Real Life Robinson Crusoes

SARASIJ MAJUMDER

 Peter Warner, an Australian seafarer whose already eventful life was made even more so in 1966 when he and his crew discovered six shipwrecked boys who had been living on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific for 15 months. Peter died on April 13, 2021 in Ballina, New South Wales. He was 90.

In June 1965 the boys, all students between 13 and 16 years old from a boarding school in Nuku’alofa, had stolen a 24-foot long boat and gone for what was intended as a maritime joy ride. Before setting sail they brought food that they took from their homes and a few Liters of water that they were able to collect. That same day they set sail on an adventure.

 A few hours into their trip, though, a fierce wind broke their sail and rudder, setting them adrift for eight days. Then luckily they reached at an uninhabited island.

The children managed to get water from the coconuts and got to eat some fish they caught. At first the boys lived off raw fish, coconuts and birds’ eggs. After about three months, the real luck came when they climbed to the top of a cliff and found an abandoned settlement, the ruins of a village, and their fortunes improved — amid the rubble they discovered a machete, domesticated taro plants and a flock of chickens descended from the ones left behind by the previous inhabitants. They also managed to start a fire, which they kept burning for the rest of their stay.

"The children had established a small commune with a food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gym with weights, a badminton court, chicken runs and a permanent fire."—Reported Peter, after witnessing it, later.

The children established rules, worked in pairs and there were even punishments if anyone disobeyed.

After 1 year and three months specifically, Australian captain Peter Warner discovered the abandoned children-- “I thought, that’s strange that a fire should start in the tropics on an uninhabited island,” he said in a 2020 video interview. “So we decided to investigate further.”

The story of the 1966 rescue, which made Mr. Warner a celebrity in Australia, began during a return sail from Nuku’alofa, the capital of Tonga, where he and his crew had unsuccessfully requested the right to fish in the country’s waters. Casually casting his binoculars at a nearby island, ‘Ata’, which was thought to be uninhabited, he noticed a burned patch of ground.

As they approached, they saw a naked teenage boy rushing into the water toward them; five more quickly followed. Recalling that some island nations imprisoned convicts on islands like ‘Ata’, he told his crew to load their rifles.

But when the boy, Tevita Fatai Latu, who also went by the name Stephen, reached the boat, he told Mr. Warner that he and his friends had been stranded for more than a year, living off the land and trying to signal for help from passing ships.

Mr. Warner, still sceptical, radioed Nuku’alofa.

“After 20 minutes,” he said, “a very tearful operator came on the radio, and then amongst tears he said: ‘It’s true. These boys had been given up for dead. Funerals have been held. And now you have found them.’”

As they later told Mr. Warner, they finally spotted ‘Ata’, about 100 miles south of Tongatapu, the main island of Tonga. It had once been home to about 350 people, but in 1863 a British slave trader kidnapped about 150 of them, and the Tongan king relocated the rest to another island, where they would be protected.

The children were generally in good health when Warner found them.

Back in Tonga, Mr. Warner was greeted as a hero. King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, who had earlier denied him fishing rights, reversed himself. But the owner of the stolen boat was not in a celebratory mood, and he had the boys arrested. He dropped the charges after Mr. Warner offered to compensate him.

The story captivated Australia; a year later the Australian Broadcasting Corporation sent Mr. Warner and the boys back to the island to recreate aspects of their ordeal for a film crew. Other documentaries and newspaper features followed.

The news media cast the story as a real-life version of “Lord of the Flies,” William Golding’s 1954 novel about a group of boys stranded on an island who descend into murderous anarchy. But this was nothing like Mr. Golding’s book: The six boys flourished in their spontaneous community, suggesting that cooperation, not conflict, is an integral feature of human nature.

“If millions of kids are required to read ‘Lord of the Flies,’ maybe they should also be required to learn this story as well,” the Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, who wrote about the episode in his book “Humankind: A Hopeful History” (2020)

References:-

1.0 Book HUMANKIND: A Hopeful Story by Rutger Bregman.

2.0 News Clips—in net.

3.0 Photos-- NET