by Joan Druett
The marketing of the book was carried out with equally deliberate care. Extracts were published in three installments in the very popular Hachette-owned magazine Le Tour du Monde, starting July 1869, to whet public interest. Then, the following year, the entire story was published under the title Les naufrages; ou, Vingt mois sur un recif des îles Auckland: recit authentique, illustré de 40 gravures sur bois dessinées par A. de Neuville.
It was an immediate best-seller, translated into Italian and German in 1871, into English in 1874, and Norwegian in 1879. Printing followed printing, while reviewers breathlessly compared it to the classic Robinson Crusoe. There were obvious reasons for this. Like Defoe’s book, Les naufrages involved as well as enthralled the reader; like Robinson Crusoe, it celebrated the value of hard work and the importance of human labor. At a time when technological advances were booming, it brought renewed awareness of the blessings of tools and engineering. It even affected the leisure time of its readers—a fashion arose for such activities as gardening, camping, pottery, sewing, leather-work, and the keeping of pets. In the past, these basic skills had been dismissed as the kind of thing our lowly peasant ancestors did to keep body and soul together, but now they became therapeutic recreational activities for educated city-dwellers. Because of its inspirational appeal, Hachette put it out in special editions, some intended for family collections and others, particularly handsomely produced, for end-of-year school prizes. Both English and French editions are in print today—still without Raynal’s name on either the cover or the title page.
HELPED BY A RECOMMENDATION from a director of the publishing company, Raynal secured a good job with the Paris Municipal Council, and from then on moved up steadily through the ranks of public servants. He was recognized by the literati, too: In 1868 he was nominated a member of the Geographic Society of Paris, and in 1873 he was invited to talk at the Académie des Sciences during a meeting of the Commission of the Transit of Venus, giving them the advice (which they followed) to site their observatory on Campbell Island rather than in the Aucklands. In 1874 Les naufrages was awarded a Montyon prize by the Académie Française, which involved a fat purse of 1,500 francs in addition to a flattering citation; in 1875 Raynal was a delegate to the International Congress of Geographical Sciences; in 1881 he was admitted to the Order of Palmes Académiques.
However, Raynal’s health was as precarious as ever. In 1888 he was forced to take sick leave, and was never well enough to work again. On August 18, 1889, he was granted early retirement on medical grounds. Less than a decade later, on April 28, 1898, he passed away at the age of sixty-eight, his remarkable life finally over.
AFTERMATH
Unknown to any of the Invercauld survivors, the discovery of the corpse of their erstwhile shipmate, James Mahoney, had led to a great deal of interest in the Auckland Islands, which resulted in the ultimate provision of castaway depots for the survivors of future shipwrecks. Because of the death of the second mate of the Invercauld, their awful ordeal was eventually to be the inspiration that saved the lives of many others.
Back on October 14, 1865, while Captain Norman and the surgeon of the Victoria were busily disinterring the remains of James Mahoney, the paddle wheels of the steam tug Southland churned up mud and water as she turned around and then chugged out of Invercargill. Her captain was James Greig, a flamboyant Scotsman who had arrived in Southland in 1862 after several years on the Australian goldfields, and who currently held the position of harbormaster. A remarkably energetic man, he not only completed his allotted task, but also produced a long and chatty statement that was published in the New Zealand papers—much of it highly irritating, as Captain Musgrave confided to Macpherson in a letter.
In this gossipy account, after reporting that he had seen nothing but “the ordinary accompaniment of sea fowls and porpoises” on the passage south, Greig announced that he had arrived at Port Ross at four in the morning on October 21—to find a notice carved on a tree informing him that the Victoria had beaten them to it, along with a message in a bottle, signed by Captain Norman, giving all the particulars of their search. Well, as he candidly confessed, this surely did have the effect of “considerably dampening the enthusiasm” of everyone on board the Southland. However, he and his men searched on, undaunted, and in the process turned up traces of past occupation that the Flying Scud and Victoria parties had missed.
