A castaway is a person who is cast adrift or ashore. While the situation usually happens after a shipwreck, some people voluntarily stay behind on a deserted island either to evade their captors or the world in general. Alternatively a person or item can be cast away, meaning rejected or discarded. Note that when a person was left ashore as punishment, usually the term maroon (or maroon'd) was used. The provisions and resources available to castaways allow them to live on the island until other people arrive to take them off the island. However, such rescue missions may never happen if the person is not known to still be alive, the fact that they are missing is unknown or if the island is not mapped. These scenarios have given rise to the plots of numerous stories in the form of novels and film.
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Real occurrences
Thorgisl
Icelander Thorgisl set out to travel to Greenland. He and his party were first driven into a remote sound on the east coast of Greenland, then Thorgisl, his infant son and several others were abandoned there by their thralls. Thorgisl and his party traveled slowly along the coast to the Eystribyggð settlement of Eric the Red, on the southwest coast of Greenland. Along the way they met a Viking, an outlaw, who had escaped to East Greenland. This history is told in Flóamanna Saga and Origines Islandicae and occurred during the early years of Viking Greenland, while Leif Ericson was still alive.
Grettir Ásmundarson
Icelander Grettir Ásmundarson was outlawed by the assembly in Iceland. After many years on the run he, with two companions, went to the forbidding island of Drangey, where he lived several more years before his pursuers managed to kill him in 1031.
Fernão Lopez
The Portuguese Fernão Lopez was marooned on the island of Saint Helena in 1513. He had lost a hand and much of his face as a punishment for mutiny. With some interruptions he stayed on the island until his death in 1545.
Juan de Cartagena and Pedro Sánchez Reina
In August 1520 a mutiny broke out in Magellan's fleet while at the Patagonian seashore. After he put it down and executed some of the ringleaders, Magellan punished two others, the King of Spain delegate Juan de Cartagena and the priest Pedro Sánchez Reina, by marooning them in that desolate place. They were never heard from again.
Gonzalo de Vigo
Gonzalo de Vigo was a Spanish sailor who in March 1521 deserted from Magellan's fleet in the island of Guam. He was unexpectedly found there in 1526 by the flagship of Loaísa Expedition, in their way to Spice Islands and the second world circumnavigation. Gonzalo de Vigo was actually the first European castaway in the History of Pacific Ocean.
A Miskito called Will
In 1681, a Miskito named Will (he had been given that name by his English comrades) was sent ashore as part of an English foraging party to Más a Tierra. When he was hunting for goats in the interior of the island he suddenly saw his comrades departing in haste after having spotted the approach of enemies, leaving Will behind to survive until he was picked up in 1684.
Alexander Selkirk
The Juan Fernández Islands, to which Más a Tierra belongs, was to have a more famous occupant from October 1703 when Alexander Selkirk made the decision to stay there. (Selkirk had been born in Lower Largo in Scotland in 1680). Selkirk was concerned about the condition of the Cinque Ports, on which he was sailing, and remained on the island – the ship later sunk with most of its crew being lost. Being a voluntary castaway, Selkirk was able to gather numerous provisions to help him to survive, including a musket, gunpowder, carpenter's tools, a knife, a Bible, and his clothing. He survived on the island for four years and four months, building huts and hunting the plentiful wildlife before his rescue on 2 February 1709. His adventures were a direct inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, a novel by Daniel Defoe first published in 1719 and sometimes regarded as the first novel in English. In 1966 Más a Tierra was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island.
Philip Ashton
Philip Ashton, born in Marblehead in New England in 1702, was captured by pirates while fishing near the coast of Nova Scotia in the June of 1722. He managed to escape in March 1723 when their ship landed at Roatán in the Bay Islands of Honduras, hiding in the jungle until the pirates left him there. He survived for 16 months, in spite of many insects, tropical heat and crocodiles. He had no equipment at all until he met another castaway, an Englishman. The Englishman disappeared after a few days but he left behind a knife, gunpowder, tobacco and more. Ashton was finally rescued by the Diamond, a ship from Salem.[1]
Leendert Hasenbosch
Leendert Hasenbosch was a Dutch ship's officer (a bookkeeper), probably born in 1695. He was set ashore on uninhabited Ascension Island on 5 May 1725 as a punishment for sodomy. He was left behind with a tent and a survival kit and an amount of water for about four weeks. He had bad luck that no ships called at the island during his stay. He ate seabirds and green turtles but he probably died of thirst after about six months. He wrote a diary that was found by British mariners in January 1726 who brought the diary to Britain. The diary was rewritten and published a number of times. As late as 2002 the full truth of the story was disclosed in a book by the Dutch historian Michiel Koolbergen (1953–2002), the first book to mention Leendert by name; before that time, the castaway's name had been unknown. The story is available in English.[2]
Charles Barnard
In 1812, the British ship Isabella, captained by George Higton, was shipwrecked off Eagle Island (part of the Falkland Islands). Most of the crew were rescued by the American sealer Nanina, commanded by Captain Charles Barnard. However, realising that they would require more provisions for the expanded number of passengers, Barnard and a few others went out in a party to retrieve more food. During his absence the Nanina was taken over by the British crew, who left them on the island. Barnard and his party were finally rescued in November of 1814. In 1829, Barnard wrote A Narrative of the Sufferings and Adventures of Captain Charles Barnard detailing the happenings.
