A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

Fresh Air

NPR

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.4 • 34.4K Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David Grann's book, The Wager, is about an 18th century British warship that wrecked on an island after passing through the treacherous waters of Cape Horn. The castaways faced terrible conditions and starvation, and descended into chaos, including cannibalism and mutiny. 81 sailors escaped the island on a makeshift boat, and sailed nearly 3000 miles to Brazil. Only 29 survived. Grann is also the author of Killers of the Flower Moon.

David Bianculli reviews the new Netflix miniseries The Four Seasons, co-created by Tina Fey.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Does the idea of listening to political news freak you out?
0:03.6	Well, don't sweat it.
0:04.6	The NPR Politics Podcast makes politics a breeze.
0:08.2	Every episode will break down the day's headlines into totally normal language
0:12.5	and make sure that you walk away understanding what the day's news might mean for you.
0:17.4	Take a deep breath and give politics another chance with the NPR Politics Podcast,
0:22.2	available wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bian Cooley. Our guest today
0:28.1	is best-selling author in New Yorker magazine staff writer David Gran. Grant has a knack for finding
0:34.4	little-known stories from history and turning them into books that are page
0:37.9	turners. His nonfiction book The Wager, now out in paperback, is no exception. It's about a shipwreck
0:45.2	and mutiny in the 1700s. Martin Scorsese plans to adapt it into a film. Scorsese already adapted
0:52.6	another of Grant's books into a movie, Killers of the Flower
0:55.9	Moon. An earlier Grand book, The Lost City of Z, also was adapted for the movies. Our producer,
1:03.4	Sam Brigger, spoke with David Grand in 2023. Here's Sam. At the bottom of the world, below the tip of South America, the Atlantic and Pacific
1:13.3	oceans converge to form one of the most dangerous places to find yourself in a boat, the Drake
1:18.5	passage. In the mid-18th century, a squadron of British warships made the journey through
1:23.9	the passage in the worst weather imaginable, suffering terrible damage to their ships.
1:29.5	One man of war called the wager went missing and wrecked upon the rocks of a desolate island off
1:34.9	Patagonia. At first, the castaways maintained the naval laws and discipline of the British
1:40.6	Empire under their captain, but that unraveled under the hardships they endured,
1:45.8	including poor shelter, punishing weather, and starvation. There was murder and cannibalism,
1:51.9	and the captain lost the respect of his crew, especially after killing one of the sailors by shooting him.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.