The Castaways of Disappointment Island

This book tells the story of the Dundonald, a four masted barque which in 1906 departed Sydney Australia bound for England, taking a route south and east, to pass under New Zealand. Lost in a storm they ran aground on Disappointment Island, in the Auckland Island Group in the Subantarctic waters of the Southern Ocean, between New Zealand and Antarctica.

Dictated by Charles Eyre of London, an able bodied seaman on the Dundonald, and one of the survivors. It is a fantastic story, told with passion and pace, a true adventure story of hardship and survival.

I borrowed this book and read it as I travelled South from Bluff to visit the Auckland Islands. The ship I was on visited Port Ross in Erebus Cove, where Jabez Peters, first mate who died on Disappointment Island, after surviving the wreck was buried, having been exhumed after the survivors were rescued.

Surviving by eating raw mollymawk chicks, before the matches dried enough to make fire, and building sod shelters, they survived on the island for some months, taking sea lions for food. The Auckland Islands were well known to ships, and the Dundonald was one of a number of ships wrecked there. As such, the New Zealand government set up a food depot and rescue boat on the nearby main Auckland Island to assist stranded men. The crew of the Dundonald knew of this, but they were on an adjacent island, and it was quite a mission to find it. They built a coracle from Rata branches, covered it with sail cloth. Although the first coracle expedition to Auckland Island was unable to locate the depot, and returned, and the second coracle was wrecked on departure, the third was able to reach Auckland Island before being destroyed, and the men finally found the depot in Port Ross.

They returned to collect the other survivors, ferrying them to the depot, then venturing forth to another nearby island where cattle had been left to feed shipwrecked survivors such as these.

In November 1907 the men were rescued by the HMS Hinemoa, which called to refresh the depot and to drop scientists on a subantarctic expedition. However the ship was full, and asked them to wait for two weeks while it dropped off the scientists, and took the shearers to Campbell Island to carry out the shearing of the sheep there, before returning to collect the men and return to New Zealand. Charles Eyre travelled with them as their cook!

While obviously very topical for me, this was a great read. It was well told and well written. A real shipwreck adventure story - but 100% non-fiction.

5 stars.

This is a rather hard to find book, but there is an online archive version here:
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-EscCast.html