How an 18th Century Sailing Battleship Works

If you, like me, are currently reading David Grann’s new book The Wager and are having trouble visualizing exactly what British Royal Navy ships of that era look like and how they work, you might want to watch this video. The 3D fly-through model ship in this video, HMS Victory, is larger and more recently constructed than any of the ships in The Wager (the biggest of which is HMS Centurion) but the basic layout and principles are the same.

• David Grann
• The Wager
• video

An Excerpt From David Grann’s Forthcoming Book, The Wager

David Grann’s newest book, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder (ebook), comes out next month. It tells the story of a British shipwreck that happened during the war with Spain in the 1740s. The New Yorker, where Grann is a staff writer, is running an excerpt from the book to whet your appetite.

Each man in the squadron carried, along with a sea chest, his own burdensome story. Perhaps it was of a scorned love, or a secret prison conviction, or a pregnant wife left onshore weeping. Perhaps it was a hunger for fame and fortune, or a dread of death. David Cheap, the first lieutenant of the Centurion, the squadron’s flagship, was no different. A burly Scotsman in his early forties, with a protracted nose and intense eyes, he was in flight — from squabbles with his brother over their inheritance, from creditors chasing him, from debts that made it impossible for him to find a suitable bride. Onshore, Cheap seemed doomed, unable to navigate past life’s unexpected shoals. Yet, as he perched on the quarterdeck of a British man-of-war, cruising the vast oceans with a cocked hat and spyglass, he brimmed with confidence — even, some would say, a touch of haughtiness. The wooden world of a ship — a world bound by the Navy’s rigid regulations and the laws of the sea and, most of all, by the hardened fellowship of men — had provided him a refuge. Suddenly, he felt a crystalline order, a clarity of purpose. And Cheap’s newest posting, despite the innumerable risks that it carried, from plagues and drowning to enemy cannon fire, offered what he longed for: a chance to finally claim a wealthy prize and rise to captain his own ship.

The problem was that he could not get away from the damned land. He was trapped-cursed, really-at the dockyard in Portsmouth, along the English Channel, struggling with feverish futility to get the Centurion fitted out and ready to sail. Its massive wooden hull, a hundred and forty-four feet long and forty feet wide, was moored at a slip. Carpenters, caulkers, riggers, and joiners combed over its decks like rats (which were also plentiful). A cacophony of hammers and saws. The cobblestone streets past the shipyard were congested with rattling wheelbarrows and horse-drawn wagons, with porters, peddlers, pickpockets, sailors, and prostitutes. Periodically, a boatswain blew a chilling whistle, and crewmen stumbled from ale shops, parting from old or new sweethearts, hurrying to their departing ships in order to avoid their officers’ lashes.

Grann is so good at both telling the larger tale and inserting wonderful turns of phrase throughout. Can’t wait to read this one.

• books
• David Grann
• The Wager

David Grann’s next book: The Wager

From the latest issue of Publisher’s Lunch daily newsletter comes the news that David Grann’s next book will be called The Wager, “an 18th century story of a shipwreck, a mutiny, a struggle for survival and a trial full of twists and turns”. The deal includes “two other works of narrative nonfiction” as well. Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon was excellent…can’t wait for this one! (thx, matt)

• books
• David Grann
• The Wager