Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild from Air and Manky. The rugged New
Speaker 1: England coastline has seen its fair share of tragedy. The
Speaker 1: Isle of Shoals, a collection of nine rocky, treeless islands
Speaker 1: off the coasts of New Hampshire and Maine, has been
Speaker 1: cast in the starring role of the human dramas that
Speaker 1: have played out across the centuries. The name of the
Speaker 1: islands comes from two possible places, from the shallow shoals
Speaker 1: long used for fishing in these waters, or the schools
Speaker 1: of fish that swam heartily. When Europeans began showing up,
Speaker 1: and with these colonizers, as it often happens, came new monikers.
Speaker 1: Each jut of an island became re christiened with names
Speaker 1: such as Star, White, Cedar, Apple Door, and the one
Speaker 1: where our stories take place today Smutty Nose. The islands
Speaker 1: proved to be a lucrative fishing hub in the early
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, and by sixteen forty five as many as
Speaker 1: six hundred people were braiding their harsh, windswept landscapes. It
Speaker 1: was a place that required a certain sturdiness of character
Speaker 1: and temperament, and attracted folks who could play that part.
Speaker 1: It also attracted pirates. It was said that the lawless
Speaker 1: islanders were happy to host these seafaring bandits, and legend
Speaker 1: tells us that not only did their treasures still exist there,
Speaker 1: but so do their ghosts. Author and resident Celia Thaxter
Speaker 1: was among the people who wrote of these legends, telling
Speaker 1: the story Philip Babb, the island's butcher and a rumored
Speaker 1: pirate associate, who purportedly was so wicked in life that
Speaker 1: there was speculation as to whether he could ever rest
Speaker 1: in death. He supposedly dug a hole in the ground
Speaker 1: of Apple Doore Island, where he and a friend found
Speaker 1: a large treasure chest that stank of sulfur and gave
Speaker 1: off smoke when they tried to open it. The famed
Speaker 1: author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was trying to outrun his family's
Speaker 1: association with the Salem witch trials just down the coastline,
Speaker 1: recorded this tale in his journal, attesting that Celia's father
Speaker 1: had seen this ghost with his own eyes. According to
Speaker 1: one tale, a shoulder on Apple Door was out walking
Speaker 1: one night when he spotted a man running toward him.
Speaker 1: He assumed it was a friend trying to scare him,
Speaker 1: but when the figure got closer it became clear that
Speaker 1: it had a corpse's face and sunken eyes. The figure
Speaker 1: then pulled a wicked looking knife from his belt and
Speaker 1: held it high. It looked uncannily like the butcher's knife
Speaker 1: that Philip was known to have carried with him. The shoulder,
Speaker 1: of course, ran some say that this phantom is guarding
Speaker 1: a treasure chest. It's also said that Philip was buried
Speaker 1: somewhere near by. Could it be Blackbeard's treasure and some
Speaker 1: think so. Rumors proliferate around the Isle as each island
Speaker 1: claims to harbor the treasure itself. Blackbeard supposedly stranded his
Speaker 1: wife there, though whether it was his thirteenth, fourteenth, or
Speaker 1: fifteenth is still up for debate. Other pirates such as
Speaker 1: ned Lowe, William Fly, and John Quelsh all passed through here,
Speaker 1: with some such as George and Rachel Wall, settling down
Speaker 1: to stay for a while. Even still, many of the
Speaker 1: pirate legends that continue to live on here are just
Speaker 1: that legends. There's no concrete evidence that Blackbeard even visited
Speaker 1: the Isle of Shoals, but in one of the darkest
Speaker 1: hours on the isle, one seafaring man proved to be
Speaker 1: more fearsome than all legends and hauntings that call the
Speaker 1: island's home. I'm Lord Bobobam. Welcome to American Shadows. By
Speaker 1: the eighteenth seventies, the Isle of Shoals was experiencing a
Speaker 1: slow trickle of change. It had long been a fishing hub,
Speaker 1: but now tourism slowly began replacing tradition. A Smuttynose island
Speaker 1: is rumored to have gotten its name from its shape,
Speaker 1: which supposedly resembled the nose of a fearsome sea creature.
