Youtube The Castaways

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Osman Briseno

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Aug 3, 2024, 2:55:27 PM8/3/24

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The islet, today called Tromelin Island, lies 300 miles east of Madagascar and 350 miles north of Mauritius. Shaped like a sunflower seed, it is just one-third of a square mile of sand and scrub. Today it hosts an unpaved runway, a staffed weather station, and a wildlife preserve. Hermit crabs swarm across the island in packs at night, and each year hundreds of sea turtles and countless birds arrive to lay their eggs.

Gurout believes that most of the 60 to 80 slaves died within the first couple of years. A group of 18 had apparently departed the island not long after they were abandoned, but it is unknown whether they ever reached Madagascar. Some 15 survivors endured for the following 10 years or so. Just months before the rescue, three men and three women, as well as the French sailor stranded from La Sauterelle (who had witnessed two failed rescue attempts himself), had left the islet on a raft with a sail of woven feathers. They were never heard from again. The testimony of the seven remaining women and the records of La Dauphine have been lost. Only the archaeology that has been conducted on the island can reveal their story of abandonment, survival, and, ultimately, community-building.

Tromelin Island is in an ideal place to monitor weather, especially cyclones, bound for Madagascar. In 1954, French authorities built a weather station there. (It was destroyed by a cyclone two years later and then rebuilt.) It is still in operation today and consists of a few buildings, cisterns, and concrete footings. Mid-twentieth century accounts of the island note that there were stone walls there extending at least a few feet out of the ground, and that the stone was mined to build the new structures. In 2006, the archaeologists found a piece of buried wall there, consisting of slabs of beach rock and chunks of coral and a layer of bird bones and ash from cooking fires.

In addition, the buildings, rather than being separate, shared walls and were clustered in about half an acre, unlike more diffuse villages back home. The archaeologists found that the castaways had, at some point, dismantled buildings to erect a wall approximately 20 feet long, probably after a cyclone damaged the hamlet. In these ways, the structures represent systematic adaptation to the lack of space and the need for protection from cyclones, and they reflect a psychological state: grave-bound, but together, leaning upon one another.