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The only people who have ever made tongs without tongs are apparently God and Raynal. Welcome back to what to Carry, what to Burn. I'm your host, Blair Braverman. I'm a writer, an adventurer, and a long distance dog sledder. And today I'll be telling you a story that I think is really cool. I think it's one of the most successful survival stories I've ever heard. This podcast is still very new. I'm still experimenting with it. So for this episode, we don't have a guest. I'm just going to be telling you the story directly. So thank you for joining me around the fire. Let's jump right in. Our hero's name is Francois Reynal, and He's born in 1830 in France to a family that's relatively well off. And what that means is that instead of doing child labor as a kid, he and his siblings are able to go to school. And he loves school. He loves science, he loves math, he loves geography. He just loves studying and learning. And when he's 14 years old, his family abruptly loses their money and he is yanked out of school, and his siblings are yanked out of school also. All of a sudden, he's the oldest child and he has to think of ways to support his family. His biggest goal at this point as a 14 year old is like, okay, even if he can't go to school, he wants to make money so that his siblings can keep studying. And he's heard that the way to make money is to go to sea. So he signs up on a ship, he becomes a sailor, and immediately the ship gets caught in a massive storm. All the sailors are praying and begging God for their lives. And the water is crashing over the deck and he's puking up his guts and clinging on as hard as he can and just thinking like, oh, my God, I should have stayed on land. And he. He tells himself if he makes it through this night, through this storm, he's going to be a pious man for the rest of his life. From then on, he has like a ton of faith in God. Like these become his guiding principles. He wants to make money to support his family, to support his siblings and his parents. And he also feels like God has his back. So for the next couple years, he's working really hard. He works on a couple ships, and then he works on a sugar plantation in Mauritius. Whenever he makes enough money, he sends it home. And his younger siblings are able to go to school for just a little while. And sometimes he even gets to go back to school. But then the money runs out and he goes back to work. When he's working on the sugar plantation, a typhoid epidemic just sweeps through the community and he gets really sick. He manages to survive, but it's like, by the skin of his teeth. And he starts having these chronic effects from the illness. So he starts going through phases where he's so weak he feels like he's going to die. And then he does better for a couple weeks, and then he, you know, it's cyclical. And then he gets sick again. And this is just something that he's having to live with. And that also makes it really hard to be earning money. But when he's 22, he hears about a gold rush in Australia. And the rumors he's hearing are incredible. People are saying, like, anyone can go to Australia. There's just boulders of gold sitting on the ground. They're so heavy, you can't even pick them up. People are getting so rich that they are bathing in baths of champagne, lighting their cigars with cash, and Reynal's like, that is the place for me that is going to solve all the problems for me and my family. So he gets a job on a ship that's going to Australia. And the whole time while he's at sea, he's learning English as fast as he can. And just when the ship is about to land, it sinks. And he spends a whole day and night clinging to a mast that is just sticking out of the roiling water. The next day, he's rescued and he makes it to shore, and he immediately starts looking for gold. Unsurprisingly, there are not boulders of gold lying on the streets like he's able to find a little bit enough to pay for his expenses. But he is not getting rich. Over the next couple years. He is working, he's hustling. This guy has nine lives. Like he gets cholera and survives. He's in a cave that collapses around him, and somehow he manages to live. And he still has these bouts of illness that are really debilitating. But in between those bouts, he's able to be well enough to work. And he keeps telling himself that one of these days he's going to find a project that's going to restore his family's ability to live comfortably. That opportunity comes when he's 33 years old. He has two friends who work in the drapery business. They're very wealthy men. The drapery guys come to him and they're like, did you know that there's this island south of New Zealand that is just covered in silver. There's so much silver there. Like, if you. If you went to this island on a ship, you would just come back rich. And Reynald's like, I, I didn't know this. How do you know this? And also, why is no one there? And they're like, shh, it's a secret. Don't ask so many questions. But we will invest in a trip. If you go there and look for that silver, we'll pay the money for the ship. And they also tell him this trip is risk free because there's so many fur seals on the island that even if he can't find silver, he's going to make a fortune in fur. As we know, Raynal loves a rumor. And he has a good friend who's a ship's captain. His name is captain Musgrave. And the two of them decide they're going to buy a ship and they're going to check out the island. Now, Captain Musgrave, he's a serious guy. He's very responsible. He's diligent. He has a wife and kids at home, so he doesn't want to be gone very long. And they agree that the trip will take roughly four months to go out and back. They buy a ship called the Grafton, and they pack a bunch of food and crackers, salt, molasses, butter, pounds of coffee. They get some sandstone and iron for ballast. This is just the basics. After they've bought these basics, they run out of money for anchor chain, and they go back to their financiers and they say, hey, we've bought what we need, but we still need some money to have longer chains for the two anchors. And the drapery guys are like, couldn't you save money by just having really short anchor chains? Captain Musgrave knows this is risky because the closer to shore you have to anchor your ship, the less wiggle room you have if the anchor moves around. Now, the anchor chain they have, it's not like so short. It's just like on the edge of the safety threshold. So they, they discuss it and they decide they want to go anyway. They're just going to be. Just going to be careful they don't have that wiggle room they would have liked to have. They find three guys to hire, which is really easy to do because there's a lot of broke gold prospectors around who are really desperate for work. I'll introduce you to their employees. There's a 20 year old from England named George Harris, and he Is, in Reynal's words, simple even to naivete. He's very nice. He's not the most critical thinker. We know how he got roped in. The second sailor they hire is a Norwegian named Alec, who is massive. He's huge. He's very strong. He doesn't really speak. He's just very respectful. And he lifts a lot of heavy things. So they're like, fantastic. This is what you want from a sailor. And the third guy they hire is a cook named Harry, who has been having a lot of trouble getting work because he has no nose. He had leprosy and his nose just sort of caved inward into his face. And so people are very bigoted against him when they see his appear. But Raynal and Captain Musgrave don't care about that. They're just like, he's a good guy and he is the opposite of Alec because he's super chatty. He never, ever, ever stops talking. Before they leave, Reynal goes back to the financiers and he's like, look, if we're not back in four months, will you send someone to look for us? The drapery guys are like, yeah, that sounds expensive. Reynal negotiates with them and he gets them to agree that even if they're not going to send a rescue ship in four months, they'll at least tell the government if this trip goes missing, and maybe the government will do something about it. With that agreement, our five gentlemen set off from Australia on November 12, and they immediately get caught in a storm. There's constant lightning in every direction. The waves are hitting them side on. They're clinging to anything they can while the ballast is just sliding back and forth and the whole ship is