Notes
January 1742. A vessel washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were survivors of the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. They were greeted as heroes. Six months later, another craft landed on the coast of Chile, containing just three castaways and they had a very different story to tell. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth…
