Number of words: 2,686<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months<\/p>\n\n\n\n
for centuries western culture has been permeated by the idea that humans are selfish creatures. That cynical image of humanity has been proclaimed in films and novels, history books and scientific research. But in the last 20 years, something extraordinary has happened. Scientists from all over the world have switched to a more hopeful view of mankind. This development is still so young that researchers in different fields often don\u2019t even know about each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I started writing a book about this more hopeful view, I knew there was one story I would have to address. It takes place on a deserted island somewhere in the Pacific. A plane has just gone down. The only survivors are some British schoolboys, who can\u2019t believe their good fortune. Nothing but beach, shells and water for miles. And better yet: no grownups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the very first day, the boys institute a democracy of sorts. One boy, Ralph, is elected to be the group\u2019s leader. Athletic, charismatic and handsome, his game plan is simple: 1) Have fun. 2) Survive. 3) Make smoke signals for passing ships. Number one is a success. The others? Not so much. The boys are more interested in feasting and frolicking than in tending the fire. Before long, they have begun painting their faces. Casting off their clothes. And they develop overpowering urges \u2013 to pinch, to kick, to bite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time a British naval officer comes ashore, the island is a smouldering wasteland. Three of the children are dead. \u201cI should have thought,\u201d the officer says, \u201cthat a pack of British boys would have been able to put up a better show than that.\u201d At this, Ralph bursts into tears. \u201cRalph wept for the end of innocence,\u201d we read, and for \u201cthe darkness of man\u2019s heart\u201d. My wife Maartje and I rented a car in Brisbane and some three hours later arrived at our destination, a spot in the middle of nowhere that stumped Google Maps. Yet there he was, sitting out in front of a low-slung house off the dirt road: the man who rescued six lost boys 50 years ago, Captain Peter Warner. Peter went to work for his father\u2019s company, yet the sea still beckoned, and whenever he could he went to Tasmania, where he kept his own fishing fleet. It was this that brought him to Tonga in the winter of 1966. On the way home he took a little detour and that\u2019s when he saw it: a minuscule island in the azure sea, \u2018Ata. The island had been inhabited once, until one dark day in 1863, when a slave ship appeared on the horizon and sailed off with the natives. Since then, \u2018Ata had been deserted \u2013 cursed and forgotten. All summer long it hardly rained, driving the boys frantic with thirst. They tried constructing a raft in order to leave the island, but it fell apart in the crashing surf.
This story never happened. An English schoolmaster, William Golding<\/a>, made up this story in 1951 \u2013 his novel Lord of the Flies<\/em> would sell tens of millions of copies, be translated into more than 30 languages and hailed as one of the classics of the 20th century. In hindsight, the secret to the book\u2019s success is clear. Golding had a masterful ability to portray the darkest depths of mankind. Of course, he had the zeitgeist of the 1960s on his side, when a new generation was questioning its parents about the atrocities of the second world war. Had Auschwitz been an anomaly, they wanted to know, or is there a Nazi hiding in each of us?
I first read Lord of the Flies <\/em>as a teenager. I remember feeling disillusioned afterwards, but not for a second did I think to doubt Golding\u2019s view of human nature. That didn\u2019t happen until years later when I began delving into the author\u2019s life. I learned what an unhappy individual he had been: an alcoholic, prone to depression. \u201cI have always understood the Nazis,\u201d Golding confessed, \u201cbecause I am of that sort by nature.\u201d And it was \u201cpartly out of that sad self-knowledge\u201d that he wrote Lord of
<\/em>I began to wonder: had anyone ever studied what real children would do if they found themselves alone on a deserted island? I wrote an article on the subject, in which I compared Lord of the Flies<\/em> to modern scientific insights and concluded that, in all probability, kids would act very differently. Readers responded sceptically. All my examples concerned kids at home, at school, or at summer camp. Thus began my quest for a real-life Lord of the Flies<\/em>. After trawling the web for a while, I came across an obscure blog that told an arresting story: \u201cOne day, in 1977, six boys set out from Tonga on a fishing trip … Caught in a huge storm, the boys were shipwrecked on a deserted island. What do they do, this little tribe? They made a pact never to quarrel.\u201d
The article did not provide any sources. But sometimes all it takes is a stroke of luck. Sifting through a newspaper archive one day, I typed a year incorrectly and there it was. The reference to 1977 turned out to have been a typo. In the 6 October 1966 edition of Australian newspaper The Age, a headline jumped out at me: \u201cSunday showing for Tongan castaways\u201d. The story concerned six boys who had been found three weeks earlier on a rocky islet south of Tonga, an island group in the Pacific Ocean. The boys had been rescued by an Australian sea captain after being marooned on the island of \u2018Ata for more than a year. According to the article, the captain had even got a television station to film a re-enactment of the boys\u2019 adventure.
