Island of the Lost (35 page)

Particularly eloquent is the story of the survivors from the
Dundonald
, which piled up on Disappointment Island in the middle of the night of March 7, 1907. According to the reminiscences of one of the survivors, Charles Eyre, when dawn broke eleven men were clinging to the rigging, while five more were hanging onto precipitous cliffs, having jumped there from the sternmost mast. Like the
Invercauld
men, many of them had discarded their boots and heavy clothing. The first officer, who was the most badly hurt, was in command, as the captain and the second mate had gone down with the ship.

For a while, they thought they were on the main island, Auckland Island, and that a simple walk would take them to the castaway hut. Struggling over rock and plateau, they finally realized with horror that they were on Disappointment Island, and Auckland Island was on the other side of a turbulent five-mile-wide channel. Worse still, the rocky islet had no running streams of fresh water. On the twelfth day, the mate died, but the men kept together as a reasonably democratic group, catching rainwater and sharing out the meat from mollymawk albatrosses and the occasional seal. For shelter they dug seven or eight little burrows, roofed them with tussock, and lived in them in pairs, like rabbits, while they debated how to get across the channel to Auckland Island.

Finally, they built a coracle out of long twigs and seal skins, and three of the men crossed over in it. Days later, they returned
to say that the big island wasn't worth the trouble—the terrain was impossible, and they had not been able to find the depot. The other castaways, however, determined to make another attempt, which they finally accomplished in October. This second party was successful in locating the depot, which, to their joy, was by this time furnished with a boatshed and boat. The rest of the castaways were fetched from Disappointment Island, and on November 15 the New Zealand government steamer
Hinemoa
arrived—not to inspect the castaway depot, but on another mission altogether, having a party of scientists on board. The castaways, though furnished with more provisions, were forced to keep on living in the depot hut until the scientific survey was completed, when they were carried to New Zealand.

T
HIS WAS BY NO
means the first scientific expedition to call at the islands, one of the most important being the German one that in 1874 set up a base at Terror Cove in Port Ross to observe the transit of Venus. They, unlike the French expedition, which had gone to Campbell Island on Raynal's advice, were lucky in that the weather cleared at the critical time of the planet's passing. The three brick pillars erected as bases for their instruments are still there.

The Enderby experiment was to be imitated too. In 1894 the island group was divided into three pastoral runs, and offered for lease by the New Zealand government. The following year nine longhorn cattle and twenty sheep were landed on Enderby Island, but, like their predecessors, they did not thrive. In 1900 another leaseholder landed two thousand sheep at Carnley Harbour and farmed Adams Island, but the climate worked its evil
spell again. Within ten years most of the sheep had perished, and the lease was forfeited.

With the end of the windjammer era, the route along the fifties latitude in the southern ocean was abandoned, and the Auckland Islands group, being out of the shipping paths, was no longer infamous as a graveyard for ships. A different future beckoned. As scientists explained the unique character of the flora and fauna, ideas of conservation began to take hold. In 1934 the group was declared a nature preserve, and the fur seals, sea lions, birds, and native plants were protected. Once again, the hills and beaches were shrouded in silence, distant from the touch of man.

Abruptly, war intruded. In August 1939 the German steamer
Erlangen
was at anchor in Dunedin Harbour when her master, Captain Grams, was warned by the German consul that hostilities were imminent. He immediately made a quiet departure, but, having only five days' fuel on board, headed first for Carnley Harbour, where his men cut down tracts of rata forest for firewood. When the New Zealand government heard about this, it was decided to set up coastal watching stations. These, established in 1941, were manned by scientists, partly so that the islands could be properly studied and surveyed, and partly so that men with valuable qualifications would not be lost in the theater of war. Despite the constant rain and mist, the men rowed about the entire coast, surveying as they went. All the heights were surmounted, named, and measured, too, and so the first complete, accurate map of the Auckland Islands was drawn up.

Thomas Musgrave, without a doubt, would have thoroughly approved.

At every heave of the swell she is dragging the anchor home, and getting nearer the shore. From 10
P.M.
till midnight the gale blew with the most terrific violence, and precisely at midnight the ship struck.

—logbook of the
Grafton
,
Saturday, January 2, 1864

 

Remains of the wreck of the
Grafton
, at Epigwaitt, Auckland Islands. Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington, reference number 1/2-098 181-F.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I
n the Macpherson collection (MSX-4936), which is held at the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, there is a clipping of an undated review from the
Saturday Review
, which compares Musgrave's
Castaway
with Raynal's
Les naufrages
. The writer concludes by saying, “The relation between the two books has been rather a puzzle to us; and though we have given to the comparison as much trouble as the question seemed to be worth, we do not feel confident that we have obtained a satisfactory explanation.”

