Castaway: The extraordinary survival story of Narcisse Pelletier, a young French cabin boy shipwrecked on Cape York in 1858

by Robert Macklin

In 1858, 14-year-old Narcisse Pelletier sailed from Marseilles in the French trader Saint-Paul. With a cargo of Bordeaux wine, they stopped in Bombay, then Hong Kong, and from there they set sail with more than 300 Chinese prospectors bound for the goldfields of Ballarat and Bendigo. Around the eastern tip of New Guinea, however, the ship became engulfed in fog, struck reefs and ran aground. Scrambling aboard a longboat, the survivors undertook a perilous voyage, crossing almost 1000 kilometres of the Coral Sea before reaching the shores of the Daintree region in far north Queensland, where, abandoned by his shipmates and left for dead, Narcisse was rescued by the local Aboriginal people. For seventeen years he lived with them, growing to manhood and participating fully in their world - until in 1875 he was discovered by the crew of a pearling lugger and wrenched from his Aboriginal family. Taken back to his 'real' life in France, he became a lighthouse keeper, married and had another family, all the while dreaming of what he had left behind...Drawing from firsthand interviews with Narcisse after his return to France and other contemporary accounts of exploration and survival, and documenting the spread of European settlement in Queensland and the brutal frontier wars that followed, Robert Macklin weaves an unforgettable tale of a young man caught between two cultures in a time of transformation and upheaval.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Survival, Book Club, Australia

317 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 25, 2019

Reviews

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non-Fiction that reads like Fiction. Enthralling story of a 1858 French 14 year old boy being castaway on the far north coast of Australia and being accepted and eventually included by local Aboriginal people before being reluctantly returned to his French family 17 years later. Astonishing detail. That story while it has it's brutal moments is nothing in comparison to parallel story of the brutality of the Frontier Wars/massacres that were happening in Queensland and depicted in alternate chapters.
A fascinating, if confronting account.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Castaway is overall a fascinating read. The chapters on history are extremely well documented and informative. However, I found the pattern the book is based on (a chapter on history, a chapter on Narcisse Pelletier) a bit clunky and it didn’t work for me. As acknowledged by the author, we don’t know much about Pelletier’s life and the chapters dedicated to him are largely fiction. Surprisingly, the author only really stresses that point at the very end of his book. I wonder if a book just about Pelletier would have not been more appropriate? Retrospectively, the chapters on the conquest of Australia by the British are therefore even more convincing and interesting. As another reviewer here has mentioned before, the use of ‘Aboriginal’ as a noun and not an adjective gets a bit annoying and embarrassing after a while and there might be a few historical inaccuracies, but I disagree with that same reviewer when they say that the book is ‘a terrible read’ and ‘utter garbage’. Being French, I didn’t mind the use of French words here and there, but I wonder if non-French speakers will fully understand what the author means. Using French wasn’t always necessary and felt a bit artificial/pretentious at times. The thing I found really annoying was the absence of maps in the book. I just don’t understand how an author can talk about history, geography and the conquest of territories and not include maps in their book. I was really struggling with some of the chapters because of this. In any case, it is an interesting read and I am grateful to the author for introducing me to the life of Narcisse Pelletier. The final chapters are particularly heart-breaking. I am now considering reading Stephanie Anderson’s Pelletier - The Forgotten Castaway of Cape York and I may try to get my hands on a copy of Chanouga’s Narcisse.

[Julie Giles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary tale. I feel that my 65 years of living as an Australian has just had a reality check. I’ve known about the genocide of the first Australians, as the truth has come out over the past few decades, but Macklin’s respectful telling of two stories has really opened my eyes. Thank you Robert.

[Dougal P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Macklin set himself a high bar in including a history of early colonialists' contact with the many indigenous groups in Australia in the early nineteenth century as part of his imaginatively recreated story of Pelletier, but it does work.

Macklin includes various historians' accounts of the genocidal practices of the then 'Native Police' forces, who aggressively snuffed out every attempt at resistance as the various Indigenous tribes attempted to retain their place in territory which had been theirs for thousands of years. The work is thus part historical narrative, part imaginative re creation of an individual's life.

Pelletier's early years, as well as his abandonment by his European shipmates, are movingly depicted, as is his adoption and by the Night Island people, who subsequently name him 'Amglo'.

Macklin notes that Pelletier/Amglo transitions into a completely new world and identity as an adolescent (about 14 years of age), and effectively becomes socialised as Aboriginal, although retaining some vague memories of his earlier world. The two utterly disconnected worlds give the book great power and poignancy, especially when, Pelletier is wrenched from his Aboriginal world and thrust back into the lift he had left as a youth after seventeen years.

