The Wreck of HMS "Wager"

For some reason I had a sudden desire to reread the book
Byron of the Wager (not the famous Lord Byron, but his grandfather, who was a midshipman in Anson's day).

I remembered it as a story about survival after a dramatic wreck; I'd completely forgotten that this happened to be another case of a famous small-boat voyage, where the crew successfully built themselves a new craft in order to sail home after their ship was wrecked in a hostile environment. And my memory apparently wiped a lot of the more gruesome bits...

The story of the crew of the "Wager" is almost the reverse of the story of the survival of Captain Bligh after the mutiny on board the "Bounty". Unlike Bligh's and Shackleton's men, almost all of them died, pretty much as a direct result of the lack of discipline after the mutiny.( Read more... )

"I, Captain Anson", Ronald Syme

As a result of reading up on the "Wager" disaster I was inspired to revisit the history of what happened to the rest of Anson's expedition, and the first book that came to hand was my old copy of "I, Captain Anson", an accessible-history-for-children book by the prolific Ronald Syme. (Judging by the information on the back cover, it seems to have been one of his first books; he went on to establish a career in such titles as "Vancouver, Explorer of the Pacific Coast", "Cortez, Conqueror of Mexico" and "Magellan, First Around the World".)

To my pleasure, it's actually just as good as I remembered when I read it avidly as a child; having recently read up on the facts of the first part of the voyage I can recognise the source materials (the description of revictualling at Funchal, for instance) while appreciating the author's choice of how much detail to go into and what to leave out. And it's vividly and unpretentiously written in the first person, with just a hint of eighteenth-century diction -- like all the best historical novels, it presents the world of its protagonists as an everyday thing, while giving just enough detail to explain the technical aspects without being obvious. (The distant "triangular sails" of the little sloop that arrives with a summons from the Admiralty, for instance, in a world where ships have square sails by default).

The author brings the historical facts to life by presenting them as things that are actually happening to the protagonist, with vivid little details like Anson and his officers personally helping to manhandle the sick seamen ashore because they were so short-handed, and the rejoicing of the Irishman responsible for suggesting a raid upon the town of Paita, successfully carried out almost without casualties. It's not so much that it's a stylistically brilliant book (although it may be), but that for a book aimed at children it's entirely readable through the eyes of an adult; I wasn't conscious at all of being talked down to, or of being given a papered-over version of history. In fact it's probably more literate and certainly better-informed than various of the blog pieces on the "Wager" that I came across on the Web...

I was pleasurably impressed by the first page. After that I was simply absorbed as of old in the story.