Other castaways
- Gerald Kingsland
- Nakahama Manjiro
- Tom Neale a 20th century man from New Zealand who voluntarily stayed alone on a small island
- Otokichi
- Pedro Serrano
- Juana Maria ("The Lone Woman of San Nicolas")
- Ada Blackjack an Inuit woman on Wrangel Island between 1921 and 1923
- 22 men of Ernest Shackleton's crew on Elephant Island off the Antarctic Peninsula for 4 months in 1916
- Alain Bombard
- HMAV Bounty's mutineers and Tahitian women
- Sixteen people who were washed onto an island during the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and were rescued after two months
- Jesus Vidana, Salvador Ordoñez and Lucio Rendon. Three Mexican fishermen from the port of San Blas, Nayarit who sailed 5500 miles before being rescued 200 miles from Marshall Islands on August 9, 2006
Castaways in popular culture
Various novels, television shows and films tell the story of castaways:
- Philosophus Autodidactus, a 12th century novel by Abubacer
- Theologus Autodidactus, a 13th century novel by Ibn al-Nafis
- Robinson Crusoe, a novel by Daniel Defoe based loosely on the real life of Alexander Selkirk, first published in 1719 and sometimes regarded as the first novel in English
- Survivor, a CBS television reality series that pits contestants against each other on various remote island areas
- Baby Island, a 1937 novel by Carol Ryrie Brink about two preteen sisters caring for four babies on a South Seas island
- The Blue Lagoon, a 1908 romance novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole about two children stranded on a tropical island after a shipwreck which was adapted into the 1980 film starring Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins
- Cast Away, a 2000 film starring Tom Hanks, directed by Robert Zemeckis
- Castaway, a 1986 film starring Amanda Donohoe and Oliver Reed, and directed by Nicolas Roeg, based on the book Castaway by Lucy Irvine.
- Castaway, a 1984 book by Lucy Irvine describing her life with Gerald Kingsland on a deserted island which was adapted into a 1986 film starring Amanda Donohoe and Oliver Reed
- Castaway 2000, a British reality television series in which a volunteer community lived for a year on the previously uninhabited Taransay in the Outer Hebrides
- The ClueFinders 5th Grade Adventures: The Secret of the Living Volcano, a 1999 PC game created by The Learning Company
- Gilligan's Island, an American TV sitcom which aired on CBS from 1964 to 1967
- Hatchet, a novel that follows the life of a teenage boy as he survives in the Canadian wilderness after the plane he was on crashes. While he was brought into the situation by a plane, Hatchet's plot (and most survivalist fiction) features many similar elements to castaway stories.
- Island of the Blue Dolphins, a book by Scott O'Dell about a girl marooned on an island for 18 years
- Life of Pi, in which the title character, Pi Patel, spends months on a lifeboat with a Bengal Tiger
- Johnny Castaway, a screensaver -pehaps the most extensive ever- that follows the daily exploits of the screensaver's namesake.
- Lord of the Flies, a novel by William Golding, and several movie versions
- Lost, a 2004 drama series
- Mr. Robinson Crusoe, a 1932 Douglas Fairbanks movie
- The Mysterious Island, a 1874 novel by Jules Verne
- The Swiss Family Robinson, an 1812 book by Johann David Wyss that has been adapted into various film and television versions
Castaways are part of other stories as well, where the event is not the central plot but is still an important aspect. Examples include:
The idea of a character becoming a castaway is common in television series, particularly ones that utilise the scenario for comic effect – it is a more extreme version of a character being stranded, but less likely and therefore more appropriate for non-serious series. Series that have had an episode about castaways include:
- Family Guy episode "The Perfect Castaway"
- Full House episode "Tanner Island"
- Futurama episode "Obsoletely Fabulous"
- The Mighty Boosh episode "The Nightmare of Milky Joe"
Desert Island Discs
Desert Island Discs is a BBC Radio 4 chatshow in which the subject is invited to consider themselves as a castaway on a desert island, and then select their eight favourite records, favourite book and a luxury inanimate object to occupy their time. This concept has become so widespread as to have become a part of popular culture.
See also
References
- ^ "Pirate Biographies" at The New England Pirate Museum. Accessed 4 December 2005.
- ^ Alex Ritsema, book "A Dutch Castaway on Ascension Island in 1725" ISBN 978-1-4116-9832-1 2006 and Michiel Koolbergen, book "Een Hollandse Robinson Crusoë", ISBN ISBN 90-74622-23-2 2002
- Adams, Cecil (2 December 2005). Not necessarily Lost: Are there actual cases of castaways who have been rescued? at The Straight Dope. Accessed 4 December 2005.
External links
- "Pilot dumps drunk man on island" at BBC News – a man is cast away on Porto Santo Island after being abusive on a flight.