Speaker 1: It had gained prominence as a workstation for passing ships,
Speaker 1: featuring a compound that included a dock and warehouse, a
Speaker 1: distillery and brewery, a boat house and hotel, a blacksmith
Speaker 1: shop and windmill. Four fishermen who largely lived aboard their ships,
Speaker 1: the island became a welcome reprieve where they could work
Speaker 1: and play before continuing on back out into the cold
Speaker 1: New England waters. If you can imagine a mirage in
Speaker 1: the distance that could offer you anything you wanted, the
Speaker 1: Smuttynose felt like that. To see worn sailors, but it
Speaker 1: didn't disappear when they got close. The fishing industry, though,
Speaker 1: would be decimated by the American Revolution and the following
Speaker 1: War of eighteen twelve. Still the island did okay. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the proprietor of the compound decided to build a three
Speaker 1: story hotel four summer tourists, which he called the mid
Speaker 1: Ocean House of Entertainment by the Lady. Teen hundreds wealthy
Speaker 1: businessmen took a gamble on the islands, buying up huge
Speaker 1: spaths of land, raising fishing cottages and building hotels for
Speaker 1: tourists to rest in. On Smuttynose Island, only one family remained,
Speaker 1: the Hoovetts and the Christiansens, a close knit group that
Speaker 1: shared one red house surrounded by the sea, six miles
Speaker 1: from the rugged New Hampshire coast line. John and Maren
Speaker 1: had landed on the island first, then sent for Marren's sister,
Speaker 1: Karen A. Karen had found work and lived at the
Speaker 1: Apple Door Hotel. Eventually John's brother Matthew joined them and
Speaker 1: together they tended to their fishing schooner, the Clarabella. Together
Speaker 1: the family thrived on their island home not so much castaways,
Speaker 1: as they were a motley crew of seagulls and seafaring peoples.
Speaker 1: John was a good fisherman. He was eventually able to
Speaker 1: invest in trawling equipment the cutting edge and favored fishing
Speaker 1: pools of the day, and occasionally was able to hire
Speaker 1: help aboard his boat. One of those men was a
Speaker 1: handsome six foot tall Prussian immigrant named Louis Wagner. A
Speaker 1: struggling boat hand, John was able to give him a
Speaker 1: job and also a place to stay for a few
Speaker 1: months from April through November of eighteen seventy two. Louis
Speaker 1: ended up spending a lot of time in the home
Speaker 1: with Maren due to his rheumatism. It said that they'd
Speaker 1: got along famously and even became as close as siblings.
Speaker 1: He eventually moved out, most likely to make room for
Speaker 1: the arrival of Marin and Karen's half brother Ivan and
Speaker 1: his wife Annette. It was hard for Lewis to find
Speaker 1: work in nearby Portsmouth on the Mainland. Soon he was
Speaker 1: sharing a cheap room in a boarding house with multiple
Speaker 1: other men. Cash was hard to come by, and Brent,
Speaker 1: as it always seems to, was coming due. As fortune
Speaker 1: would have it, he ran into his old friends on
Speaker 1: the Clarabella down at the docks on the night of
Speaker 1: March fifth of eighteen seventy three. He asked John several
Speaker 1: times over the course of their conversation whether they planned
Speaker 1: on returning home to Smutty Nose that night. It's hard
Speaker 1: to say now how this made John feel, but he
Speaker 1: told Louis that yes, that had been the plan, but
Speaker 1: now they were running behind schedule, waiting for a bait shipment,
Speaker 1: and they were going to dock for the night. This
Speaker 1: represented the second change of plans for the Clarabella that day. Originally,
Speaker 1: on their way back from the open Ocean, they had
Speaker 1: planned to stop on Smutty Nose to pick up Karen,
Speaker 1: who wanted to do some shopping in Portsmouth. She was
Speaker 1: dressed and waiting for her ride, having collected all of
Speaker 1: the money for her goods and tucked a little white
Speaker 1: button in her change purse in the hopes of finding
Speaker 1: a matching one in town. But the winds had changed,
Speaker 1: forcing John to bypass Karen and her plans and head
Speaker 1: straight to port. They had sent word by another boat
Speaker 1: that they would return to the island around ten that evening,
Speaker 1: but now they had no way of telling them about
Speaker 1: their second delay. John decided to make use of his
Speaker 1: time on shore and offered Louis a little bit of
Speaker 1: money to bait trolls. When the shipment finally arrived, Louis
Speaker 1: said he would meet him back at the dock. When
Speaker 1: the shipman arrived, John went looking for Louis, but he
Speaker 1: never showed up. He was nowhere to be found. There
Speaker 1: was a good reason John Houtvet couldn't find Louis Wagner
Speaker 1: among the wares and weathered boarding houses of the Portsmouth waterfront.
