my name clevcor and

speaker engagement at the pratt library. thank you all for coming this evening. it's greatly appreciated. andó7 david'toe or about 45 min. he has a powerpoint. you'll be able to see everything off screen right there. and he'll take your questions. yonowions. we do have a virtual of this program like we do for all of programs. so if you wouldn't mind bringing questions to that mike or to thatolks back home can hear them. i want to thank our onsite bookseller, ivy bookshop for being here. if you haven't purchased a book yet, me to the joke. okay. i spot a library books from a mile away, so don't to get one sign. t didn't land, see she loves that one. we have a lot of great programs in may and june coming up as our

new campus newsletter out there, there's a please grab your way out. i promise. there's something there for everybody tonight. i'm happy. welcome david graham to the library to discuss his latest book, the wager a tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder. in it, he recounts the fallo of a btiav off the coast of patagonia in the mid 18th century. the survivors of his majesty's ship, the wager, eventually landed at different■2■ locatio 0 miles from the wreck, with competing stories. the incident that resulted in a court martial, david grann, a afeveral bestselling, including the lost city of z killers of the flower moon, a finalist for the national book award and winner of the edgar allan poe award■-c, killer killers of the flower moon is also being adapted, a martin scorsese film that will be released this fall vanity a defying literary naval history thriller, part master and commander, part of the flies, in a recent gq profile, wroha david has

been your favorite writers, favorite writer for decades. and in her review of the book for the los angeles times, pulitzer prize winning journast marianne gwin wrote, the story of the wager is, like many of its antecedents, from homer's odyssey to mutiny on bounty, a testament to the depths of human depravity in the heights of human endurance. and you can't ask for better than that from a story. maybe you get seasick at the thought of a seafaring novel make an exception this case, the wager will keep you in its grip to its head scratching improbable end. library.great pleasure to ■4it's great to be here tonight and to be back at the library. research can you to you never expect for example one day several yearself

in a small wood heated boat, a motorboat off the chilly coast of now an area that is known as gulf of saros, as some prefer to call it the gulf of payne. it was freezing winter and we were caught in a storm with towering waves that dwarfed the boat when i looked in front of me, all i could see was a mountain of water. and when glanced behind me, all i could see anoerwater. there was captain and two crew members and the boat was being tossed about so violently that i sat on the deck the cabinet, and did not dare where i maybe tossed and break a limb and in you think i may be taking some literary i have some video evidence.

so as you can probably. i'm not much of an explorer or or an adventurer and i taken everyble remedy of seasickness better possible i was like a laboratory, you know. i was taking those things off i had a little band, my wrist and a patch behind, my ear, and i was about half drunk on dramamine and i hadn't seen another or another boat for more for nearly a and they kept lookingc%■5 porthole, hoping catch a glimpse of that place. it consumed my imagination. ouijasland on that deserted

island had unfolded one of the most extraordinary and gripping sagas i'dheard of a saga that had philosophers like and voltaire and montesquieu,nt, just like charles darwin and of the great novelists of the sea, herman melville and patrick o'brien. yet as the boat rolled further and over the seas, swallowing the deck, i began to wonder what you're probay all wondering now. what the hell was i doing in the gulf of pain? and my girl good stories. this oneep■áegan in 1742. it then that a small battered boat washed ashore off the coast of brazil and on board were 30 me■n. theirwasted to the bone. one soon gave out as the last breath and but one of them rose with an extraordinarexertion of and he announced that they

were the of his majesty's ship. the and that they had been shipwrecked a desolate island for months and after building this flimsy craft they traverse. some 3000 miles one of the longest castaway voyages ever recorded and were hailed for their engines, witty and for their courage. then several months later, another little boat washed ashore off the coast of chile. on the otheris boat was even moe battered. it was just a dugout with sails stitched together from ripped blankets. condition even worse. one of them so delirious, could not recollect his name. but when they told a very different story and they leveled a shocking allegation that those people had not heroes,

they were mutineers. and in the controversy that followed with charges being both, it soon became that while stranded on that desolate island, these officers and crew, western had slowly into a real life lord of flies, a hobbesian state with warring factions and mutinies and murder. now back in england. these castaways, the leaders of the two factions, along with many of their allies, were summoned to face a court martial for. their alleged crimes on the island. and so qy them published their conflicting account of what had happened, which truth.

