In which there was nothing romantic or touching, as we saw in the films “The Blue Lagoon” or “Cast Away”. This is a difficult test that not everyone can cope with.
Everything is very painful, prosaic and the chances of not dying after surviving a shipwreck are very small. But the people in this selection succeeded. But at what cost...
Ada Blackjack
Ada with her son
The Inuit girl Ada (nee Delutuk) did not live the most fun life. Of the three children, only one survived, and a short time later the young husband also died. She had no choice and had to give her son to an orphanage in order to go earn money. Alan Crawford from Canada offered the girl to work as a seamstress and cook on an Arctic expedition.
Five people: Alan, Ada, polar explorers Fred Maurer, Lorne Knight and Milton Halle left for Wrangel Island on September 16, 1921. They needed to get ahead of the Japanese expedition, who wanted to claim their rights to the island. The winter turned out to be difficult: the food quickly ran out, and the hunt, contrary to the hopes of the team, did not bring results.
Maurer, Halle and Crawford decided to go back home. But Ada refused and stayed with Knight on the island, who was seriously ill and could not move. The expedition cat Vits also stayed with them.
The polar explorers disappeared on the way back. Knight died shortly after their departure. Ada lived alone with her cat for a year and a half. She learned to hunt, live in extreme conditions, and only in 1932 was she rescued from the island by the expedition of Harold Noyce.
Ada returned, took her only son from the orphanage and moved with him to Seattle.
Alexander Selkirk
During the 4 years and 4 months spent on a desert island, the Scottish boatswain was able to cope with all the trials that befell him and became the prototype of that same Robinson Crusoe.
In April 1703, Selkirk participated in a British expedition to the coast of South America and, frankly speaking, within a year he had annoyed the entire crew of the Cinque Ports ship with his scandals.
During the next showdown, Selkirk demanded to be dropped off and Captain Charles Pickering, with a joyful cry, immediately fulfilled his request. The boatswain tried, of course, to take back his words, but the first word is worth more than the second, so... Welcome to the uninhabited island of Ma-a-Terra, Mr. Selkirk.
Fortunately, before the boatswain, settlers had already lived there for some time and they left behind cats and goats. The animals managed to go wild, but Selkirk was in no hurry: he tamed goats, received fresh milk, meat, skins, from which he sewed something like clothing. The cats saved Alexander from rats and were something like friendly company. On the island he found edible berries and wild turnips.
It was not until the beginning of 1709 that the British ship Duke dropped anchor off Mas a Tierra. The crew was surprised to find a completely settled Selkirk on the island. The boatswain was rescued, and upon returning to his homeland he became very famous: all the newspapers wrote about him, and in the pubs where he liked to spend time, there were queues of people wanting to treat him to alcohol and listen to stories.
A few years later, Alexander Selkirk sailed to West Africa as part of the royal fleet and died there of yellow fever.
Gerald Kingsland and Lucy Irwin
This couple ended up on the island solely of their own free will.
Gerald Kinsland, already an elderly British journalist, in the early 1980s, wanted to conduct a social experiment and live one year away from civilization, on a tropical island. In search of his Friday, he wrote an ad in a magazine, which Lucy Irwin responded to.
And so, in 1982, Kingsland and Irwin went to an island located between Australia and New Guinea. But first, they got married to make it easier for themselves to obtain visas.
And only when they were already in Taina, the newlyweds realized that they had nothing in common at all. But on the island there were not only people, but also registry offices (and indeed any official institutions, so, willy-nilly, they had to learn to live together, and even in extreme conditions. Both Gerald and Lucy admitted that the search for mutual understanding turned out to be more difficult for them than any everyday difficulties.
Unfortunately, in 1983, a drought hit the island, and the hermits ran out of fresh water. They were rescued by aborigines from Badu Island, located nearby. After returning to Britain, the couple immediately divorced and both wrote a book. Both of them became real bestsellers: "The Islander" and "Throwaways".
Pavel Vavilov
In 1942, the crew of the icebreaker "Alexander Sibiryakov" entered into battle with the German cruiser Admiral Scheer near Domashny Island (Kara Sea). Almost all passengers and crew either died on board during the fire or were captured.
But the fireman Pavel Vavilov fell into the water later than everyone else, and later was able to climb onto the surviving rescue whaleboat. We were also lucky that it was August 25 and the water was relatively warm. He found biscuits, matches, and a barrel of water in the boat. Vavilov caught warm clothes and a bag of bran from the water, and then headed to the lighthouse signals and found himself on the uninhabited Belukha Island.
For 34 days, the fireman lived on an island where, besides him, there were only cute white bears. Pavel set up a more or less safe home for himself on the upper platform of the lighthouse, ate bran brew and drank melt water, since in September there was already snow in those parts.
Ship "Sacco"
The supplies were running out and, fortunately for the fireman, Vavilov was seen by the crew of the Sacco steamer, which was passing nearby. The seaplane sent to rescue Vavilov was flown by the legendary polar pilot Ivan Cherevichny.
After being rescued, Pavel Vavilov quickly came to his senses and worked on the icebreakers "Lenin" and "Georgiy Sedov".