Speaker 1: It's because he wasn't there. Louis had left John with
Speaker 1: a plan in mind. Around eight o'clock that night, he
Speaker 1: located a small boat along the wharf and got in.
Speaker 1: He unhitched himself, threaded the oars onto their locks, and
Speaker 1: began to pull. Louis began to row up the Scataquas
Speaker 1: River and out into the open sea, covering the ten
Speaker 1: long miles to Smuttynose Island. It was a clear night,
Speaker 1: with a three quarter moon hanging high. The three lighthouses,
Speaker 1: all long cherished beacons of hope and security illuminated Lewis
Speaker 1: in flashes as he went, and then the light could
Speaker 1: no longer reach him. He was too far gone. Lewis's
Speaker 1: plan seemed simple. He needed money, and he knew where
Speaker 1: he could get cash. He knew that John had been
Speaker 1: saving to buy a new boat, something they had talked
Speaker 1: about at the docks, and like many on the aisle,
Speaker 1: he knew that John kept his cash at home rather
Speaker 1: than dealing with banks on the mainland. When he finally
Speaker 1: landed on the island, he likely intended to burglarize the
Speaker 1: house without disturbing Maren, Annette and Karen, who he supposed
Speaker 1: had gone to bed long before his arrival. He was
Speaker 1: surely thrilled and unsurprised to find that the front door
Speaker 1: was unlatched and it popped open easily. He crept into
Speaker 1: the dark house and slid into the kitchen. The candles
Speaker 1: had all grown cold, and the stove's embers faded to
Speaker 1: a whisper. Everything was dark. He noticed that Marin, whose
Speaker 1: bedroom was off the kitchen, had left her door open,
Speaker 1: and he quietly closed it and jammed the lock. But
Speaker 1: he was no match for Canine's years. The family dog, Renya,
Speaker 1: heard a noise and began to bark. The barking quickly
Speaker 1: woke Karen, who was asleep on a cot in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: She assumed that the men had returned home, and in
Speaker 1: her haze, began to speak. Louis realized he was caught
Speaker 1: in a flurry of panic. Not knowing what else to do,
Speaker 1: he picked up a nearby chair and began to beat
Speaker 1: Karen with it as she screamed, and they scuffled a
Speaker 1: clock falling from the kitchen shelf. It stopped at one
Speaker 1: oh seven a m Maren bolted upright in bed. She
Speaker 1: blunched for her door, but found it jammed. The latch
Speaker 1: eventually freed itself as as Karen screamed, a shouts of
Speaker 1: John killed me, John killed me sliced the night's quiet.
Speaker 1: Maren could only see a tall man, silhouetted by the moonlight,
Speaker 1: holding a chair aloft with both hands. She grabbed Karen,
Speaker 1: dragged her into the bedroom where a nette was, and
Speaker 1: slammed the door behind them. Karen leaned against the door,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what to do next. And there
Speaker 1: they were three women trapped and huddling in their night clothes.
Speaker 1: Their only course of action was to try to jump
Speaker 1: out the window and make a run for it. Karen
Speaker 1: collapsed from her beating a Maren held her and convinced
Speaker 1: a Nette that she had to try to escape. Nete
Speaker 1: pushed open the window and climbed out, jumping down the
Speaker 1: short distance into the fresh snow, but once there she froze.
Speaker 1: Their attacker had stopped pounding at the door, and soon
Speaker 1: Maren heard a new sound, a Nette's voice in the yard,
Speaker 1: screaming Lewis Louis. The two were now illuminated by the
Speaker 1: light of the moon, but it was clear as day
Speaker 1: what was about to happen. He had been identified. This
Speaker 1: certainly would spell his doom, so he made the decision
Speaker 1: to retrieve an axe he had seen by the front door.