joan didion famously said that we all tell ourselves stories in order to live, get in their place. it was quite literally true. if they did not tell a convincing tale, they could be hanged. these defendants once hoped to return to england, basked in they had embarked with a squad in a four other four other misss to try to capture a spanish galleon, feel filled with so much treasure. the ship was known as the prize of all the oceans. believe it or not, that was part the mission of their pla. ■,it had al of piracy about it. in fact, the seamen were given offered a tantalizing prospect a share of any seized.

but before they could embark, they had to get out of the dockyard raids in england where th had been trapped. this just this map shows where they were heading. and it shows were supposed to crosthe around cape horn, the tip of south america, then up coast to chile and then into the pacific, where they wereopg to coast of the philippines. but they were trapped, marooned at thethe squadron included four warships, as well as the major. the flagship was as the centurion was under thed of thee leader of the expedition a man named george anson. d taskf in out of these dockers was proving insurmountable all these ships were really the engineering marvels of their■■ timm e devish murders instruments, cannons and

also the homes to sailors would live in close quarters for as ng= as years at a time. this model of the wager, which was a little bit the ugly duckling of the squadron because it was a warship that was not born for battle. it had been remade into a battleship from a merchant ship to serve in this war, but even so was elegant. it had three mass towering mass, a wooden yard arms, which are like booms from which the sails would hang a singl ship, like the wager could fly as many as 12 sails. and the larger warships fly as many as sophisticated as these ships were, they were also vulnerable to the elements because they were made of perishable material, which was mostly wood, a single warship, but was one of those astonishing facts come across vwhen you're doing a research, a single warship could take as many as

4000 trees to construct. elements of wind and storm. little sea worms would burrow holes into ship and termites and. so t ss d what was known as rotten row, the dockyards where they had to be essential early remade in many and fitteout for thegt■ expedition ocean that they required. also countless tons of provisions whether or not a single warship could run could require as as much as 40 miles of rope,. 50, 18,000 square feet of sails sails in a f worth of animals, including goats, goats and cattle and pig. none of which were very cooperative inmost importantly d

and in order to operate these five warips wo require for nearly 2000 men, many of whom needed be skilled as seamen. the wager, which was the smallest of the warships at about 123 feet long, would require about 250 men, twice thd originally designed for because of the length of the expedition and the require. yep. great britain at that time not have conscription and it had exhausted its splvolunteers. and so what did the british admiralty do it sent out the press gangs and the press citied ports looking for any telltale signs of a checkered shirt. they would even look at your

fingernail eels and fingertips to see if you had torn or tar was often used on a ship to make things water resistant. and if you had tar on your fingers you would be seized and in effect kidnapednwillingly tos expedition. yet even after the gangs had gone out, squadronas still sh men. and so the admiralty took, the extreme measure of rounding 500 soldiers and seamen from a retirement home many of these men were in sixties and seventies were missing an assortmentz of so ill. they had to be lifted on stretchers onto theseone of thes life on board the ships so is that they were mike a floaty town or a floating

civilization. they were people from all ages, boys as young as six. the cook on the wager was in his eighties and they came from all walks of life there were aristocrats and dandy geese. there weit paupers, free black seamen and craftsmen like, carpenters. there's a great quote from a seam w said, a man of war, which is what a warship was called, made just to be styled an epitome oth world in which there's a sample of, every character, some good as well as bad. among the laer were burglars. pickpockets the butchers, adulterers, gangsters, lampoons, imposters, panders parases, hype is my favorite thread worn bow jack a dandy the navs qp abilite these fractious individual wills

into what horatio nelson would later dub a band of]l on wager s enormous because so many of the men had been■óssnd so many were sick. by september 1740, nearly year had gone by since theand still e other warships were marooned on the dockyards. but finally, on septemb squadroo small cargo ships which plan to accompany the expedition way set off on the perilous voye. here n as sketched one of the members on board the flagship, the centurion that'th ship and you can see the wager mark there. now the book focuses on the competing acun a three men on board the wager we all impose

