On their own
Survival reality shows and movies like "Castaway" romanticize what it's like to survive alone on a deserted island, but these dramatizations pale in comparison to real-life stories. History is wrought with harrowing survival stories of exiled castoffs and marooned travellers who have defied the odds and survived. Here's our list of eight such real-life stories.
Suggested Story: 9 of our favourite lost-at-sea movies
1. José Salvador Alvarenga
One of history's most recent unlikely survival stories is that of José Salvador Alvarenga, an El Salvador man who was lost at sea for 13 months until washing ashore 6,000 miles from home on the tiny atoll of Ebon, in the Marshall Islands. Alvarenga claims that he survived by catching fish with his bare hands and drinking bird blood. He became a castaway while on a shark-fishing expedition when the ship lost power in a storm.
Because he was found in relative good health, some officials are sceptical about the details of his story, but there is little doubt that he underwent a remarkable journey. An investigation is still underway to determine exactly what happened during his 13-month absence.
Suggested Story: 15 of the biggest scientific hoaxes
2. Alexander Selkirk
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The remarkable survival tale of Alexander Selkirk is the most likely source of inspiration for Daniel Defoe's fictional "Robinson Crusoe," making it one of history's most legendary castaway stories. Interestingly, Selkirk is a rare example of a person who willingly become a castaway. He chose to remain on Juan Fernández Island, just off Chile, after expressing doubts about the seaworthiness of the ship that brought him there. Before his rescue, he spent more than four years alone on the island, where he learned to live off the land.
Though he had great bouts of loneliness and remorse while stranded, Selkirk made the correct decision. The ship he chose to abandon, Cinque Ports, sunk off the coast of Colombia not long after it left the island.
3. Ada Blackjack
Photo: Wikipedia
Originally from Alaska, Ada Blackjack was an Iñupiat Inuit woman who lived alone on Wrangel Island in northern Siberia for two years. She was hired by Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson as a cook and seamstress for an expedition designed to claim the island for Canada or Britain. After the voyage took a turn for the worse, she was left alone when the other survivors made a desperate attempt to seek help.
Blackjack learned how to survive on her own in this harsh landscape until she was rescued in August 1923 by a former colleague of Stefansson’s.
Suggested Story: Could your child survive alone in the woods?
4. Tom Neale
Tom Neale was a New Zealander bushcraft and survival enthusiast who willingly stranded himself on the island of Anchorage in the remote Suwarrow atoll of the Cook Islands. He spent an astounding 16 years during three different sessions of living and surviving alone on the tropical island. His story is immortalized in his autobiography, "An Island to Oneself," which chronicles his time on Anchorage.
Suggested Story: 7 amazing islands for eco-tourists
5. Ernest Shackleton
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
One of the most remarkable survival stories of all time is that of Ernest Shackleton and his crew. Leader of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, Shackleton and his crew became stranded on Antarctica's remote Elephant Island after his ship was crushed by frozen sea ice. In a desperate attempt to seek rescue, Shackleton and five others set out in a 22-foot lifeboat to travel an impossible 800 miles to the nearest inhabited island: South Georgia. Despite having to traverse some of the world's worst seas, the seafarers completed their journey in just 17 days.
After hailing rescue, Shackleton returned to Elephant Island to save his remaining crew, all of whom survived until his arrival. [More]
Suggested Story: 13 of history's greatest polar explorers
6. Steven Callahan
Steven Callahan is a sailor most notable for having survived 76 days adrift in 1981 on the Atlantic Ocean in an inflatable life raft that measured a mere 6 feet across. After his sloop was wrecked, likely by a collision with a whale, Callahan collected what he could from the sinking ship, including a life-saving spear gun and solar stills for producing drinking water.
He survived mostly off mahi-mahi and triggerfish, along with flying fish, barnacles and birds that he captured. After being adrift for about 1,800 nautical miles, he was rescued off the island of Marie Galante, southeast of Guadeloupe. His incredible journey is documented in the book "Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea."
Suggested Story: 7 major threats to our planet's oceans
7. Marguerite de La Rocque
Abandoned by her uncle on the forbidding Island of Demons in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, off the coast of Quebec, Marguerite de La Rocque survived by hunting wild animals and living in caves until she was rescued by Basque fishermen some years later. She was originally abandoned because her uncle, who was likely motivated by his strong Calvinist morals, disapproved of her taking on a young lover while unmarried. (Harsh punishment!)
Suggested Story: 7 people who gave up on civilization to live in the wild
8. Otokichi
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Otokichi was a 14-year-old Japanese crew member on a rice transport ship that wrecked in a storm in 1832. Though the ship was originally set to port elsewhere in Japan, the wrecked vessel washed ashore 14 months later on the westernmost point of Washington state's Olympic Peninsula, all the way across the Pacific Ocean.
Soon after coming ashore, Otokichi and two other survivors were enslaved by a local Indian tribe. Eventually they were handed over to John McLoughlin, the Chief Factor for the Columbia District of the Hudson's Bay Company, who sent the trio to London in the hopes of softening trade relationships with Japan. Remarkably, after being shipped nearly all the way around the world, Otokichi finally returned to Japan in 1849, 17 years after his ordeal had begun.
Otokichi died in Singapore in 1867, and the tombstone pictured here commemorates him in the Japanese Cemetery Park of Singapore.
Suggested Story: 5 teens who have sailed around the world solo
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please adhere to proper blog etiquette when posting your comments. This blog owner will exercise his absolution discretion in allowing or rejecting any comments that are deemed seditious, defamatory, libelous, racist, vulgar, insulting, and other remarks that exhibit similar characteristics. If you insist on using anonymous comments, please write your name or other IDs at the end of your message.