Speaker 1: Maren could only watch through the window as Louis raised
Speaker 1: the axe and began to strike Annette until she lay
Speaker 1: dying in the snow. He headed back to the house's
Speaker 1: front door, Now with a weapon in hand. Maren knew
Speaker 1: her only option was to run as fast and far
Speaker 1: as she could on their little island and find a
Speaker 1: place to hide. But try as she might convince her
Speaker 1: injured sister to follow her out the small window, Karen
Speaker 1: couldn't muster the strength alone. Maren wrapped her night shirt
Speaker 1: around her neck and ran barefoot out into the night.
Speaker 1: Karen was now alone and save for Louis. As she
Speaker 1: stumbled out into the house, attempting to hide under her bed,
Speaker 1: Louis caught her, though, and strangled her with a white handkerchief.
Speaker 1: Maren Can continued her run, searching for a place to hide.
Speaker 1: She decided to try a small abandoned house near the water,
Speaker 1: that is, until Rinya appeared. Afraid that the small dog
Speaker 1: would bark and give them away, she ran past the
Speaker 1: dilapidated building and to the island's coal Maybe she thought
Speaker 1: she could find Louis's boat and escape, but it wasn't there.
Speaker 1: There were no boats at all. There was nowhere to hide.
Speaker 1: As she ran, she heard her sister cry out one
Speaker 1: last time, and then saw a lamp and the house
Speaker 1: turn on. The abandoned houses were going to be too
Speaker 1: obvious to hide in. The risk was too high, so
Speaker 1: she decided to stay hidden among the rocks. It would
Speaker 1: turn out that Marin was right to choose the spot
Speaker 1: that she did. Later, bloody footprints would show that Louis
Speaker 1: had searched the island for her without success. He checked
Speaker 1: every room in the closed mid Ocean House, hotel, opened
Speaker 1: every door in the old store, and fish house and warehouse,
Speaker 1: and it seems once his search turned up empty, he
Speaker 1: returned to the house to find the money had come for.
Speaker 1: He also made himself a cup of tea in the process.
Speaker 1: In all, he came away with a total of sixteen
Speaker 1: dollars roughly four hundred in a day's money. What he
Speaker 1: didn't notice, though, as he grabbed the money from Karen's purse,
Speaker 1: was the presence of a small white button among his
Speaker 1: handful of coins. The sun rose again, but for Maren,
Speaker 1: the nightmare continued. She waited until dawn to leave her
Speaker 1: hiding place, afraid that Lewis was lying in wait for her.
Speaker 1: When she heard the sound of workmen starting their day
Speaker 1: a short distance away on Star Island, she began to
Speaker 1: wave and jump and yell for their help. They noticed
Speaker 1: her but did nothing. Maren took off along the sea wall,
Speaker 1: where she would be inside of apple door, but just
Speaker 1: a quarter mile across the frigid water. She continued to
Speaker 1: wave and yell until she got the attention of the
Speaker 1: children of one Yorga in Yebertsen, who were playing outside
Speaker 1: in the morning sun. They alerted their dad, and he
Speaker 1: quickly loaded into his doory across to Maren. He was
Speaker 1: shocked by what he found. She was frostbitten and bruised,
Speaker 1: clothing torn and frozen, and the only thing she could
Speaker 1: say when he asked her what had happened was Lewis, Lewis, Lewis.
Speaker 1: He trundled her into his boat and brought her to
Speaker 1: his home, where Peebe, his wife, and their neighbor, Celia Thaxter,
Speaker 1: tended to her. Her condition was so bad they worried
Speaker 1: she was going to die. Yorga and two other fishermen
Speaker 1: grabbed weapons and headed back to Smuttynose, prepared for a fight.
Speaker 1: At this same moment, John, Matthew, and Ivan were all
Speaker 1: heading back out again from Portsmouth. There trolls baited and
Speaker 1: ready for another round of fishing, but as they approached
Speaker 1: up people hailed them frantically. Matthew and Ivan hopped into
Speaker 1: a dory and rowed ashore, where the news was broken
Speaker 1: to them that Marin had been found near death, nearly
Speaker 1: paralyzed with fear, and with a horrifying story to tell.
