Island of the Lost, 13 years after publication

Back in the year 2007, which now feels like a totally different era, Algonquin Books published my strange account of two shipwrecks on the same uninhabited sub-Antarctic island.

Since then, it has gone into several different editions, been translated into the Ukraine language, was a bestseller in New Zealand and Australia, and was optioned for a film.  To everyone's surprise, it has kept on selling, now called a classic.  I think about the story often now, as it is a record of good and bad leadership, something that calls the attention of many columnists.  It is also used as a text in college leadership courses.

And there have been hundreds of Amazon reviews.  This is the latest, just published.  It was written by Carrie V., who gave it five stars.

Island of the Lost is a meticulously researched and dramatically recounted tale of seafaring tragedy in the Southern Ocean. The story is also the true account of a social experiment in human survival that would turn Mark Burnett green with envy (and terrify a research ethics committee)! Savvy storyteller and obsessive historian Joan Druett opens this tale of fortune-hunting turned maritime disaster with a shopping trip for a boat. Within a few pages, I’m picking out which Oscar winning actors will bring Raynal and Musgrave, the leaders on the Grafton ship, to life on the big screen. Druett’s seafaring yarn is spun with thousands of fascinating details about maritime life, but the real story is a strange coincidence that sets the stage for this social experiment. In 1864, two ships crash on different parts of Auckland island, within six months of each other. But their stories diverge from the moment each crew crawls up on the beach—one crew buoyed by innovation and strength of character and the other sunken by despair and stubbornness.

The plight of the people stuck on this desolate, foul-weathered island is grim and nearly hopeless. There is little to eat among the strange flora and the animal population is seasonal. Despite their aligned circumstances, the leadership and crew of each ship take completely different paths in their struggle for survival. The first stranded group begins immediately to carve out a plan to heighten their chances to stay alive for a rescue. The crew of the second ship, which had crashed ashore just twenty miles north of the first shipwreck, quickly surrenders to fear and hunger. The difference in process and outcome under the same dire circumstances makes for a terrifying and fascinating book. Author Joan Druett pulls from the personal diaries of the captains, the first-person accounts written post-rescue, newspaper articles and historical archives to construct a story that is both an instructive parable and a nail-biting adventure.