The Wager Disaster

Author : C.H. Layman
Publisher : Andrews UK Limited
ISBN 13 : 1910065528
Total Pages : 327 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Wager Disaster written by C.H. Layman and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2015-04-08 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the astounding story of HMS Wager, driven ashore in foul weather onto the inhospitable coast of Patagonian Chile in 1741. Shipwreck was followed by murder, starvation, mutiny, and the fearful ordeal of 36 survivors out of about 140 men. Some were enslaved, some defected; many drowned. The captain shot one of his officers. There was an epic open-boat voyage of 2500 nautical miles through the world's most hostile seas, probably the greatest castaway voyage in the annals of the sea, and the least known. Midshipman Byron, the grandfather of the poet, was prominent among the survivors. The story is placed in its historical context, using eye-witness accounts where possible, with some previously unpublished material. It finishes with the finding of the wreck by a British expedition in 2006. Foreword written by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh.

Author : John Byron
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781535466271
Total Pages : 142 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Byron's Narrative of the Loss of the Wager written by John Byron and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-07-25 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Byron's Narrative of the Loss of the Wager is an account of the wreck and mutiny of the HMS Wager. The Wager was a British ship which wrecked in 1741 off the coast of Chile. A mutiny ensued and only a handful of the original 300 crew made it back to England.

Author : Neil Swidey
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0307886735
Total Pages : 434 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Trapped Under the Sea written by Neil Swidey and published by Crown. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The harrowing story of five men who were sent into a dark, airless, miles-long tunnel, hundreds of feet below the ocean, to do a nearly impossible job—with deadly results A quarter-century ago, Boston had the dirtiest harbor in America. The city had been dumping sewage into it for generations, coating the seafloor with a layer of “black mayonnaise.” Fisheries collapsed, wildlife fled, and locals referred to floating tampon applicators as “beach whistles.” In the 1990s, work began on a state-of-the-art treatment plant and a 10-mile-long tunnel—its endpoint stretching farther from civilization than the earth’s deepest ocean trench—to carry waste out of the harbor. With this impressive feat of engineering, Boston was poised to show the country how to rebound from environmental ruin. But when bad decisions and clashing corporations endangered the project, a team of commercial divers was sent on a perilous mission to rescue the stymied cleanup effort. Five divers went in; not all of them came out alive. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents collected over five years of reporting, award-winning writer Neil Swidey takes us deep into the lives of the divers, engineers, politicians, lawyers, and investigators involved in the tragedy and its aftermath, creating a taut, action-packed narrative. The climax comes just after the hard-partying DJ Gillis and his friend Billy Juse trade assignments as they head into the tunnel, sentencing one of them to death. An intimate portrait of the wreckage left in the wake of lives lost, the book—which Dennis Lehane calls "extraordinary" and compares with The Perfect Storm—is also a morality tale. What is the true cost of these large-scale construction projects, as designers and builders, emboldened by new technology and pressured to address a growing population’s rapacious needs, push the limits of the possible? This is a story about human risk—how it is calculated, discounted, and transferred—and the institutional failures that can lead to catastrophe. Suspenseful yet humane, Trapped Under the Sea reminds us that behind every bridge, tower, and tunnel—behind the infrastructure that makes modern life possible—lies unsung bravery and extraordinary sacrifice.

Author : David Grann
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1471183696
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Wager written by David Grann and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-05-11 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Milkyway Media
Publisher : Milkyway Media
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 16 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Summary of David Grann's The Wager written by Milkyway Media and published by Milkyway Media. This book was released on 2024-01-16 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Get the Summary of David Grann's The Wager in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. David Cheap, first lieutenant on the Centurion, sought redemption from his troubled past by joining Captain George Anson's squadron on a mission to disrupt Spanish commerce in the Pacific. Despite delays and a shortage of skilled crew due to Britain's lack of conscription, the squadron set sail with a reluctant and poorly equipped crew. John Byron, a young midshipman aboard the Wager, documented the harsh realities of life at sea, including the rigid social hierarchy and the crew's diverse backgrounds...

