This is Tromelin Island.
It is exactly as barren as it looks,
so much so that it used to be known simply as the Isle of Sand.
In 1761, almost a hundred people captured from their homeland were abandoned here,
and most of them were never seen or heard from again.
This is their horrifying story.
[intro music]
Sometime after nightfall on July 31st, 1761,
Jean de La Fargue looked back and forth between two different maps.
He was the captain of a French ship known as L'Utile, and he was in a hurry,
but having two maps of the exact same area of the Indian Ocean
that contradicted one another, wasn't helping.
After leaving from the east coast of Madagascar,
Captain Jean was guiding his ship in complete darkness while up against winds of up to 20 knots.
And unfortunately, he didn't need a map or the ability to see
more than a few feet in front of him to know that his ship was off course.
Without an accurate and reliable map on the ship though,
he was left to figure it out using bad information.
Considering this, the smart move would have been to slow down
and wait until the sun came up so he could get his bearings,
but time was a luxury Captain Jean could not afford.
Along with a crew of more than 140 men,
Captain Jean was charged with sailing west from the Isle of France,
which is now known as Mauritius, to Madagascar to transport a load of beef and rice.
The ship was expected back in the Isle of France in a few days,
but Captain Jean had another stop to make first that only he and his crew knew about.
Payment for the beef and rice would be a nice sum of money,
but Captain Jean couldn't pass up the opportunity to make a lot more.
His plan was for the ship to sail past the Isle of France to Rodrigues Island.
There, he'd drop off a load of unplanned cargo
before returning to the Isle of France with the supplies he was sent to bring back.
Below deck, 160 men, women, and children of Malagasy descent, or natives of Madagascar,
were locked in the cargo hold to be sold when Captain Jean landed on Rodrigues Island.
And the payday he was supposed to get for them went far beyond the worth of beef and rice,
so he was anxious to make it to the island from the moment the Malagasy were forced on board.
By 1761, they fetched a premium
since the governor of the Isle of France ordered a ban on that type of activity.
So along with this being a lucrative trip, it was also a highly illegal one.
And all these factors weighed heavily on Captain Jean's decision-making.
While he tried to figure out where the ship was,
the crew were busy executing his orders to keep the ship moving as planned,
because in his mind, waiting for daylight wasn't an option.
However, had he been just a little bit more patient and at least waited until first light,
he would have noticed the tiny island directly in the ship's path.
In fact, it wasn't so much the island that would have caused alarm;
it was the reef that surrounded it just below the surface.
And Captain Jean found out just how protective of the island it was
when the choppy waters of the Indian Ocean caused the ship to collide with the reef.
Right away, this was a fatal blow to the ship.
The hull was smashed open and water overtook it within minutes.
Captain Jean and most of his crew abandoned ship and swam to the safety of the island,
but even still, 18 of the men were swept out to the sea in a storm and drowned.
Horrifyingly, many of the Malagasy and the cargo had no escape from the rushing water.
And those who could get out did so through the hole the reef had created.
When the ship sank, moments after the damage was done,
it did so with almost half of the Malagasy still trapped in the cargo hold.
As the sun rose and in the wake of losing their ship,
the magnitude of their predicament could finally be seen.
More than 120 crewmen and between 60 and 80 Malagasy made it safely onto land after the wreck.
Unfortunately, they were stranded on an island that at the time was known as the Isle of Sand.
And when the survivors could finally see where they were as morning set in,
they all must have felt an immediate sense of dread.
The Isle of Sand is about the worst place in the world to be stuck.
First discovered by France in the 1720s,
it's about 300 miles northwest of Réunion Island and 280 miles east of Madagascar,
so it's essentially in the middle of nowhere in the Indian Ocean.
The island was once a volcano that eroded over millions of years, maybe even longer,
and sea levels didn't leave much of it remaining above the water.
On top of that, the island has a land area of about a single square kilometer.
Imagine an island the size of an average city block. But that's not all.
Its highest point is just 23 feet (7 m) above sea level,
so spotting any ships in the distance was out of the question.
That's no problem on an island with trees, but the Isle of Sand was literal in name.
In fact, outside of a few blades of grass and a couple of shrubs that weren't even knee-high,
the island was completely devoid of vegetation.
And because there are so few plants, animals aren't exactly plentiful either.