Speaker 1: Brothers John and Matthew immediately set sail for Someboddy Nose
Speaker 1: ivan stayed behind with Maren. When he asked her where
Speaker 1: his wife, Annette was, all she could manage to tell
Speaker 1: him was that she was still at home. He took
Speaker 1: the dory and rode over to his island, where John
Speaker 1: Matthew and the three other armed fishermen were standing outside
Speaker 1: the home, a which was surrounded by blood soaked snow. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Louis Wagner had managed to reach the mainland in his
Speaker 1: stolen boat, abandoning it in a less traveled waterway in
Speaker 1: nearby Newcastle. He was icy and sodden, conspicuous as he
Speaker 1: walked bedraggled along the road back home to Portsmouth. He
Speaker 1: was fidgeting, angry and nervous, and unable to eat anything.
Speaker 1: When he found only arrived back at his boarding house.
Speaker 1: He made several strange comments to those who saw him
Speaker 1: at home that morning, including that he was in trouble
Speaker 1: and that he was afraid he was going to be
Speaker 1: taken in. He cleaned out his room and left without
Speaker 1: paying his overdue rent. By that afternoon, he had spent
Speaker 1: most of his stolen money on a shave, a hair cut,
Speaker 1: a new set of clothes, and a one way train
Speaker 1: ticket to Boston. Once there, he went to a boarding
Speaker 1: house where he had once lived and asked the owners
Speaker 1: if he could stay on credit. By now the police
Speaker 1: were already on the case, and they didn't have to
Speaker 1: look very hard to find him. They apprehended him at
Speaker 1: this old address. Though he quickly denied any involvement in
Speaker 1: what had happened on Smuttynose Island. He was taken to jail,
Speaker 1: and news quickly spread in the papers and through the streets.
Speaker 1: A one newspaper report claimed that as many as ten
Speaker 1: thousand people poured into the streets of Portsmouth hoping to
Speaker 1: enact some mob justice. A one headline read fisherman vow vengeance.
Speaker 1: Another said the fishermen that the shoals are terribly excited
Speaker 1: should Wagner fall into their hands while there. In their
Speaker 1: present temper, he could hardly escape being torn into pieces. John,
Speaker 1: Matthew and Ivan, who had lost almost their whole family
Speaker 1: that night, soon arrived to see Louis in jail. He
Speaker 1: denied his crime to their faces. John screamed that he
Speaker 1: ought to be cut to pieces and used as fishing bait.
Speaker 1: The person who waited to come was Maren. She did eventually,
Speaker 1: though she had to be carried in. She was in
Speaker 1: bad shape but mustered everything she could to face Lewis down.
Speaker 1: A man who had once been something of a brother
Speaker 1: had killed her family and tried to kill her too,
Speaker 1: as she knew it, yet he continued to deny it.
Speaker 1: The betrayal, the horror was almost too much to bear.
Speaker 1: On March twelfth, it was decided there was enough evidence
Speaker 1: to charge him with murder, just three days after the
Speaker 1: funerals of Karen and Annette. Throughout his trial in June
Speaker 1: of eighteen seventy three, he continued to proclaim innocence. It
Speaker 1: became a local sensation and in the public opinion he
Speaker 1: was already good and guilty and hanged. Spectators packed the
Speaker 1: courtroom from all over New England. It was the biggest
Speaker 1: event of the year. The crowd hung on the witnesses
Speaker 1: every word. Maren was the unwilling and unfortunate star of
Speaker 1: the show, reliving the worst night of her life in
Speaker 1: excruciating detail for the courts. Over twenty people were called
Speaker 1: to attest to Lewis's actions on the days leading up
Speaker 1: to the murders. And then there was the physical evidence.
Speaker 1: The bloody shirt dumped into the boarding house pretty, his
Speaker 1: bloodied and blistered hands and one small white button in
Speaker 1: his possession, Lewis's alibi fell short. He denied making any
Speaker 1: strange statements and attempted to cast suspicion on others, including
Speaker 1: John himself, wept that he was falsely accused. On June
Speaker 1: twenty fourth, he was sentenced to death by hanging. He
Speaker 1: appeared to take it in stride because he had one
Speaker 1: more plan. The cell locks in the jail in which
Speaker 1: he was held had been installed incorrectly. The jailers knew
Speaker 1: that he could get out, but he promised them that
Speaker 1: he'd stay in. He broke that promise and took two
Speaker 1: other prisoners with him that night. His freedom wouldn't last long,
Speaker 1: though he was apprehended three days later. Tired, hungry, and disheveled,
Speaker 1: he talked about wanting a vacation and continued to deny
Speaker 1: his crime until he hung the following June. The people
Speaker 1: of the shoals they tried to continue on, but life
Speaker 1: on Smutty Nose was forever changed. Maryn John, and Matthew
Speaker 1: immediately left for the safe harbors of Portsmouth. Ivan took
Speaker 1: up work on Appleedore Island before eventually moving back to Norway.