Author : Jonathan Miles
Publisher : Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN 13 : 1555848672
Total Pages : 434 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Wreck of the Medusa written by Jonathan Miles and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2008-10-16 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “thrilling . . . captivating” account of the most famous shipwreck before the Titanic—a tragedy that inspired an unforgettable masterpiece of Western art (The Boston Globe). In June 1816, the Medusa set sail. Commanded by an incompetent captain, the frigate ran aground off the desolate West African coast. During the chaotic evacuation a privileged few claimed the lifeboats, while 147 men and one woman were herded aboard a makeshift raft that was soon cut loose by the boats that had pledged to tow it to safety. Those on the boats made it ashore and undertook a two-hundred-mile trek through the sweltering Sahara, but conditions were far worse on the drifting raft. Crazed, parched, and starving, the diminishing band fell into mayhem. When rescue arrived thirteen days later, only fifteen were alive. Among the handful of survivors were two men whose bestselling account of the maritime disaster scandalized Europe and inspired promising artist Théodore Géricault, who threw himself into a study of the Medusa tragedy, turning it into a vast canvas in his painting, The Raft of the Medusa. Drawing on contemporaneously published accounts and journals of survivors, The Wreck of the Medusa is “a captivating gem about art’s relation to history” (Booklist) and ultimately “a thrilling read” (The Guardian).

Author : John Byron
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781436635257
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.5X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Byron's Narrative of the Loss of the Wager written by John Byron and published by . This book was released on 2008-06 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Author : Donna Jo Napoli
Publisher : Henry Holt and Company (BYR)
ISBN 13 : 9781429946810
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Wager written by Donna Jo Napoli and published by Henry Holt and Company (BYR). This book was released on 2010-04-27 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Don Giovanni was once the wealthiest and handsomest young man in Messina. Then a tidal wave changed everything. When a well-dressed stranger offers him a magical purse, he knows he shouldn't take it. Only the devil would offer a deal like this, and only a fool would accept. Don Giovanni is no fool, but he is desperate. He takes the bet: he will not bathe for 3 years, 3 months, and 3 days. Beauty is a small price to pay for worldly wealth, isn't it? Unless he loses the wager—and with it his soul. Set against the stunning backdrop of ancient Sicily, Donna Jo Napoli's new novel is a powerful tale about discovering what truly matters most.

Author : Chris Moss
Publisher : Andrews UK Limited
ISBN 13 : 1908493356
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Patagonia written by Chris Moss and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Patagonia is the ultimate landscape of the mind. Like Siberia and the Sahara, it has become a metaphor for nothingness and extremity. Its frontiers have stretched beyond the political boundaries of Argentina and Chile to encompass an evocative idea of place. A vast triangle at the southern tip of the New World, this region of barren steppes, soaring peaks and fierce winds was populated by small tribes of hunter-gatherers and roaming nomads when Ferdinand Magellan made landfall in 1520. A fateful moment for the natives, this was the start of an era of adventure and exploration. Soon Sir Francis Drake and John Byron, and sailors from Europe and America, would be exploring Patagonia’s bays and inlets, mapping fjords and channels, whaling, sifting the streams for gold in the endless search for Eldorado. As the land was opened up in the nineteenth century, a crazed Frenchman declared himself King. A group of Welsh families sailed from Liverpool to Northern Patagonia to found a New Jerusalem in the desert. Further down the same river, Butch and Sundance took time out from bank robbing to run a small ranch near the Patagonian Andes. All these, and later travel writers, have left sketches and records, memoirs and diaries evoking Patagonia’s grip on the imagination. From the empty plains to the crashing seas, from the giant dinosaur fossils to glacial sculptures, the landscape has inspired generations of travellers and artists.

Author : Gordon Thomas
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1497658926
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Shipwreck written by Gordon Thomas and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Edgar Award Finalist by two New York Times–bestselling authors provides an “exciting” account of the devastating and mysterious cruise ship fire (The Washington Post). In the early morning hours of September 8, 1934, the luxury cruise liner Morro Castle, carrying 316 passengers and 230 officers and crew, caught fire a few hours out of the New York harbor on a return voyage from Havana. The fire spread with terrifying swiftness, transforming the ship into a blazing inferno. One hundred thirty-four people died that night—was it an accident? Writers Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts prove that the disaster was no accident, but was planned, meticulously and deliberately, by an officer of the Morro Castle. His name: George White Rogers, chief radio officer. They also prove that Rogers was responsible for the death of the captain, who was poisoned several hours before the fire broke out. Shipwreck is a spellbinding moment-by-moment account of the Morro Castle’s last voyage, and one of the most spectacular disasters to stir the Atlantic Ocean. Through interviews with survivors, rescuers, and investigators, the authors detail a desperate investigation and the search for a mass murderer. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the buildup of World War II, Shipwreck is a sweeping tale of personal heroism, tragedy, and murder.