The Castaway Boat

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Many of the sailors had begun to gravitate towards a man named John Bulkley, who'd been in charge of the weapons on the wager. He wanted to sail through the sometimes very narrow Strait of Magellan to get back to the Atlantic Ocean without going around Cape Horn. The main point of his plan is we're done with this expedition. We want to get the hell out of here. That Captain Cheep wanted to continue.

There’s an old sailors’ saying about the ocean at the southernmost part of the world — “below 40 degrees latitude, there is no law; below 50 degrees, there is no God.”

David Grann brings us the story of what happened when five British warships set off on a secret mission to steal a ship filled with treasure. They’d have to sail around the very bottom of South America — at 56 degrees south.

David Grann’s book is The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.

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Artwork by Julienne Alexander.

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