The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

On the island, the survivors could not find anything to eat, even fish in the sea. They were also afraid of being attacked by natives, so they stayed close to shore. To survive, they depended on supplies from the wreckage and on mussels and snails from the beach. Most of the crew, including Bulkeley, had to sleep and live outside.

Bulkeley managed to make shelter out of part of the ship. Meanwhile, discontent grew against Cheap’s command. The service of volunteer and forcibly enlisted sailors ended after a ship was decommissioned. Therefore, some argued that, since the Wager had sunk, they were under no legal obligation to obey Cheap or the other senior officers.

Fear grew as members of the crew, including Byron, became convinced they were sharing the land with a large, dangerous beast. Also, it was discovered that the terrain made it too difficult to travel further inland. All the survivors knew was that they were on an island otherwise uninhabited by humans not far from the South American mainland. From the survey of the island conducted by Byron from the top of a mountain, there “seemed to be no escape” (112).

The survivors were starving. In 1945, the Minnesota Starvation Experiment found that people who experienced starvation became moody, depressed, and more prone to violence and theft. Cheap still tried to impose a strict order. He planned to “carve out an outpost in this wilderness, planting the seed of the British Empire” (114). Bulkeley and others were sent off on a boat to investigate the ruins of the Wager for supplies. They managed to recover some liquor and wine, food, tools, and clothing, among other items. The recovery of supplies, especially food, soothed discontent among the survivors. It helped that the survivors found they could also get nutrients from seaweed.

Still, though, “Bulkeley bristled at all the rules and regulations” that Cheap enforced (116). Bulkeley engaged in a lot of activities for improving life on the island, including designing separate quarters within the shelter. Other survivors began building their own tents and huts and devised a method of collecting rain in empty barrels. They renamed a nearby mountain summit as Mount Misery and their island as Wager Island.

Mitchell formed a gang of discontents who “roved about the island with their long beards and hollowed eyes, demanding more liquor and threatening those who opposed them” (122). Byron suspected that Mitchell’s gang even killed one of the survivors in order to steal the items they claimed from the shipwreck.

That winter, three canoes carrying Indigenous men arrived at Wager Island. They were of the Kawésqar people, who lived migratory lives in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego: “Given the impossible terrain, they spent much of their time in canoes and survived almost exclusively off marine resources” (124). Europeans at the time thought the Kawésqar and other peoples were cannibals, but there is no evidence that this was the case. They were so well-adapted to the cold climate that NASA scientists later studied their methods.

These Kawésqar individuals had probably never encountered Europeans before, but they had heard reports of how the Spanish brutalized Indigenous populations to the north. When Ferdinand Magellan became the first European to reach Patagonia, he took two young Kawésqar individuals prisoner. However, the Kawésqar people began to help the sailors, supplying them with sea urchins and other food. Mitchell’s gang members were seducing the Kawésqar women and planned to steal their canoes, which made the Kawésqar people leave Wager Island.

Without the food supplied by the Kawésqar people, food supplies were again running low. Sailors even took, killed, and ate a dog Byron had adopted, despite Byron’s protests. Still, he was so hungry he ate some of the dog too. Mitchell killed other survivors to steal their share of supplies. Cheap ordered a strict watch be kept over the camp’s supplies. Three survivors were caught and arrested. They were condemned to be whipped over the course of three days and then banished to a small islet with few supplies. Even so, the thefts continued.

Cheap increasingly distrusted Bulkeley, who “was constantly holding meetings in his makeshift hotel and forming alliances, building his little empire, as if he were the monarch of the island” (140). When a midshipman named Henry Cozens refused to move a casket of peas, Cheap struck him with his cane and had him imprisoned. Cheap released him from imprisonment. Later, Cozens started an argument over rations. Cheap then shot him in the head.