rumbling. It feels like it's going to break in half. But it's a good ship and it stays strong. And they make it through the storm. They make it to the island and there's nothing there. There's no silver, there's no seals. The whole trip has been a massive waste. Obviously, they're extremely disappointed. But to make it worse, Raynal's illness has come back with a vengeance. He's so sick that when they're at the island, Captain Musgrave digs a grave for his friend because he thinks he. He's just going to have to leave his body there, have a funeral. I do wonder if Raynal knows this. Like, if he's like, hey, bud, where are you going with that shovel? Or if he's just so out of it that he has no idea what's going on, but either way, he doesn't die. He's starting to get a little bit better. And Musgrave's like, okay, we're going to go back to New Zealand. This trip was obviously a bust. But on the way there, we can stop at this other archipelago called the Auckland Islands, because maybe we can hunt some seals there and at least make a little bit of money. They set off again, and Reynal is having a rough time below deck. He is sick, he's nauseous. The ship is constantly rocking. His lantern is swinging overhead, so shadows are bouncing off the walls, which does not help if you're already feeling delirious. But after a couple days, Alec and George and Harry come down to visit him. And they're like, raynal, you have got to see this. It's so beautiful outside. And so they wrap him in blankets and they carry him up onto the deck. And in the distance, they see the cliffs of this island just rising up from the sea. There's these seagulls circling and calling. Overhead, the waves are crashing against rocks. And Captain Musgrave looks in his telescope and starts hollering with excitement because there's just seals lumping all over the shore. There's so many seals. So they're like, maybe this trip is redeemable. And Raynal's still alive. Like, things are looking up. They lower the anchor, and it doesn't touch the ground. They go closer to shore and they lower the anchor again, and it still doesn't touch the ground. And at this point, it's getting dark. They can't see the beach, they can't see the rocks, but they're listening for the sound of waves breaking. And they're trying to navigate by that sound. They finally get close enough that both their anchors touch the ground, and they go to sleep. The next day, a huge wave and a gust of wind comes in and it hits them hard. And just like that, one of the anchor chains snaps. The ship swings around and it starts dragging its second anchor, and they are completely helpless. They're watching in slow motion as she slams into the rocks. Water is pouring in below deck. Their belongings are floating around with seaweed. It's freezing cold. They're swimming inside the ship. They're trying to grab everything they need. And the Norwegian guy, Alec, the guy who. Who doesn't talk, he just jumps into the sea with a rope and he swims to shore. And he uses the rope he makes like a. A pulley system between the wreck of the ship and their lifeboat and the shore. And in this way they're able to, like, send supplies down the pulley. So they're able to send bread and coffee and tea and tobacco. And they use the pulley, this rope, in order to get themselves safely to shore as well. Even Raynal, who still has to be carried. They make it to shore. They're drenched, they're freezing, their clothes are dripping. They make a lean to out of cloth and they discover that their cook, Harry, has a few matches in his pocket, just a few. And he starts lighting them, but they keep snapping off because they're so damp. Finally, one of them lights and they immediately start trying to light this fire so carefully because they know if it goes out, they're really in trouble. They nurse the flame into a fire and. And they sit back and they take in their situation and it is not great. They're trapped on the island. Nobody knows they're there because this was a detour en route from their original destination. If someone comes looking, it's not going to be for months. And to make things more uncomfortable, Captain Musgrave just starts sobbing. Just absolutely like back is shuddering, he's wailing, his face is in his hands. And the other men don't know what to do with this information. They're like, our captain's sobbing. What are we supposed to do? Reynal, who's so sick, is trying to, like, tell people to cheer up, but physically he can't do anything. And they're huddled in this little shelter as night falls. And then they start hearing bizarre sounds outside, just like rumbling and crashing. That's coming closer and closer and closer to their little tent. There's roars and bellows. They've never heard anything like it. What sort of animal is making this sound? And they're clinging together. Even Captain Musgrave is so startled that he stop. These sounds are terrifying, but they can't see in the darkness. They have no idea what it is. And finally the sun starts to rise, the sky turns from black to blue, and they look outside and make out their surroundings. And they are surrounded by massive sea lions, just massive male sea lions that are fighting because it's mating season. And they're like, we're gonna get crushed by these sea lions. So they grab these flaming sticks from the fire and they're like waving them around and throwing them at the sea lions. And the sea lions sort rumble off slowly, but they're still too close for comfort. Now that it's daylight, they can really get a look around. And they're on this lush slope Rising up from the beach. The ground is covered in moss and ferns. It's a little bit like a jungle. And the trees are really strange. They're like these thin, gnarled hands that are reaching out of the ground, and they're packed so closely together, they make almost a single object, and they're bent in half from the wind. It's one thing to be in a huge landscape on purpose, but if you're trapped there, it is so unbelievably lonely to know that there isn't a single human for hundreds of miles in any direction. There's just plants and animals and trees and sea lions and the ocean and the five of them all alone. So the other men go off exploring, and Reynal's just lying by the fire, and his one job is to keep it going, because if it goes out, they're screwed. He's adding wood to the fire. He's blowing on the coals when they get low. And this shimmering haze of flies just congeals around him like thousands and thousands of tiny flies. They're so little, and their wings are moving so fast that it seems like the air is flickering. And these flies start attacking every inch of his skin. Their bites hurt. It feels like they're pinching off these little chunks of flesh. He's building up the fire, but the smoke won't keep them away. And if that's not bad enough, there's another kind of flies that starts attacking him, too. And these are really big. They're bright blue, and they're, like, meaty. They're like an inch long each. And they start burrowing into the seams of his clothes, like, trying to get in around his neck and his wrists and trying to get into his skin. And this goes on for hours straight, just constantly fighting the flies. It's like the only thing that could distract from the horror of being trapped on this island is the horror of these flies. Plus, as the hours pass, he realizes that the big meaty flies have been laying eggs on him because he starts getting maggots in his clothes. And the maggots are starting to wriggle around. Finally, the other guys come back and they have been dealing with the same thing. Like, their skin is streaked with blood. They have little bloody spots from the bug bites. There's dirt wiped into the wounds, but they're carrying meat. They have these big armloads of raw meat. And it turns out that while they were exploring, one of them remembered a fun fact, basically, that he'd learned, which is that it. If you Want to hunt a sea lion, you have to hit the bridge of its nose. That that's sort of the place where its skull is weak. And he tried it out and sure enough, it worked. And they were able to hunt a sea lion. They go back into the tent and they're roasting the meat. And for a couple days things pass like this. They're living in the tent, they're keeping the fire going. It's not feeling great, like they're wet, they're covered in bugs. The only good things are that they have quite a few supplies from the wreck. And there's also so many seals around that they are not worried about