William Golding's 1954 book The Lord of the Flies tells the story of young boys stranded on a remote island. In the book, things quickly turn chaotic as the boys' darker sides emerge.
However, just eleven years after the book came out, six teenage boys really did get stranded on an uninhabited Pacific island. They survived for fifteen months before being rescued. Their real-life experience was very different from Golding's fictional tale.
How Six Teens Ended Up Stranded
In 1965, six teenagers from Tonga, aged 13 to 18, ran away from their Catholic boarding school. They were looking for adventure and planned to sail to Fiji or New Zealand. They brought coconuts, bananas, and a gas burner.
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Start Your News DetoxOne night, they lost their way and drifted for eight days, growing very thirsty. Finally, they saw an island and made their way to its shore. This remote island, called 'Ata, became their home for over a year.
Life for the Tongan Castaways
On their first night, the boys cried and prayed. The next day, they explored the island. They desperately needed water and food, so they promised to work together to survive.
They created a small society. They started and ended each day with songs and prayers. They made a chore list for cooking, gardening, and guard duties. When they argued, they gave each other time-outs.
They built houses from coconut fronds. They found chickens that had been breeding since the island's previous inhabitants, who were kidnapped into slavery, left. Eventually, they learned to cook food over an open fire. They even made musical instruments and gym equipment.
In Lord of the Flies, the boys also try to create order, but it falls apart due to paranoia. This was not the case for the Tongan boys. They supported each other through intense thirst and homesickness. When one boy broke his leg, the others used sticks to set it and cared for him until he recovered.
Their upbringing likely played a role in their cooperation. Sione 'Ulufonua Fataua, one of the boys, told People in 2020 that they came from close, poor families where sharing was important. He explained that if someone had a problem, they would talk about it, apologize, and pray. If someone got very angry, they would go look at the ocean for a few hours to clear their mind.
The Rescue of the Boys
The Tongan castaways were found in 1966 by an Australian named Peter Warner. He was sailing his fishing boat and saw signs of fire on the island's coast. Some of the boys spotted him and ran towards him, long-haired and screaming.
Warner contacted a radio operator who confirmed the boys had been missing and presumed dead. The operator exclaimed that finding them was a miracle, as funerals had already been held.
When they returned to Tonga, the boys were arrested for stealing the fishing boat they had used to leave. However, Warner had sold the rights to their story to an Australian TV station. He used the money to bail them out.
For the Tongan boys, their time stranded showed the best of human nature, not the worst. Castaway Mano Totau wrote that they learned a lot on the island, perhaps more than at school. He learned to trust himself and realized that background doesn't matter when facing a real problem; you find what you need to do to survive.
