Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World [Hardcover]

Joan Druett (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1565124081 | ISBN-13: 978-1565124080 | Publication Date: May 17, 2007

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In early 1864, heading back to Australia after a failed mining expedition, the crew of the Grafton encountered a violent storm and found themselves shipwrecked in the Auckland Islands, off the coast of New Zealand. Druett, a maritime historian (In the Wake of Madness), draws upon the journals of the ship's captain, Thomas Musgrave, and prospector François Raynal to reveal how the crew pulled together and made the best of their circumstances for nearly two years. By contrast, when the Invercauld ran aground on the other side of the island months later—beyond an impassable mountain range, and hence unaware they were not alone—the surviving sailors quickly began eating their dead crewmates out of desperation. Soon, only three remained, the ineffectual captain and another officer being kept alive by a resourceful seaman. Druett tells the two stories in strict chronological order, allowing readers to become familiar with the Grafton party before weaving the Invercauld survivors into the narrative. She zeroes in on the salient details of their ordeals, identifying the plants that kept the castaways from contracting scurvy or sketching out an improvised recipe for soap with equal aplomb. This is a fine addition to the genre of survival tales like Endurance or In the Heart of the Sea. (Jul. 20)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—Using diaries, ship logs, and newspaper accounts, Druett re-creates the different experiences of the survivors of two wrecked vessels. In January 1864, the five-man crew of the Grafton left Sydney, Australia, intending to locate a source of argentiferous tin allegedly to be found on remote Campbell Island. In May 1864, the Invercauld left Melbourne for South America, with no passengers and a crew of 25, to sail to Callao to take on a cargo of fertilizer. Neither ship reached its final destination. Instead, both were shipwrecked on opposite ends of the same subantarctic island. Grafton's crew survived, and could even be said to have prospered. By working together, the men managed to build a shelter, hunt sea lions, and, eventually, build a boat and launch their own rescue team. The initial 19 survivors of the Invercauld, on the other hand, fell into arguing and quibbling with no direction or plan. Their number soon dwindled to 16, and then to 3. Viewers of television's Survivor and readers of survival novels will enjoy Island, and the book could provide teens with the know-how to stay alive if they ever found themselves in a similar situation.—Joanne Ligamari, Rio Linda School District, Sacramento, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 284 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books (May 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565124081
• ISBN-13: 978-1565124080
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #129,500 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #45 in Books > History > Australia & Oceania > New Zealand
  • #74 in Books > Professional & Technical > Transportation > Ships > History

More About the Author

Back in the year 1984, on the picture-poster tropical island of Rarotonga, I literally fell into whaling history when I tumbled into a grave. A great tree had been felled by a recent hurricane, exposing a gravestone that had been hidden for more than one and a half centuries. It was the memorial to a young whaling wife, who had sailed with her husband on the New Bedford ship Harrison in the year 1845. And so my fascination with maritime history was triggered ... resulting in 18 books (so far). The latest -- number nineteen -- is a biography of a truly extraordinary man, Tupaia, star navigator and creator of amazing art.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating story of two sets of castaways, July 18, 2007

By 

Kurt A. Johnson (North-Central Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World (Hardcover)

On the morning of November 12, 1863, the five-man crew of the schooner Grafton weighed anchor and set sail for Campbell Island in the sub-Antarctic region. At midnight on January 3, 1864, she was wrecked on the coast of Auckland Island, further to the west. This is the story of the able leadership of Captain Thomas Musgrave, who saved the entire five-man crew of the Grafton, and helped them to endure a winter in one of the most hostile corners of God's (usually) green Earth.

On May 3, 1864, the 888-ton freighter Invercauld left Melbourne with a crew of 25, setting sail for Callao, Peru. On May 10, it also wrecked on the coast of Auckland Island, but the officers and crew stayed on the northern side of the island and as such were never aware of the presence of the survivors of the Grafton, and vice versa. This is the story of the inept leadership of Captain George Dalgarno, whose crew endured the hostile weather of the Auckland winter without leadership or even unity. When they were finally rescued, only three men were left of the Invercauld's crew. Theirs was a story of despair, in-fighting, selfishness, cannibalism, and death.

