NAVAL HISTORY
David Grann
Simon & Schuster, 352 pages, £20
In September 1740 a small squadron of Royal Navy ships set off from Portsmouth, once a merchant vessel but now adapted for war. What happened to that ill-fated ship, and the men on it, is the subject of this gripping tale. Shipwrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia, the marooned sailors questioned allegiances in their struggle to survive. That we know their story at all is thanks to the dogged determination of two groups who eventually made it back to England, and caused a sensation with their conflicting accounts.