food. Obviously this is good survival wise, but they find it super frustrating because they're like, look at all these seals. Look at all this fur. We would be making a fortune right now in seal fur. Captain Musgrave and the other guys start cutting down trees to try to build some kind of bigger long term shelter. And Raynal is too sick to help. So he's just lying by the fire. And if you'll bear with me for a moment, do you know in the original cartoon film Snow White, when Snow White has this objectively terrible life, but she's just like singing and twirling and little birds are landing on her arms, doing her hair wrapping ribbons around her. That is Raynal in this situation. And I don't just mean emotionally. I mean literally, because he's so covered in flies that he's also covered in birds, like little robins and bluebirds are just perching all over his body to eat the bugs. And he loves it. He starts hand feeding them flies. There are these little green parrots that are constantly singing, and Raynal starts whistling to them and they whistle back like he's doing a little duet with the birds. Because these birds haven't encountered people before. They don't know to be afraid of them. Raynal's journal is all about how beautiful it is. Like, how it's such a blessing that even on a deserted island, he's surrounded by birds and music. After about a week, the sun comes out and he writes, Behold how sweet it is, how smiling should we not see in this a happy omen, a promise of happiness and approaching deliverance. Captain Musgrave's attitude is the polar opposite. His journal during these same days is like, we are in hell. This place is beastly. The bugs are making our blankets and clothes in the most disgusting state imaginable. We're all gonna die. So you have these two leaders who are polar Opposites, but they're working together, and they care about each other a lot. And they start reading the Bible together at night. They have a Bible along. Captain Musgrave reads a passage where Jesus is basically telling his disciples that they have to love one another. And all the men start crying, and they cling to each other and they swear that no matter what happens, this is what they're going to do. They are going to love one another no matter what. They are going to be taking care of each other. And whether they live or die, they are. That is how they are moving through this ordeal. Within about two weeks, they start to have a little bit more of a system. The men are building a house as fast as they can. And the trees are so gnarled that they can't stack beams horizontally. They can't make your typical log cabin, but they make these vertical posts that are dug into the earth, and they're making a structure that's like 24ft by 16ft. So that's pretty big. That's a legitimate cabin. It's not a tiny shelter. They're also getting better at hunting seals, so they have this method now where they hit a seal and run like hell. That is the strategy. Now, I don't know how this is possible, but the insects are getting worse. There's this new kind of black flies that seems to be like, hatching in the seaweed on the beach. These flies bite their skin so hard that you can't even pull them off with your hands. They just flatten themselves and double down. And these men are so bitten by flies that every inch of skin is like ground beef. Like, they're just puffy and bloody and red, and they're constantly scratching themselves on everything they can. They're, like, rubbing their backs against the house posts like they're bears. They're also cracking up. Like, they watch each other do this, and they're in so much pain, but they are just laughing at how ridiculous this is. They're not just covered in flies and birds and parrots, but they're also surrounded by these massive sea lions who are constantly, like, burping and vomiting and throwing sand at them. And when they're not, like, fighting and throwing up, they're sleeping. But they snore really loudly. Like, their bodies are huge and they can make this incredibly loud snoring sound. So it's so noisy and ridiculous and it smells so bad. In the midst of this, Reynal is keeping a journal, kind of for everyone, because everyone else is working so hard. They don't have time to write. And he's making these beautiful observations. Like, here's how he describes the sea lions. He says, quote, the upper lip, thick and fleshy, is fringed on either side with 30 hairs, hard as horn, each about 4 inches in length and terminating in a point. Some of these hairs are marked with transparent veins like that of a tortoise shell. Like, that is a beautiful description. That's incredible. You don't describe the veins in the whiskers of sea lions unless you are looking at them with, like, wonder and awe. Meanwhile, they're building a chimney for the cabin and they discover a problem, which is that the ground is made of peat and it's flammable. Like, whenever they have a fire going, the ground itself is igniting around the flames. Raynal's like, oh, I know what we need to do. We just need cement. And the other guys are like, sure, yeah, we need cement. We also need, like a four course meal in a rescue ship. We don't have it. But it turns out that Raynal is basically a living Wikipedia. And he's like, well, I know how to make cement from scratch. And he's doing a little better at this point. He's able to move around. He builds a massive fire and he throws in a ton of seashells and then he buries the whole fire so it makes, like an underground oven. And in the morning he digs it up and the seashells have turned into lime, which is this caustic ingredient that's sort of a basis for cement. It's what binds it together. He mixes the lime with sand and it's so caustic that it is burning his fingers raw while he's mixing. And he manages to make enough cement to line the fireplace. Meanwhile, it's a full moon, so the tide is going super low. And George and Alec wade out to the wreck with every low tide and they're trying to peel these sheets of copper off the wreck of the ship. They're waist deep in this freezing water and they constantly have to, like, dive under the waves in order to get pieces. And they save every tiny nail that they pull out. They use the copper and the nails to build the top part of the fireplace. And then they make walls with canvas from the ship's sails. And they dig like a ditch, like a moat around the house so that when water flows off it, it won't flood them. And when they think it might finally be done, they go inside and they realize it is way too windy to have canvas walls. Like the wind is just making the walls shake and snap constantly, and the air keeps getting in and blowing out the fire. So they climb up a nearby mountain and it has these huge tussocks, which are like massive clumps of grass. The tussocks are taller than they are and the grass is sharp, like it's slicing into their skin. But they gather these arm sized bundles of grass and they carry it down, and they carve a wooden needle the size of a sword in order to sew the bunches of grass onto the side of the house. It takes 9,000 bundles of grass. But finally the walls are thatched and they go inside and they're making cots out of wood and canvas and mattresses that are soft and piled up with moss. They make a dining table. They make a writing table for Captain Musgrave, and he's run out of ink at this point, so they. They fill a little jar with seal blood so he can write with that. Raynal's like, you know, what we really need now is soap. And this shocks the other guys. They don't think it's possible. But Raynal manages to make lye out of burned shells, and he uses ashes from the fire and rendered fat, and he makes bars of soap. They're now about six weeks into their time on the island, and things are looking pretty good. For being trapped on an island. They have a house that's strong and it's cozy. It keeps them warm. They have basically unlimited meat from the seals. And maybe it's because the big project of the house is done, they have a little bit less to focus on. But they start to have interpersonal problems. And the main social problem is one end of the house is draftier than the other end. And Captain Musgrave takes the good end of the house for himself and Raynal, because they're officers and leaves the drafty side for Alec and George and Harry, who don't like this at all. They're like, we are in this situation together. We're not still on the ship. You can't just give orders. You can't just pull rank like that. This stresses