In the winter of 1864, five seamen aboard the schooner Grafton wreck on the remote and icy Auckland Island, 285 miles south of New Zealand. An isolated speck in the Southern Ocean, it is a godforsaken place, with winds howling at sixty miles an hour, rain three hundred days a year, and an almost impenetrable coastal forest. Nineteen men struggle ashore. They succumb to utter anarchy, and only three survive, while all the Grafton men survive for nearly two years before finally building a vessel and setting off on one of the most courageous sea voyages ever. Award-winning maritime historian Joan Druett tells a gripping cautionary tale about leardership, endurance, human ingenuity, and the tenuous line between order and chaos. |
Author: Joan Druett Title: Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World Series: n/a First Published by: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill Place: Format: HC Date: 2007 ISBN-10: 1-565124-08-1 ISBN-13: 978-1565124080
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