HMS Wager was a square-rigged sixth-rate

Sixth-rate

Sixth rate was the designation used by the Royal Navy for small warships mounting between 20 and 24 nine-pounder guns on a single deck, sometimes with guns on the upper works and sometimes without.-Rating:...

 Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

 ship of 28 guns. She was built as an East Indiaman in about 1734 and made two voyages to India before being purchased by the Royal Navy in 1739. She formed part of a squadron under Anson and was wrecked on the south coast of Chile on 14 May 1741. The wreck of the Wager became famous for the subsequent adventures of the survivors who found themselves marooned on a desolate island in the middle of a Patagonian winter, and in particular because of the Wager Mutiny

Wager Mutiny

The Wager Mutiny was the mutiny of the crew of after she was wrecked on a desolate island off the west coast of Chile in 1741 and the subsequent adventures of her crew. The final voyage of Wager was as part of a squadron commanded by George Anson destined to attack Spanish interests in the Pacific...

 which followed.

Service in the East India Company

Wager was an East Indiaman, an armed trading vessel built mainly to accommodate large cargoes of goods from the Far East. She measured 123 ft 0in on the gundeck, 101 ft 4.125in on the keel, 32 ft 2.375in breadth and 14 ft 4in depth in hold, giving a burthen tonnage of 558 82/94. As an Indiaman she carried 30 guns and had a crew of 98.

Under Captain Charles Raymond she sailed from the Downs

The Downs

The Downs are a roadstead or area of sea in the southern North Sea near the English Channel off the east Kent coast, between the North and the South Foreland in southern England. In 1639 the Battle of the Downs took place here, when the Dutch navy destroyed a Spanish fleet which had sought refuge...

 on 13 February 1735, arriving in Madras on 18 July and returning to England via St Helena in July 1736. She made her second and final run for the Company to India in 1738, sailing via the Cape of Good Hope to Madras and Bengal, and returning to the Downs on 27 August 1739.

Purchase by the Royal Navy

She was purchased from Mr J Raymond of the East India Company

East India Company

The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...

 on 21 November 1739 for £3,912 2s 1½d. She was bought to form part of a squadron under Commodore George Anson to attack Spanish interests on the Pacific west coast of South America. Intended to carry additional stores of small arms, ball and powder to arm shore raiding parties, she was rated

Rating system of the Royal Navy

The rating system of the Royal Navy and its predecessors was used by the British Royal Navy between the beginning of the 17th century and the middle of the 19th century to categorise sailing warships, initially classing them according to their assigned complement of men, and later according to the...

 as a 28-gun sixth-rate

Sixth-rate

Sixth rate was the designation used by the Royal Navy for small warships mounting between 20 and 24 nine-pounder guns on a single deck, sometimes with guns on the upper works and sometimes without.-Rating:...

. It was apt that she carried the name of the principal sponsor of the voyage, Admiral Sir Charles Wager

Charles Wager

Sir Charles Wager was a British Admiral and First Lord of the Admiralty between 1733 and 1742.Despite heroic active service and steadfast administration and diplomatic service, Wager's reputation has suffered from a profoundly mistaken idea that the navy was then at a low ebb...

.

She was fitted for naval service at Deptford Dockyard between 23 November 1739 and 23 May 1740 at a cost of £7,096.2.4d, and was registered as a sixth-rate on 22 April 1740, being established with 120 men and 28 guns.

Anson's circumnavigation

George Anson

George Anson, 1st Baron Anson

Admiral of the Fleet George Anson, 1st Baron Anson PC, FRS, RN was a British admiral and a wealthy aristocrat, noted for his circumnavigation of the globe and his role overseeing the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War...

 led an expedition to the Pacific in August 1740 consisting of 6 warships and 2 transports, and manned by 1854 men. The Navy purchased Wager specifically for this mission and commissioned her under Captain Dandy Kidd. Kidd died before the ship reached Cape Horn

Cape Horn

Cape Horn is the southernmost headland of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago of southern Chile, and is located on the small Hornos Island...