the captain out because he's like, it's a pending mutiny. And he's also pretty defensive because he feels like he's been sharing equally with the men. Like he had tobacco that was just his, but he's divided it up among all of them, and so he feels like they should be maybe a little bit more grateful. He writes in his journal, I've worked as hard as any of them. In making them comfortable. But you might as well look for the grace of God in a Highland man's logbook as gratitude in a sailor. Musgrave is also struggling psychologically way more than the other guys. He has these really long bouts of crying. He refers to it as severe melancholy. I don't know if it would be accurate to say he's depressed. I always think of the book the Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon, where he writes, and I'm paraphrasing this, but he says basically that grief is depression in proportion to circumstance, and depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. To me, it seems like Musgrave's melancholy, his sadness, is in proportion to circumstance. He's trapped on an island. He is the only one who has a wife and kids at home. So he feels guilty because he's not there taking care of them. And he also feels responsible for the fact that all the other guys are trapped there, too. He's leading a group of men who could realistically all die. But he also writes in his journal that he has, throughout his life, suffered from this kind of melancholy before, which makes me think that maybe through the lens of today, through the language we tend to use today, we would say that he's a person who struggles with depression. Either way, Raynal is thinking about all these dynamics, and he comes up with an idea. Raynal is fundamentally an egalitarian. He believes that all people should be equal. But he also believes that it's helpful to have a leader, an official leader, and he could sort of see why the captain is feeling a little bit insulted. He gathers the other four men together, and he says, look, here's my perspective. We're all equal here, so let's vote equally on a leader. And to be clear, this leader is not going to be a superior. They're going to be a public servant. They're going to be someone whose judgment we trust. So if there's an emergency and someone has to make a decision really fast and we all need to listen, that's going to be the leader's job. The men consider this, and they're like, okay, we like it. But let's add two rules. Rule one is that if someone won't listen to the leader, they can get exiled temporarily. They can go in timeout. And also, if we feel that the leader is taking advantage of his position, or if he's not doing a good job, we can impeach him and we can elect a new leader. This sounds good. Everyone agrees, and then they vote on a new leader, and the vote is unanimous. And when I first read this, I thought, oh, they must have voted unanimously for Raynal because he's the guy with all the good ideas. But no, they voted unanimously for Captain Musgrave. And I think this is really revealing because looking back on these events, like reading Musgrave's journal and Raynal's journal, it could be easy to get the impression that Musgrave is sort of living in his own mind, that he's distracted, that he's struggling so much that he's not able to be present. But the fact that everyone voted for him suggests that he must be a great leader in ways that are not necessarily captured in the journals. That he continues to be kind and respectful and wise and deeply devoted to the crew. And they all trust him with their lives. But they also want their status on the island to be recognized as different from what it was on the ship. And so this form of micro democracy solves all their social problems at once. But Reynal is not done. He has another idea that he proposes and he says, I think we should all take turns being the cook and housekeeper for a week at a time, because that's sort of a dirty job. It's boring, it's thankless. Harry was the cook on the ship, but it is really not fair for him to have to be the full time cook now that they're stranded. And here Raynald does something else that's brilliant because he volunteers for the first week as housekeeper and then he immediately reframes things. So he's doing better physically now. And instead of being like, ugh, I just have the dirty job this week, he pours himself into going way above and beyond. So he wakes up super early and he goes fishing and he catches some cod, which is sort of like a treat for the guys. And he gets hundreds of mussels off the rocks, and he prepares this elaborate multi course feast with fried fish and seal and boiled mussels and a bouquet of fresh flowers on the table. And he sweeps the house and he organizes everything. He refreshes the moss in their beds. And like, from then on, suddenly being a housekeeper isn't drudgery. It's like a chance to show off, a chance to impress everyone else and celebrate them. And now the men, when they have this job, they're competing and they're trying to really impress each other, which is obviously great for morale. For instance, on Reynal's last day as housekeeper, the last day of the week, he goes and gets barrels from the ship and he brings them back to the house and he painstakingly heats the pot after pot after pot of water over the fire. And then he makes it so that when the men get back from hunting, every one of them has a hot bath waiting. Like, can you imagine being in this situation? And you all have clean hot baths. Everyone's ecstatic. It's the most luxurious thing they can imagine. They're also trying to make the island homey in other ways. So the days are getting shorter and the evenings are getting longer. They're spending more time inside by lamplight. And they institute a school, a night school, and they start taking turns teaching each other things that they want to learn and also that they want to teach. Harry and Alec are learning to read and write, and meanwhile they're teaching the other men how to speak Portuguese and Norwegian. George is trapped on a desert island taking a math class every night. Raynal writes, these new relations still further united us by alternately raising and lowering us one above the other. They really kept us on a level and created a perfect equality amongst us. His diary is showing that these dynamics he's creating are not by accident. He's being incredibly intentional about what's best for morale, both individually and as a group. The men are also getting really weak and they're losing weight rapidly because even though they have a lot of calories, they're only eating seal meat and sea lion meat. So they're basically on the Atkins diet. Like, they can't keep weight on their bodies. And also, if you learn anything from this podcast, it's that seal and sea lion meat is an acquired taste. It's very potent, so it's not like their favorite thing to eat. They start toxicity testing plants, which is a process by which you basically try new plants over a period of time to see if they're going to poison you or not. Like, if there's a plant you want to know about, on day one, maybe you touch it to the inside of your wrist where your skin is a little bit sensitive, and. And then you wait 24 hours and see if you get any irritation. And if you don't, then the next day you touch the plant to your mouth and you wait a day and then you lick it and then you chew it and spit it out and then you swallow a tiny amount. And after every escalation you're waiting a full day to see if you have any negative effects. Now, this is not something that I would ever recommend doing in a non survival situation, because even if things seem like they're fine, you don't know if a plant is going to have long term effects or cumulative effects. You just don't know really if it's okay. But luckily they are able to find a plant that has these huge fuzzy brown leaves and these really thick, woody, fuzzy stems. And this plant seems to agree with them. And it is plentiful. It's all over. It's kind of sweet tasting. So they name it sacchari. And they discover that they can grate the stems. They make a grater out of metal with holes punched in it and they can fry the grated stems like hash browns, basically. And in this way, thank goodness, they're able to get some starch and some fiber and vitamin C in their diet. The sacchari also has this interesting effect of like making their teeth super white. The more they eat it, the whiter their teeth get. They do an experiment and they manage to ferment