I was bursting with questions. Were the boys still alive? And could I find the television footage? Most importantly, though, I had a lead: the captain\u2019s name was Peter Warner. When I searched for him, I had another stroke of luck. In a recent issue of a tiny local paper from Mackay, Australia, I came across the headline: \u201cMates share 50-year bond\u201d. Printed alongside was a small photograph of two men, smiling, one with his arm slung around the other. The article began: \u201cDeep in a banana plantation at Tullera, near Lismore, sit an unlikely pair of mates … The elder is 83 years old, the son of a wealthy industrialist. The younger, 67, was, literally, a child of nature.\u201d Their names? Peter Warner and Mano Totau. And where had they met? On a deserted island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Peter was the youngest son of Arthur Warner, once one of the richest and most powerful men in Australia. Back in the 1930s, Arthur ruled over a vast empire called Electronic Industries, which dominated the country\u2019s radio market at the time. Peter was groomed to follow in his father\u2019s footsteps. Instead, at the age of 17, he ran away to sea in search of adventure and spent the next few years sailing from Hong Kong to Stockholm, Shanghai to St Petersburg. When he finally returned five years later, the prodigal son proudly presented his father with a Swedish captain\u2019s certificate. Unimpressed, Warner Sr demanded his son learn a useful profession. \u201cWhat\u2019s easiest?\u201d Peter asked. \u201cAccountancy,\u201d Arthur lied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
B<\/strong>ut Peter noticed something odd. Peering through his binoculars, he saw burned patches on the green cliffs. \u201cIn the tropics it\u2019s unusual for fires to start spontaneously,\u201d he told us, a half century later. Then he saw a boy. Naked. Hair down to his shoulders. This wild creature leaped from the cliffside and plunged into the water. Suddenly more boys followed, screaming at the top of their lungs. It didn\u2019t take long for the first boy to reach the boat. \u201cMy name is Stephen,\u201d he cried in perfect English. \u201cThere are six of us and we reckon we\u2019ve been here 15 months.\u201d
The boys, once aboard, claimed they were students at a boarding school in Nuku\u2018alofa, the Tongan capital. Sick of school meals, they had decided to take a fishing boat out one day, only to get caught in a storm. Likely story, Peter thought. Using his two-way radio, he called in to Nuku\u2018alofa. \u201cI\u2019ve got six kids here,\u201d he told the operator. \u201cStand by,\u201d came the response. Twenty minutes ticked by. (As Peter tells this part of the story, he gets a little misty-eyed.) Finally, a very tearful operator came on the radio, and said: \u201cYou found them! These boys have been given up for dead. Funerals have been held. If it\u2019s them, this is a miracle!\u201d
In the months that followed I tried to reconstruct as precisely as possible what had happened on \u2018Ata. Peter\u2019s memory turned out to be excellent. Even at the age of 90, everything he recounted was consistent with my foremost other source, Mano, 15 years old at the time and now pushing 70, who lived just a few hours\u2019 drive from him. The real Lord of the Flies<\/em>, Mano told us, began in June 1965. The protagonists were six boys \u2013 Sione, Stephen, Kolo, David, Luke and Mano \u2013 all pupils at a strict Catholic boarding school in Nuku\u2018alofa. The oldest was 16, the youngest 13, and they had one main thing in common: they were bored witless. So they came up with a plan to escape: to Fiji, some 500 miles away, or even all the way to New Zealand.
There was only one obstacle. None of them owned a boat, so they decided to \u201cborrow\u201d one from Mr Taniela Uhila, a fisherman they all disliked. The boys took little time to prepare for the voyage. Two sacks of bananas, a few coconuts and a small gas burner were all the supplies they packed. It didn\u2019t occur to any of them to bring a map, let alone a compass.
one noticed the small craft leaving the harbour that evening. Skies were fair; only a mild breeze ruffled the calm sea. But that night the boys made a grave error. They fell asleep. A few hours later they awoke to water crashing down over their heads. It was dark. They hoisted the sail, which the wind promptly tore to shreds. Next to break was the rudder. \u201cWe drifted for eight days,\u201d Mano told me. \u201cWithout food. Without water.\u201d The boys tried catching fish. They managed to collect some rainwater in hollowed-out coconut shells and shared it equally between them, each taking a sip in the morning and another in the evening.