Overall, I must say that this is a fascinating book. The author did a great job of bringing the stories of the two crews alive, presenting them in a no-nonsense, journalistic way. I like the way the author dug into the survivors' diaries and later interviews and letters to keep the story grounded in reality.

So, if you like good maritime books, or fascinating stories of disaster, or just plain like a good read, then you will like this book. I give it my highest recommendations!

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Memorable Telling Of An Extraordinary Story, July 12, 2007

By 

A. N. Turner (Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World (Hardcover)

From the first page, Joan Druett convinces you that she knows the sea and the men and ships that sail on it.

Telling a historical event is often a challenge and Druett delivers with a terrific recounting of the wrecking of two separate ships that left both crews stranded on an isolated and uninhabited island between New Zealand and Antarctica at the same time. However, due to the location of the wrecks and the nature of the island, neither crew was aware of the other's presence.

In telling the story, Druett contrasts the response of both crews to the crisis they find themselves in. One crew of 5 men, that of the Grafton, come together as one to endure and overcome their fate. The other crew, 19 men from the Invercauld, show what happens when command and perseverance collapse in the face of overwhelming odds.

Druett's use of diaries and journals from men of both crews lends not only a solid substitute for dialog, but insight into the thoughts and struggles of these men.

Not being a big fan of maritime books, I was nontheless drawn by the book's summary on the jacket and finished it in 2 days. It is an amazing story that is both true and well-written and well-worth a couple of days' reading.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AGAINST ALL ODDS..., August 11, 2007

By 

Lawyeraau (Balmoral Castle) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World (Hardcover)

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, two ships, the Grafton and the Invercauld, set sail for different destinations within six months of each other. Both ended up being shipwrecked on the rocky, treacherous coast of Auckland Island, a remote and desolate place in the Southern Ocean, some two hundred and eighty-five miles south of New Zealand. As Auckland Island is located in the sub-Antarctic region, it provides an alien and hostile environment, one that is plagued by freezing rain and howling gales force winds.

In January of 1884, the Grafton, a schooner captained by Thomas Musgrave and his crew of four, was the first of the two ships to meet its fate. Beset by howling winds and driving rain, the Grafton was swept onto the reefs that stand like sentinels around Auckland Island, wrecking the ship. Retrieving what provisions they could, the five men from the Grafton survived the debacle and were able to make it to shore, finding themselves marooned on the southern end of Auckland island. There, forced into the jaws of hell, they were faced with ordeal of survival, and to that end the five banded together like brothers for the common good. They were on that god-forsaken island for nearly two years when a desperate and daring escape by three of the five lead to the rescue of the remaining two,

In May of 1884, unbeknownst to these stalwart five, the Invercauld, a freighter, captained by George Dalgarno, found itself caught in a hurricane on the northern end of Auckland Island. The torrential rain and driving winds forced the ship onto the island's forbidding rocky reefs, which proceeded to decimate the ship. Nineteen men, including the Captain survived, but unlike the crew of the Grafton, the survivors did not become a band of brothers. Rather, it was everymen for himself. Consequently, when they were finally rescued about a year later, only three had managed to survive their ordeal.

During the time that they shared the island, neither the survivors of the Grafton nor the survivors of the Invercauld knew of each others' existence, separated as they were by about twenty miles of forbidding and hostile terrain. How these men managed to survive and why one group fared much better than the other makes for an engrossing and spellbinding story. Well-researched and well-written, the author seamlessly weaves their respective stories together, keeping the reader compulsively turning the pages of this engrossing maritime survival saga. Those readers who enjoyed Nathaniel Philbrick's "In the Heart of the Sea" will, likewise, enjoy this book, as will those who enjoy stories of survival against all odds. I, myself, was riveted to this book from beginning to end.