the sacchari into beer, which they're very happy about. And when that works, they try to make liquor out of it. And they draw these playing cards out of paper that they like stiffen with flour and water. Liquor and playing cards is obviously a slippery slope into vice. And Captain Musgrave and Raynal in their journals, both independently claim to be the one who threw the playing cards into the fire to save them all from the vice of gambling. And Raynal pours out the liquor. And from then on, the men stay on the straight and narrow. They stay wholesome and they stick to beer and chess and dominoes instead. They start to have a different relationship with the animals around them too. Like they've, they've always liked the birds. But Harry, who's the youngest, he's only 20, starts raising two baby parrots who start living inside the house with them, like eating meals at the table. And they get attached to the seals and the sea lions too. There's certain seals that they see a lot and they get to know and they give them names. Like, one of them is named Christmas Day. And there's this giant male sea lion who just seems to rule the seal colony on a nearby island. And he's just surrounded always by female sea lions and babies. He's ferocious and he's tough and he opens his mouth and roars when they get close. And he's old and scarred and he's missing teeth. And they name him Royal Tom because he really seems like sea lion royalty. They're just in awe of Royal Tom. Like he's their neighbor, he's their friend, they admire him, They've learned to hunt the younger animals because they taste better. But they start feeling really bad about this too. Like eventually they realize that if they hunt a baby seal, the moms will go back to that spot day after day, sometimes for weeks. And a lot of their journals from this period of time are just descriptions of the seals and sea lions and birds that they've gotten to know. Like they even bring an orphan seal pup home to the house and they have this whole conversation like, can we keep him? And the only reason they don't keep him is because they realize they wouldn't be able to catch enough fish to feed him and to keep him healthy. They've been on the island for five months now and this seems like such a dramatic transformation from when they first got here and they looked around and saw the seals and just thought about killing them for money. And now they're looking around and they feel bad about the fact that they even have to eat any of them. Captain Musgrave has been holding out hope that someone's going to come look for them. And when they reach that six month mark, he really has to accept that that's, that's not going to happen. No one's coming. Maybe next October when it starts getting warmer again. But in the meantime they're getting to have to make it through the sub Antarctic winter. It's going to get cold and they are quickly running through all the firewood around their house and the seals around their house. They have to go much farther for wood, they're burning so much every day. And when they need more seals, they take their dinghy to the colony on the nearby island and they visit their friend Royal Tom. They really feel like they're getting to know this sea lion. Like especially Harry, the youngest guy, he starts playing games with Royal Tom. Like they'll sort of get close, close to him and Royal Tom will glump toward him and they'll try to like splash him and get him wet and he'll roar back. Captain Musgrave is telling Harry, don't do that. Don't bother him, don't disturb the seals. But he also secretly doesn't really think it bothers Royal Tom. Like he thinks kind of they're both enjoying it. And he's also really glad that Harry's finding ways to stay light hearted. The island has always had frequent storms, but as winter's approaching, these storms are getting old. Worse. There's thunder rolling over them. The whole landscape feels like it's vibrating lightning flashing all over. The waves are getting stronger. So there's this constant rumbling and crackling of waves on the beach moving the rocks around. The trees are swaying and cracking in the wind. Branches are breaking off. One day they wake up and go outside and the island is covered in snow and all the seals and sea lions are just pouring into the ocean. They're all leaving at once. The water is boiling with them. There's so many. And they're headed out to sea. The men jump in their dinghy and they row as fast as they can for the nearby seal colony. They're desperately hoping there's still a few seals around they can hunt. But it's deserted. The rocks and the beaches are bare. They're snow covered. They wade into the water to look for mussels. And the mussels are gone too, just like that, literally overnight. They're out of food. And this begins a very difficult series of winter months. They're eating some meat that they've salted and dried, but it's rancid. They try to eat it anyway and they're getting sick. They're losing weight really fast. Musgrave starts obsessively climbing this nearby hill and just staying at the top of it for hours. Day after day, just looking in every direction at the horizon, watching for ships on the ocean. But the ocean's always empty. The men take turns going for hunting parties and they keep coming back empty handed. The only bright spot in this time is that they start seeing the aurora on clear nights. Just these swaths of red and pink and green dancing overhead. It's so bright that even the snow around them gets tinged with pink and green and these shifting colors. But the beauty of the lights is not enough. They are starving. They're demoralized. They don't even have it in them to keep up with their evening classes. They just eat whatever bite of dinner they might or might not have, a little shred of rancid meat and they go right to bed and try to sleep so they can't feel their empty stomachs. Of course, Raynal is still working on his inventions. He's been tanning seal skins through this really time consuming process and they're finally ready to use. He decides that what they really need urgently are shoes. New shoes. Their shoes are completely falling apart. And he sews the leather together using thread that he makes from the main hair of male sea lions. This is definitely a process of trial and error. So like the first pair of shoes he makes that looks actually pretty good. He has formed the leather around these wooden lasts. These like foot shaped pieces of wood. And he realizes when he's done that the lasts are bigger than the opening in the shoes, so he has to just slice them completely open and start over. He makes new lasts that can be broken into pieces to take them out. And he makes new shoes. And finally, he says, this is a quote. At the end of a week's hard labor, I had produced a pair which perhaps a village cobbler's apprentice might have induced a ploughman to accept for wearing in the furrowed fields. But even then, the plowman must have been very simple. Eventually, they all have new shoes, which is great, but they're still starving, and on clear days, they're taking the dinghy out, just desperately looking for any seals. They're rowing around and around the little islands, and one day, Captain Musgrave hushes them. He says, I think I heard something. Everyone listen. They hear over the sound of the waves, the calling of a single sea lion. And they row toward it and find, sure enough, on the rocks, there's a single individual, and it's Royal Tom. He's lying on the beach where he used to be, surrounded by all the other sea lions, the females and the babies who would always hang out with him. But he's all alone, and he's clearly sick. He's lethargic. He can't move very well. And he sees them approaching in the dinghy, and he opens his mouth and he roars, just like he always did before. But now he's missing even more teeth, and the teeth that are left in his mouth are black. The men approach him with tears in their eyes, and instead of roaring back and playing with him, they pull up on land and they hesitate and look at Royal Tom. And Royal Tom's looking at them. And then they kill him. And they're able to eat for one more week. They're all struggling, but Musgrave in particular is really depressed. He's afraid that he's losing his mind. He writes in his journal that he may be going mad and that he was mad once before. The other men don't know that, but they do see that he's constantly roaming the island, that he's obsessively watching the sea. He's not sleeping at