Thumbs up for Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World by Joan Druett. Nonfiction/survival story.
Long before I ever saw a copy of this book, I was intrigued by the topic: the parallel stories of two crews shipwrecked without mutual knowledge on either side of an island. One crew, due to strong leadership and hard work, escapes with all five men alive and healthy; while the crew of the other ship cannot work together, and of the sixteen who make it to shore, only three survive to be rescued. This seemed a nice thing to read simultaneously with Lord of the Flies. Or maybe not; because this was hugely more interesting than Lord of the Flies (which I still haven’t finished). A fascinating quick-reading adventure with an intriguing psychological angle. The moral here: If you must be shipwrecked, try to be shipwrecked with a good leader and an engineer.
He landed sprawling on the deck, losing his grip of the tiller. The rudder slapped free, and the schooner fell off her course, coming side-on to the force of the waves. A huge breaker reared up as high as the foremast and then crashed viciously down, smashing part of the bulwarks and tipping the hull far over. Crashing noises echoed from below as ten tons of loose sandstone ballast slid in one mass. Suddenly the Grafton fell onto her side, while all men on board held their breaths in terrified suspense. They waited, waited, for her to drop back onto an even keel, but instead she stayed on her starboard side, thumping as she hit the foaming waves. Her deck was slanted too steeply for men to walk on, and the heavy planking of the hull creaked deafeningly, while the strained masts and rigging whined in protest.
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