some cahir somechaotic events o. we like to rummage the raw images of our memories selecting burnishing a racing and eye. organize the book this way to. show how each of these men, like all of us, tried to shape his ■c■,story in this case to emergs the hero. one perspective is that of david sheep, who had ren wager, he was a burly scotsman in, his forties with a volatile temperament and obsessive dreams of glory.land. he had been plagued by debts, chased by creditors. but in that wooden world of a sh fell and refuge. and on this voyage he had finally obtained what he had always longedcaptain his own wad possibly capture a lucrative

prize. the other perspective is told a second perspective from john bulkeley, the gunner. we do not know what bulkeley looks like because he was born to the lower to he cannot affora portrait made of. but we know his thoughts. his intimate thoughts because he was a compulsiveskilled seaman . and he was instinctive leader. yet, because he was not born that would never become a commander of a warship. and the third perspective is point of view of jim byron, who had been just a 16 year old midshipman on the wager when it set sail. was born into the nobit and. he later became the grandfather of the poet lord byron, whose poetry, including don june, was fled■v referred as my great granddad's, my great my granddad's narrative.

now,ik■wn the wager, he had volunteered for the mission. and this is a book and a story that is not only about the tell, but also the way stories shape us. and byron had read all these adventure tales. he even brought them with him in his sea chest for the voyage. and he thought he was going to live this great romance. he in many ways, ah, bewildering floating, bewildering, floating civilization. as a midshipman. he was training to become an officer. and he has to mysterious mores of what it was like to be a warship including a secret coded language in which everything on thend it was onlye researching this book that i learned how much of the idioms use today camerom the age of sail. a scuttlebutt. does anyone know what a scuttlebutt is? scuttlebutt was a barrel in the

middle of the shipe the seamen d gather for water rations. and what would they around the scuttlebutt? was bosun's whistle for a hot meal. pipe down was the bosun's to be quiet under the weather. i always thought that was a great for sickness. well, it turns out to be quite literal on a ship when a seaman was sick. he did not have to serve on watch. kept deck. so he was quite literally under the weather. and perhaps my favorite of these expressions and there are many derive came a little bit later in the century from when vice admiral horatio wanted to officers flag to retreat battle. and so what did he do? he took his telescope and he put it up to his blind eye, which ie now. one day in the voyage, byron

heard, the pitch ofy midshipman. aloft you go. and he had to climb up the main mast, which rose some hundred feet in the air, in order to work the a plunge from such a height when undoubtedly kill him after managed to reach the peak. ships in squadron and beyond them the sea a blank expanse on which he wasown story. but soon everything began to go wrong. as the squadron cross, the atlantic. it found itself chased by a more powerful spanish armada. then they faced anat. the seas around cape horn at the tip. south america. southern are the only waters flow uninterrupted around globe,

unimpeded by any land th accumulate and build waves over as much as 30,000 piles. the cape horn rollers, as they're called, they ac passage can dwarf a 90 foot mass or the strong currents on earth. and then the which frequently accelerate,■@ accelerate to hurricane force and can reach as much 200 miles per hour. herman melville, who later roundern, compared it to a descent into hell in dante's inferno. and as the men tried toou were y storms day and night. byron called it the perfect. he would steer all at the waves that broke over tag no more than a pitiful rowboat. water seeped through virtually every seam. it began to get colder and the some the men suffered from frostbite and icicles drip from

the lines below 40 degrees. lot tude. there is no law a sailor's adage went below 50 degrees. there is no. and they were now in what was known as the furious fifties. captain cheap and the other comw they were going to need everybody on board their ships if they were to persevere. and yet it was in that very moment when of the men could no rise from their hammocks suffering from a mysterious illness, their eyes bulged and their teeth fell out. and so did their hair. even the cartilage that seemed to glue together. the body seemed to be coming undone. one man who had fallen in a battle five decades earlier bone and healed over five decades. it suddenly again in the very same place. and the disease seemedaffecting. as one seaman put it, it got into our brains and we went raving mad.

they were suffering from that great enigma of the age of sail, scurvy, scurvy kilmore including other and sea battles, combine. no one then knew that it was brough by lack of vitamin c and that the cure was so simple. more fruit and in their diet. in fact, the wager in the squadron it stopped in brazil before they went around the horn and on that island where they stopped. there were plentof limes which could have saved their lives. and of course once people understood later in the century scurvy was caused seamen would carry lines with them, which is the reason we were. they were known as limes. in this case, the men in the squadrons suffered one of the worst outbreaks the scurvy ever recorded in maritime historythe.