night. He stays up all night long in case a ship comes, even though there's no reason to think that it will. Musgrave writes in his journal that week passes on after week, another one has passed, like its predecessors, and thus, I suppose, it will continue till time shall be no more. Musgrave even suggests that he and Raynal row out to sea in the dinghy and just die faster that way, which terrifies the other men. They beg him not to do that, and they promise, okay, okay, we won't. But it's still a terrifying suggestion to even bring up. Once again, I think we have to read between the lines here a little bit, because Raynal's and Musgrave's journal are talking about how poorly Musgrave is doing, but the men are still choosing to keep him as their leader. They have the ability to choose a different leader, and they don't. They have faith in Musgrave. They believe in him, and ultimately they believe in his judgment. But they're definitely worried. They're spending so much time just trapped in their house by the light of little lamps, by the light of the fire, while wind is buffeting the outside. It smells terrible in there. Like Seal and Bo, they keep the fire going constantly for warmth, so the air is really dry. Their eyes hurt from the dry air and their lips are cracking and bleeding. They're using seal oil to soothe their skin. Musgrave also eats something that doesn't agree with him, like some. Some old mussels they find or a bit of rotten meat. And he gets incredibly sick to his stomach, vomiting and diarrhea. And you can only imagine how bad the house smells then. But also, this really scares Raynal in particular, because he's the one who's been dealing with this ongoing illness, and even though he's mostly doing better physically these days, he is constantly terrified that the other men will get sick or that, God forbid, they will somehow catch what he has. He writes, I have experienced, on the appearance of the slightest indisposition, a terrible fear. I am persuaded that the death of any one of us in our present circumstances would more injuriously affect the morale of the others and perhaps be attended with fatal consequences to all of us. Raynal, of course, is Mr. Sunshine. So for him to talk about being scared like that, fear must be bone deep. Eventually, Musgrave feels better from his food poisoning, and Raynal once again gathers the men and makes an announcement. He's like, look. It's clear now beyond a doubt that the world has abandoned us. Nobody has come looking. Our financiers have not sent help, and that means we should just decide right now that we're going to save ourselves. The men are looking at him like he's speaking in tongues. They're probably terrified that he's suggesting suicide now, too. But Reynal's like, look, listen, to me, we made a house, we made cement, we made soap, we made shoes. What else are we going to do? Just wait to die? Let's make a ship and sail across the ocean in it. The men are like, a, we don't have any tools, and B, New Zealand is 285 miles away across the stormy sea. Like, what are we going to do? Make a raft? They say, no, no, no, no, this isn't an option. But Raynal knows that Musgrave would rather go to sea on a log than keep living on the island. And he thinks he can convince the other guys. He says the most powerful argument would be a successful beginning. The men think it's impossible to build a ship because they don't have tools. Okay, fine. All Raynal has to do is build a forge and an anvil and a bellows. Just a whole blacksmithing workshop from scratch, from nothing. And then he can just make some carpenter's tools and, you know, there you go. Out of all these things, he needs the bellows seems the most challenging because he needs to build what's called a double lung bellows, which is basically a device that is constantly shooting a jet of air. The next morning he gets up really, really early, before any of the men are awake, and he wades out to the wreck and yanks some copper off of it right before the tide comes in. He folds the copper into a tube for the air to shoot through. And he shapes some pieces of wood and then he makes these like accordion, like soft sides out of seal skin. And he attaches it all together with tiny pegs and nails. And he goes back to his friends and he's like, well, would you look at that? I made a bellows. What do you say about building a ship? Now this time they are all in. They can't believe it. And I think there's something really powerful here in Reynal's leadership that he's not just telling them to work. He doesn't do that at all. It's all about him taking the initiative. And then the men get so excited that they want to join in. But still, building this forge, making enough tools, building it all from scratch is going to take an astronomical amount of work. And the problem now is that it's basically taking them full time effort just to stay alive. Like back when they built the house, they were able to take the time to build it because they had food supplies from the ship, prepared foods. But now they're living totally subsistence and it takes all of their time to hunt and fish and cook and wash and repair things. George and Harry, the youngest, they sort of talk to each other and they raise their hands and they're like, we'll do it. And the other guys are like, what? And George and Harry are like, you3 build a ship from scratch. And the two of us working together are going to do every single other thing that needs to be done to keep, keep you fed, clothed, sheltered. Between the two of us, we're going to do five full time jobs. We're going to give it everything we got. This is incredibly moving and inspiring to Alec and Musgrave and Raynal. And Alec volunteers. He says, well, I'm going to take on the job of fueling the forge. That's going to take all day and all night because I'm going to have to make so much charcoal and build this enclosed furnace that's buried in peat and keep it burning intensely, even though the peat is just constantly going to be cracking and falling apart. And it'll need to be refreshed along with the fuel, which I need to just keep shoveling in there. And Reynal's like, great, okay, I'll take the lead on making the tools. And Musgrave is going to just sort of float around helping all of us. It takes weeks until the forge is ready for raw materials. They have this rusty iron ballast they managed to pull out of the ship. And Reynal's first challenge is to make a pair of iron tongs that he can use as a tool to to turn over the pie pieces of hot iron in order to shape it into other tools. But until he has the tongs, he won't have a good way to turn over the pieces of hot metal which he needs to do in order to make the tongs. When I read this, I about lost my mind with excitement because it corresponds to one of my favorite facts in the universe, which is that in the Talmud, which is not like a single authoritative text, it's like a record of centuries of disagreements. One of those disagreements is how the world's first tongs came to be. Because it takes tongs to make tongs. And after extensive discussion, several rabbis end up agreeing that after God made the heaven and the earth and the sea, lions and Adam and Eve, et cetera, et cetera, the last thing God made before resting was the world's first pair of tongs. So I couldn't believe it when I was researching this story and Reynal had to make tongs without tongs. But he does it someh somehow he makes them. And how I don't know. Nobody knows. The only people who have ever made tongs without tongs are apparently God and Reynal. But this miracle occurs pretty soon. He has three pairs of tongs and a mold for making nails and a hammer and a chisel and a bunch of other tools. And the men are working from dawn until late into the night. They're going to build a 35 foot ship with a deck and sails. They want to use timbers from the wreck of the Grafton. So they're, they're bringing this wood onshore. But they realize that a lot of it is just rotten and brittle from being in the water for a year. And they run into another obstacle because they're trying to make an auger. And Reynal is trying again and again, but he cannot manage to successfully make the twisted metal tip of the drill. So between these two challenges, they, they realized with horror that this isn't going to work. They can't build their ship even if they had enough supplies. It would take them literally years to build it. So Raynal comes back to the men and he has, he has a new proposition. He says, look, instead