In March 1741, unending gales slam the Wager and the squadron near Cape Horn. John Byron endures freezing, drenched watches as ice encases rigging and men succumb to scurvy. Symptoms spread rapidly—blackened skin, loosened teeth, reopened old wounds, hallucinations, and despair—leaving many unable to rise from their hammocks.

With watches depleted, surgeons search for answers. After moving to the Centurion, Henry Ettrick dissects bodies and blames climate before conceding ignorance. Walter Elliot, transferred to the Wager, tends the crew as Captain Cheap himself falls ill. Burying patients in soil and Dr. Ward’s purgative pills prove harmful. The real cause—vitamin C deficiency—goes unremedied despite earlier access to limes; Lieutenant Saumarez senses that land and vegetables are the true physic.

Deaths mount across the squadron: hundreds are listed Discharged Dead, ships resemble ghost hulks overrun by rats, and officers tire of recording losses. On the Wager, Byron struggles to bury the dead with too few hands. A searing blow lands when Captain Cheap’s nephew, Henry Cheap, dies and is entered in the records.

Facing annihilation, the squadron fixes on reaching the Juan Fernández Islands for salvation. Byron, inspired by tales of Selkirk and Crusoe, shares the crew’s visions of refuge. In April, believing they have cleared the Horn, they tack north—until the Anna sights towering rocks. Dead reckoning proves wrong by hundreds of miles; they narrowly avoid wrecking and, crushed, are forced to turn back south into the storms.