He was right in saying that there are puzzling inconsistencies. While both men told the same basic story, there are constant contrasts in timing and emphasis. This reflects not just the influence of the men's editors but also the writers' differing memories, because
both
men padded their diaries with remembered anecdotes when preparing them for publication. The only difference is that Raynal openly admits he did this, while Musgrave does not. Deciding which version of each little event was closer to the truth was an interesting challenge.

Musgrave wrote his journal only intermittently, initially
about every Sunday but with increasingly longer gaps as he became involved in projects or wandered off on long treks. On October 30, 1864, he complained he “must now forego about the last bit of comfort that was left to me, which is writing a little on Sundays; for if I continue to do so, my only remaining book of blank paper will be filled up. I may yet have something of moment to insert, for which purpose I must reserve the few remaining pages,” he added. Ten thousand words follow this entry, far too many to fit into a “few remaining pages,” so the conclusion that he added a lot of material when preparing for publication is inescapable.

This is confirmed by the occasional little mistake. For instance, on January 10, 1864, just seven days after the wreck, he says that Raynal “is our blacksmith, and makes nails for us”—which was impossible, because Raynal had no means of making nails then, not having a forge, tools, or materials, let alone the physical strength. Evidently Musgrave intended to add that tidbit to an entry for January the following year, a time when Raynal really was busy with his hammer and anvil, but somehow turned to the wrong page.

Raynal kept a daily record, Musgrave also writing on January 10, 1864, that “my time has been so much occupied in hard work as to leave me no time to make even daily notes, but Mr. Raynal, who is improving fast, keeps the diary.” Raynal himself noted that he updated the logbook every evening, usually with mundane details of weather, but occasionally adding “a brief narrative of our doings and adventures; sometimes I allowed myself to jot down my individual impressions.” These were easily elaborated from memory, and—perhaps after an
editorial decision, or maybe because of Raynal's natural flair for narrative—repositioned for dramatic impact.

Because of this more romantic approach, there are times when Raynal is less reliable than Musgrave. For instance, Musgrave noted that the earthquake occurred on May 15, 1864, while Raynal placed it at a more portentous time, in June, when provisions were getting very low. Where Musgrave admitted that he went off on long solitary treks, Raynal glossed over this, once (January 24, 1864) saying that George and Harry had gone with him when it had not been so. It seemed more probable, in view of his mental state, that Musgrave's version was the right one.

Raynal reckoned the first sea lion the group killed and ate was a one-year-old female, yet his vivid word picture of the black, oily, disgusting meat makes it plain that this was a bull. Either the original identification was wrong, or his memory was faulty. Working from the translation has hazards too. Though very competent, the English version is at times more effusive than the French original. For instance, while describing the storm that almost sank the schooner on the way to Campbell Island, Raynal said simply, “
Le ciel est noir
,” but the translation reads, “The sky is literally black.” For some unknown reason, too, the translator played fast and loose with Raynal's dates, his simple notation “
1er mai
” becoming “
Wednesday, May 1
,” when May 1, 1864, was actually a Sunday.

A puzzling difference is the sad wrecking of the little
Rescue
, which Raynal places at the time the
Flying Scud
first crossed the bar of the New River estuary, providing an emotional moment in his story. Musgrave, while he also describes the little boat breaking its towline at the bar, says it happened when the
Flying Scud
arrived at Invercargill the second time, after the rescue of Harry and George from the Auckland Islands. It seems logical that if the boat had survived the first crossing, the curious populace would have flocked to inspect it, and the newspapers would have printed a firsthand description, and so I opted for Raynal's version.

The ownership of the gun posed a problem, as both men claimed that it was his. It seemed more plausible to me that someone who had spent a decade on the goldfields would be armed, and so I decided in favor of Raynal. A curious discrepancy is that Raynal did not mention heaving over the wreck of the schooner. For those interested in the technicalities, the process of heaving down a ship to expose her bottom is described in detail in Albert Cook Church,
Whale Ships and Whaling
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1938), pp. 24–25. In a shipyard, the ship would be moored close to the wharf, so that the cable rove between the two heaving blocks (one on the mast, one on the heaving post) was short and steep, helping the process along. Considering the circumstances the
Grafton
sailors faced, tipping over the wreck was an extremely ambitious project, involving a huge amount of physical work, so it is very surprising that Raynal failed to describe it.