unserem tony eastley as the poet lord byron put it, would later put itut grave unconfined, an unknown, cheap. and the other captains were increangly running outnds to op. some ships cannot even raise a sail and seals were blowing out in the storm. so much that they had to take them down. and one of the commanders and this was just. couldn't maneuver the ship without sails were just being tossedbo badly. and so we ordered the top men, the climbed the mass to scurry up these mass up these rope lines and ratlinesbo to their bodies as threadbare sails. and so 100 feet in the air, they are clinging to the ropes like spiders, their bodies concave holding on as a gale blew against them. it enabled the captain to

maneuver the ship somewhat. but one of the men was tossed into the ship as they rocked about 45 degrees to one side and then 45 degrees to the other. and that man drowned. the ships were desperate to stay together because they knew if they were separated, there'd be one to rescue them. something h. and so how did they. well, you know, they didn't have iphones. so what did they do? they would fire their guns repeatedly location. but the wind eventually drowned out. the booming sound of the guns and in the mist and the storm and the giant holl the eventual. and the wager was separated from all left alone to its own destiny. and captain cheap was determined to try to get cape horn to prove to live up to theroic captain. and even though the had lost one of its mass, he manages guide

them around cape he wants to get to a point where commodore had told him they should rendezvous if they were ever separated. d yet, captain chief and his other navigators on board like all seamen in that time, were sailing partially not know exace they were. the map they could determine their latitude by reading the stars, which was elongitude becd require reliable clocks and they had not yet been invented. and so they were forced to rely on what was known as dead reckoning. and to simplify it, essentially amounted to inform guesswork and a leap of faith. there is a reason why it's called dead many seamen ended up on the rocks dead. and the wagersestimation of ther longitude turned out not only to be wrong, but wrong by hundreds

of miles. and suddenly the ship is in what. would later become known as the gulf of saros or the gulf of payne, and it hits a submerged rock and the rudder shatters and a two ton anchor falls through the hull, leaving a gaping hole in the ship for a moment is teetering on these rocks. and then another enormous wave sweeps the ship off this rocks. and it's careening through a minefield of rocks sealing without a rudder and water pouring the hull until a last crashes into a cluster of rocks and the ship begins to break apart. and yohave to understand, these ships were homes, many seamen. most seamen back then do not actually even know how to swim. so you can imagine their terror as planks shatter the collapse,t come down. water surging up through through the bottom of the hull.

rats are scurrying upward. those who have been suffering from scurvy have been in their hammocks for months and could not get out, drown. yet the ship the not became wedt miraculously between a pillar. two pillars of rocks. so it did not sink, at least yet completely. and the survivors up on to the remnants of the ship. and they peered out into the stance and through the mist, they could an island. and ofou hull began about. 145 survivors, including captain the gunner john bulkley and the young midshipman, john byron, make it ashore being ferried in a is like a rowboat. and they hope will maybe this will be our salvation.

complete, utterly inhospitable. it is cold. the temperature hovering around 30. it is constantly raining or sleeting. and what's more, they can find virtually no food. they have to eat. they find little bits of seaweed that they eat. some mussels. they gradually exhaust them they're at. there were no animals on. the island, other than the birds that were flying in distance. they found some of sprouts ofceo them ended up curing their scurvy. that was it. one british officer later described thesoul, the dies in . and this is where the test of their wits began.

that island in, many ways, became a kind of lab retreat to test the human condition under the mand inevitably, it would tr hidden nature, both the good and thnow know most of you have not read the book, so i will not spoil the unfathomable saga that unfolded on that isla. so is the they were there many the men as they began to starve would hold these great philosophical debates about the nature of leadership and duty and loyalty. and then later the prospect of mutiny. they did this as they gradually into warring factis. murders and thieves would try to steal their rations. and they askedhe question, who

has the right to over us? does the captain because he was the captain of the ship by title automatically deserved to be our commander or in that democ sea of sufferi someone john bulkele, though he did not come from the aristocracy emerge as a captain in his own right. and he would invoke these are resonant with us today. he said such phrases life and liberty. now, as the men were starving on that island, one day, almost amazingly emerges through the mist. a of canoes with native and on board. and they were members of the group who the care squire lived in along the and they had adapted to the very

