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The forces unleashed on Wager Island were like the horrors inside Pandora’s box: once unlocked, they could not be contained.

This quote from Chapter 21: A Literary Rebellion describes the continuing infighting and paranoia that plague Bulkeley and the crew of the Speedwell even after they land safely in Brazil. People around the former castaways expect their mutual hardships to have forged strong connections between them, but the survivors who made it to Brazil are mentally unable to return from the dissolution of the social order they experienced on Wager Island. This irreversible breakdown of civility will play an essential role in the anticlimactic court-martial in Chapter 25, when Grann argues that Great Britain would rather conceal crimes related to the Wager than allow them to reflect poorly on the empire’s ability to govern itself.

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