The Wager Disaster

by C. H. Layman

  Figure 2. Reassessment of where the wreck might be.

  In addition to revisiting the information in the survivors’ accounts, we also went back to the information that Davy had discovered about the earthquakes in the area. Between 1741 and 2006 there had been a total of ninety-four earthquakes recorded in the Golfo de Peñas. On 22nd May 1960 the largest-ever recorded earthquake, 9.5 on the Richter scale, hit the Chilean coast within a few miles of Wager Island. The Chilean authorities have little practical interest in Wager Island or the archipelago it sits in, so no accurate data exist as to how this earthquake affected the island. It would be up to us to make an educated guess – and without the help of a qualified geologist. The tectonic plate on which Wager Island sits is advancing at around 20–70mm per year, and information we could lay our hands on suggested that it had moved at more than 20mm per year before the 1960s event. This, we think, led to an advance of around 5.5 metres during the quake. Converted into a vertical height as the plate rode up over the South Americas, this gave us a rise of somewhere between three and seven metres! We made some observations ourselves and also compared the historical charts with modern satellite imagery. While there is always some discrepancy in old charts, it was clear that Wager Island was a very different shape now from what it had been in 1741 – it was larger, and to our eyes it looked very much as though it had been pushed up and out of the ocean, and by an amount that was nearer to seven metres than to three (see Figure 3). The very real possibility dawned on us that not only could we be in the wrong spot, we might also not be on a diving expedition anymore! The bay that presented itself most readily in the north-western corner of the island on the old chart as Cheap’s Bay no longer existed; all that was visible on the satellite photos was a large sandy beach and acres of forest.

  At breakfast each morning I would brief the team on the plan for the day, and after dinner we would summarise the day’s activities and discuss options for the following day. After dinner and over a long discussion, the team all came to the same conclusion: we needed to get to the other side of the island. The following morning I called John Blashford-Snell on the satellite phone and requested a move. Having discarded thoughts of an initial recce using the inflatables on safety grounds, we would now be at the mercy of a fishing boat, the Santa Fe, and the weather, to advance our search.

  Figure 3. The outline of the island has changed considerably owing to the 94 earthquakes that have occurred since the ship was wrecked.

  Cheap’s Bay from Mount Misery, looking north.

  The dotted lines show approximately where the shoreline would have been before the great earthquake of 1960 (the largest earthquake ever recorded) which raised the land seven metres. The wreck was found just below present-day sea level, midway between where the dotted lines touch the sea.

  At this point, when we really needed a break in the weather, we were hit by a storm that lasted for three days and prevented all but the most basic of activities. It was our first taste of the kind of treatment that the Golfo de Peñas can mete out, and all of us were glad we had constructed such a robust camp. Once the storm had cleared and Santa Fe was able to move, we had one more day to fill before she arrived. It is always important to keep people occupied on these trips and we decided we should placate the sea gods and name our two boats:

  Many of the Chilean locals still believe in an evil sea serpent called Kai Kai, and a more passive land serpent. After the severe earthquake in the 1960s, a six year-old boy was beaten to death and offered as a sacrifice to the sea. One of our boats had to be named Speedwell and we decided that the other should have a girl’s name and probably a Chilean one. Having consulted with Martin and Jaime, we came up with Rosita. This was after one of Jaime’s female instructors – apparently a loveable and reliable woman, but one who did nothing in a hurry. We held a brief ceremony, and Lynwen blessed each boat with a dribble of whisky from a hip flask.

  Finally our salvation arrived in the form of Santa Fe, and we loaded all our equipment and people onto what was a very small vessel. Those with a sense of mortality kept their dry suits on, and halfway through our journey it seemed that their pessimism might have been well placed. I watched as the boat’s engineer disappeared into a smoke-filled space below my feet. I looked in with interest until what I saw led me to think I was better off not watching. The smoke cleared to show our engineer working in a tiny space, but with a clearly rising water level. Two large truck batteries were floating in sea water and, as they arced gently against the side of the large metal fuel tank, the engineer relit his constantly present cigarette. I looked for my dry suit and, not finding it, grabbed a life jacket and joined the rest of the team sitting on deck enjoying the view and in a position where, if necessary, we could swim for the shore. The engineer emerged after twenty minutes with a handful of worked timber, some electrical circuitry and two grubby bits of engine that looked to me like fuel pumps. He showed them to the captain, exchanged a few brief words and then threw them all overboard! Obviously non-essential components. Our offerings to the sea gods must have worked, because two hours later we were on a mile of white sand beach with all our equipment and some less tense divers.

  Wager Quest, Camp 2.

  From almost the moment of arrival, our second camp site had a certain feeling of rightness. We pitched camp high on the flood plain of a fresh-water stream, and the team constructed windbreaks to protect our new home from more expected bad weather. We utilised the few days of good weather and set about making searches, both diving along the northern shore and also travelling inland to high vantage points in an effort to identify Mount Misery and to search for signs of past habitation.

