Island of the Lost

by Joan Druett

  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

  In 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.

  At times a good guide for deciding the true order in which things happened was to see what the sea lions were doing at the particular times described. Their breeding pattern is described in Preliminary Results of the Auckland Islands Expedition 1972–1973, compiled and edited by J. C. Yaldwyn, and printed by the New Zealand Department of Lands and Survey in 1975. The papers relevant to sea lion breeding cycles were “Report on the Natural History and Behaviour of Hooker’s Sea lion at Enderby Island, Auckland Island, 1972-73,” by H. A. Best (pp. 159–70); “Observations on the Breeding Cycle of Hooker’s Sea lion on Enderby Island, 1972–73,” by B. J. Marlow (pp. 171–75); and “Report on the Collection of Anatomical and Osteological Material of Hooker’s Sea lion during the Auckland Islands Expedition 1972–73,” by Judith E. Marlow (pp. 176–82), this last being a charming dissertation, which I briefly quoted in the discussion of sea lions in Chapter 6.

  I am indebted to Creative New Zealand for a grant I received in the year 2000 to research the history of sealing in the subantarctic islands, and to the J. D. Stout Fellowship for a year’s tenure (2001) at the Stout Centre for New Zealand Studies, an institute that still provides a great deal of intellectual support. The job of comparing the various editions of the two books was carried out in the reading room of the J. C. Beaglehole Library, at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand, where I was greatly assisted by the librarian, Nicola Frean, and her assistant, Tracey Williamson. They were not only helpful but enthusiastic, even organizing a most valuable panel discussion of the two publications.

  Their volume of Les naufrages is an 1870 edition, and is a large, splendid book with a handsome crimson cover and gilt-edged pages. The English translation I used is an enlarged facsimile of an 1880 reprint by T. Nelson and Sons, printed in 2003 by Roger Steele, of the Wellington publishing firm Steele Roberts. This edition is augmented with commentaries on the Auckland Islands; François Edouard Raynal and his book; Alphonse de Neuville, illustrator; Captain Th omas Musgrave; and
the influence of Raynal’s Wrecked on a Reef on Jules Verne’s novels, all researched and written by Verne scholar Christiane Mortelier.

  There is a third edition of Musgrave’s book. In 1943 the New Zealand publishing firm A. H. & A. W. Reed produced a version with almost the same title, Castaway on the Aucklands: the wreck of the Grafton, from the private journals of Th omas Mus-grave, Master mariner, edited by A. H. and A. W. Reed. However, though the reader is not warned by the foreword, it is by no means a true reproduction. Instead, in an inappropriate effort to make Musgrave’s plain, workmanlike writing more accessible to the ordinary reader, the editors paraphrased his account—replacing his “I went to bed” with “I turned in,” for instance. As I could not comfortably quote from this, it was set aside.

  The Macpherson collection (MSX-4936) at the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, includes three letters, one fragmentary, written by Musgrave to Macpherson; a letter of thanks from Mrs. Musgrave to Macpherson; an unsourced newspaper clipping, dated October 20, 1865, reprinting Andrew Smith’s account from the Glasgow Mail; a statement of accounts from the Grafton Relief Fund; a recipt for Mahoney’s gravestone (£3); and the review of Raynal’s book, mentioned earlier. Additionally, a notebook kept by Musgrave on the island is held by the Queensland Maritime Museum. However, if it were not for Captain Greig’s detailed description of what he found at Epigwaitt, which was printed on page 5 of the Daily Southern Cross on November 27, 1865, after the return of the Southland, it would be easy to believe that both Les naufrages and Castaway are largely works of fiction. Questions were certainly asked—the Macpherson collection includes a copy of a letter from the Geneva branch of Librairie Hachette, dated February 11, 1870, and signed by Nancy Coulin, which asks John Macpherson for authentication of the wreck, saying that while Hachette publishers have no doubt of Raynal’s veracity, during a lecture tour doubts were expressed by some who heard him.

  The ordeal of the Invercauld survivors, which runs in such terrible parallel to that of the Grafton castaways, is described in detail in a book called Wake of the Invercauld, which was published in Auckland in 1997 by Exisle Press. The author, Madelene Ferguson Allen, was Robert Holding’s great-granddaughter. An adopted child, she discovered her birth family in 1984, and at the same time learned about her remarkable ancestor. Upon reading the memoir Holding had begun in 1926, a handful of years before his death in January 1933, she was inspired to embark on a mission that included two trips to the Auckland Islands, and ended in the publication of her book, which encompasses a complete transcription of Holding’s journal, with a running commentary of her journeys and researches.

  Painstakingly researched, Wake of the Invercauld authenticates everything he wrote—as long as allowance is given for the fact that Holding started his chronicle on an old Remington typewriter at the age of eighty-six, sixty years after the actual events. Natural lapses in recollection are particularly apparent where nautical details are confused; for instance, Andrew Smith, the mate, said the Invercauld had single topsails, while Holding described a ship with the new (at the time) double topsails. In the text, I have glossed over these inconsistencies, and am grateful for the technical advice given by Captain Nick Burningham. The credit is his; the mistakes are mine.