, and Lieutenant David Cheap was promoted to his position. In rounding Cape Horn in terrible weather, the ships of the squadron were scattered, and Wager became separated. In attempting to make her rendezvous, she turned North before sufficient distance had been made to the West, and in foul weather closed the coast of modern-day Chile.

The wreck of the Wager

On 13 May 1741 at 9:00am, the carpenter went forward to inspect the chain plates. Whilst there he thought he caught a fleeting glimpse of land to the west. Lieutenant Baynes was also there but he saw nothing, and the sighting was not reported. Consequently, no one realized that Wager had entered a large uncharted bay.

At 2:00pm land was positively sighted to the west and northwest and all hands were mustered to make sail and turn the ship to the southwest. During the operations that followed, Captain Cheap fell down the quarterdeck ladder, dislocated his shoulder, and was confined below. The ship's disabled and worn-out condition severely hampered efforts to get clear of the bay.

At 4:30am the next day the ship struck rocks repeatedly, broke her tiller, and although still afloat, was partially flooded. Invalids below who were too sick to get out of their hammocks were drowned. The ship was steered with sail alone towards land, but later in the morning the ship struck again, and this time became hard aground.

Wager had struck the coast of what would subsequently be known as Wager Island in position 47°40′43"S 75°02′57"W. Some of the crew broke into the spirit room and got drunk, armed themselves and began looting, dressing up in officers' clothes and fighting. The other 140 men and officers took to the boats and made it safely on shore. On the following day, Friday 15 May, the ship bilged amidships and many of the drunken crew still on board drowned.

The Wager mutiny

In the Royal Navy of 1741 the commissions of the officers were valid only for the ship to which they had been appointed. The loss of the ship meant also the loss of any official authority. To make matters worse, the seaman ceased to be paid on the loss of their ship. These factors, combined with terrible conditions and murderous in-fighting between officers and men, caused discipline to break down. The party split into two parts; 81 men under the gunner, Mr Bulkley, took to small boats with the aim of returning to England via the East coast of South America, and 20 men remained on Wager Island, including Captain Cheap. After a series of disasters and over 5 years later, 6 of Bulkley's group and 4 of Captain Cheap's group returned to England. Wager had left England with the best part of 300 men on board.

The wreck site

In the years after the wreck the Spanish sent expeditions to recover the guns and to establish a foothold in the area. Spanish charts of the mid-eighteenth century show the approximate location of the wreck, indicating that it was well-known to the local elite at the time.

In late 2006, a Scientific Exploration Society expedition searched for the wreck of the Wager and found, in shallow water, a piece of a wooden hull with some of the frames and external planking. Carbon-14 dating indicated a date contemporary with the Wager. In 2007, the Transpatagonia Expedition visited the wreck site and saw more remains.

HMS Wager in fiction

The novel The Unknown Shore

The Unknown Shore

The Unknown Shore is a novel published in 1959 by Patrick O'Brian. It is the story of two friends, Jack Byron and Tobias Barrow who sail aboard HMS Wager as part of Anson's 1740 expedition. The midshipman Byron and somewhat unworldly surgeon's mate Barrow are prototypes for Jack Aubrey and Stephen...

 (pub. 1959) by Patrick O'Brian

Patrick O'Brian

Patrick O'Brian, CBE , born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist and translator, best known for his Aubrey–Maturin series of novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and centred on the friendship of English Naval Captain Jack Aubrey and the Irish–Catalan physician Stephen...

 is based on the accounts of the survivors. One of the crew on Wager was Midshipman John Byron

John Byron

Vice Admiral The Hon. John Byron, RN was a Royal Navy officer. He was known as Foul-weather Jack because of his frequent bad luck with weather.-Early career:...

, later Vice-Admiral in the Royal Navy and grandfather of the famous poet George Byron

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...

. O'Brian's novel closely follows John Byron's account.