of making a new ship from scratch, what if we use our dinghy as a base? Like, I know it's only 12ft long, but maybe we can build up the walls higher and we can give it a deck and, and we can go to sea in that instead. That idea seems terrifying, but they also can't think of another solution. Even though the dinghy is only a quarter as long as they'd want it to be in order to safely go to sea. They spend months making nails, literally months before they have enough iron nails that they can even start building it up. The nails have to be super precise and sharp because otherwise they'll make the wood splinter. And wood is precious, too. Everything they have is precious. They can't use the planks from the Grafton, so they just also build a sawmill from scratch, which I'm not even going to go into the details of this. It's ridiculous, but they just make a sawmill. They're also starving and they all get dysentery. And it's getting warmer now and the flies are worse, but they keep working anyway. They have to stitch new sails and they make a deck on the dinghy with, with these holes, kind of with skirts attached to the holes made of canvas so they can be like tied into the deck itself. Like their, their lower bodies are under the deck and their upper bodies will be above it. Finally, they have a new tiny ship that's 17ft long. To give you context, this ship, which they are going to take out into the open ocean, is the length of an suv. They might encounter waves that are three to four times higher than the length of the ship itself. And there also isn't room for all five of them to go on the ship. So even though they do not want to split up, they decide that only Musgrave and Reynal and Alec are going to see. And George and Harry, who are good friends, are going to stay on the island alone. Their goodbye on the beach is incredibly difficult. These men have lived together for almost two years. They have relied on each other every single day. They've lived in the same room, they sleep beside each other, they love each other, and they really don't expect to ever see each other again. The odds are very high that this mission is a suicide mission. Captain Musgrave and Raynal and Alec are going to give it their all, but they're prepared to die at sea. George and Harry expect that pretty soon they're going to be the last remaining survivors. And then eventually they'll probably die too. So they are sobbing on the beach, just clinging to each other, covered in flies. They hold hands and they pray. And then the three of them step off land for what might be the very last time. And they get into this tiny ship and they fasten their lower bodies under the deck and they take off, looking back until all they can see is this little thread of smoke from the house rising up into the sky. There's a cold wind coming from Antarctica and as long as it keeps up, they think they can make this trip to New Zealand in about 60 hours. But it starts hailing and their upper bodies are completely unprotected. And pretty soon the ship is being thrown violently by waves. They're so sick and nauseous they can't even sip water. This storm goes on for hours, until dusk falls and the water that's just crashing violently all around them is glowing with phosphorescence. The white caps are glowing blue. It's like they're inside the stars. A monstrous wave that seems to stretch up into the sky starts rolling toward them and then it crashes down on them and their boat flips upside down. They start spinning under the water. If they weren't tied into the deck, they would be gone, they would be lost. Water is pouring down their throats. They're choking on salt. And just when they're running out of air and they're going to pass out or die, the little ship heaves back up the ballast they've put inside. It works. And they're upright again. And almost instantly their wet clothes are starting to freeze solid around them in the cold air. This terrible fight with the ocean goes on for days. Four days and four nights without any sleep, without any food, until they're so weak that even if they saw land, they wouldn't be able to row toward it. On the evening of the fifth day, the sky clears and the waves settle. There's a light breeze and in the distance they see a line of land. At first they think they're hallucinating. But they get closer, it's still there. And they sail into a bay. They see trees and meadows and cliffs. They don't see any signs of people. It seems like they're landing in another wilderness. But as they get closer, they start seeing houses. There are women and kids spreading fish nets out on the beach to dry. There's a man walking with a Newfoundland. The dog looks up and he sees the little nutshell of a ship and he starts to bark. And the people look up when the dog starts barking. And they see the men and they wade into the water and they carry them to land. They carry them into a house and they feed them warm bread, fresh bread and potatoes, pork cutlets. They give them a hot bath. The three men can barely believe this is real. They fall into the deepest sleep they've ever had. When they wake up, they're in different beds and they're at sea again. They're so confused and disoriented and they realize that the man who found them, the man whose house they fell asleep in, has carried them down onto his own ship and he's sailing them to the mainland where they can get help and better medical care. Before too long, they pull up at the marina of a big town. There's so much energy and excitement. There's horse drawn carriages. There's women leading cows down the street. There's the sound of wooden clogs on cobblestones. Chatter. People are selling food. People are rushing all around them. They're trying to see who these new strangers are. They're asking them a million questions so fast. They're telling them they're safe now. But Musgrave and Reynal and Alec are in this very strange, surreal state because they're on land, they're with people, they have food. They're overwhelmed with joy and relief. But the relief is shallow because they won't feel that they're safe until they know that George and Harry are safe too. They go directly to the local government and they're like, we need to launch a rescue mission immediately. Our friends are counting the hours. They might starve by the time we get there. The government tells them, and this is a quote, they will take the matter into consideration. And at a later date, Captain Musgrave is like, yeah, no, take me to your boss. So then they talk to someone higher up in the government, and that guy also says, we don't have the budget. We can't go save George and Harry at this point. The whole town is now invested in this saga. And they are like, the hell? You will not leave those men on the island. We're going to do it ourselves. And they set up a collection. By the next day, there's enough money for the entire rescue mission. They can pay to send a rescue ship back for George and Harry. Plus, they've donated clothes and food and medications. Musgrave and Reynal and Alec are not in good shape. They have serious infections. They're sick, they're weak. So originally they're not going to go on the mission. But they realize that there are no other captains around, no other ship's captains who have the qualifications and the skills to cross the ocean. And so Musgrave steps up and he goes, I'm going right back out to sea. I'm not going to stop and recover. First we're turning around and we're going to get George and Harry. Now, their little dinghy is obviously inadequate, but they can't find a good ship either. So the guy who saved them is like, you can use my ship. It's not great, but it's okay. Basically, immediately, Captain Musgrave gets on that ship. He packs it with supplies. A couple other volunteers come on and they go directly to sea to rescue the others. It takes weeks to reach Auckland island because they are constantly blown off course by storms. But finally they see it in the distance. And Captain Musgrave sees something that disturbs him because he sees what looks like a thread of smoke coming from a different end of the island, not the place where they live. But as they get closer, he can't see it at all. He thinks maybe it was a trick of the eyes. He sails around to their side of the island and it's so misty and foggy that he actually goes ashore and starts walking uphill. And he's at the door of the house before George and Harry realize he's there. When they realize that Captain Musgrave is there, they just