The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

Anson and his ship, the Centurion, were returning to England. The members of the Centurion had their own hardships sailing in the Pacific Ocean, including becoming castaways on an island. In their case, the Centurion reappeared after being thought lost at sea. They resumed their mission, seeking to intercept Spanish treasure around the Philippines. Tricking the Spanish navy into believing they were returning to England, Anson managed to chase down and capture the Spanish galleon, Our Lady of Covadonga. After the resulting naval battle, Anson seized the galleon and took its surviving crew hostage: “It was the largest treasure ever seized by a British naval commander—the equivalent today of nearly $80 million” (220). Soon after Anson’s celebrated return to England, Captain David Cheap also returned to England.

After their failed attempt to leave Wager Island, Cheap and his men were approached by members of another local Indigenous group, the Chono. Cheap and his men looked down on the Chono, even though they saved Byron from eating poisonous berries. The Chono led them through the islands back to the mainland. There, however, they were captured by Spanish soldiers. The Spanish took them to Santiago and brought them before the colonial governor, who allowed them to live outside prison as long as they did not write to anyone in England. After two and a half years in Chile (227), a peace agreement between Britain and Spain made it possible for Cheap and his men to return to Britain.

When he arrived back in England, Cheap was furious to learn about Bulkeley’s journal. He wrote to the Admiralty, asking for a hearing. Accounts of the expedition were still popular among the public, especially since the press was “fueled by the loosening of government censorship and by wider literacy” (229). Talk of a hearing led to suspicions that the various accounts, including Bulkeley’s, were false. Cheap’s demands led to the Admiralty holding a court martial and summoning all the survivors of the Wager.

Bulkeley and the other mutineers were confined but soon released. Although it had a reputation for being rigid, 18th-century naval law in Britain was “often more flexible and forgiving in reality” (233). Cheap accused Bulkeley and his supporters of not only murder, but attempted murder in abandoning him and the other survivors on the island.

There was also a possibility that Cheap could be convicted of homicide for killing Cozens. The trial had significance for the entire military since “it was meant to uphold and reinforce discipline throughout the service” (234). Other mutineers, like the mutiny on the HMS Bounty in 1789, ended with the guilty party being taken all the way from the Pacific to England and being hung.

The survivors of the Wager were to be tried by 13 judges, all senior officers from the navy. The trial was to be conducted by a state prosecutor and a judge advocate “who helped to run the tribunal and provide its members with legal advice” (237). No one had a defense attorney. The survivors had to defend themselves, although they could call and cross-examine witnesses and receive legal advice from the court (238). The focus of the trial was not on Bulkeley’s mutiny, but on Cheap and Lieutenant Baynes’s responsibility for what happened to the Wager.

Cheap’s defense included the claim that Lieutenant Baynes had failed in his duties, especially in his not warning Cheap that land had been sighted before they crashed on the rocks. In Bulkeley’s defense, Bulkeley blamed Cheap for worsening the situation with arrogance and refusal to change his plans. In the end, there was a “unanimous verdict […] that Captain David Cheap had done his duty” (240). Everyone was absolved except Baynes, who was given a reprimand. The basis of the verdict was that the survivors were not under naval law since they were castaways.

Grann offers two theories as to why no one was condemned at the court martial. First, calling attention to the behavior of the survivors after the wreck of the Wager would have undermined the British concept that their society and the behavior of their military officers were “inherently superior” (242). Second, it would have reminded the public of what a disaster the war against Spain had been, particularly that the incident that supposedly sparked the war, the attack on Robert Jenkins, happened eight years before the war began (242-243).

In reality, the war was fought so that the British could continue to use the slave trade to smuggle outlawed goods into Latin America. Although the British navy was on the way to helping Britain become the largest empire in history, the government was “preoccupied with maintaining public support after so many dreadful losses” (243-44). For the sake of public relations, the mutiny was completely erased from the record.

Three months after the trial, three crew members from the group that Bulkeley had abandoned appeared in England. They had been rescued from starvation by local Indigenous people. Like Cheap and his supporters, they were taken prisoner by the Spanish and placed as prisoners on a Spanish warship. Eleven Indigenous people who had been enslaved and forced to work on the ship rebelled. However, the Indigenous mutiny on the ship was crushed and the survivors died by suicide by jumping overboard. Grann notes that the Black freeman John Duck never left behind an account of what happened with the Mutiny. Duck had been sold into slavery by the Spanish, and his ultimate fate was never learned.

Various accounts of Anson’s voyages were published. Pascoe Thomas published A True and Imperial Journal of a Voyage to the South-Seas, and Round the Globe, in His Majesty’s Ship the Centurion, Under the Command of Commodore George Anson, a chronicle of the voyages of the Centurion in the Pacific. The ship chaplain on the Centurion, Reverend Richard Walter, also published A Voyage Round the World in the Years 1740-1744 by George Anson (1767). Much of the latter book was ghostwritten by the mathematician Benjamin Robins. Anson had chosen who would write it and provided the source materials. The book was “designed to burnish not only his reputation but also that of the British Empire” (250). The book became a bestseller.