In the Gulf of Paine, some castaways have tried to row across three times that are across this headland. One of their boats had sank and they didn't have any more space for them. The last thing they were recorded as ever saying was God bless the king. And so their epitaph is on these islands. That is their only real epitaph.
David Grann is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book is The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.
“I became very haunted by the stories that [nations] don't tell. Nations and empires preserve their powers not only by the stories they tell, but also by the stories they leave out. … Early in my career, if I came across the silences in a story, I might not have highlighted them, because I thought, Well, there's nothing to tell there. And now I try to let the silences speak.”
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