He was first introduced to the Cook Islands at the age of 18 while in the Royal New Zealand Navy. After his military service ended, he worked as shopkeeper on the islands and met writer Robert Dean Frisbie, who fascinated him with stories about Suwarrow. He knew, once he visited the atoll, he was indeed home. In October 1952, Neale gathered food supplies, tobacco, various tools and two cats and embarked for the island.
He lived in buildings left behind by the military during WWII. Neale adapted to island life fairly easily and lived off of fish, crabs and clams, chicken eggs, coconuts, breadfruit, bananas and wild-grown vegetables. Occasionally, he welcomed visitors who wanted to meet this real life Robinson Crusoe. Neale lived on the island until 1977 when cancer forced him to return to the mainland. His grave is in the RSA cemetery on Rarotonga in the Cook Islands opposite the airport. Neale wrote about his experiences on Suwarrow in a memoir called, An Island of One's Own.Īda Blackjack was Iñupiat Inuit woman who was a castaway on uninhabited Wrangel Island in northern Siberia. On September 16, 1921, Blackjack was one of five settlers who left on the ill-fated expedition across the Chukchi Sea to Russia's Wrangel Island in a speculative attempt to claim the island for Canada by Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Weather conditions were bad upon their arrival and soon rations ran out for the team. They attempted to kill game, but were unsuccessful. Starving and desperate, three expedition members left the camp in January 1923 to travel 700 miles across the frozen Chukchi Sea to Siberia for help and food.
Only Ada and an ailing crew member were left behind. Ada was taught to hunt by the remaining explorer who was to weak to do it himself. The men were never seen again and by April 1923 she was left alone after the death of the man in her care. Ada, who came along on the trip to help the explorers as a cook and seamstress, managed to stay alive and in August of that year she was rescued by a former colleague of Stefansson's, Harold Noice.ĭubbed the "female Robinson Crusoe," Ada hated the media circus surrounding her and chose to live a quiet life. She eventually moved back to the Arctic where she lived until the age of 85.įormer British Army captain Ed Stafford spent 60 days naked and marooned on a deserted island in the South Pacific armed with only a video camera. The Discovery Channel aired a show of his experiences, not-so-surprisingly called Naked and Marooned with Ed Stafford.
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