Speaker 1: As for their little red house, it would never be
Speaker 1: the same. It was no longer filled with life and family,
Speaker 1: a holdout of a changing world. By the summer after
Speaker 1: the murders, with new hotels on nearby islands ramping up business,
Speaker 1: the murder scene became a tourist traction. The stories of
Speaker 1: what happened on Smutty Nose Island eventually evolved from simple
Speaker 1: news into history and legend. Celia Thaxter, one of the
Speaker 1: women who comforted Maren in the wake of this tragedy,
Speaker 1: was a well known poet with a firm standing in
Speaker 1: the Isle community. In fact, her family owned Smutty Nose,
Speaker 1: effectively making her the bed's landlords. In the days after
Speaker 1: the murders, she wrote a letter to a friend describing
Speaker 1: everything that Marin had told her, and in May of
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy five, just a month before Lewis was hanged,
Speaker 1: Celia published an article entitled an Amiable Murder in the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Monthly. A copy was delivered to Lewis and his
Speaker 1: cell and he said that Celia was simply telling lies
Speaker 1: to make money, but really what Celia did was pen
Speaker 1: a cornerstone piece in the canon of American true crime writing.
Speaker 1: Unlike many contemporary newspaper accounts, which delighted in the blood
Speaker 1: and gore of a crime, Celia wrote about the world
Speaker 1: of Norwegian immigrants and those who were left behind in
Speaker 1: the wake of the killings. It was a work of humanity,
Speaker 1: something that's not often afforded to victims or their families.
Speaker 1: Her personal letters revealed that she agonized over whether writing
Speaker 1: about the murders was in poor taste. She intentionally focused
Speaker 1: on the lives of Karen and Annette, reanimating them as
Speaker 1: flesh and blood, living and breathing characters, not just inert corpses.
Speaker 1: The story of these lost lives continues to echo through history.
Speaker 1: The way that they were written about and remembered continues
Speaker 1: to shape the media we consume today. A scholar's credit
Speaker 1: her article with being a direct influence on the modern
Speaker 1: genre of true crime, especially in the case of Truman capotees.
Speaker 1: In Cold Blood. Karen and Annette might not be household names,
Speaker 1: but it can be argued that their fingerprints remain. There's
Speaker 1: more to this story. Stick around after this brief sponsor
Speaker 1: break to hear all about it. There's a particular literary
Speaker 1: canon that's existed in American high school classrooms for a
Speaker 1: long time now, and if you went to school in
Speaker 1: the States, you've probably read the likes of Catcher and
Speaker 1: the Rye by J. D. Salinger or Kill a Mockingbird
Speaker 1: by Harper Lee. There's another book that continues to set
Speaker 1: its apart as a foundational literary text for young minds,
Speaker 1: The Harrowing Tale of the Lord of the Flies. Published
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty four, it was the debut novel of
Speaker 1: British author William Golding, who would go on to win
Speaker 1: a Nobel Prize. It details the story of British schoolboys
Speaker 1: marooned on a desert island and what unfolds is they
Speaker 1: try to establish a system of self governance. It's chaotic,
Speaker 1: it's dark. It asks readers to deeply interrogate their own
Speaker 1: morals and whether the ending is a happy one. Well,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say. It's a novel, yes, but stories
Speaker 1: of being marooned on islands can be found the world over,
Speaker 1: from the long past through the present, and sometimes the
Speaker 1: truth of these tales provides an outcome that fiction writers
Speaker 1: could only dream of. On an evening in June of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, six boys stole a boat. They intended
Speaker 1: to go for a ride. After all, their strict Catholic
Speaker 1: boarding school in the Kingdom of Tonga left much to
Speaker 1: be desired in the way of entertainment. The boys, ages
Speaker 1: thirteen to sixteen, planned to sail five hundred miles to Fiji, or,
Speaker 1: if they were feeling daring and in good spirits by
Speaker 1: the time they arrived, even further on to New Zealand. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: they didn't have much experience in long haul sailing, nor
Speaker 1: did they have the supplies they needed to make such track.
