Shipwrecks and castaways ...

Twelve years after its first publication, Island of the Lost has become a maritime classic, one of the foremost in its genre.

This is the story of the castaway ordeals that inspired it, and of the memoirs and books that resulted from the terrible experience.

The first to feature in the tragedy was the schooner Grafton, which sailed out of Sydney, and had a remarkable crew of five.

The fifth in rank was the cook, a Portuguese from the Azores called Henry Forges.  Henry had already been cast on an island -- by his own request, because his messmates in the ship where had been serving had been so revolted by his face, which was scarred by leprosy, that he had begged to be marooned in the Samoan Islands.  The kind natives had nursed him back to health, and so he had come to Sydney.

Then there were the two seamen, English George Harris, and Alick Maclaren, who despite his Scottish name was Norwegian.

Even more remarkable were the first mate and supercargo, Francois Raynal, an engineer who had been unsuccessfully searching for gold for the past eleven years, coming away with nothing more than bad health.

And then there was the captain, Thomas Musgrave, a master mariner of good reputation, a fine navigator, and a staunch member of the church, with a good reputation.  Like the rest, he was trying to make his fortune in Australia -- and the way to riches seemed to be a wild tale of a tin mine in the sub-Antarctic Island called Campbell.....