  Holding’s descriptions of both Smith and Captain Dalgarno are derogatory, but seem to be justifiably so. The inescapable conclusion is that if Holding had held rank, and had been allowed to take control, more of the Invercauld group would have survived. Though he did not know about the part that Holding played, Th omas Musgrave confirmed this, writing to Macpherson on November 9, 1865, that Dalgarno’s account “proves that there has been no unity amongst them, neither has the Captain attempted (or he has not been able) to hold any authority or influence over them; to which cause I atribute [sic] a great number of their deaths.” It must be added, however, that while Musgrave’s moral strength and Raynal’s ingenuity played a large part in the survival of the Grafton group, they were fortunate in that they were stranded in the early summer when the sea lions were gathering to pup, and that they were able to cannibalize the wreck to make a sturdy house. Though they were just novice sealers, they were mentally prepared to kill the animals, which the survivors from the Invercauld were not. (The Grafton’s real mission was almost certainly to scout out sealing grounds; as Bob Braithwaite, a Wellington geologist, confirmed to me in a helpful discussion, the fabled silver-tin mine can be dismissed as just that, a fable.)

  Captain Dalgarno’s Narrative of the Wreck of the “Invercauld” among the Auckland Islands is an appendix in Raynal’s book. Evidently, Raynal kept the newspaper that carried the story, and it was translated into French to be added to Les naufrages. Then, when Wrecked on a Reef came out, Dalgarno’s narrative was translated from the French back into English. Consequently, the phrasing is unlikely to be exactly the same as the original. Unfortunately, Raynal neglected to tell his readers the name of the newspaper, and it has been impossible to track it down since.

  There are just a few other published sources. In 1866 the official journals kept by Musgrave and Captain Norman on board the Victoria were printed in Melbourne by F. F. Baillière, with the title Journals of the voyage and proceedings of H.M.C.S. Victoria: in search of shipwrecked people at the Auckland and other islands, with an outline sketch of the islands. This was bound into the copy of the Melbourne edition of Castaway that was presented to John Macpherson, but I read it as a separate volume at the National Library, Wellington.

  The strange little book that Musgrave used to navigate the Flying Scud into Port Ross was A history of gold as a commodity and as a measure of value: its fluctuations both in ancient and modern times, with an estimate of the probable supplies from California and Australia. Written by James Ward, and published in 1853 by the London firm of William S. Orr, it devotes chapter five (pp. 81–90) to the Auckland Islands. As mentioned in the text, Ward himself had never been there, but instead related what he had been told by the surgeon of the Earl of Hardwicke.

  This unnamed fellow could well have been one of the three doctors whose drunken frolics were noted with such despair in the daybooks of two of the unfortunate officials who administered the settlement, William Mackworth and William Munce. These can be read in Enderby Settlement Diaries: Records of a British Colony at the Auckland Islands 1849–1852, edited by P. R. Dingwall, C. Fraser, J. G. Gregory, and C. J. R. Robertson, and published by Wild Press and Wordsell Press (Auckland and Wellington) in 1999.

  Because of the lack of documentation, the seven-year effort by the Ngati Matunga chief Matioro and his people to colonize Auckland Island has never been described, though it was significantly more successful than any other attempt, leading to the successful introduction and acclimatization of the New Zealand flax, Phormium tenax. I thank Wilford Davis for sending me a short account of one of those colonists, his great-grandmother Kurapa, which was originally published as “Captives on the Auckland Islands,” NZ Genealogist, November/December 1999: 375. Coastmaster: the story of Captain James B. Greig, by John McCraw, was published by Silverdale Press (Hamilton, NZ) in 1999. The story of the General Grant castaways, begun by Madelene Ferguson Allen, and completed after her death by Ken Scadden, was published by Exisle Press (Auckland) with the title General Grant’s Gold, in 2007. The enthralling story of the Dundonald castaways is documented in the book The Castaways of Disappointment Island by H. Escott Inman, published by Partridge & Co. of London in 1911. It was here that I learned that eating Stilbocarpa bleaches the teeth. Plant information is from the Plants for a Future species database, a Web search engine by Rich Morris that is linked to www.ibiblio.org. Many other dietary details come from J. C. Drummond, with Anne Wilbraham, The Englishman’s Food: a history of five centuries of English diet (London: Jonathan Cape, 1957), and Donald S. McLaren, Nutrition and its Disorders (Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 1976). The Grafton castaways were suffering from an abnormally elevated concentration of ketones in the body tissues and fluids,
the result of their fat and protein-high diet, plus carbohydrate deprivation and deficiencies in essential vitamins and minerals.

  There are remarkably few books about the history of the Auckland Islands, most of them outdated and out of print. Roger Carrick’s New Zealand’s Lone Lands: being brief Notes of a Visit to the Outlying Islands of the Colony, was published in Wellington by Didsbury in 1892. More balanced and reliable is Fergus McLaren’s The Eventful Story of the Auckland Islands, published in Wellington by A. H. & A. W. Reed in 1948. Two comprehensive accounts of the subantarctic islands that include the Auckland Islands are Allan W. Eden, Islands of Despair (London: Andrew Melrose, 1955) and Rosaline Redwood, Forgotten Islands of the South Pacific: the Story of New Zealand’s Southern Islands (Wellington: Reed, 1950).

  The story of the scientific coastwatchers during World War II was written up from their journals by Graham Turbott and published as a monograph by the Department of Conservation in September 2002, under the title Year Away: Wartime Coast-watching on the Auckland Islands, 1944. Though out of print, it has been partially digitalized, and can be read on the Department of Conservation Web site, www.doc.govt.nz. Also of great interest is I. S. Kerr, Campbell Island: A History (Wellington: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1976). A particularly beautiful book is Conan Fraser’s Beyond the Roaring Forties: New Zealand’s Subantarctic Islands (Wellington: Govt. Printing Office, 1986). Extremely useful is a revised and updated edition of New Zealand’s Subantarctic Islands (originally edited by Tim Higham and published in 1991), edited by Tom O’Connor and published with the same title by Reed in 1999, under the auspices of the Department of Conservation.