Then, on the eighth day, they spied a miracle on the horizon. A small island, to be precise. Not a tropical paradise with waving palm trees and sandy beaches, but a hulking mass of rock, jutting up more than a thousand feet out of the ocean. These days, \u2018Ata is considered uninhabitable. But \u201cby the time we arrived,\u201d Captain Warner wrote in his memoirs, \u201cthe boys had set up a small commune with food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gymnasium with curious weights, a badminton court, chicken pens and a permanent fire, all from handiwork, an old knife blade and much determination.\u201d While the boys in Lord of the Flies<\/em> come to blows over the fire, those in this real-life version tended their flame so it never went out, for more than a year.
The kids agreed to work in teams of two, drawing up a strict roster for garden, kitchen and guard duty. Sometimes they quarrelled, but whenever that happened they solved it by imposing a time-out. Their days began and ended with song and prayer. Kolo fashioned a makeshift guitar from a piece of driftwood, half a coconut shell and six steel wires salvaged from their wrecked boat \u2013 an instrument Peter has kept all these years \u2013 and played it to help lift their spirits. And their spirits needed lifting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Worst of all, Stephen slipped one day, fell off a cliff and broke his leg. The other boys picked their way down after him and then helped him back up to the top. They set his leg using sticks and leaves. \u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d Sione joked. \u201cWe\u2019ll do your work, while you lie there like King Taufa\u2018ahau Tupou himself!\u201d
They survived initially on fish, coconuts, tame birds (they drank the blood as well as eating the meat); seabird eggs were sucked dry. Later, when they got to the top of the island, they found an ancient volcanic crater, where people had lived a century before. There the boys discovered wild taro, bananas and chickens (which had been reproducing for the 100 years since the last Tongans had left). They were finally rescued on Sunday 11 September 1966. The local physician later expressed astonishment at their muscled physiques and Stephen\u2019s perfectly healed leg. But this wasn\u2019t the end of the boys\u2019 little adventure, because, when they arrived back in Nuku\u2018alofa police boarded Peter\u2019s boat, arrested the boys and threw them in jail. Mr Taniela Uhila, whose sailing boat the boys had \u201cborrowed\u201d 15 months earlier, was still furious, and he\u2019d decided to press charges.
Fortunately for the boys, Peter came up with a plan. It occurred to him that the story of their shipwreck was perfect Hollywood material. And being his father\u2019s corporate accountant, Peter managed the company\u2019s film rights and knew people in TV. So from Tonga, he called up the manager of Channel 7 in Sydney. \u201cYou can have the Australian rights,\u201d he told them. \u201cGive me the world rights.\u201d Next, Peter paid Mr Uhila \u00a3150 for his old boat, and got the boys released on condition that they would cooperate with the movie. A few days later, a team from Channel 7 arrived.
The mood when the boys returned to their families in Tonga was jubilant. Almost the entire island of Ha\u02bbafeva \u2013 population 900 \u2013 had turned out to welcome them home. Peter was proclaimed a national hero. Soon he received a message from King Taufa\u2018ahau Tupou IV himself, inviting the captain for an audience. \u201cThank you for rescuing six of my subjects,\u201d His Royal Highness said. \u201cNow, is there anything I can do for you?\u201d The captain didn\u2019t have to think long. \u201cYes! I would like to trap lobster in these waters and start a business here.\u201d The king consented. Peter returned to Sydney, resigned from his father\u2019s company and commissioned a new ship. Then he had the six boys brought over and granted them the thing that had started it all: an opportunity to see the world beyond Tonga. He hired them as the crew of his new fishing boat.
While the boys of \u2018Ata have been consigned to obscurity, Golding\u2019s book is still widely read. Media historians even credit him as being the unwitting originator of one of the most popular entertainment genres on television today: reality TV. \u201cI read and reread Lord of the Flies<\/em> ,\u201d divulged the creator of hit series Survivor<\/em> in an interview.It\u2019s time we told a different kind of story. The real Lord of the Flies<\/em> is a tale of friendship and loyalty; one that illustrates how much stronger we are if we can lean on each other. After my wife took Peter\u2019s picture, he turned to a cabinet and rummaged around for a bit, then drew out a heavy stack of papers that he laid in my hands. His memoirs, he explained, written for his children and grandchildren. I looked down at the first page. \u201cLife has taught me a great deal,\u201d it began, \u201cincluding the lesson that you should always look for what is good and positive in people.\u201d
\u2022 This article was amended on 12 May 2020 to remove a reference to William Golding beating his children. The line was based on Golding\u2019s own account of a pillow fight with his four-year-old son in which he described how he had enjoyed hitting the boy and \u201cstopped when [my son] was on the verge of tears\u201d. Golding\u2019s daughter has said (see letter<\/a>) that their father never beat or smacked them.
Excerpted from <\/em>https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2020\/may\/09\/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"