Tom Neale

Thomas Francis Neale was born in Wellington, New Zealand, but his family moved to Greymouth while he was still a baby, and then to Timaru when he was seven years old.

After a few months back in Timaru in 1928, Neale returned to the Pacific and settled in Moorea, Tahiti, where he lived until 1943, supporting himself with odd jobs and enjoying a private life.

In 1945, Neale had the opportunity to visit Suwarrow briefly when a ship dropped in stores for the World War II coast-watchers living there.

In October 1952 he had an opportunity to book a passage on a ship passing close to Suwarrow, uninhabited since the end of the war.

[1] The boat dropped him off with two cats and all the supplies he could scrape together on the islet of Anchorage, about a mile long and a few hundred feet wide.

The visitors gave Neale a new plan: to rebuild the pier which had been built on Anchorage during the Second World War, but which had been wrecked during a hurricane in 1942.

A couple on a yacht arrived at the atoll not knowing of his existence, discovered him in pain, and were able to nurse him back to health.

British author Noel Barber heard of Neale's life on the island from a report by the United States Navy and paid him a visit.

This decision was due in part to a group of pearl divers who paid periodic visits to Suwarrow; he had found their presence increasingly hard to tolerate.

1964, June von Donop, a former accountant from Honolulu, lived alone in his house on Suwarrow for a week, while her crewmates on the schooner Europe stayed on board their vessel.

In 1965–66 Michael Swift lived alone on Suwarrow, but he was not familiar with survival techniques and had a hard time finding sufficient food.