A study in chaos and cooperation

IMAGINE two bands of shipwrecked sailors washed up on opposite sides of a deserted island about 300 miles south of New Zealand. Little food lands with them, and supplies are limited to what they can scavenge from their shattered vessels. There is no communication with the outside world.

Call it “Survivor: Auckland Island.” Except this story goes reality TV a few steps better. There’s nothing contrived -- the shipwrecks were real, happening within a few months of each other in 1864, with the stranded crewmen struggling for their lives on Auckland Island, a storm-battered, sub-Antarctic map-speck far off the regular South Pacific sailing routes.

How these two groups of sailors fared lies at the heart of Joan Druett’s new book, “Island of the Lost.” Using survivors’ published memoirs and other records of the time, Druett details how one group cast aside its class perceptions and survived, while the other -- unable to make the necessary social adaptations -- dissolved into deadly chaos. “MacGyver” meets “Lord of the Flies.”

The first ship, the schooner Grafton, left Sydney, Australia, to chase a legend -- rich tin deposits on Campbell Island, another remote speck in the South Pacific. Once there, the five-man crew found nothing, so they changed their mission to seal hunting and made for Auckland Island, where a violent storm and a weak anchor chain conspired to heave the ship onto the rocks on Jan. 3, 1864.

All five sailors made it to shore, where over the next few weeks they turned into a commune, with the ship’s captain the elected leader but all pitching in on decisions and strategies for freeing themselves. Ultimately, they stripped their ship’s carcass, built a cabin and rigged up a small forge to make the nails and other metal bits they needed to craft a small sailboat. More than a year later, three sailed off to freedom and to summon rescuers for the other two.

Unknown to the Grafton’s crew, on the other side of the island a storm blew another, larger ship -- the Invercauld, sailing from Melbourne to South America -- onto the rocks in May 1864. Of the 25 men aboard, 19 made it to shore, including the captain and first mate, but the ship was nearly obliterated by the waves.

The Invercauld crew’s shipboard hierarchy survived for a time, but with the captain and first mate incapable of leading on dry land, the band fell apart. One by one they succumbed to disease, starvation and exposure until only three were left -- the captain, the first mate and the inventive 23-year-old Robert Holding, who saw the disaster in the making and distanced himself from the others as some began cannibalizing the dead.

Ultimately, Holding proved to be the savior of the captain and first mate, taking charge and finding shelter and food for all three and positioning them where they could see -- and be seen by -- a passing ship. Eventually they were spotted and plucked from the island, moments after the captain, returning to form, ordered Holding to remain silent as the rescuers approached. Once aboard, the captain and mate bunked with the ship’s officers, and Holding was relegated to the crowded crew’s quarters, the caste system intact.

The different fates of the two crews stand as a clear morality tale about the pitfalls of rigidity and the benefits of adaptability and cooperation.

Druett, who has written other works of nautical history and a maritime mystery series, wisely lets the details make the point, resisting the temptation to oversell. Her writing style is clear and detached, her touch just right once she settles into the story.

One quibble: At the end of the book, Druett explains her sourcing, but the book itself is devoid of footnotes. Although that helps smooth the narrative, it leads to nagging questions about what details were gleaned from memoirs and what the author imagines from what is known about the circumstances. The opening scene in particular rings hollow, as Druett describes as though she were there the two leaders of the Grafton expedition while they search the Sydney wharves for a ship to buy.

But the power of the crews’ divergent stories overshadows those issues and propels the narrative like a trade wind.

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scott.martelle@latimes.com

Martelle is the author of the forthcoming “Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West.”