Tongan castaways

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ʻAta island.

The Tongan castaways were a group of six boys aged between 13 and 16: Luke Veikoso, Fatai Latu, Sione Fataua, Tevita Siola'a, Kolo Fekitoa, and Mano Totau. In 1965 the boys ran away from a boarding school on the island of Tonga, stole a boat, and after a storm wrecked the boat, drifted to the abandoned, remote island of ʻAta where they were shipwrecked for 15 months.

Cast away[]

The boys formed a strong bond and, despite deprivations and injuries, kept themselves fit and healthy for the 15 months they were there.

They fed on local wild birds, fish, wild taro. They captured feral chickens, and found bananas that remained from being raised and cultivated on the island before it was evacuated 100 years prior.[a] They captured rainwater using hollowed out logs, though it was sparse during the initial months of their survival. They drank blood from seabirds when they did not have enough water.[1]

Rescue and contemporary documentary[]

They were discovered in 1966 by Australian fisherman Peter Warner, in good health and spirits under the circumstances, and returned with him to Tonga, where they were immediately imprisoned for the theft of the boat. The boys were released from prison after Warner compensated the owner of the stolen boat with proceeds from sale of the film rights, and negotiated their participation in a documentary for an Australian television channel.[2]

Later documentaries and books[]

In 2015 Spanish explorer Alvaro Cerezo spent 10 days on ʻAta island with Kolo Fekitoa, one of the castaways (by then in his mid-60s). The two men lived there alone and survived on coconuts, fish and seabirds, exactly as the boys did back in 1965. In summer 2020, Cerezo released a documentary of his experience with Kolo and a book detailing the 15 month ordeal of the castaways.[3] A trailer for the documentary was published on YouTube.[4]

In 2020, historian Rutger Bregman wrote about the castaways' civilized experiences in his book Humankind: A hopeful history, as a rebuttal example to the fictional story, The Lord of the Flies, where a group of castaway boys on a deserted island descended into savagery.[5] In addition, the film studio, New Regency acquired the film rights for the boys' experience for a possible feature film.[6]

Footnotes[]

  1. ^ After a slave raid by a whaler-turned-brigand, surviviors on ʻAta had been evacuated to the inner part of the Kingdom of Tonga.

References[]

  1. ^ Lyons, Kate (2020-05-13). "The real Lord of the Flies: A survivors' story of shipwreck and salvation". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-05-14.
  2. ^ Bregman, Rutger (2020). Humankind: A hopeful history. Little, Brown, and Company. ISBN 978-0316418539. – the book is well illustrated with pictures of the boys from the 1966 documentary
  3. ^ Cerezo, Alvaro (2020-04-10). The Six Tongan Survivors. The Teenager Castaway Boys. The Documetary (documentary trailer). Retrieved 2020-04-10 – via Youtube.
  4. ^ Cerezo, Alvaro (2020-05-09). The Tongan castaways of Ata Island. Surviving with one of the six boys (documentary trailer). Retrieved 2020-05-09 – via YouTube.
  5. ^ Bregman, Rutger (2020-05-09). "The real Lord of the Flies: What happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-05-14.
  6. ^ Westfall, Sandra Sobieraj; Herbst, Diane (6 June 2020). "Inside the Lord of the Flies survival of 6 Tongan boys 54 years ago: The story we need now". People.com. Retrieved 10 May 2021.

External links[]


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