The first was the “frame of a boat, made of small sticks woven together, and lashed together with strips of seal skins.” Without realizing it, Greig’s men had discovered the coracle that Holding, Smith, and Dalgarno had constructed in November 1864, almost exactly twelve months earlier, and abandoned after they had built a wooden boat. The second was the hut Holding had lived in by himself while ostracized by Smith and Dalgarno—“A thatched hut about nine feet square,” which, Greig deduced, had been built by someone “who had no axe, and who subsisted on limpets, to which fact a large pile of shells bore testimony.” A track led from this to a promontory, where they found a tall pole with a bunch of white grass attached to the top, which had fallen down in the meantime.
Having noted all this, Greig then turned to another piece of business—to dig up Mahoney’s body yet again. Dr. Monkton, the Invercargill surgeon who was with him, inspected what was left of it and came to some conclusions that were truly remarkable, as Th omas Musgrave tartly remarked. Indeed, as he ironically commented in a letter to Macpherson after reading the newspaper account, he wondered if they had dug up the same body.
Dr. Monkton declared that the deceased had been no ordinary seaman—that, judging by his clothes, he had never been accustomed to hard labor. The dead man’s hair was “medium” brown, not light, the way Musgrave had described it, “cheekbones not high, nor chin pointed.” He was similarly derisory about Musgrave’s conclusion that the deceased had been Catholic, saying that a small heart-shaped locket with some kind of token hidden inside was poor evidence of any such thing.
Having dug Mahoney up for the second time, the Southland crew then buried him for the third time—in a coffin, which they had carried for that purpose. As well as this, they had prepared a board, which read: ERECTED BY THE CREW OF THE P.S. ‘SOUTHLAND,’ OVER THE REMAINS OF A MAN WHO HAD APPARENTLY HAD DIED OF STARVATION, AND WAS BURIED BY THE CREW OF THE ‘FLYING SCUD,’ SEPTEMBER 3, 1865. Having set this up at the head of the grave, they left their own message in a bottle, and then made steam and chugged down the east coast of Auckland Island.
On October 28, having stopped to shoot pigs and sea lions every now and then, they dropped anchor in Carnley Harbour. In the course of the following survey, they slept two nights in Epigwaitt—“a very comfortable sort of place about 12 feet by 18 feet, with a large stone chimney,” Greig decided. “The only objectionable feature,” he went on, “was the slightness of the rafters, which bent so much to a gale we experienced the second night, that some of the nervous ones of the party, before turning in formed a complete network of rope between the wall-plates to catch the roof if it fell”—which, as he went on to comment, created a strangely mysterious effect in the firelight.
“We found a quantity of smoked shags and pieces of seal inside the house,” he went on; “and a variety of little articles, evincing the expenditure of a considerable amount of patience and ingenuity in their construction.” The bush had been cleared all about the house, and there was “an old forge, charcoal pits, tannery, &c.,” too—an important confirmation of the achievements Musgrave and Raynal described.
Greig himself was not particularly admiring—“Musgrave’s party appear to have had no garden whatever, and to have cut very few tracks in the bush,” he criticized. He had heard that Musgrave considered the forest about Carnley Harbour “impenetrable.” Well, he reckoned, if Musgrave ever lived in New Zealand, he would learn what “impenetrable” forest was really like.
Finally, on November 7, after some exciting days of hunting sea lions—and being chased by more than a few infuriated sea lion bulls—the crew of
the Southland raised the anchor and set course for New Zealand, Greig having come to the firm conclusion that there was no one left alive in the islands. “Having now seen all that is to be seen of this group, it is obvious that no one at present exists thereon, or, with the exception of Musgrave’s party, have existed on any of these islands for some time past,” he wrote. Obviously, it was a big surprise to him when he arrived back in New Zealand and learned about the Invercauld castaways.
IN JANUARY 1868, public interest in the Auckland Islands was electrified again when the papers broke the story of the American-built 1,200-ton General Grant, which on May 13, 1866, crashed into the cliffs of the western side of Auckland Island and became a total loss.
“Wreck of the ship ‘General Grant’—sixty-eight dead—ten survivors confined for eighteen months upon a desert island,” ran the heading in the Sydney Morning Herald. “On the morning of the 10th of January, a telegram announced the arrival at Bluff of the whaling ship Amherst, Captain Gilroy, having on board ten persons (one of them a woman), the sole survivors of the crew and passengers of the ship General Grant, which sailed from Melbourne for London in May 1866, with a valuable cargo of wool, skins, and gold.”
