Great Britain then did not have conscription. And it had exhausted its volunteers of seamen. So what they did was they unleashed the press gangs. They would take you out and a little floating vessel. It was like a floating jail, load you on to the ship.
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