Killers of the Flower Moon

In March 1738 Robert Jenkins spoke before the British Parliament. Captain of a British trading vessel, his ship had been boarded by the Spanish off the Florida coast on suspicion of smuggling. Jenkins explained that his ear had been cut off as a warning to the British. Though the incident had happened 7 years earlier, it was used to drum up support for war with Spain, a war now known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear. 

As part of that war, a squadron was sent under Commodore George Anson to round the dangerous straits of South America and harass Spanish shipping in the Pacific. The losses among the fleet during this mission were horrific. Of the more than 1800 men who set out, fewer than 200 survived. David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon, details the fate of some of those lost souls, namely the shipwreck and mutiny of the ship The Wager. 

Its slow beginnings, horrific casualties from disease, desperate, weeks-long attempts to push through Cape Horn, breaking up against the rocks ringing an island off the coast of Chile, murder, mutiny, and the eventual thousand-mile journey to return to civilization of its few survivors on little more than rafts. It’s an incredible story, both exciting and informative about the harsh life in the age of sail.

The Royal Navy 

The Royal Navy is remembered as one of the greatest fighting forces of all time, so it is a bit surprising how ramshackle its operation was as late as the 1740s. It simply lacked the manpower to quickly transition from peace to wartime and relied on the dubious tactic of impressment to fill out its ranks. Press gangs would board neutral merchant ships and essentially kidnap any British citizens they could find. At least they were sailors.  Desperate for bodies of any kind, they would also grab men off the streets of British towns to fill out the rosters, though they would only be fit for the most menial of tasks.

For this particular mission, sick and old men from naval invalid hospitals were carried on board, which would come back to haunt the expedition, as they spread disease among the crews from the very beginning. Diarrhea and later scurvy would devastate the crews of the fleet long before the actual shipwreck of the wager. The maybe not-so-surprising fact that most of the sailors thus impressed couldn’t swim would also add to the casualty count.

Once at sea, life aboard the ship was not pleasant. One of the main sources for this book is the diary of John Byron, the grandfather of the famous poet, who was just beginning his career as an officer.  Though he ranked above ordinary sailors, the ceiling of his communal quarters was only 4 feet high, located just above the stinking bilge of the deck below, and doubled as an operating room. 

The Mutiny  

One factor that contributed to the mutiny was a strange quirk of Naval policy. Though a captain had absolute authority aboard a ship, there were questions about that authority after a shipwreck.  Sailors knew they would not be paid for any time after the ship was lost. If they couldn’t expect to be paid, why should they be expected to obey? 

Another factor was the weakness of the captain, David Cheap, both physically: he had broken his arm in the breakup of the ship, and was out of action for the first crucial days on the island when the men had no shelter, food, or plan, and mentally: His attempts to reassert control went awry when he shot an innocent man, Cozens, in the face for theft of supplies,  and then denied him medical care, allowing him to linger for more than a week before he eventually died.

By contrast, John Buckley, the head gunner, was a natural leader. In the first crucial days, he built shelter for himself, and assisted others in doing the same, which was crucial during the constant storms, and organized expeditions to the ship to rescue whatever supplies they could scavenge.  Very quickly the surviving crew split into three factions. Those loyal to the captain, those loyal to the gunner, and a third group, who acted out their own version of the Lord of the Flies, living apart drinking constantly and possibly murdering each other.

Life on the Island 

Life on the island was intolerable. The storms were constant, Food was almost nonexistent and the men resorted to scraping algae off the rocks, eating Byron’s dog and, possibly, each other.  Things came to a head when the captain made plain to the crew his intention to continue the mission and attack Spanish cities on the Chilean coast once the schooner they had been building was complete. This was seen as insanity by most of the surviving crew, and Bulkley made his move. With most of the men, he stranded the captain and a handful of his supporters and took the schooner east, returning through the Strait of Magellan.

As it turned out, both Cheap and Bulkley survived and made it back to England, though almost all of the men who followed them did not. The Remnants of the fleet that did make it to the Pacific did carry out its mission, taking a Spanish treasure ship, and scoring a propaganda coup for the navy, though the mission didn’t come anywhere close to recouping its losses in money spent, let alone losing the vast majority of its men.

Conclusion

In the end, the Navy essentially swept the mutiny under the rug. The whole affair, like the war itself, was an embarrassment. Buckley’s mutiny and Cheap’s murder of Cozens went unpunished.  Instead, the various survivors published their own versions of events, to huge public interest.  Byron’s account inspired the shipwreck sections of his grandson’s great poem Don Jew.

If you think I’ve given away too much of what happened to want to read this book yourself, you’d be wrong. It’s an incredible page-turner, full of insane details from a time when life was harder, and frankly less precious, at least to those who made the big decisions. So the next time you’re mad at traffic, or have a bad day at the office, think of the men of the Wager, shivering, shoeless, starving, yet still capable of sailing a thousand miles through rough waters in the South Atlantic in a desperate bid for survival.