From an Australian reader's point of view, the book makes riveting and disturbing reading. It is to Macklin's credit that he is able to very imaginatively show two dimensions of the 'destruction of Paradise' of the First Australians.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and shocking story. Non-fiction that reads as fiction, the story of a French boy of 14 years old who gets left behind by his shipmates on Cape York in 1858. The Aboriginees rescue him and take him in. It still shocks me to read about the real history of Australia. Those British were pure criminals, nothing Great about them.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting book, well researched, a mixture of fact and a lot of fiction, that is a narrative of the whole episode of the life of the castaway and of Queensland in general during the time of the castaway while he lived with the Aboriginal people, and also before and after that episode.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I wished I learnt at school

[Rigby Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this excellent book, Robert Macklin engages both intellect and emotions with his clear, precise telling of a superbly researched tale. His style is objective, factual, but never cold or clinical.
Alternating chapters tell the story of North Queensland in the late 1800s. The murderous displacement, rape, slavery and pillage that always accompanied British colonial expansion, are countered by the absorbing tale of Narcisse Pelletier, a young French cabin boy who lived for 17 years with an Aboriginal clan on northern Cape York, after being shipwrecked in 1878.
Life for Narcisse among the indigenous people who adopted him, was hard and demanding, but deeply fulfilling. These chapters are full of extraordinarily interesting detail about the lives of pre-colonial Aborigines, in which there was much to admire, especially the complex social structures that had preserved their culture and environment for sixty thousand years.
Amglo (Narcisse’s clan name) experienced kindness, generosity, consideration, honesty, egalitarianism… among intelligent people whose diligent respect for each other, the land, plants and animals derived from necessity, and would have ensured their healthy, fit, satisfying lives continued for another sixty thousand years, had the rest of the world left them alone.
This is a very fine book; both uplifting and incredibly sad. I found it inspiring to learn about a race of humans who had worked out how to allow people to be human, with all their irrationality, jealousies, competitiveness and so on, yet maintain a social structure that was stable, just, egalitarian and satisfying.
This is a book to treasure.

[Paulibrarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

From brutal beginnings, to a beautiful if savage life amongst the Night Islanders of Cape York, Australia, eventually leading to a heartbreaking conclusion back in France. Prolific Macklin spins his cinematic-like magic of a true story, with heavily researched notes, and the travails of Narcisse, a 14 year old cabin boy shipwrecked in the Coral Sea, 1000km from the Cape. Just the right balance of what actually happened and the rounding out of what would have happened. In 1858, Australia was in the midst of a pitched battle to suppress Aboriginal habitation, and this sorry story is told in parallel with Narcisse and his acceptance by the Night Islanders, who named him Amglo. In fact, I found it fascinating to read about Narcisse/Amglo and hurried through the parallel chapters to return back to 'his' story. Nevertheless, it is a shameful time which is depicted with great reverence and a good introduction to what went on between settlers and First Australians. Great cover to the trade paperback, suggesting a teen waking up to the fact that he is in a totally foreign land without any communication skills.

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Narcisse Pelletier, een Franse kajuitjongen lijdt schipbreuk op de kust van Cape York (Australië) en wordt moedwillig achtergelaten door zijn kaptein en de rest van de bemanning. Hij is 14 jaar. Hij wordt gevonden en verzorgd door een Aboriginal jongen die behoort tot een stam die leeft van de zee. Hij wordt opgenomen door de stam en leert alles van hun levenswijze en voelt zich er thuis. Hij leert langzamerhand van de taal en gaat met ze mee op jacht soms ook naar het binnenland waar ze soms vechten met andere naburige stammen. De schrijver wisselt het boek af met de belevenissen van Narcisse met de geschiedenis van de blanken in Queensland. De ontdekkingsreizigers, de settlers, de politie en het leger. Het is geen roman! De oorspronkelijke bevolking werden door de meesten niet als mensen gezien. Waar hebben we dat meer gehoord?
Ik denk niet dat er een Nederlandse vertaling van is maar het is zeker het lezen waard als je geïnteresseerd bent in de geschiedenis van Australië en zijn bevolking.

