Montezuma features in today’s blog. Oh! it was a long time ago but his deeds live on, in microbia.
A juice cocktail with the previous night’s meal started to impact during the early morning, and the day ended in a blur, for us both. It wasn’t till Jen, who wasn’t affected, went out for some remedial medicine that things started to stabilise.
As we didn’t leave the hotel room and so nothing of interest to report, I thought a little of the history of this amazing place.
What’s interesting about this photo, is the name of the commander of the British…yes, British fleet. Admiral Sir Charles Wager, 1666 – 1743. The British fleet was in Cartagena because he had just beaten a Spanish Treasure Fleet at Cartagena in 1708. It made him a very wealthy man. Never mind the ethics…:) You can see the importance the Spanish placed on this town, with the impressive fort, visited the previous day. Which brings me to the subject of a book, The Wager.
The Wager by David Grann
On 28th January 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon, the Wager was wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The crew, marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing 2,500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.
Then, six months later, another, even more decrepit, craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways and they had a very different story to tell. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with counter-charges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous captain and his henchmen. While stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court found guilty could hang.
The next phase for us.
Today, Saturday, we check out of our accommodation, for another, in this city. We are not unhappy about that as at around 2.30am last night the power to the ceiling fan and heat pump ceased and at around 27degrees in a small room, it wasn’t pleasant and little sleep was had. Jen will pick up the thread for the day, later.
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