Speaker 1: Their packing list was slim and just two sacks of bananas,
Speaker 1: a few coconuts, and a small gas burner. Notably missing
Speaker 1: were any maps or compasses. However, they all fell asleep
Speaker 1: that night, and when they woke up, it was to
Speaker 1: a storm that sent giant waves crashing over their boat.
Speaker 1: When they hoisted their only sail, the wind quickly demolished it,
Speaker 1: and their rudder also broke with the force of the gale.
Speaker 1: For eight days, the boys drifted in the South Pacific
Speaker 1: with no land in sight, attempting to catch fish and
Speaker 1: rain water. The boat, which was leaking, barely stayed afloat.
Speaker 1: Despite their concerted efforts to bail it out. Finally, they
Speaker 1: spotted an island roughly ninety miles from where they had begun.
Speaker 1: It was Ata, which had been uninhabited since a Peruvian
Speaker 1: enslaver ship had kidnapped almost all of its peoples in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two. The boys employed planks to swim ashore,
Speaker 1: at which they reached after an exhausting day of paddling.
Speaker 1: At first, they dug a shallow cave in the island's
Speaker 1: cliffs and survived mainly by catching and eating sea birds
Speaker 1: and their eggs, as well as raw fish and coconut shoots.
Speaker 1: After several months, they were able to climb up to
Speaker 1: the long dormant volcanic crater at the island center, where
Speaker 1: people had lived one hundred years before. They discovered a
Speaker 1: pair of rusty knives left behind by Atta's last inhabitants,
Speaker 1: and with them were able to build a shelter. Not
Speaker 1: knowing when or if they'd be rescued, the boys set
Speaker 1: up an island society on Atta that bore no resemblance
Speaker 1: to William Golding's story. They took turns cooking, tending their garden,
Speaker 1: and carefully keeping their ever lit fire. Over time, they
Speaker 1: were able to construct pens for chickens, as well as
Speaker 1: a recreational area with a badminton court and weightlifting. One
Speaker 1: of the boys crafted the guitar from coconuts, driftwood and
Speaker 1: salvaged wire. They sang and prayed every morning and evening,
Speaker 1: and composed songs to sing together. When another boy fell
Speaker 1: off a cliff and broke his leg, the others splinted
Speaker 1: it and took over his chores. They would end each
Speaker 1: day with a council and have a chance to air
Speaker 1: any grievances before the night was done. And it went
Speaker 1: this way for many months. In early September of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, a fishing boat called the Just David, captained
Speaker 1: by Australian Peter Warner, was out searching for new crayfishing grounds.
Speaker 1: When they passed Atta A Warner noticed some unusual burnt
Speaker 1: patches on the islands of Verdant Cliffs. Above the screams
Speaker 1: of sea birds. Just David's lookout insisted that he heard
Speaker 1: a human voice yelling. Warner, who had confirmed with a
Speaker 1: book on board that the island was uninhabited, was skeptical,
Speaker 1: but that skepticism evaporated when they saw someone running down
Speaker 1: a cliff path and diving into the water, shouting all
Speaker 1: the while. He swam for the boat, and a naked
Speaker 1: teenager climbed aboard, telling them a harrowing story Warner could
Speaker 1: barely believe. The rest of the boys came too, telling
Speaker 1: the tale of their innocent outing gone horribly wrong. Warner
Speaker 1: was worried that they might be escaped criminals, but when
Speaker 1: he radioed Tonga with their names, he was met with tears.
Speaker 1: It was assumed that all of the boys had died.
Speaker 1: The boys reunited with their families, and the King of
Speaker 1: Tonga granted Warner fishing rights and permission to start a
Speaker 1: business on the island. Then hired all six boys as
Speaker 1: crew on his new boat, which was named Ata, after
Speaker 1: the island they had spent fifteen months on. He figured
Speaker 1: that if they could live together for all this time,
Speaker 1: working to support each other and stay alive, they were
Speaker 1: exactly the kind of people that he probably wanted to
Speaker 1: work with too. American Shadows as hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum.
Speaker 1: This episode was written by Robin Miniatter, researched by Robin
Speaker 1: Minatter and Cassandra de Alba, and produced by Miranda Hawkins
Speaker 1: and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show, visit
Speaker 1: grimminmile dot com. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.