The best-selling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters tells the story of a wild encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig, and a British warship in the Falkland Islands during the War of 1812. Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, the incident left three British sailors and two Americans--including the captain of the sealer, Charles H. Barnard--abandoned in the Falklands for eighteen months. A tale of intriguing complexity, with surprising twists and turns throughout--involving greed, lying, bullying, a hostile takeover, stellar leadership, ingenuity, severe privation, endurance, banishment, the great value of a dog, the birth of a baby, a perilous thousand-mile open-ocean journey in a seventeen-foot boat, an improbable rescue mission, and legal battles over a dubious and disgraceful wartime prize-- Left for Dead shows individuals in wartime under great duress acting both nobly and atrociously, and offers a unique perspective on an important moment in American history.