People That Were Truly Cast Away

If you’ve ever seen that legendary Tom Hanks movie called Cast Away, in which he was stranded on an uninhabited island and made friends with a volleyball. While the entire story, especially the part where he makes it back, sounded a bit farfetched, there have been people in history that have (willingly or not) survived similar situations. Let’s take a look at some.

Tom Neale
Ol’ Tom wanted to go live on an uninhabited island, so that’s what he did. He wrote a book about his life on the island, called An Island to Oneself. All in all he spent a total of about 16 years on the Cook Islands. He didn’t do it all in one go, however – he returned to the mainland twice.

Juana Maria
Being the last of her tribe, Juana survived alone on an island from 1835 until 1853. Ironically, she passed away not even two months after returning to the mainland due to the fact that her gastro-intestinal system wasn’t used to handling nutrient-heavy food anymore.

Douglas Robertson and his family
Doug went out on a sailing trip with his entire family and a bunch of killer whales lived up to their name and trashed his entire boat. The six survivors of the sunken ship drifted off on a small raft, trying to reach the mainland. After 38 long days of being at sea, eating nothing but what the ocean gave them (including turtles!), they were found and rescued.