"Riveting." --The New York Times Book Review Hundreds of miles
from civilization, two ships wreck on opposite ends of the same deserted
island in this true story of human nature at its best--and at its
worst.
It is 1864, and Captain Thomas Musgrave's schooner, the Grafton, has
just wrecked on Auckland Island, a forbidding piece of land 285 miles
south of New Zealand. Battered by year-round freezing rain and constant
winds, it is one of the most inhospitable places on earth. To be
shipwrecked there means almost certain death.
Incredibly, at the same time on the opposite end of the island, another
ship runs aground during a storm. Separated by only twenty miles and the
island's treacherous, impassable cliffs, the crews of the Grafton and
the Invercauld face the same fate. And yet where the Invercauld's
crew turns inward on itself, fighting, starving, and even turning to
cannibalism, Musgrave's crew bands together to build a cabin and a
forge--and eventually, to find a way to escape.
Using the survivors' journals and historical records, award-winning
maritime historian Joan Druett brings to life this extraordinary untold
story about leadership and the fine line between order and chaos.