2 of 2 copies available
2 of 2 copies available
*LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION*
'The beauty of The Wager unfurls like a great sail... one of the finest nonfiction books I've ever read' Guardian
'The greatest sea story ever told' Spectator
'I cannot think of anyone who would not love this book . . . It is an extraordinary true story, beautifully written' Richard Osman
'A cracking yarn... Grann's taste for desperate predicaments finds its fullest expression here' Observer
From the international bestselling author of KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE LOST CITY OF Z, a mesmerising story of shipwreck, mutiny and murder, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.
On 28th January 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty's ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon, the Wager was wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The crew, marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing 2,500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.
Then, six months later, another, even more decrepit, craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways and they had a very different story to tell. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with counter-charges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous captain and his henchmen. While stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court found guilty could hang.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Awards
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Release date
May 11, 2023 -
Formats
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781471183690
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781471183690
- File size: 80656 KB
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Accessibility
The publisher provides the following statement about the accessibility of the EPUB file supplied to OverDrive. Experiences may vary across reading systems. After borrowing the book, you may download the EPUB files to read in another reading system.
Summary
A moderate complexity publication with images and logos, converted to meet EPUB Accessibility specifications of WCAG-AA level. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images and logos, long descriptions, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order, structural navigation, index, and semantic structure. Blank pages from print have been removed in this ebook, with related page number spans set on the first following in-spine page. Certain front and back matter pages have been adjusted in the reading order sequence from print, with related page references reordered in the page-list order.
Ways Of Reading
No information about appearance modifiability is available.
Not all of the content will be readable as read aloud speech or dynamic braille.
Has alternative text descriptions for images.
Conformance
The publication contains a conformance statement that it meets the EPUB Accessibility and WCAG 2 Level AA standard.
This publication claims to meet EPUB Accessibility 1.1 WCAG 2.2 Level AA.
Navigation
Table of contents to all chapters of the text via links.
Index with links to referenced entries.
Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation.
Rich Content
Information-rich images are described by extended descriptions.
Additional Information
Page breaks included
High contrast between text and background
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Languages
- English
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