Wager Mutiny - Captain Cheap's Group

Captain Cheap's Group

Twenty men remained on Wager Island after the departure of the Speedwell. Poor weather during October and November continued. One man died of exposure after being marooned for three days on a rock for stealing food. By December and the summer solstice, it was decided to launch the barge and the yawl and skirt up the coast three-hundred miles to an inhabited part of Chile. During bad weather the yawl was overturned and lost, with the quartermaster drowned.

The loss of this boat meant that there was not enough room for everyone in the barge, and therefore four of the most helpless, all marines, were left on the shore to fend for themselves. In his account, Campbell describes events thus:

"The loss of the yawl was a great misfortune to us who belonged to her (being seven in number) all our clothes, arms, etc. being lost with her. As the barge was not capable of carrying both us and her own company, being in all seventeen men, it was determined to leave four of the Marines on this desolate place. This was a melancholy thing, but necessity compelled us to it. And as we were obliged to leave some behind us, the marines were fixed on, as not being of any service on board. What made the case of these poor men the more deplorable, was the place being destitute of seal, shellfish, or anything they could possibly live upon. The captain left them arms, ammunition, a frying pan, and several other necessaries."

Fourteen now were left in the barge. After repeated failed attempts to round the headland, it was decided to return to Wager Island and give up all hope of escape. The four stranded marines were looked for but had disappeared. Two months after leaving Wager Island, Captain Cheap's group returned; there were only thirteen men left now, and they were close to death, indeed one man died of starvation shortly after arriving.

Back at the island Captain Cheap did himself little credit by claiming captain's privileges to take more food than the others and do less work. Fifteen days after returning to Wager Island the men were visited by a party of astonished Indians. After some negotiation, with the surgeon speaking Spanish, it was agreed that they would guide the castaways to a small Spanish settlement up the coast using an overland route to avoid the peninsula, for which the barge would be traded. John Byron, in his book gives a detailed account of the journey to the village of Castro in Chile, as does Alexander Campbell, but suffice to say it was a horrific ordeal that took four months and during which another ten men died of starvation, exhaustion and fatigue, leaving Marine Lieutenant Hamilton, Midshipmen Campbell, Midshipman Byron, and Captain Cheap as the only survivors.