Originally published in England in 1959 and based on British Commodore Anson's 1740 circumnavigation of the world, this is the story of the HMS Wager, a ship sailing around Cape Horn. Jack Byron, an enthusiastic midshipman with "gaudy" family connections, and his best boyhood friend, Tobias Barrow, an unworldly budding doctor and naturalist, sign on. Their later counterparts are Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.

Byron, a romantic, forceful lad, signs on as a midshipman; Barrow, a strangely educated, scientifically brilliant boy, is running away from his father and wins a commission as a surgeon's mate. Set up in the Wager, which is parted from Anson's squadron and sinks somewhere along the desolate coast of Chile, Byron and Barrow are left to struggle for survival by wits alone, facing mutiny, famine, indifferent natives and lingering infighting.

Author of the Master and Commander book(s).