There were fish in the water in the nearby reefs, but those same reefs would make fishing difficult.
Just about the only easily accessible food are the seabirds that land on the island
and the turtles that come up to shore, which is obviously barren by any standards.
The island is also just south of the equator and is classified as having a mild tropical climate.
But with no trees or shade, temperatures on the island are anything but mild during most of the year.
In fact, July and August are the only months when the average temperatures
just barely dip below 80 Fahrenheit or 27 Celsius.
For the rest of the year, the sun beats down, and it's sweltering.
Its size and lack of protection from the elements
also means that even the most comfortable days are windswept.
Violent cyclones and tropical storms also pop up relentlessly during the summer months,
which at the very least brings lots of rain.
This, as you might imagine, is particularly important for anyone planning on spending
any time on the island since it has no source of fresh water.
From the moment Captain Jean washed up on the island with the rest of the survivors,
his behavior grew increasingly erratic.
The stress and pressure of smuggling the Malagasy illegally
and being lost in the Indian Ocean had already been more than enough to deal with,
but now, not only would he not be getting that big payday he was looking forward to,
but he also wouldn't be able to conceal the highly illegal activity he was up to.
If or when he was rescued from the island, and that was a big if,
Captain Jean would have to face the Isle of France governor.
This stress eventually became too much for him and he seemed to have a break from reality.
Something in him just snapped, and from then on, he was never the same.
With this break, his crew had no other choice but to relieve him of his command.
Afterward, First Lieutenant Barthélémy Castellan du Vernet took over and began organizing survival efforts.
In the first little while after the stranding,
the crew gathered up anything from the ship hat washed up on the island,
while others swam out to the wreck and retrieved supplies still inside.
Because of this, they managed to stockpile a considerable amount of wood, food,
and various items that could come in handy.
However, something that should have been the top priority,
which was sourcing drinkable fresh water, was completely overlooked.
Since the crew had control of all the food and water, and the Malagasy were not seen as equals,
there was little reason for them to address it at the start of their ordeal.
This would result in eight Malagasy dying from dehydration in the first few days.
It was only after their deaths that the new captain ordered a well to be dug to find water.
And despite their shared circumstances,
the social divide between the two groups remained in place.
They shared the work side by side and necessary survival tasks
like the construction of an oven for cooking and a forge for melting metal,
but very little of the food and water stores were shared with the Malagasy.
The crew even placed a literal divide between them and the Malagasy
by setting up a camp on the opposite end of the island.
But the differences between them were no more evident
than when Barthelme ordered that a ship be built with the wreckage of L'Utile.
Incredibly, the order wasn't just to build a raft with the scrap wood;
it was to build a literal ship from scratch.
When it was done, they even gave the new ship a name, dubbing it "The Providence".
Then, on September 27th, almost 2 months after their stranding,
The Providence was loaded up and departed the Isle of Sand.
When it did, it left all of the surviving Malagasy behind,
with only a promise to send a ship back to rescue them.
After 4 days at sea, The Providence arrived back in Madagascar.
During the journey though, an illness spread throughout the ship
and killed some of the crewmen, including Captain Jean.
So with the commander responsible for everything now dead,
Barthélémy was summoned to answer to the Isle of France governor when the crew returned home.
The governor was furious, and Barthélémy was lambasted,
but despite this, he still tried to convince the governor to send a ship back to the Isle of Sand.
Unfortunately, the governor denied Barthélémy each time he asked.
At the time, France was in the Seven Years' War with Britain for global dominance,
and not a single ship could be spared.
This meant that no help was coming for the Malagasy.
In the first few months after the Providence left the island,
the 60 or so Malagasy waited eagerly for a rescue ship
that unfortunately, unbeknownst to them, would never come.
Eventually, everyone left behind had little choice but to make the inhospitable island home.
Without many natural resources to work with, the Malagasy dug pits in the sand
they would fortify with coral rocks to serve as shelters.
Morbidly, it was common for the Malagasy at the time to bury their dead
in buildings similar to mausoleums we see in cemeteries today.
They'd dig large holes and build walls from the bottom of the pits to a few feet above ground.
The structure was then covered by a stone roof to complete a small,
self-contained underground building intended to house the dead for eternity.
This meant that the Malagasy castaways essentially lived inside what they consider to be graves.