According to the riveting report that followed, the ship sailed into “a deep crevasse of volcanic origin, against whose sides the hull was shattered before foundering,” and only fourteen men and one woman (the stewardess) survived, the captain going down with his ship. They rowed in the two unscathed ship’s boats to Port Ross, where they lived in the ruined house at Hardwicke—the same house where the corpse of James Mahoney had been discovered a few months earlier—after closing in the sides to render it more weatherproof.
The goats and pigs Captain Norman had liberated were still running around, and they managed to kill one or two of these. However, their main food supply was sea lion. In the pupping season of January 1867, having collected a good store of meat, the first officer, Bart Brown, set off for New Zealand with three other men in one of the ship’s boats, which had been decked over and loaded with skins of fresh water as well as the provisions. Unlike Musgrave’s Rescue, this boat was never seen or heard from again.
The remaining ten men and one woman struggled on. On September 3, 1867, one of the men, sixty-two-year-old David McLellan, died. On October 6, a sail was sighted, but though fires were lit and the day was clear, there was no response. Like Robert Holding earlier, the castaways decided that they should move to an island that was closer to the open sea, and the whole party was ferried to Enderby Island in the remaining boat, only to see another ship pass without seeing their signals. Just two days after that, however, on November 21, 1867, the colonial whaling brig Amherst called by, and Captain Paddy Gilroy carried them to New Zealand, to relate their dreadful tale.
The resulting public uproar led to a government decision to establish castaway depots on both Campbell Island and Auckland Island, and the Amherst was sent out with building materials, livestock, and provisions. Paddy Gilroy was again in command and a justice of the peace, Henry Armstrong, was on board to keep an official record. The first depot they established was at Port Ross, where they strengthened the house at Hardwicke and left a strongbox with supplies. On the lid of this Armstrong wrote, THE CURSE OF THE WIDOW AND FATHERLESS LIGHT UPON THE MAN WHO BREAKS OPEN THIS BOX WHILST HE HAS A SHIP AT HIS BACK.
Then they steered for Perseverance Harbour on the same mission, with a large spar in tow, Captain Gilroy being determined to hoist a flagstaff? on treeless Campbell Island so that those in need could fly a signal of distress. They arrived at the mouth of Perseverance Harbour on February 14, 1868, but for some days the wind blew so hard from the interior that it was impossible to enter, and so it was not until the twenty-fourth that they were able to drop anchor. There were no traces at all of the animals the Victoria had landed, so they released some more. Then they erected the spar a hundred yards from the notice board that had been set up by the Victoria, and put a strongbox and a spade at its foot.
At the same time, they stumbled across the grim sight of six graves and, alongside them, the skeleton of a man, evidently the remains of the crew of some ship that had been wrecked since the Victoria had left. Further impelled by this ghoulish discovery, they fixed up a hut that had been built by these unknown castaways. It was about ten feet long and eight feet wide, with overlapping deal boards and a pitched roof, with thatch that they repaired. Then, after placing a chest of provisions inside, Gilroy and Armstrong sailed away, their mission in the dangerous subantarctic seas accomplished.
THESE DEPOTS, OCCASIONALLY checked and restocked by navy ships and government craft, were to save the lives of many shipwrecked sailors. Eight of these were survivors of the Derry Castle, which foundered off the north coast of Enderby Island in 1887. The men knew there was a castaway hut at Port Ross, which gave them the courage to live in rough shelters made out of tussock while they constructed a boat from the timbers of the wreck. Having crossed the channel, they lived on the stores and what sea lions they could catch until rescued by the Awarua, which was sealing illegally, as by that time the trade had been banned by the New Zealand government.
In March 1891, the ship Compadre caught fire to the north of the islands, and after finding the situation was hopeless, her captain deliberately steered for the rocks of a cape off Port Ross. All fifteen crew climbed onto the jibboom, and when she hit they jumped for it, landing battered and bruised, but alive, on the shore. One man died during the first night, but the rest survived on the stores they found, until saved by the schooner Janet Ramsey on June 30, in what the newspapers called a remarkable state of good health, considering the privations they had endured.
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.
THIS 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 expeditio
n, 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.