A Voyage to the South-Seas, in the Years 1740–1 - Containing a Faithful Narrative of the Loss of His Majesty's Ship the Wager on a Desolate Island

John Bulkeley and John Cummins were respectively ship's gunner and carpenter aboard the ill-fated HMS Wager, part of a squadron sent to attack Spanish ships in the Pacific. The ship was wrecked after rounding Cape Horn in 1741. This 1743 account of survival against the odds gripped the public's imagination.