A ravaged, makeshift boat drifts into an inlet on Brazil’s southeastern coast, carrying thirty skeletal men. One dies on arrival, while the apparent leader declares they are castaways from His Majesty’s Ship the Wager. The vessel and its crew’s condition testify to months of catastrophic exposure and deprivation.

News shocks England. The Wager, part of a 1740 squadron secretly sent to seize a treasure-laden Spanish galleon, was presumed lost after a hurricane near Cape Horn. Shipwrecked on a Patagonian island, eighty-one survivors cobbled together a boat from wreckage and, packed tight, endured gales, ice, and even earthquakes. More than fifty perished during a nearly three-thousand-mile voyage before the remnants reached Brazil and were hailed for endurance.

Six months later, a tiny dugout lands in Chile with three even more desperate survivors, one delirious and unmoored. After recovering, they accuse the Brazilian party of mutiny. Accounts from both sides reveal that on the island attempts to restore naval order unraveled into warring factions, marauding, murders, and, for a few, cannibalism, as starvation and cold eroded discipline.

Back in England, the Admiralty summons principal figures to face court-martial. Each side publishes sensational narratives to sway judges and public, casting themselves as truthful and the other as deceitful. The prologue underscores that with reputations and lives at stake, the contest over what happened—and how it is told—will determine judgment.