extreme conditions they tended to travel in small familiar groups. they lived÷[ almost f resources. they spend most of their time in canoes. they were so well adapted to the region that nassau later r when i was looking into how humans might adapt to the inhospitable elements of space actually st region in the cara squire for example. they would keep warm by keeping a fire their canoes. and most important, they knew how to find food. they would travel up and down these coastline fish were located. and the reefs with sea urchins could be in where mussels and limpets could be in. and theylifeline to the castawa. they went out and actually them food. but this is also a story about

rialism and the prejudices that color us. and many of the castaways blinded by the prejudice squire. and at that time also the casco are looking at the castaways who are spiraling into greater violence t just pack up and disappear essentially we're out of here, you know, and that the castaways on they descended further into a hobbesian state of depravity. and a few of the men also succumbeto cannibal ism. now, increase ably. several of these castaways make it back england and these journeys are unfathomable sagas in own right evoking the journey for example of shackleton century later. and again i won't spoil what happened in the book butt is

so interesting. and what fascinated me about the story is not only what happened to these castaways the island and during theirescape from thee two members of each faction. but what happened to them after they got back to eng feared thed before a military tribunal where they feared they would be hanged for their crimes on the island. and so, again, they publish their accounts and after waging a war you it scurvy typhus wounds tidal waves ice bergs shipwreck the violence from their own ship means they now began to wage a war over truth. and just like today, there were allegations of disinformation.

mis information and fake journals. and while i was reaching, researching this story, i would go to the archives and read the old accounts and then i would come back home and i would flip on the tv or read the newspaper and what would i hear or turn on? factsews? what is true? i go back to the archive. and i'd be reading about this war over who would get to had to tell it. and at the same time, there were efforts by those ingm power covr up the scandalous truth because the admiralty and in power were listening to these warring stories, any these stories. they make british officers and crew vanguard of the empire. they suppose that of western civilization looked more like brutes than gentlemen.

and so they also attempt to manufacture and tell their own version of the sto, r own alternative history, their own mythic tale. ■■én this story, i did so in a place very suited for paltry physical attributes, wh archives england. and what is amazing is that it's a trove of these records, primary you could find journals and logbooks and muster. somehow they survived. you know the■fame back even from the shipwreck. and it took me a while to read these documents. documents can also speak to you in very unexpected ways. for example, i pulled the master books, some of the ships in the squadron. a master book is simply almost li acomes on board a ship, their

name is listed. at the time they arrived, the rank officer or whatnot. butle column with abbreviated symbols next to them. and at first when i looked at these, it must have books, they look just like gibberish to me and they really thought, oh, but eventually i was informed by a british naval story and said, no, have to look at those abbreviations. and i kept these symbols next to so many members of the squadron. it kept saying after their name. dee dee. dee dee. keep going dee dee dee. on and on. dee dee dee dee. what? dee dee. stand for. discharge. these people all die during the voyage. and so

doing research in the archives i began to be gnawed by that doubt sometimes hits you as a fearing there was still more i needed know and that i might never able to fully understand what the undergone an that island unless i went there myself. and so that's when i decided to do something■y wife, i'm going o go to wager island. and i found chilean captain who could take me there. he had sent me a picture of the picture of the boat look really big and formidable like some jacques cousteau vessel. and i thought, okay, no problem. go tually fly. we were going to leave from chiloé island, which is off the coast of chile, which about 350 miles nor of what is now known as. wager island and i had fly from to florida then to santiago and then i flew south and then took ferry. eventually i get to the boat in

chile island. after several days, i take one look at the boat and think that doesn't look like boat in small. and we're supposed leave right away. but it was so rough that we couldn't embark so we were trapped in this port. and one day passed. and then another day the coast guard wouldn't let any boats in or out. and just, you know, a few to get across this gulf of good weather. and finally on the fourth or fifth day, the coast said, yes, you can leave. and we slipped at dawn. here you can see my very glorious. i got the best captain, the best cabin on thedr boat and for thoe of you who've been to patagonia had never been there. you know, it's amazing coastline. looks like you took alate, a glass, and you just shattered it. and there are all these is slits, these little islands. so if you weave them, you can actually be wine through these

misty passageways that are relatively calm. and again, i thought, oh, i got would stop the captain. the boat was heated by a it was wintertime. it was heated by a wood stove. so we'd stop at the little is here would go off and cut wood and bring him on the ship. and that's how we warm. to the glacial stream, andse up that's how we would get water for the boat. let just tell you, that was the cold, the shower i've ever taken. 15 seconds. and you were awake for a week. and. but eventually, about five days, the captain came to you. he said, well, now, you know, if we're going to them, we're going to have to go out into the open ocean. now. and that's when we headed out into those seas. and just for a little refresher back on that ship, sitting on the floor floor. you couldn't see, you couldn't. to pass the time.

