castaway

U.S. merchant seamen try to revive a shipwrecked Filipino fisherman rescued in the South China Sea.

Castaways may need to survive on a desert island.

A castaway is a person who is cast adrift or ashore. While the situation usually happens after a shipwreck, some people voluntarily stay behind on a deserted island either to evade their captors or the world in general. Alternatively a person or item can be cast away, meaning rejected or discarded. Note that when a person was left ashore as punishment, usually the term maroon (or maroon'd) was used.

The provisions and resources available to castaways may allow them to live on the island until other people arrive to take them off the island. However, such rescue missions may never happen if the person is not known to still be alive, the fact that they are missing is unknown or if the island is not mapped. These scenarios have given rise to the plots of numerous stories in the form of novels and film.

Real occurrences

Thorgisl

Icelander Thorgisl set out to travel to Greenland. He and his party were first driven into a remote sound on the east coast of Greenland, then Thorgisl, his infant son and several others were abandoned there by their thralls. Thorgisl and his party traveled slowly along the coast to the Eystribyggð settlement of Eric the Red, on the southwest coast of Greenland. Along the way they met a Viking, an outlaw, who had escaped to East Greenland. This history is told in Flóamanna saga and Origines Islandicae and occurred during the early years of Viking Greenland, while Leif Ericson was still alive.

Grettir Ásmundarson

Icelander Grettir Ásmundarson was outlawed by the assembly in Iceland. After many years on the run he, with two companions, went to the forbidding island of Drangey, where he lived several more years before his pursuers managed to kill him in 1031.

Fernão Lopez

The Portuguese Fernão Lopez was marooned on the island of Saint Helena in 1513. He had lost a hand and much of his face as a punishment for mutiny. With some interruptions he stayed on the island until his death in 1545.

Juan de Cartagena and Pedro Sánchez Reina

In August 1520 a mutiny broke out in Magellan's fleet while at the Patagonian seashore. After he put it down and executed some of the ringleaders, Magellan punished two others, the King of Spain delegate Juan de Cartagena and the priest Pedro Sánchez Reina, by marooning them in that desolate place. They were never heard from again.

Gonzalo de Vigo

Gonzalo de Vigo was a Galician sailor who in March 1521 deserted from Magellan's fleet in the island of Guam. He was unexpectedly found there in 1526 by the flagship of the Loaísa Expedition, on their way to the Spice Islands and the second circumnavigation of the globe. Gonzalo de Vigo was the first European castaway in the history of the Pacific Ocean.

Marguerite de La Rocque

A French noblewoman, Marguerite de la Rocque was marooned in 1542 on an island in the Gulf of St Lawrence, off the coast of Quebec, by her near-relative, Jean-François de La Rocque de Roberval, a nobleman privateer, as punishment for her affair with a young man on board ship. The young man joined her, as did a servant woman. They later died, as did the baby she bore. Marguerite survived by hunting wild animals, and was later rescued by fishermen. She returned to France, and became well-known when her story was recorded by the Queen of Navarre in her work Heptameron.

Jan Pelgrom and Wouter Loos

In 1629 Jan Pelgrom and Wouter Loos were shipboys on board the Dutch ship Batavia, famous because of its stranding on the islets of the Houtman Abrolhos off the west coast of Australia and the subsequent mutiny and mass killings. When all culprits were arrested on the islets, most of them were either hanged or sent to Court in the town of Batavia (now Jakarta). However, the young culprits Jan Pelgrom and Wouter Loos were marooned on the Australian mainland, probably near the mouth of the Murchison River; the two boys were probably the first Europeans to "live" on the Australian mainland. During the following decades captains of Dutch ships were ordered to search for the boys in case the ships would be nearby, however, the two boys were never heard from again.

A Miskito called Will

In 1681, a Miskito named Will by his English comrades was sent ashore as part of an English foraging party to Más a Tierra. When he was hunting for goats in the interior of the island he suddenly saw his comrades departing in haste after having spotted the approach of enemies, leaving Will behind to survive until he was picked up in 1684.

Alexander Selkirk

The Juan Fernández Islands, to which Más a Tierra belongs, was to have a more famous occupant in October 1703 when Alexander Selkirk made the decision to stay there. (Selkirk had been born in Lower Largo in Scotland in 1680). Selkirk was concerned about the condition of the Cinque Ports, on which he was sailing, and remained on the island. The ship later sunk with most of its crew being lost. Being a voluntary castaway, Selkirk was able to gather numerous provisions to help him to survive, including a musket, gunpowder, carpenter's tools, a knife, a Bible, and clothing. He survived on the island for four years and four months, building huts and hunting the plentiful wildlife before his rescue on 2 February 1709. His adventures are said to be an inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, a novel by Daniel Defoe published in 1719. In 1966, Más a Tierra was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island.

