In 1864, two ships' crews were cast away at the same time on the same remote island in the Southern Ocean. But the two groups would undergo strikingly different experiences. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the Auckland Islands castaways and reflect on its implications for the wider world.
We'll also consider some fateful illnesses and puzzle over a street fighter's clothing.
Intro:
Lewis Carroll proposed fanciful logic problems.
In 1946, a kangaroo made off with William Thompson's money.
Sources for our feature on the Aucklands Islands castaways:
Joan Druett, Island of the Lost: An Extraordinary Story of Survival at the Edge of the World, 2007.
Nicholas A. Christakis, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, 2019.
Elizabeth McMahon, Islands, Identity and the Literary Imagination, 2016.
A.W. Eden, Islands of Despair, 1955.
William Pember Reeves, New Zealand, 1908.
F.E. Raynal, Wrecked on a Reef, or Twenty Months on the Auckland Islands, 1880.
T. Musgrave, Castaway on the Auckland Isles: Narrative of the Wreck of the "Grafton," 1865.
Don Rowe, "A Tale of Two Shipwrecks," New Zealand Geographic 167 (January-February 2021).
"The Kindness of Strangers," Economist 431:9141 (May 4, 2019), 81.
Peter Petchey, Rachael Egerton, and William Boyd, "A Spanish Man-o-War in New Zealand? The 1864 Wreck of Grafton and Its Lessons for Pre-Cook Shipwreck Claims," International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 44:2 (2015), 362-370.
Bernadette Hince, "The Auckland Islands and Joan Druett's Island of the Lost," Shima: The International Journal of Research Into Island Cultures 2:1 (2008), 110.
"Mystery of the Shipwreck Shelter," [Wellington, New Zealand] Sunday Star-Times, Feb. 21, 2021.
Charles Montgomery, "The Audacity of Altruism: Opinion," Globe and Mail, March 28, 2020.
"Was New Zealand Pre-Cooked?" [Wellington, New Zealand] Sunday Star-Times, April 26, 2015.
Herbert Cullen, "Wreck of the Grafton Musgrave -- An Epic of the Sea," New Zealand Railways Magazine 9:2 (May 1, 1934).
"Twenty Months on an Uninhabited Island," Glasgow Herald, Dec. 27, 1865.
"Wreck of the Grafton: Journal of Captain Musgrave," Australian News for Home Readers, Oct. 25, 1865.
"New Zealand," Illustrated Sydney News, Oct. 16, 1865.
"The Wreck of the Grafton," Sydney Mail, Oct. 7, 1865.
"The Wreck of the Schooner Grafton," Sydney Morning Herald, Oct. 2, 1865.
"Wreck of the Schooner Gra
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