The Real Life "Lord of the Flies" Didn't Go Like the Book

'Ata

The fascinating story of the "Tongan castaways," via wikipedia:

The Tongan castaways were a group of six Tongan teenage boys who shipwrecked on the uninhabited island of ʻAta in 1965 and lived there for 15 months until their rescue. . . .

In June 1965, the boys ran away from St Andrews Anglican boarding school in Nukuʻalofa on Tongatapu. They had stolen a 24-foot boat on short notice and with little preparation. After they anchored for the night (approximately 5 miles north of Tongatapu), a storm broke their anchor rope. The boat's sail and rudder were destroyed quickly by the wild winds. Over the next eight days, they drifted for almost 200 miles generally southwest, bailing water from their disintegrating boat until they sighted ʻAta; at that point, they abandoned their ship and swam to shore over the next 36 hours, using planks salvaged from the wreck.

Mano was the first to reach land; weak from hunger and dehydration, he could not stand but called out that he had safely reached shore, and the rest followed him. After escaping the sea, the boys dug a cave by hand and hunted seabirds for meat, blood, and eggs.

Initially, they were desperate for food and water, but their situation improved after three months when they discovered the ruins of the village of Kolomaile in the island's volcanic crater, following a two-day climb. They revived the remnants of 19th century habitation, surviving on feral chickens, wild taro, and bananas; they captured rainwater for drinking in hollowed-out tree trunks. They drank blood from seabirds when they did not have enough water. The boys divided up the labour, teaming up in pairs to work garden, kitchen, and guard duty. One of the boys, Stephen (who would go on to become an engineer), managed to use two sticks to start a fire, which the boys kept burning continuously for more than a year while marooned.

At night, they sang and played a makeshift guitar to keep their spirits up, composing five songs during their exile. Once, they attempted to sail away on a raft they made, but it broke up approximately 1 mile offshore, and they were forced to return. The breakup of their raft was fortunate in retrospect, as the boys believed they were in Samoa and had started sailing south into the open ocean.

The boys were eventually rescued by an Australian fishermen who was so impressed with them that he hired them to crew a lobster boat and then paid the owner of the boat they had stolen to get them out of legal trouble.

Story here of the boys' return to the island with reporters in 1966.