  This was a magical couple of days, particularly because all our dives and boat excursions were accompanied by a pod of porpoises:

  On the way back in the boats and with time to spare we played again for about 15 minutes with the porpoises. It was a fantastic experience, which had everyone, including me, animated. The animals were also clearly enjoying themselves, and, as we circled around to create a wake for them to play in, they were not only jumping out of the water close to the boats to get a good look at us, but even brushing up against the boats and puffing so close that I could smell their breath. If for no other reason, today made the entire trip worthwhile.

  As tick follows tock, our three splendid days of good weather were followed by a three-day storm that prevented us from achieving anything. We were again pinned down in the tents and could do nothing useful in terms of searching at all. It was deeply frustrating, particularly as we were all convinced that we were at last in the right spot. A consequence of this storm was that the small stream next to which we had camped expanded from a two metre wide trickle into an eight or ten metre wide torrent. We were camped on a sandy flood plain a few hundred metres behind the sand bar that separated the fresh river water from the ocean. It was the only relatively flat spot available and we had camped there safe in the knowledge that in the fullness of time, we might have to move – the alternative being to hack a clearing in the dense undergrowth or to live on the beach exposed to the relentless wind. Twice a day the high tide would breach the sand bar and the now swelling stream would come into our camp. It was a fairly unpleasant and damp time.

  At last our luck changed: on 20th November the weather broke and we sent teams inland and into the water to recommence the search. After a successful but fruitless day, we sat around the camp fire and all agreed that the next logical step was to get a team to the top of the nearby mountain that was 400 metres inland, and fast becoming the top candidate for Mount Misery.

  The following morning a large team headed upstream; the river was vastly expanded because of the heavy rain, and we could use it as a highway. The mountain was only 400m inland, but by the stream the journey was closer to a kilometre. The members of the team planning to climb the mountain were dressed in walking gear and sat in the boat during the deeper sections. The remainder of us wore dry suits, to enable us to haul the infla
tables up and over two sets of rapids. It was hot and hard work. Once the climbing team led by Andy had set off, we tied up the boats, swam the kilometre or so back to the camp and waited a call on the radio to replay the whole performance in reverse.

  Andy is not someone who is drawn into false optimism; he is a ‘professional Scotsman’ and proud of it. When I met him back at the boats, he was excited about the correlation between what he had seen from the top of the mountain and the descriptions in the accounts. He finished off his debrief to me by saying: ‘I think I’ve just been to the summit of Mount Misery, which means that the Wager is somewhere here.’ The whole team was excited, and the journey downstream and back to the camp seemed to take half the time and effort – none the less it was again hot and heavy work. As the buoyant land team stepped out of the boats at our camp site, there was one task left before everyone could get out of their suits and relax for the evening: having nearly lost one of the inflatables to the wind, we religiously removed the boats from the water at the end of every day and tied them down firmly. As I was leaning on the bow of one of them, I heard a flurry of ripe language from the stern. Chris Hunter, one of the serving members of the Armed Forces on the team, had painfully stubbed his toe on something, and the heat and effort were not helping. ‘Just a minute fellas, I’m going to move this damned thing, otherwise I’ll only do it again.’ On his hands and knees, he cleared away the sand around the offending item and tried to move it away from his now throbbing toes. It was an unusual moment, one of those where everyone goes quiet at the same time and you cannot really remember who spoke first, but, as he continued to fan with his hand, slowly but surely the outline of a large worked piece of timber became visible. More hands joined his, and within three or four minutes we had uncovered about one and a half metres of hull planking. An unusual feeling came over me, much like when you have known the answer to a question all along, but for some reason have forgotten to tell anyone. We were literally ten metres away from my tent, in the very spot where for a week we had been washing our pots, pans, clothes and bodies, and it was entirely likely that we had just stumbled over the wreck of HMS Wager. The storm that had come close to washing away our morale had also scoured away large amounts of sand on the bottom of the stream, exposing the smallest edge of timbers that must have remained buried for decades.

  HMS Wager, found after 265 years.

  Regrettably the logistical constraints of getting food and equipment to the island meant that we were only able to toast our success with a bottle of wine between 12 people – but we were all on top of the world. By the time we finished an initial investigation of the area to establish the likely size of the find, we had uncovered a piece of wreckage roughly 5 x 5 metres. With the light fading, we decided on an early start to begin a detailed survey that we could then hand over to a professional archaeological team.

  The following morning Andy reminded the team of the basics of a simple survey and we set to work. Concurrently, we also began to build a small coffer dam of boulders and rocks upstream from the find to prevent the excavation being back filled with sand flowing downstream.

  The wreckage was in a remarkably well preserved condition under about 50cm of water and 10cm of sand. We had found four frames of a hull section with at least eight pieces of hull planking attached. Constructed completely of timber, the joints were made with trenails, wooden fixing pins, that could be clearly seen. This would be consistent with Wager’s construction, but more importantly the size and shape of the timbers were consistent with what we had been told we should expect to find. There were a number of interesting areas: three rectangular cut blocks that could either be repairs of a split timber or evidence of her conversion from an East Indiaman to a warship, some ceramics applied to one of the timber ends, perhaps as a waterproofing putty used when she was repaired in Brazil, and finally evidence of rough cutting and burning at the edges of some of the timber planks. Sadly there was only one artefact, a musket ball that Matt Buckland-Hoby discovered wedged between two of the frames.

