Good lord -- a newspaper book review, nearly a decade after the original launch.
And it beats most of the 399 reviews on Amazon, and matches many of the over 2,000 reviews on Good Reads.
It appears in the
Summit Daily, Colorado.
"Nothing makes for better reading than an adventure on the high seas," it begins. "Throw in a good old shipwreck, and the story ramps up quickly. The icing
on the cake, of course, is when the story is true. Joan Druett’s book
“Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World” covers all
those bases, and it’s a captivating read by any account. Druett, a noted
maritime historian, pens her book to read like a narrative nonfiction,
which brings immediacy to the powerful survival story that unfolds
quickly from the first page onward.
"The action opens on the docks in Sydney, Australia, in 1863, at the
height of the windjammer era of naval exploration. A pair of
adventurers, Captain Thomas Musgrave and first mate, François Raynal,
were in search of a ship, one that was sturdy enough to sail 1,500 miles
in rough waters but small enough to be managed by a crew of five. The
goal was the remote Campbell Island in the Southern Ocean, where the men
hoped to make a killing mining the volcanic island’s rumored veins of
silver-bearing tin.
"The many islands scattered south of New Zealand are notorious for their
jagged and dangerous shores, so the men planned their ship’s sandstone
ballast carefully, knowing such a small crew would require all hands in
synchronicity if any problems arose. Barely out of port, the men
encountered treacherous waters, and storm after storm threatened to
break their vessel, The Grafton, apart. Their hopes for Campbell Island
proved to be a bust, as the island was a veritable wasteland, so the
decision was made to try for a moneymaking load of sealskins from the
nearby Auckland Islands before they set their sails for home.
"As they neared the rocky coastline, another storm began to build, and
Captain Musgrave struggled to find safe harbor among the unfamiliar
rocks with an anchor chain that was too short. Darkness arrived, and
still the ship was not securely moored, given the intensity of the gale,
which raged all night. Prophetically, at midnight, the ship broke free
and foundered, sending the men into a lifeboat with minimal provisions
to make a dash for land.
"Druett capably evokes the mood that the men must have felt, which is
that, for all intents and purposes, they had fallen off the bottom of
the world. No one knew where they were, as the Auckland Islands had not
been their initial destination. Before sailing, they had alerted their
loved ones that a search was to be commenced if they did not return in
four months, but their ship had wrecked only weeks into their journey.
"Druett makes what could have been a dreary
and monotonous read — akin to watching paint dry — into an exciting
documentation of the day-to-day fight for survival that the men
underwent from the moments their sodden feet made land. With winter fast
approaching, finding shelter and enough food to sustain life and limb
became the daily struggle, as the island was poorly supplied with native
flora and fauna, save the seals they had hoped to pack home as riches.
Even the seals began to desert them, quickly growing wise to their
intentions.
"The men spent their days trying to sustain
life and hope, keeping their minds fixed on the unlikely possibility of
rescue, and Druett uses many primary sourced references from the men’s
journals and letters to build the narrative, documenting what lengths
they had to go to finding food. Seal meat became a staple, but the men
knew that to prevent scurvy — the scourge of every sailor — plants would
have to be a part of their diet. The islands were windblown and barren,
so the struggle to find nutrients became an epic challenge.
"What the men did not know was that only
months after their ship wrecked on the southern side of the island,
another ship suffered a similar fate just off the northern shore,
resulting in 19 men struggling to shore with only the clothes on their
backs.
"This is where the book’s pace intensifies,
for the author tells the fates of the two groups of men in parallel,
which makes for an intriguing study of human nature and the varying
effects of deprivation on the human body and spirit. Unlike the smaller
initial five survivors, who quickly selected a leader and established a
daily routine for survival, the larger, less-cohesive group to the north
floundered in disarray and animosity, with fear and suspicion cloaking
their efforts from their first moments on shore.
"Like a real-life “Lord of the Flies,” the
second group of men became quickly fractured and prone to violence, and
cannibalism became a very real concern. Thankfully for the initial five,
the two groups never encountered each other, but the contrast of the
survival rates between the two groups makes for fascinating reading.
“The Island of the Lost” takes its rightful place among some of the most
riveting true-life accounts of survival. Written with clarity and with a
scholarly voice, Druett delivers a masterful adventure story that will
have the reader cheering when rescue finally arrives."
Karina Wetherbee wrote the review, as a Special to the Daily.