and so what foolish thing that i decide to do. had my iphone a recording of moby and so i listened to moby. d not to be seasick and let me just step away novel absolutely recommend it perhaps not the■x most soothing thing to do when you're tumultuous seas but a captain was very and i don't de'm telling you about it because it was so informative and it breathed life into my description and is my understanding going. captain was very skilled. he lead around the headlands and ll imwt the gulf of paine.e■g to and there are references on the map to the stay to this old chapter of history that is bewildering to contemporary

seamen. at one point, like captain on our map to several which had names like smith and hobbs and waller and i thought, wow, these are such curious sounding english names. and they seem kind of familiar to me. and i had brought with me some of the cast copies of the castaways journals, and sure enough, i found the names in. that was where when some of the castaways from some one of the factions had tri escape wager island in two tiny little boats. one of the boats had sank and they had not enough room them on the so these four men were on ts little of islands and this is why they are named only epitaph. and the captain didn't know why he, just knew those were the names. we also wenty a cal cheap and byron island and eventually we got to wagersl sleeping by the island at dawn the next

morning we got into a little zodiac. i'm going to show you a photograph because i look so good ini share this photograph,e wishes of my wife, just to show how bundled up i was. i had all these layers. a war hat, long johns and yet i was still really cold. and so i suddenly why in the journals the castaways kept describing using the term saying they were freezing. but now i understood that they were no doubt suffergpothermia. they only had scraps of clothing, much of which had disintegrated on the island. and eventually we got to the and we were able to explore it. the castaways had described a heart it was to walk on the island and enough it really is impossible to walk not only because it's so mountainous, but it's covered in this dense foliage and this boggy ground. so it's like pushing through hedges, after going about 25 yards, you're just area where

the encampment where the castaways had built their encampment centuries ago. like them,e find no animals on the island other than the birds flying in the distance. we saw mussels along the shore. i found some of the kind tof ceh they had eaten. and i could now begin to understand why they desc the fly that british officer had described the island as the place, the soul, the man dies in him, and at one point a member, our group called down and pointed to an icym saying, look, look here. and i looked at the icy stream. and there just beneath the surface. timber about yards long from an 18th century warship believe f'. the wager.

we knew what they were because a expedition had discovered them about a decade earlier. and here you can see a video we took of those planks. and nothing else remains of furk place there or the dreams of empire ander all the time of documenting all the warring stories and the battle over the battle over survival all the sound and fury i just stood there listening to the eternal of the sea, be happy to answer any you have.

■=we have about 15 minutes for your questions. again, if you could bring your to the microphone to the folks back home for your question. thank you you. thank to you. and enough practice free library for this. i' you you wrote mine in my wife's book of all time. i suspect this might become my new all time. frank, y■ st like as a writer to between the two books and how did you land? this is your next one. yeah. so after killers of deeply in. why certain parts of our told, t left out. of course, of the flower moon

was about one of the worst racial injustices and one of the mores in american history, which the systematic killings of members of the osage nation for their oil in the early 20th century in yet while the osage obviously knew their history, so many others, the osage nation and i include among them, had never taught that history. we had, in effect, excised it from our consciousness. and i get told and others don't and this story when i was doing research really seemed like a perfect illustration of how that happened. and i first came across the story when i was doiutinies. mutinies, a subject i was also interested in. i was always interested in that kind of rebellion that takes place in athese instruments of e to order.

