The Wager by David Grann

 The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann

"Storms continued to batter the ships day and night. John Byron stared in awe at the waves that broke over the Wager, bandying the 123-foot vessel about as if it were no more than a pitiful rowboat."

Today's review is going to be a short one about The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann. I feel like the book really needs no long-winded synopsis written from me as the author so painstakingly put it in the title with just three words. But in case you need more information, here goes: In 1740, a small fleet of English ships set sail for a secret mission meant to foil the war plans of the Spanish. This mission takes them around the treacherous Cape Horn where disaster strikes one of the ships, the Wager. Eventually stranded on a foreign shore, Captain Cheap is desperate to fulfill his orders and rejoin the fight; his crew, focused on survival, want to turn back.

I don't read a lot of non-fiction or historical novels because sometimes they read like an over-bogged down info-dump of despair. Which is fine, if you like that sort of thing. But I felt like this story of nautical disaster reads like fiction which made it read a bit easier.

Despite reading like fiction, this book is loaded with information. It tells you how the ships came by their crew, who was in it, and the conditions under which they worked. What they were doing and where they were going. When the story turns from a tale of quest to a tale of survival, the book details what the crew was willing to do for survival and how they justified those actions. For a story that read like fiction I found it to be well-researched and exceptionally well-written.

For providing me with information that didn't suck the life out of me, a fascinating story about an ill-fated ship, and an epic journey across the world, I gave this book a five-star rating.