'But because I know I have this weakness, I'm very acutely observing as much as I can. Like, you're, like, can't see at night, and you're stumbling, getting lost, or you're falling, or you're on a boat, or something like that,' he said. 'It's terrible when you're on an expedition. Grann's swashbuckling takes on an added degree of difficulty on account of a degenerative eye condition he's had since his 20s. 1 bestseller turned into a feature film, Grann trekked through the Amazon to a place known as the Green Hell, following the trail of a British explorer, Percy Fawcett. All that is taking place in this little tempest.' Jon Wertheim and David Grannįor his first book in 2009, 'The Lost City of Z,' a No.

You see questions of loyalty playing out, questions of duty playing out,' Grann said. You see questions of leadership playing out. 'On this island you see everything playing out. The castaways swam to the nearest island and spent months living on the inhospitable spit of land. It careened into rocks and was torn to pieces. The Wager lost its way just off the coast of Patagonia, getting into trouble in the Golfo de Penas, or Gulf of Pain.

That meant negotiating some of the world's most treacherous waters and winds. With British and Spanish empires at war, the doomed warship set sail as part of a squadron, rounding Cape Horn in search of a Spanish galleon filled with treasure off the coast of the Philippines. 'You would never catch me going to Wager Island in a little boat.' David Grann working on research 'I would never have endured anything that these people endured, but my own quests do sometimes get me in places and to do things I otherwise would never do in my ordinary life,' Grann said. He hunkered down on the ship's floor and popped some Dramamine on the way to the island.

Grann and his crew endured the moody waters over a ten-day journey. So Grann flew to Chile, chartered a 52-foot vessel, and ventured to what is now known as Wager Island himself. He spent two years poring over archival records about the lives of 145 castaways from an 18th century British warship called The Wager but that wasn't enough for him, he told 60 Minutes correspondent Jon Wertheim. Author David Grann does not think of himself as an explorer, but he'll travel to the ends of the earth to perfect the stories he tells.

The wager by david grann