and so what causes to suddenly disorder are they something unjust in the system that justified the rebellion a reason why i think mutinies fascate literature and film for so long. it's why mutinies are so brutally quashed, often by the state because they posed such a threat. and when i was doing that research, i came across that 18 century count by john byron. and let me just say the account was itten in thistteenglish. the fs were printed as ss i mean, the essays were printed as fs and and it was kd of what this what is this? but i kept pausing over these arresting passages, the perfect hurricane, scurvycannibal ism, y describes it as that last extremity and and i realized clues to one of the more extraordinary

sagas of survival and adventure i ever come across. and then, as i did morech, i bee other dimensions to the story that this was a story about the search, truth about the nature, uth about the ture of leadership, about imperialism and and about the way we tell history. and so that's what dw meo thank. mr. grand. yes. the stories you tell the places you go and the way that caught danger. i wonderedl married. so you're so you're dating. answer that question. and she must be a very ever got. oh, right. but i wanted to know whether not your research ca o narratives on of color that was on the boat

and and and ver about marshall e that would give the british what on the island. thank you two great questions i'm going to do the lastesti. ty raised the question and some of thee alleged mutineers try to use that as a loophole because it was not explicit the rules. so they you know did they jurisdiction over them if the british navyve they have easily just asserted it later though they would change the rules to make it abunnt thaa shipwreck that. captain's power extended land

and it came direct out of what ha island island. there was a free black seamen that we know who is on thã doug. he is mentioned in some of the accounts by other seamen and. he was somebody who had survived bvd. hen. he went on this voyage. she had survived going around cape. hetempest the scurvy outbreak ad the shipwreck he then survived one of these unbilled evenly long■ voyages. and yet unlike and this is specifically to your question, unlike some of the other survivors, he did not have an y to share his testimony or story. and the reason was he was seized

and kidnaped, sold into threat that often loomed over black seamen at that time one of the many story that cannot told and. one of the pois tremphasize is w empire was preserve their■ story tell, but also by the stories they don't tell by those they leave out of the history books. and this is one of them. two more questions. one here and thank you for your amazing work. thank you. so i'm curious how this works at the new yorkers so do you say to david rudnick, i'll be gone yea. just send the paycheck here. i'm not going to this question. i'm going to get in trouble.

come on. the cameras. n't notice, doesn't happen. but but seriously, i mean, this so he's a reporter. his dogged he's coming back at me. no, a yorker fan. and i'm curious how it goes. so iyears devoting my resourcesd time specifically to the new yorker writing magazine p■lieces year. and then for a while, i kind of go off in the books and i would juggle. i remember i worked on the last to juggle. i get book leave. but then i was trying to juggle the magazine stuff which was really hard and. as i focus more onttle like an . is that the word professor who because the books take me so long. killers of the flower moon took me< half a decade. and the intensity. the research is so obsessive. i wish, i was quicker and i wish

i was more talend to be able to do both. but i found i really can't. and so my wife is the most and undeworld and second to that wod be david remnick remnick. yorker writer while you were speaking. that's john mcphee. he gets awfully close to subjects too. how would you compare your approach to his approach? yeah. i mean, he's an inspiration you know, as a writer, you this thing mcphee's been doing this a lot longer than i have and has really mastered forme you two ef how this can actually happen and play out for example, the first two chapters of the book are kind of set up. ie to kind of build the world, the wooden world of a ship so that you understand the civilization that will slowly

then you have to know the world ens when it breaks apart. and so one of the books i looked at was david mccullough, the brooklyn bridge. i remember always made engineering so exciting. and so i read that book none of it's in my book, but it was just anpiration. and that's how you do this. that's how you write about construction and building and you make it vivid, exciting and comeple. and there was a passage, a very specific passage in the wager. so i'm so glad asked this question where i was quoting the journals. and i kept to saying, oh they're hungry, they're hungry. and suddenly i. how would mcphee do this? because the hunger, getting repetitive, how would handle this? and i exactly what he would do, he would just take the frag from the journals. this and quote from them. so you just keep hearing it and you see through their eyes.

you recognize the oh, they're h, they're hungry again. you just hear their obsessive mind going food. i look for food found no food. the call of hunger. hunger is calling again. where is food? is food. and that was again just the direct and that's why i did that. so you really try to learn from the masters as much as you can. thanko take this opportunity? thank gran for his time. thank all soucso very quickly. david will be out in about 5 minutes to sign your books. michael of fear right. there will be the headain, i'vee selling. thanks for coming out this evening. thank you all.

■■v■^now to businesac schiff is

the author of viera mrs. vladimir nabokov, which won the 2000 pulitzer prize for saint-exupery a biography which was a finalist the 1995 pulitzer prize. her most recent include

cleo