Castaway

This history is told in Flóamanna saga and Origines Islandicae and occurred during the early years of Viking Greenland, while Leif Ericson was still alive.

For the rest of his life – he died in about 1545 – Lopes stayed on the island, except for two years around 1530, when the Portuguese king helped him travel to Rome, where the Pope granted him absolution for his sin of apostasy.

He then punished two others: the King of Spain's delegate, Juan de Cartagena and the priest, Pedro Sánchez Reina, by marooning them in that desolate place.

[1] A French noblewoman, Marguerite de la Rocque, was marooned in 1542 on an island in the Gulf of St Lawrence, off the coast of Quebec.

In 1629 Jan Pelgrom de Bye van Bemel, a cabin boy, and Wouter Loos, a 24-year-old soldier, had been on board the Dutch ship Batavia.

The ship was famous because it was wrecked on Morning Reef of the Wallabi Group of the Houtman Abrolhos, (off the west coast of Australia) leading to the infamous Batavia Mutiny and mass killings.

However, Jan Pelgrom and Wouter Loos were marooned on the Australian mainland, probably at or near the mouth of Hutt River in Western Australia, on 16 November 1629.

Abel Tasman (after whom Tasmania was named) was subsequently ordered to search for the castaways on his voyage along the coasts of northern Australia in 1643–44 but did not sail that far south.

It has been argued by Rupert Gerritsen in And Their Ghosts May Be Heard and subsequent publications that they survived and had a profound influence on local Aboriginal groups such as the Nhanda and Amangu.

[2] There has been much speculation as to the fate of the 68, who may have ended up east of Geraldton, approximately 350 kilometres to the north, ultimately integrating with the local Aboriginal population.

They found water by digging on an offshore islet, and then killed seals and dried the meat, using the skins to raise the sides of the boat.

Leeman and his three remaining companions then walked the full length of the south coast of Java, through jungle, volcanic country, braving marauding tigers along the way.

When he was hunting for goats in the interior of the island, he suddenly saw his comrades departing in haste after having spotted the approach of enemies, leaving Will behind to survive until he was picked up in 1684.

The Juan Fernández Islands, to which Más a Tierra belongs, would have a more famous occupant in October 1704 when Alexander Selkirk made the decision to stay there.

Selkirk, a sailor with the William Dampier expedition, became concerned about the condition and seaworthiness of the Cinque Ports, the vessel on which he was sailing, and chose to be put ashore on the island.

Being a voluntary castaway, Selkirk was able to gather numerous provisions to help him to survive, including a musket, gunpowder, carpenter's tools, a knife, a Bible, and clothing.

[7] The discovery of a considerable amount of material from the wreck on the scree slope and top of the cliffs established that many people had managed to get off the stricken vessel and on to shore.

In 2002, the full truth of the story was disclosed in a book by Dutch historian Michiel Koolbergen (1953–2002), the first to mention Hasenbosch by name.

From the initial crew of 25, only 19 made it to shore and after more than a year spent on the island only three men survived starvation and cold, being rescued by a ship looking for a shelter to make repairs.

A week after sailing from the Canary Islands on January 19, 1982, Steven Callahan's self-made sloop Napoleon Solo had hit an unknown object during a night storm, he managed to escape into a six man life raft, diving into the sinking boat a few times in order to get the supplies he needed for survival before cutting his raft loose.

Utilising 2 solar stills (a third of which was cut open to find out how they worked) and eating fish, barnacles and birds he captured, he survived for 76 days adrift before reaching the Caribbean, where he was discovered and rescued by local fishermen.

Examples include: Desert Island Discs is a BBC Radio 4 interview show in which the subject is invited to consider themselves as a castaway on a desert island, and then select their eight favourite records, one favourite book (in addition to The Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare), and a luxury inanimate object to occupy their time.