Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
Ratings8
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings8
Average rating3.6
Auckland Island is a godforsaken place in the middle of the Southern Ocean, 285 miles south of New Zealand. With year-round freezing rain and howling winds, it is one of the most forbidding places in the world. To be shipwrecked there means almost certain death.
In 1864 Captain Thomas Musgrave and his crew of four aboard the schooner Grafton wreck on the southern end of the island. Utterly alone in a dense coastal forest, plagued by stinging blowflies and relentless rain, Captain Musgrave—rather than succumb to this dismal fate—inspires his men to take action. With barely more than their bare hands, they build a cabin and, remarkably, a forge, where they manufacture their tools. Under Musgrave's leadership, they band together and remain civilized through even the darkest and most terrifying days.
Incredibly, at the same time on the opposite end of the island—twenty miles of impassable cliffs and chasms away—the Invercauld wrecks during a horrible storm. Nineteen men stagger ashore. Unlike Captain Musgrave, the captain of the Invercauld falls apart given the same dismal circumstances. His men fight and split up; some die of starvation, others turn to cannibalism. Only three survive. Musgrave and all of his men not only endure for nearly two years, they also plan their own astonishing escape, setting off on one of the most courageous sea voyages in history.
Using the survivors' journals and historical records, award-winning maritime historian Joan Druett brings this extraordinary untold story to life, a story about leadership and the fine line between order and chaos.
Reviews with the most likes.
People getting stranded in places they shouldn't be seem to be a recurring theme in the books I'm picking up. Up to this point, it's been disastrous arctic expeditions. This book was an “if you like those, you might like this” recommendation by Goodreads, and I thought it was really interesting! The stakes were a bit lower than what I've read before, but this was still a pretty good read about—not one—but two different shipwrecks on the same island! Two stories for the price of one!
We start out reading about Captain Musgrave's ship the Grafton, marooned on Auckland Island after a series of bad calls and trusting in bad information. Him and his crew of four band together almost immediately and actually get themselves set up rather comfortably (given the circumstances). They built a sturdy structure, had a regular routine they followed, and when they realized the people they left behind didn't lift a finger to see them rescued, took it upon themselves to get themselves rescued. Despite some squabbles about rank and deference and the like, they did as well as could be expected for themselves.
The second wreck happened several months after the first, and things don't go nearly as well. The Invercauld runs aground, and a large number of her crew end up marooned as well. Instead of banding together, they find a derelict ruin of a building and spend all day wallowing in their own misery. One skilled crewmate did his level best to get people motivated, but you can't help people who don't want to help themselves. After the food runs out and nobody seems particularly motivated to even do anything about that, a few of the crew, including the skilled man split from the group—and at a good time too, because talk of cannibalism starts circulating amongst the dispirited crew. The small group isn't without its own set of challenges though, as nobody wants to follow anyone's directions. Nevertheless, they manage to hang on together, until a ship rescues them eighteen months later.
It's an extensively researched event, taken from historical records and journals. There's also quite a bit of what happened after all was said and done, which I appreciated. It was interesting to see how the crew of the Grafton all went their separate ways after the event, when they seemed to work well together during their time on the island. The author does a good job of contrasting the two shipwrecked groups, marooned at the same time, and weaving their stories together in time despite never meeting or realizing the other existed. One group banded together and (sort of) thrived, the other group refused to work together, and failed.
It's a unique survival story read, different than the arctic books I've read, with lower stakes but no less engaging.
I have never heard of this story before. It seems quite fantastic, but it is real. This book has a lot of details about how they survived on the island. It was really interesting.
