The PLEA: Shipwrecked

On New Year’s Day, 1864, five men huddled inside the Grafton. The America captain, French first mate, English and Norwegian crew members, and Portugese cook were enduring their second day of a fierce storm. When the anchor ripped loose, the Grafton lurched into the rocky shore of Auckland Island, an abandoned outpost 450 kilometre south of New Zealand.

The ship was damaged beyond repair but did not break up. The castaways had guns, tools, sailcloth, a longboat, and two months of food. The island had fresh water, and birds, seals, and roots to eat. They had the necessities for survival: the rest would depend upon their behaviour.

The men quickly set about assigning duties and building a cabin. They shared food equally, cared for one another when illness struck, found increasingly innovative ways to stretch their limited resources, and even set up a night school to teach one-another languages. But as weeks turned to months, a chilling reality set in: a rescue ship was not coming.

The men knew that to survive, they must find a way to preserve their unity. As the first mate wrote, “we had no strength except in union, that discord and division must be our ruin. Yet man is so feeble that reason, and self-respect, and even the considerations of self-interest, do not always suffice to keep him in the path of duty.” He concluded that “an external regimen is necessary, a strict and formal discipline, to protect him against his own weakness.”

Put differently, the men realised that absolute freedom is not possible. Rules are needed because even tightly-bonded people will sometimes make mistakes or act poorly. Hence, they created “an external regimen” to constrain absolute freedom: they wrote their own constitution.

The constitution was built around democratic principles. It prescribed an elected leader with specific responsibilities. It gave the castaways rights and responsibilities.
And it spelled out consequences for wrongdoing, with banishment being the most severe.

Once they agreed upon the final draft of the constitution, they voted the captain as leader. He had no right to keep this position. The constitution granted the men the freedom to vote in a new leader. This helped keep the men free from tyranny.

Because the men acted with compassion and solidarity, they never exercised such rights as replacing the leader. Of course, there was some conflict. For example, card games sparked heated arguments. To keep the men free from conflict, the first mate destroyed the cards.

Their castaway society was helped along by the captain’s judicious use of authority. For example, seals were not to be harassed. This could scare off a food supply: restricting the men’s freedom to harass seals gave them more freedom from starvation. Nonetheless, one day the captain saw the men teasing a seal. He let it pass because their playing was providing so much joy.

With no rescue ship coming, no ships passing the island, and the seal population dwindling, the risk of starvation grew. The men turned their attention to modifying their lifeboat so they could sail to New Zealand. After all, a society cannot live on caring and solidarity alone.

The three most-experienced seamen set sail on July 19th, 1865. Five days later they arrived in New Zealand, where they organised a rescue mission to pluck the last two castaways off the island.

There are many reasons why the Grafton wreck ended happily. The ship overturned but did not sink. Auckland Island was home to natural resources. And the castaways had a sense of camaraderie. Just as importantly, the men understood that their freedom could not be absolute.

To survive on Auckland Island, they needed mutually-agreed-upon rules.