Britain and Spain are at war in the mid-1700s. The conflict starts because a British captain gets his ear cut off, or so he says by a Spanish officer. But that's not really what the conflict is about, is it? And so the British Admiralty puts together this squadron of ships. These ships are sort of technically marvelous, but they're also rotting from the inside.
David Grann is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the acclaimed author of "The Lost City of Z" and "Killers of the Flower Moon." In his new book, the #1 New York Times bestseller "The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder," he tells the story of an 18th-century British warship that crashed on a godforsaken island off the coast of Patagonia. Stranded and starving, the men descended into murderous anarchy. Years later, when a handful of the survivors returned to England, their heroes' welcome was quickly swamped by questions about what really happened on the island.
Host: Caleb Bissinger
Guest: David Grann