Save Our Souls: The True Story of a Castaway Family, Treachery, and Murder
By Matthew Pearl
Harper
272 pages
On December 18, 1887, a shark-fishing boat called Wandering Minstrel was trapped in a storm at sea and shipwrecked off the coast of Midway Island. The survivors included the ship’s captain, Frederick Walker, his wife Elizabeth, their three sons, and a dog named Jessie. The rest of the ship’s crew joined them on Sand Island, an unknown atoll far from shipping lines and other avenues of rescue.
How isolated were the Walker family and crew? In his new book, Save Our Souls, Matthew Pearl pinpoints this desolate atoll:
“Midway was 4,200 miles east of Hong Kong and 2,500 miles east of Tokyo; it was 3,200 miles west of San Francisco and 1,300 miles northwest of Honolulu; going south from Midway would require traveling 4,900 miles before reaching Australia, and almost 4,800 miles to New Zealand. For all practical purposes, they found themselves at the edge of the world.”
On the surface, the story behind Save Our Souls is fairly straightforward. And, in fact, Pearl wastes little time getting to the shipwreck itself. The boat Frederick Walker hoped might pave the way to a more stable family life was “smashed by waves into mere scraps swept away to what might as well have been the ends of the earth.”
Complicating matters was the presence on the atoll of a previous castaway named Hans Jorgensen about whom there was a great and terrible secret. Jorgensen had been “marooned there intentionally by another ship whose sailors knew the truth: Hans was a murderer.” (Not a spoiler, this fact is strongly hinted at on the book jacket and almost universally revealed in other reviews.) Jorgensen’s erratic behavior soon became evident to the others:
“Reportedly, at the appearance of a full moon, Hans would rave madly, walking up and down the beach … His outbursts felt different to the observers than the rest of the castaways’ mental strains, reflecting a darker history than he had revealed.”
Save Our Souls seems like an ideal vehicle for portraying survival strategies and tactics needed to endure harsh, desolate conditions. But for a long stretch, this part of the story is left behind. Instead, Pearl describes similar shipwrecks, the backstories of some of the crew’s most unsavory characters, the lore of shark-fishing (its history and techniques), along with other related but marginal digressions. In other parts of the world, various intrigues and imbroglios crop up, involving who might ultimately help rescue the castaways. This takes up many pages as well.
As the book regains focus on the castaways, tension grows, and a full-fledged adventure story ensues. Save Our Souls amply displays the author’s prodigious research, and his prose shines throughout. At one point, Frederick and his son Freddy experience maritime troubles while hunting for sharks aboard a makeshift vessel:
“With the shark dead and secured, a rainstorm descended upon them, churning out gale-force winds … As father and son were tossed and spun around, they lost an oar. The twisted piece of iron serving as their anchor hooked back into the sea floor, but the tighter it was pulled the more it strained. Caught in the deluge of rain and finding themselves in a new position, they could no longer see the island. At any moment, the rope could snap from the anchor and, if it did, they would be washed out to sea without any possibility of survival.”
Fans of castaway classics like Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson will find plenty to enjoy in Pearl’s new book.
Author Bio:
Lee Polevoi is Highbrow Magazine’s chief book critic. An audiobook version of his novel, The Confessions of Gabriel Ash, has just been released.
For Highbrow Magazine
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