I love a good nonfiction read and this historical telling of the Wager was captivating and horrifying. It got a little slow at times, but maybe I just haven't read enough seafaring books. As the subtitle summarizes, the Wager's voyage was beset with one calamity after another: typhus, scurvy, violent weather, wrecks, starvation, death, mutiny, and murder. Pretty much everything that could go wrong, went wrong. There were very few survivors left, but the ones that survived the horrors all seemed to have conflicting stories. Was there really a mutiny? Was the captain at fault? After reading this recounting I can tell you that I would last about 1 second on one of these 17th century British warships. Absolutely not. Hard pass. Don't read this before you go on a cruise to the Cape of South America.
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