break down. Harry is clutching the wall. He thinks he's going to pass out. From emotion. He can't even speak. Harry, who talks all the time, can't speak. And George just starts violently shaking Musgrave's hand again and again, up and down. It turns out that they'd seen those terrible storms that came right after Musgrave and Raynal and Alec left. And so they had just assumed that the three men had drowned and that it was a matter of time for them, too. They had actually considered killing themselves together just to get it over with faster. They'd gotten so low on food that they were also trying to hunt mice just for single mouthfuls of meat. Also, according to Reynald, George stood up at the end of this conversation and said, harry hasn't told you everything. We actually fought and we decided to live on opposite sides of the island, but it was my fault. And Harry's like, no, it was my fault. And George is like, no, no, no, it wasn' you, it was me. And they start arguing about who caused the argument. They're just all so overjoyed. The relief is unimaginable. As they're leaving the island on the ship, Captain Musgrave can't stop thinking about the smoke that he thought he saw when he was coming in. He's like, did I hallucinate it? What if someone else is trapped on the other side of the island? And I don't think I clarified this, but the island is like. It's narrow, but it's like 25 miles long. So there's definitely areas they haven't explored. When they leave, he insists that they spend a couple extra days inspecting the other side of the island. They find a cove and they pull in and they start walking on the beach looking for signs of people. Musgrave is walking along the shore, and George and Harry go uphill. After a little while, George and Harry start running down the hill yelling Musgrave's name. They're like, captain, Captain, we found a body. Musgrave follows them uphill, and sure enough, there's a tiny wooden house with a dead man in it. And the man is freshly dead. He has not been there for long. He's wearing a huge amount of clothing, like five men's worth of clothes. Like a coat on top of a coat on top of a coat. And he's lying on a wooden plank that's covered in moss. And there's a slate next to him with a note written on it. And all they can make out is one word. The name James. How long has this other man been on the island with them? How long ago, did he die? They dig a grave and they bury him and they build a huge fire. They think if there's someone else here, maybe they'll see the fire and come. But nobody comes, and there's no other signs of living humans. So eventually, they sail back to New Zealand. The five survivors reunite. They're all together once more, and then they go their separate ways. Alec and George keep working as sailors. That's how they know how to make a living. Harry moves very far inland and he becomes a sheep farmer. He never sets foot on the ocean again. Raynal gets passage on a ship back to France. He reunites with his parents, who are still alive. He regrets ever leaving them. He moves back in at home, and he becomes a vocal proponent of egalitarianism and democracy. He shares the story of the island as a case for equality among people. He says, look, we survived because all our voices were heard, because we treated each other as equal. That's what all of society should be like. As for Captain Musgrave, he is consumed by the thought of this other man who was on the island with them. And he petitions the government to go back one more time and check for castaways. He's successful in funding that trip, and he makes it himself. And even though they don't find anyone, he leaves these, basically packages of supplies on the island, these emergency depots that have food and medicine and guns and supplies. He puts notes on the depots that say, the curse of the widow and the fatherless light upon the man who breaks open this box whilst he has a ship at his back. I can't explain how much I love that. He's just like, if you misuse these supplies, you're cursed. That's. That's the punishment. You are cursed now, but it works. Over the next decades, 29 different men in multiple shipwrecks end up being wrecked on the islands. And every one of them lives because of the supplies that Musgrave put there. He, of course, reunites with his beloved wife and kids, and they're overjoyed. They didn't think they'd ever see him again. He has a bit of a dilemma because he doesn't want to be separated from his family now, not for long. But also the way that he supports them is by being a captain. So he ends up getting a job as a captain on a ship whose whole mission is to sail between remote islands, rescuing castaways, searching for and rescuing people who are in trouble. He's not just making a living and supporting his family, but he's also devoting his life and his work to making sure that other families can see their loved ones again and stay together. There's two things that really stand out to me about this story, two reasons I wanted to share it. Yes, all five of the men are very clearly heroes, but the two leaders have what we would probably call now chronic physical and mental illnesses. Raynal spends a lot of his time very, very weak and sick to the point where he can't even stand up. This illness comes back cyclically for him again and again. And Captain Musgrave, by his own description, has suffered from melancholy his whole life. He is afraid of his own mind and that hits him with a vengeance on the island. But for both of them, these conditions in no way diminish their ability to be magnificent leaders. And every single member of this five person team is integral. They never, ever, ever see each other's challenges as burdens. They see it as their responsibility to take care of each other completely as much and maybe more than they're caring for themselves. And it is because of this, not in spite, but because of this, that all five of them manage to survive in what I believe is the most successful survival story I've ever heard. I also find this story extraordinarily moving because it's not just about this incredible love and teamwork that gets them through the ordeal together, but the fact that they take that care and they bring it back to the rest of the world. Reynal is fighting for equality in France. Captain Musgrave is single handedly trying to rescue and protect every shipwrecked sailor he can possibly find and any sailors who might be shipwrecked in the future. In the last episodes about Ada Blackjack, we talked a bit about how trauma isn't a lesson. It doesn't make people better. In fact, it's common for people who experience trauma and especially cruelty by other humans to become more self absorbed, more defensive because they've learned that no one else is going to put them first. So they have to do that. I believe what we learn the most from is kindness, especially kindness in spite, kindness when we're not expecting it. Obviously this time on the island was extremely traumatic for these five men. But the lesson that stayed with them was the brotherhood, was the love that they poured into one another despite everything that happened. They were cared for because they cared for each other. They learned firsthand that you can get through so much suffering through care for other people. That's not just what carried them through their time on the island. It's what they carried through the rest of their lives. And it's the reminder that I take from this story too. Now, in our next episode, we are going to be learning about the opposite what happens when a crew is shipwrecked and instead of looking out for each other, they are dead set on only looking out for themselves. We're also going to learn through that story about how that fresh dead body ended up on the same island at the same time as this week's crew. Thank you so much for joining me today. And thank you also to those of you who have taken time to review and comment and share the word about the podcast. I just am completely honored to be sharing this time and these stories with you. Sources for this episode include the book island of the Lost by Joan Druitt, Captain Musgrave's journal as recorded in the book Castaway on the Aucklands, the Wreck of the Grafton from the private Journals of Thomas Musgrave and the book Wrecked on a reef or 20 months on the Auckland Islands by Francois Reynal. Original music and audio production are by Brandon Chabell and everything else, research, writing, narration is by me. Talk to you next time. Sa.