Philip Ashton

Philip Ashton, born in Marblehead in New England in 1702, was captured by pirates while fishing near the coast of Nova Scotia in June 1722. He managed to escape in March 1723 when the pirates' ship landed at Roatán in the Bay Islands of Honduras, hiding in the jungle until the pirates left him there. He survived for 16 months, in spite of many insects, tropical heat and crocodiles. He had no equipment at all until he met another castaway, an Englishman. The Englishman "disappeared" after a few days but he left behind a knife, gunpowder, tobacco and more. Ashton was finally rescued by the Diamond, a ship from Salem.^[1]

Leendert Hasenbosch

Leendert Hasenbosch was a Dutch ship's officer (a bookkeeper), probably born in 1695. He was set ashore on the uninhabited Ascension Island on 5 May 1725 as a punishment for sodomy. He was left behind with a tent and a survival kit and an amount of water for about four weeks. He had bad luck that no ships called at the island during his stay. He ate seabirds and green turtles, but probably died of thirst after about six months. He wrote a diary that was found by British mariners in January 1726 who brought the diary back to Britain. The diary was rewritten and published a number of times.

As late as 2002, the full truth of the story was disclosed in a book by the Dutch historian Michiel Koolbergen (1953–2002), the first book to mention Leendert by name. Before that time, the castaway's name had not been known. The story is available in English as A Dutch Castaway on Ascension Island in 1725.^[2][3]

Chunosuke Matsuyama

In 1784 Chunosuke Matsuyama, a Japanese seaman, and forty-three companions set out in search for a treasure buried on a Pacific island. But a storm came up; high waves almost turned the small ship over and the sails were ripped. Finally the wind blew the battered craft onto a coral reef. Matsuyama and the other crew members jumped out and waded ashore. They considered themselves lucky to have escaped, but after the storm blew itself out the next day, Matsuyama and his friends realized it had uprooted palm trees and except for a few coconuts there was nothing to eat. They survived on small crabs for some time, but there was no fresh water to drink. Matsuyama watched his friends die one by one and realized none of them, including himself, would ever see their families or home again.

He decided to send a message. He found a bottle from the wreckage of his ship. Then using a knife he always had strapped to his waist, he cut thin pieces of wood from a fallen coconut tree. He carved a message carefully - the story of what had happened to him and his shipmates, sealed it in the bottle and threw it into the sea.

In 1935, a century and a half later, the bottle washed ashore and was found by a Japanese seaweed collector. The place where the bottle came ashore was the village of Hiraturemura, the birthplace of Chunosuke Matsuyama.^[4]

Charles Barnard

In 1812, the British ship Isabella, captained by George Higton, was shipwrecked off Eagle Island, one of the Falkland Islands. Most of the crew were rescued by the American sealer Nanina, commanded by Captain Charles Barnard. However, realising that they would require more provisions for the expanded number of passengers, Barnard and a few others went out in a party to retrieve more food. During his absence the Nanina was taken over by the British crew, who left them on the island. Barnard and his party were finally rescued in November 1814. In 1829, Barnard wrote A Narrative of the Sufferings and Adventures of Captain Charles Barnard detailing the happenings.

Other castaways

• Gerald Kingsland and Lucy Irvine, British writers; self-imposed castaways for a year (1982-83) on Barney Island, Queensland, in the Torres Strait between New Guinea and Australia; Irvine then wrote Castaway.
• Nakahama Manjiro, a Japanese fisherman's son, shipwrecked on Torishima in 1841, rescued by an American ship; he played a role in the opening up of Japan to the West.
• Tom Neale, a New Zealander who chose to spend 16 years between 1952 and 1977 on Suwarrowin the Cook Islands.
• Otokichi, a Japanese boy whose ship was cast adrift and after 14 months reached the west coast of North America
• Pedro Serrano, a 16th century Spanish sailor marooned in the Caribbean
• Juana Maria, the last surviving member of the Nicoleño, who lived alone on San Nicolas Island, California from 1835 to 1853; she inspired Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins.
• Ada Blackjack, an Inuit woman left alone (1921-23) on Wrangel Island when a European expedition went wrong.
• 22 men of Ernest Shackleton's crew on Elephant Island off the Antarctic Peninsula for 4 months in 1916
• The Bounty's mutineers and Tahitian women
• Dougal Robertson and his family, experienced sailors from Scotland, were sailing to the Galapagos Islands from Panama when their boat was sunk by a pod of killer whales. From June 15, 1972 they survived for 38 days on a lifeboat before being picked up by a fishing trawler. Robertson then wrote Survive the Savage Sea.
• Sixteen people who were washed onto an island during the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and were rescued after two months
• Jesus Vidana, Salvador Ordoñez and Lucio Rendon. Three Mexican fishermen from the port of San Blas, Nayarit who sailed 5,500 miles (8,900 km) before being rescued 200 miles (320 km) from Marshall Islands on August 9, 2006

Castaways in popular culture

Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday by Carl Offterdinger.