[Adrian Archer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Having read many factual books relating to Australian history, I was alarmed and disappointed at the historical inaccuracies of this book and at how poorly it was written. Unfortunately, the author believed such things as pigs being hunted and wild mangoes being eaten grew in Cape York peninsula by early 1860’s (feral pigs had only become established by the 1880’s and mangoes much later). This made the book seem a work of pure fantasy and combined with the annoyingly persistent and incorrect use of the adjective ‘aboriginal’ in plural form ‘aboriginals’ made the author appear uneducated. Although the author freely admits that very little is known of Narcisse’s experiences living with an indigenous tribe, the book purports to be factual in his experiences. A terrible read that I feel embarrassed to shelve on my bookshelf. Utter garbage.

[N. Wiklund · Rating 5 out of 5]

Castaway. An extraordinary survival story indeed.
I had been wanting to read this book for a while, and I am so glad that I did. The story of a young French cabin boy who gets ship wrecked and stranded on a beach in Far North Queensland, 1858. Adopted by a local Aboriginal tribe, Narcisse (Amglo), leads a rich life full of trust, honesty and deserved retribution (by their own morals and learnings).
I enjoyed how this book moved from chapter to chapter, discovering Amglo's life, while also giving lessons on the dark, sometimes painfully horrible history of the colonisation, particularly that of Queensland.
Coming up to Invasion Day, I think this book is an important read for all those questioning the day and the past. What does it truly mean to be an Australian if we cannot celebrate together with the First Nations?
A must read.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an honour it is to read the story of Narcisse Pelletier which Robert Macklin has brought to life in his latest book, Castaway. Narcisse was abandoned at 14 after a shipwreck, and survived due to the help of the Uutaalnganu people of Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland. His resilience and tenacity in the face of such a harsh world are really a sight to behold, as is the warmth and love of the Uutaalnganu people that accepted him as their own. Thank you Robert Macklin for my signed copy!

[Sophie Paterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow. What a history lesson. Not only an amazing insight into indigenous culture but an interesting and confronting history of white settlement. This book will make you think. 3 stars for me only because I found it a bit long winded in parts and started to skim the story but I’m glad I read it for the insight and reminder of how brutal out history is.

[Jaellayna Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title says, this is an "extraordinary" story. The real-life Narcisse Pelletier's life is interwoven with also real-life tales within the history of Australia and the sadly, tragically familiar story of colonialism, bigotry, hubris, and corruption. The author has skillfully brought it all together, and through it the reader is learning as well as thinking/feeling. Excellent overall.

[Anne Cornford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye opening book. I loved every second chapter as I entered into the Night Islander world, and wept through every other second chapter as I learnt about so much of white Australia's appalling, criminal treatment of the first Australians.

[Victor Raul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Esperaba mas de este libro, no me agrado como se desarrollo la novela, en cambio los datos historicos aportados en el libro permiten conocer las atrocidades de conquistadores y misioneros que se comportaron de la misma manera que lo hicieron los españoles en america

[Chris Waterford · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this well researched story. I was less impressed by the constant interruption (every second chapter) of the history of 19th Century Queensland and the Frontier Wars. For me, it upset the momentum of the main story.
6/10

[Mickey Bits · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent addition to my collection of interesting historical tales. Shipwrecks, castaways, cannibals, and colonialism. A bittersweet and riveting account. Listened to it over 9 hours of cooking and housework. It made the time fly.

[Jenny Kirkby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book left me with an ache, not just for Narcisse, but for both his families. And for the ignorance and arrogance that caused so much loss - of life, of knowledge and culture.

[Luke Flynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book! Fascinating true story

[David Kerr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Macklin's historical novel of Narcisse Pelletier, a French cabin boy, unearths an amazing true story of survival, set beside the genocidal landscape of Australia’s indigenous on the eastern coast of Australia.

Narcisse, shipwrecked on the coast of Cape York is rescued by an Aboriginal tribe and quickly embraces their culture. The juxtaposition of the Frontier Wars creates an uneasy tension between indigenous humanity and their welcoming of a white man, against the murderous racism of invading Europeans.

The author's careful research illuminates a hidden history - a dark stain on Australia's conscience.

Macklin brings to light the rhythm of Narcisse's new life - hunting, feasts, celebrations, marriages, rules, fights and discipline. His descriptive style engages the reader.

I found the book hard to put down, eager to discover the destiny of Narcisse's extraordinary life, holding me captive to the end.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written account of a young French cabin boys survival after being shipwrecked and abandoned, to his extraordinary life as a member of the Night Islander people of Cape York. Interspersed is the history of white mans interaction with the Indigenous people of the land. Certainly not a history to be proud of. If your interested in indigenous culture or the history of Australia this is a good read.