- Ocean Navigator

Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World
by Eric Jay Dolin (320 pp; Liveright Publishing; $29.99)

Have you ever left your boat at anchor and come back a few hours later to discover it was gone? If you’ve experienced this, you can relate to the five principal characters of “Left For Dead.” Award-winning author Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the true story of the foundering of the British ship, Isabella, which came to grief on the Falkland Islands in 1813.

Like many tragic tales of the sea, this one begins with an inattentive crew, alcohol and a reef in the South Atlantic. All passengers and crew made it to shore to learn that they are on Eagle Island, 1,300 miles from the nearest rescue

The American sailing brig, Nanina, led by Charles Barnard, came across the 54 survivors and, despite the two nations being at war, agreed to give them passage to a British port in South America. When the British rescue ship Nancy arrives and things get complicated.

The Nancy’s Captain, William D’Aranda, tossed aside the written agreement. “He wanted the Nanina to be a prize of war, and the Americans to be prisoners,” wrote Dolin. Barnard and crew are arrested; not a single castaway objected to D’Aranda’s treatment of their erstwhile saviors.

Barnard organized a hunting party to obtain fresh meat for the voyage to Buenos Aires. Imagine their shock when they return to discover that the Nancy has left. Additionally, the Nancy’s crew loaded up most of the supplies that would have assisted the castaways. They were left to face the winter at with scarcely more than the clothes on their backs, a small boat and a dog.

It was the coldest, cruelest act imaginable, being “barbarously deserted” this way with no explanation. But America and Britain were at war and D’Aranda believed to his dying day that this was the appropriate action. Barnard and four men struggle with the elements, and each other, to survive until another ship came by 18 months later.

Gleaning accounts from national archives, memoirs and personal journals, Dolin weaves a tale of greed, deceit, bravery and survival. It’s worth reading just for the story of Barnard’s effort to return home in 1816, four years after the Nanina departed New York.