fear that I could never fully understand what these 150 or so men had gone through on that island unless I went. One hundred forty five castaways, many sick from scurvy, swam to the nearest island….you'd think the name alone-the Gulf of Pain-would discourage visitors, especially one bespectacled 56-year-old man who admits he hates camping.ĭavid Grann: I spent the first two years doing research, in a way very suited to my physical attributes- which is in archives.ĭavid Grann: Yes, indoors. The Wager careened into rocks, ripping apart. As they're coming around, they're desperately, frantically trying to avoid this land. Grann showed us on his own map where the Wager got into trouble, a place aptly named.ĭavid Grann: They're barreling into the Gulf of Pain.

But, one of the ships in the squadron lost its way just off the coast of Patagonia. That meant rounding Cape Horn, negotiating some of the world's most treacherous waters and winds. With their Empires at war, a British squadron of roughly 2,000 men set out to capture a Spanish galleon filled with treasure off the Philippines.

All these names and symbols told a larger story.

The wager by david grann