HMS Wager

1741

Patagonia, mutiny, David Grann's book Location: Gulf of Penas, Patagonia, Chile · Coordinates: 47.70°S 75.05°W · Casualties: ~140 (incl. island deaths) · Survivors: ~36 · Depth: 10 m · Cause: grounding · storm — Detached from Commodore George Anson's Pacific squadron in a gale rounding Cape Horn. Struck uncharted rocks in the Gulf of Penas on 14 May 1741. Some of the crew reached a small island; the survival crisis that followed produced one of the most famous mutinies in Royal Navy history. · Fate: confirmed 2006 · hull fragments recovered · Type: warship · sixth rate · Tonnage: 559 tons · Crew: 180 · Flag: Kingdom of Great Britain · Launched: 1734 Royal Navy sixth-rate, detached from Commodore Anson's Pacific squadron in a gale at Cape Horn. Wrecked on the uncharted rocks of the Gulf of Penas, Patagonia, on 14 May 1741. ~120 men went ashore; around 36 came home, two years and a mutiny later. The survivors' rival accounts of the island ordeal, including Captain Cheap's authority and the shooting that split the crew, became the first naval court-martial conducted in print in the English language, and were fixed for the modern reader by David Grann's 2023 book. The Vessel HMS Wager was a British sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, originally constructed in 1734 as an East Indiaman for the British East India Company and converted to naval service in 1739. She was 37 metres long, 500 tons displacement, and armed with 28 guns of mixed 9- and 6-pounder calibre. She was, for a converted East Indiaman, a lightly-built ship: her hull timbers were thinner than a purpose-built naval frigate of her rate, and her accommodation arrangements, designed for a Company trading voyage, were indifferently suited to long naval deployment. She was purchased by the Royal Navy in 1739 at the outbreak of the War of Jenkins' Ear between Britain and Spain. Her conversion to naval service at Deptford Dockyard included the installation of her 28 guns, the reorganisation of her accommodation for a naval crew of 160 officers and ratings, and the strengthening of her deck planking for the weight of her armament. The conversion was completed in April 1740. Her master on her final voyage was Captain Dandy Kidd, who was appointed to her on her commissioning into naval service. Kidd died of fever in November 1740 during the South Atlantic crossing; command then passed to Captain David Cheap, a 40-year-old Scottish officer who had previously served under Admiral George Anson in the Mediterranean. The Disaster On the morning of 14 May 1741, Wager was sailing northwest along what her officers believed was the open Chilean coast, at approximately 100 kilometres offshore. In reality, due to the accumulated dead-reckoning error, she was within 15 kilometres of the coastal archipelago of the Guayaneco Islands, at approximately 47 degrees south latitude. At approximately 04:30 on 14 May 1741, Wager struck a submerged rock off the western coast of what is now Wager Island, in the Guayaneco archipelago. The impact holed her bow below the waterline; she began to flood immediately and drove onto the coastal rocks. Within approximately two hours, HMS Wager was wedged on the rocks with her hull broken amidships and her masts collapsed across her foredeck. Of the 160 aboard, 140 survived the initial grounding and made it to the desolate shore of Wager Island: a cold, mountainous, and almost uninhabited piece of land on the western Patagonian coast. The survival situation was among the worst documented in eighteenth-century naval history. The island was effectively uninhabited apart from occasional Kawésqar indigenous fishing parties; the climate was continuously cold, wet, and stormy; the food resources were limited to shellfish, seabirds, and seaweed. Over the subsequent 14 months, the Wager survivors divided into factions, mutinied against Captain Cheap, separated into smaller parties attempting independent escape, and suffered progressive attrition from starvation, exposure, drowning in atte