  Over the next two days we made a complete survey of the timbers using the old fashioned method of tape measure, pencil and paper, and took a series of photos using an underwater camera to create a photo mosaic of the entire find. So it was that with three days remaining on the island, we had effectively completed what we set out to do: to find evidence of the Wager’s final resting place and make a survey that could be used to start a follow-up expedition by an archaeological team.

  Divers carefully sifting sand to uncover timbers of the Wager.

  Diver’s sketch of a fragment of the Wager, about 5 x 5m in size.

  Section of planking with neat trenails (wooden dowels hammered into hand-drilled holes). This is likely to have been part of the original construction.

  More trenails, where the wood around them has been eroded.

  This could be a piece of damage repair (by Carpenter Cummins?) On the right hand side of the block a piece of fibrous material can be seen, no doubt packed around the edges as caulking to make a better seal.

  Chris Holt holds a musket ball found embedded in the timbers, possibly one fired by the drunken ship’s company, led by the Boatswain, who at first refused to leave the wreck.

  I awoke in the morning to one of the team telling me that a small boat was in the bay. Assuming that this was some kind of elaborate practical joke I walked out onto the beach to see, sure enough, a small inflatable with six people in it pulling into what we were now convinced was Cheap’s Bay. It is worth remembering at this point that we were on an island at best 24 hours from the nearest village and that the Golfo de Peñas is one of the most treacherous parts of the ocean, particularly in a small boat. I knew that the Chileans were considering sending an archaeological research team to the island at some point, but details were fairly thin. Once we had helped our guests to haul up their boat onto the beach, some introductions were called for. The two group leaders gravitated towards the front of both groups, and as we shook hands he said, ‘So you are Chris Holt?’

  Diego Carabias and his team from ARKA Consultants had been funded to conduct a two-year study into Wager and Byron Islands, and specifically into the relevant indigenous Indian history. Finding Wager was something that was pivotal to their research. They had heard of our expedition, but somehow we had failed to communicate with each other prior to our departure from the UK. Once he had heard of our imminent arrival, Diego had planned a period of field work on the island and hoped that at some point our paths might cross. It seems remarkable to me now, but until the moment we met, we were two completely separate expeditions in a wildly remote part of the world with only the slightest chance of bumping into each other. We had a lot to talk about!

  I showed Diego and his team our find and clearly they were as excited about it as we were. After a brief period of deliberation it was concluded that the Chileans should join us at our camp, and as we waved them off to collect their equipment from the opposite side of the island, we prepared a camp site for them. This spirit of mutual assistance would continue for the remaining time on the island.

  For our team this was the perfect ending. Not only had we found what we felt sure was part of the Wager, but we were now in a position to see a professional archaeological team start their research, and tell us more about the site and what happened after the shipwreck.

  Once Diego and his team had returned we had time to chat about his research and compare notes on what we each did and didn’t know about the Wager story. Here in the UK we are well equipped with the accounts of the survivors, and the records held in places like the National Archive in London, the UK Hydrographic Office in Taunton, and the Naval Historical Branch in Portsmouth had been invaluable in our research. The Chileans had access to the records of the Spanish outposts from the time and local Indian accounts. After a brief period talking to Diego it became clear to me and the team that Wager was not only an epic story for the Royal Navy, it is also a pivotal part of the history of the relationship
between the Spanish and the local Indian tribes, and therefore an important part of Chilean history.

  The site where the Wager was wrecked is a spot that had been used by the local Indians for some time, and the wrecked ship became for them an additional reason to visit. Even after all the British had left, the site continued to be used, and where possible items were salvaged. The local tribe, which operated in the archipelago of islands to the south of Wager Island, was known as the Alakaluf; they had not yet made formal contact with the Spanish, and were still operating as a hunter-gatherer maritime culture. In around 1745 the Spanish at Chiloé, having been alerted to the presence of the wreck by the arrival of Cheap and Byron, went off with a local Indian workforce to salvage the site for its metallic content. During this salvage expedition a Spanish camp was established near the wreck site, and first contact was made between the Spanish and the Alakaluf. For a period of over 50 years, the Spanish sent a Jesuit priest to the camp on Wager Island to convert the Alakaluf, and eventually they were subsumed into the Christian way of life.

  Interestingly, the Indians were used by the Spanish to conduct the salvage and they used a traditional and relatively low-energy method to extract the maximum metallic content from the vessel. Wager was in relatively shallow water and as far as we can tell, firmly stuck not far from shore. The accounts that exist apparently suggest that large sections of the ship would be hacked free and then dragged up onto the beach. Here they would be burned if necessary to free them from rigging or other snags and the metallic content liberated without too much care for the timber, which was essentially worthless. The fact that our find was a 5 x 5m section of hull planking with rough cuts and evidence of charring at the edges supported this theory of working, and encouraged our firm belief that we had found part of the Wager. The only question really remaining is where the other sections are and, more interestingly, where the keel section and unrecovered cannon may lie.