This month – we consider “Island of the Lost: A Harrowing True Story of Shipwreck, Death and Survival on a Godforsaken Island at the Edge of the World”
In January of 1864, five sailors from the wrecked schooner Grafton are stranded on remote and icy Auckland Island, some three hundred miles from New Zealand. An isolated speck in the Southern ocean, it is a godforsaken place, with winds howling at sixty miles an hour, rain three hundred days a year, and an almost impenetrable coastal forest.
Under the leadership of Captain Thomas Musgrave, these men defy their slim chance of survival. They build a cabin and, incredibly, a forge, where they manufacture every single nail as well as most of their tools.
Miraculously, all the Grafton men survive for nearly two years before finally building a getaway vessel and setting off on one of the most courageous sea voyages ever.
Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the SAME ISLAND – twenty miles of impassable cliffs and chasms away – the ship Invercauld wreaks during a horrible gale in May 1864. Nineteen men struggle ashore. They eventually succumb to utter anarchy, and only three survive. Using the survivors’ journals, award-winning maritime historian Joan Druett tells a gripping cautionary tale about leadership, endurance, and the fine line between order and chaos.
An captivating story of two simultaneous shipwrecks on the same island. Druett uses the journals and investigative notes to weave together a narrative story that entertains and teaches.
I recommend.
Published 2007 – available in print and audiobook.
8 thoughts on “Restless Book Club – Island of the Lost”
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Will add to my list! Have you read The Hungry Ocean? should be a quick and functional but still entertaining read.
For the purposes of adding good books to the collection, we will assume that I haven’t read anything. Good suggestion.
This is my recommendation, I love this book. It’s about why it is thought why Americans looked at the wilderness as something to fear and then as society grew they looked to the wilderness to escape. I read this for my Soc class: Wilderness and the American Mind: Fifth Edition
Excellent! Thanks for the recommendation.
On the same tack of shipwrecks and narrow escapes; South: The Endurance Expedition by Shackleton, is an excellent story of leadership and survival on the brink of destruction.
Always a good story.
I didn’t know there was a movie. Thanks for the info.