Wager Mutiny - The Voyage of The Speedwell

The Voyage of The Speedwell

At noon on Tuesday 13 October 1741, the schooner, now named the Speedwell, got under sail with the cutter and barge in company. Cheap refused to go, and to the relief of the mutineers he agreed to be left behind with two marines who were earlier shunned for stealing food. Everyone expected Cheap to die on Wager Island, making their arrival in England much easier to explain. Bulkley even assumed this by putting in his journal that day, "this was the last I ever saw of the captain". In the event, both would make it back to England alive to tell their version of events, Cheap some two years after Bulkley.

Initially the voyage got off to a bad start. After repeatedly splitting sails, the barge was sent back to Wager Island where there were additional stores. Two midshipmen, John Byron and Alexander Campbell, formed part of the nine who returned. Once back at Wager Island they were greeted by Captain Cheap, who was delighted to hear of their wish to remain with him. By the time Bulkley sailed back to Wager Island in search of the now missing barge and men, all had disappeared. The Speedwell and the cutter therefore turned around and sailed south. The journey was arduous and food was in very short supply. On 3 November the cutter parted company; this was serious as she was needed for inshore foraging work. By now Bulkley was despairing of the men in the Speedwell. Most were in the advanced stages of starvation, exposed in a desperately cold open boat and had lapsed into apathy. Some days later there was some good news, the cutter was sighted and re-joined company, but it was not to last, soon after, at night, she broke loose from her consort's tow line and was wrecked on the coast. Of the eighty-one men originally who had sailed ten had now perished.

As food began to run out the situation became desperate, ten men were picked out and forced to sign a paper consenting to being cast ashore on the uninhabited frozen bog-ridden southern coast of Chile, a virtual death sentence. Sixty men now remained in the Speedwell. Eventually the improvised vessel entered the Strait of Magellan, in monstrous seas which threatened the boat with every wave. Men were now dying from starvation regularly. Some days after exiting The Straits, the boat moved closer to land in order to take in water and hunt for food. Later, as the last of their supplies were being taken on board, Bulkley made sail abandoning the eight men on the desolate shore three hundred miles short of Buenos Aires. Once again, such actions would return to haunt Bulkley far into the future, as three of those he had abandoned would make it back to England alive. Only thirty-three men now remained in the Speedwell.

Eventually, and after a brief stop at a Portuguese outpost on the River Plate, where the crew were fleeced by the locals for meagre provisions and cheated by a priest who disappeared with their fowling pieces (shotguns) on the promise of returning with game, the Speedwell set sail once more and eventually, on 28 January 1742, sighted the Rio Grande, southern Brazil, after a journey of over two-thousand miles in an open boat full of desperate and starving men which took fifteen weeks. Of the eighty-one men who set off from Wager Island, thirty arrived at Rio in a desperate condition.