Various novels, television shows and films tell the story of castaways:

Pre-20th century

• Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (Philosophus Autodidactus), a 12th century novel by Ibn Tufail
• Theologus Autodidactus, a 13th century novel by Ibn al-Nafis
• Robinson Crusoe (1719), a novel by Daniel Defoe based loosely on the real life of Alexander Selkirk, first published in 1719 and sometimes regarded as the first novel in English
• The Swiss Family Robinson, an 1812 book by Johann David Wyss that has been adapted into various film and television versions
• Several late 19th century novels by Jules Verne, such as In Search of the Castaways (1968), The Mysterious Island(1874), Godfrey Morgan (also known as School for Robinsons, 1882), and Two Years' Vacation(1888)

20th century writing

This is a list of fiction. There are also memoirs such as Castaway.

• The Blue Lagoon, a 1908 romance novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole about two children stranded on a tropical island after a shipwreck, with multiple film adaptations
• Baby Island, a 1937 novel by Carol Ryrie Brink about two preteen sisters caring for four babies on a South Seas island
• Survivor Type, a 1982 short story by Stephen King about a shipwrecked surgeon who ends up eating parts of his own body to survive
• Lord of the Flies, a novel by William Golding, and several movie versions
• Hatchet, a novel that follows the life of a teenage boy as he survives in the Canadian wilderness after the plane he was on crashes.
• Island of the Blue Dolphins, a book by Scott O'Dell about a girl marooned on an island for 18 years
• Life of Pi, in which the title character, Pi Patel, spends months on a lifeboat with a Bengal Tiger

20th century video

• Mr. Robinson Crusoe, a 1932 Douglas Fairbanks movie
• Gilligan's Island, an American TV sitcom which aired on CBS from 1964 to 1967
• Swept Away... by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August (Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto), a 1974 Italian film written and directed by Lina Wertmüller about a rich woman and a communist sailor stranded on a Mediterranean island
• Castaway, a 1986 film starring Amanda Donohoe and Oliver Reed, and directed by Nicolas Roeg, based on the book Castaway by Lucy Irvine.
• Six Days Seven Nights, a film about two people whose plane crashes on an island.
• Johnny Castaway, a screensaver that follows the daily exploits of its namesake
• The ClueFinders 5th Grade Adventures: The Secret of the Living Volcano, a 1999 PC game created by The Learning Company
• Cast Away, a 2000 film starring Tom Hanks, directed by Robert Zemeckis
• Castaway 2000, a British reality television series in which a volunteer community lived for a year on the previously uninhabited Taransay in the Outer Hebrides

21st century

• Flight 29 Down, a television series on Discovery Kids about teenagers after a plane crash on an island somewhere in the South Pacific.
• Survivor, a CBS television reality series that pits contestants against each other on various remote island areas
• Lost, a 2004 drama series about the 48 survivors of Oceanic Flight 815, as they try to survive on a mysterious island in the South Pacific.

Minor part of the story

Castaways are part of other stories as well, where the event is not the central plot but is still an important aspect. Examples include:

• The Black Stallion (film)
• The Road to El Dorado
• Kidnapped

Desert Island Discs

Desert Island Discs is a BBC Radio 4 interview show in which the subject is invited to consider themselves as a castaway on a desert island, and then select their eight favourite records, one favourite book (in addition to the Bible and Shakespeare) and a luxury inanimate object to occupy their time. This concept has become so widespread as to have become a part of popular culture.

See also

References

1. ^ "Pirate Biographies" at The New England Pirate Museum. Accessed 4 December 2005.
2. ^ Alex Ritsema, book "A Dutch Castaway on Ascension Island in 1725" (2006), ISBN 978-1-4116-9832-1
3. ^ Michiel Koolbergen, book "Een Hollandse Robinson Crusoë" (2002), ISBN 90-74622-23-2
4. ^ Robert Kraske, "The Twelve Million Dollar Note: Strange but True Tales of Messages Found in Seagoing Bottles" (1977), pp.30-32. ISBN 0-8407-6575-4.

External links

• Adams, Cecil (2 December 2005). Not necessarily Lost: Are there actual cases of castaways who have been rescued? at The Straight Dope. Accessed 4 December 2005.

Look up castaway in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.