What are communities formed on islands after shipwrecks called?

[Mackaydon]

I think the OP did a 'hit and run'.
Don.....

 

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[KANACKI]

Hola Amigos I can think of a few.

The Pacific ocean is full of them. Palmerston Island started by one lusty sailor and 3 Polynesian wives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmerston_Island

Strange enough the island is owned by no country but the family descendants.

Kanacki

 

[MiddenMonster]

I think the OP did a 'hit and run'.Don.....

Maybe he was setting up for the boogie and got himself shipwrecked.

 

[Crow]

Gidday Amigos

Perhaps he was dreaming of island life?

Truth be told island has it good and bad points. People tend to have a romantic image of what island life is.

Crow

 

[jeff of pa]

called a history channel show .

actually I agree with a colony

of course my first thought was Gilligans Island too

 

[Red-Coat]

The original question specified “shipwrecks” and “islands”, which implies accidental arrival in a remote place with whatever resources could be salvaged from the wreck.

The generic archaeological term would usually be “survivor camp” and the degree to which such a camp could evolve into a thriving community or society (and what it would then be called) depends on a number of factors.

Availability of food and fresh water, in combination with climate and availability of resources to provide any necessary shelter determines how long a camp could survive to become a community as we know it. Availability of fertile women as well as men determines the extent to which the community could produce subsequent descendants and be in population growth.

Shipwreck survivor camps rarely include both men and women arriving in unpopulated places commensurate with long-term establishment of a community. More usually they are established on islands that already had some inhabitants who had arrived intentionally at some time in the past and the community grows by inter-relationship with those already present (and especially the women).

I’m not aware of any community that meets the criteria of “19th century, with about 11 people, that now has about 200 people, all of them their descendants” but it does broadly align with Pitcairn Island. Nine of the HMS Bounty mutineers (led by Fletcher Christian) reached Pitcairn Island in 1790 together with a group of Tahitians: six men, eleven women and a baby girl. The Tahitians had effectively been kidnapped when Christian set sail without warning them and the Bounty was not wrecked but rather set on fire by Christian to conceal his location. Also, Pitcairn was already inhabited, so the community grew from an inter-mingling with the existing (small) population. Pitcairn had a recorded population of 67 in 2011.

 

[Red-Coat]

I’m not sure there is a documented situation where shipwreck survivors including fertile women managed to establish a permanent new community on a previously uninhabited island. There is however one remarkable story that history has almost forgotten… but the community only lasted for 15 years.

In November 1760 the former French warship “Utile” under the flag of the French East India Company left Bayonne in France destined for the “Ile de France” (now Mauritius). She stopped off en route in Madagascar to purchase 150 Malagasy slaves. The governor of Ile de France had temporarily banned the importation of slaves because he was expecting an attack from India or Britain and didn’t want more mouths to feed in the event of a siege.

On the final leg of the journey in July 1761 the Utile was caught in a storm and ran aground on a coral reef off the coast of the tiny uncharted island later named “Tromelin”. The ship’s log-keeper wrote that: "All the remaining Gentlemen and crew were saved. Our losses were only 20 white men, and (two gentlemen) and many blacks, the hatches being closed or nailed down" and goes on to imply that almost a third of the 88 slaves originally rescued died because the sailors kept the meagre water supplies to themselves.

The island was no more than a mile long and half a mile wide, dominated by scrub but with no trees, and perpetually swept by strong winds. The commander of the Utile, Captain Jean de Lafargue, “lost his mind” after the shipwreck and his first lieutenant, Castellan du Vernet, took charge of the situation. Two camps were constructed (one for the crew and one for the slaves), a forge and an oven were built, and a well was dug. By September 1761 a makeshift boat had been constructed from the wreckage of the Utile that enabled a journey to Ile de France. It was large enough to accommodate the “gentlemen and sailors” (122 in total) but not the 60 slaves… a mixture of men and women. They were left behind with some food and a promise that they would be rescued later. The governor of Ile de France refused to risk the loss of another ship for a group of unwanted and illicit slaves and they were abandoned.

Castellan never gave up on his promise for a rescue mission but was stonewalled by the French authorities and the slaves forgotten. In 1773 a passing ship reported the presence of the slaves on the island, reminding the French that they were still alive. By this time Ile de France had a more humane governor, Jacques Maillart, who authorised a rescue mission but the coral reefs made it difficult to approach the island. The first rescue ship failed to reach them. A second rescue mission also failed but a sailor from that ship had managed to swim ashore from a capsized small boat, only to be abandoned there by his own crew when bad weather closed in. He apparently managed to leave the island around 1775 on a raft with three men and three women, but they were never seen again.

Finally, on 29 November 1776 (15 years after the Utile was wrecked) the French corvette “Dauphine” reached the Island and rescued the survivors. They told their rescuers that, at some time, a group of eighteen had made it off the island in a raft-like boat with a sail, but their fate is not known. All that were left numbered seven women and an eight-month-old baby boy. They were dressed in clothes plaited from feathers and had managed to keep a fire burning throughout their enforced stay, fuelling it with what was left of the Utile and then with scrub and driftwood. There were also dwellings constructed from slabs of coral and cement-like blocks of compacted sand, a large oven, and utensils of copper that had been repaired multiple times by riveting and forging.

On arrival in Isle de France the new governor (Maillart) declared the surviving slaves “free” and offered to ship them back to Madagascar, which they refused. Maillart decided to “adopt” a family of three from within the group: the baby boy, his mother and his grandmother who were given the new French names of Jacques Moyse, Eve, and Dauphine, respectively.

I’m astonished that the story hasn’t been made into a movie… but perhaps it has an uncomfortable storyline for today’s audiences.

 

[Crow]

Gidday Amigos

Here is a story of shipwreck survivors time on a island gone terribly wrong.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pN8sjcRQT8



Batavia was a ship of the Dutch East India Company. Built in Amsterdam in 1628 as the company's new flagship, she sailed that year on her maiden voyage for Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies. On 4 June 1629, the Batavia was wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos, a chain of small islands off the coast of Western Australia.


As the ship broke apart, 40 of the 341 passengers drowned in their attempts to reach land. The ship's commander, Francisco Pelsaert, sailed to Batavia to get help, leaving merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz in charge. Cornelisz sent about 20 men to nearby islands under the pretense of having them search for fresh water, abandoning them there to die. He then orchestrated a mutiny that, over the course of several weeks, resulted in the murder of approximately 125 of the remaining survivors, including women, children and infants; a small number of women were kept as sex slaves, among them the famed beauty Lucretia Jans, who was reserved by Cornelisz for himself.


Meanwhile, the men sent away had unexpectedly found water and, after learning of the atrocities, waged battles with the mutineers under soldier Wiebbe Hayes' leadership. In October, at the height of their last and deadliest battle, they were interrupted by the return of Pelsaert aboard the Sardam. Pelsaert subsequently tried and convicted Cornelisz and six of his men, who became the first Europeans to be legally executed in Australia.

Two other mutineers, convicted of comparatively minor crimes, were marooned on mainland Australia, thus becoming the first Europeans to permanently inhabit the Australian continent. Of the original 332 people on board Batavia, only 122 made it to the port of Batavia.


Associated today with "one of the worst horror stories in maritime history", Batavia has been the subject of numerous published histories, the earliest dating from 1647. Due to its unique place in the history of European contact with Australia.

Batavia's History | Western Australian Museum

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