The adventures of Capt. Cheap, the Hon. Mr. Byron, Lieut. Hamilton, Alexander Campbell and others, late of his Majesty’s Ship the Wager, which was wrecked on a desolate island in Lat. 47. S. Long. 81. 40. W. in the South Seas, in the year 1741.

The wreck of the British Navy store-ship Wager on the west coast of Patagonia in 1741 has been immortalized in the work of its most famous survivor, the Honourable John Byron. There were others, however, each with his own tale of adventure and suffering; among these, Midshipman Alexander Campbell.

A Scot by birth, Campbell was one of the small group (including Byron) which remained loyal to the ship's captain, David Cheap. Five months after the shipwreck, the majority of the survivors departed for the Magellan Strait, en route to the Atlantic Ocean. Two months later, Campbell and his companions attempted to escape northward, but were turned back by impassable seas. A subsequent attempt, with the aid of local natives, was finally successful. In all, it took more than a year for this miserable group of four survivors to reach civilization, at the Spanish outpost of Chiloe. As prisoners-of-war, they were later transported to Santiago, in central Chile, living there in comparative comfort for a further two years, until an amnesty allowed them to return to Britain. Their voyage had lasted over five years.

Because of personal differences with Captain Cheap while in Santiago, Campbell chose to live separately from his companions, returning home by a different route. Arriving in Britain later than the others, he found that the Captain had blackened his name by asserting that Campbell had joined the Spanish service. This book, therefore, is not only an account of Campbell's adventures, but also a defence of his behaviour in the face of what he claims to be unfair treatment and plain ingratitude on the part of his captain.