Even worse, the stranded survivors were all from the central highlands of Madagascar,
far from the coastline that surrounds the country.
Growing up and capturing food near the ocean was different than what they were used to further inland,
which was made all the more difficult by the dramatically few resources available to them.
On top of that, one of the few sources of food that was available to them,
which were the turtles, were considered taboo to eat in Madagascar.
But, despite this, any reservations about eating them didn't last long
as hunger crept in and they began to starve.
The good news, if there was any in their situation,
is that turtles didn't have to make up the bulk of their diet and neither did fish.
Although evidence suggests that the Malagasy became skilled fishermen while on the island,
they mostly lived on the seabirds since they were the most plentiful food source available.
Unfortunately, even though food, water and shelter were addressed early on,
and the Malagasy adapted where they needed to, their population was dwindling.
It's not clear whether this was sickness or malnutrition,
but either way, people began to pass away.
Not long after the crew left the island as well,
the Malagasy created a large raft with what was left of the wood.
When it was complete, 18 of them climbed aboard and paddled away from the island,
hoping to reach anywhere else to bring back help to save the rest of them.
Tragically, these 18 were never seen again.
As time passed, the original months they were stranded slowly turned to years
on the little barren island, and hope began to fade.
After three years, most of the Malagasy had died, leaving just 15 of the original 60 alive.
A year after The Providence landed in Madagascar, Barthélémy left to return to France,
but admirably, he continued to ask officials to send a rescue to the Malagasy.
The governor held firm every time a letter from Barthélémy arrived,
but Barthélémy didn't limit himself to just the governor.
He targeted anyone with any kind of political sway who could authorize a rescue effort for them.
And his nagging eventually grew too much for the Isle of France Minister of Marine Affairs.
In 1772, 11 years after L'Utile sank,
and with the war over, Barthélémy was finally successful.
The Minister of Marine Affairs agreed to send a ship to rescue the Malagasy.
This was unfortunately slow-moving as well, so another 3 years would pass
before any ship even left the port for the Isle of Sand.
Not even a reported sighting by a passing ship in 1773
or Barthélémy getting the French media involved was enough to speed up the rescue.
Then, finally and frustratingly, when the first ship was sent to the Isle of Sand in 1775,
it made it to the outer edge of the protective reef before turning back.
Then, after that, it would be another year before a second attempt was made.
That ship took a different route and got as close to the island as the reef would allow,
and then anchored in place.
The crew dropped a rowboat into the water,
and two of them hopped in and began rowing toward the island.
A storm had begun to blow in shortly before the rowboat departed from the ship,
and as if anyone needed any more proof how dangerous the reef was,
the rowboat was tossed into the reef by the whitecaps
and shattered into pieces, tossing the two sailors into the ocean.
One of the men swam back to the ship and the other swam to shore,
and then watched his ship pull up its anchor and abandon him there.
Afterward, the stranded crewman became part of the small community of Malagasy
and eventually led another project to build a raft.
The only difference between this raft and the one made more than a decade earlier,
was its feather sail made from the seabirds who inhabited the island.
When the craft was done, the sailor was joined by six Malagasy,
and the raft floated into the Indian Ocean.
But again, the raft and everyone else on board were never heard from again.
The remaining Malagasy returned to their solitude when the raft left,
hopeful that it would reach land and they'd soon be saved.
But as months went by, it became clear that no one was coming to save them.
You have to imagine that each of these attempts at rescue would only be more devastating
when all of their new hope was crushed as time went on.
And eventually, they must have even grown accustomed to rescue attempts of every kind failing.
They must have finally accepted that they would never leave the Isle of Sand
and continue on with any semblance of normal life they established
after being left behind by the French crew.
But everything changed for them on November 29th, 1776.
That was the day when a small French warship named the Dauphin
pulled into the island under the command of Captain Jacques Marie Boudin de Tromelin.
And what he and his crew found was shocking.
Of the 60 to 80 Malagasy who survived the shipwreck, only 7 women remained.
One of them was holding an 8-month-old baby that had been born on the island,
and all of the rest of them were wearing clothes made from seabird feathers they had braided together.
Captain Jacques would survey the conditions the Malagasy had been living in
and could hardly believe his eyes.
There were small buildings clustered together,
and a shed had been built from coral stones to store food.
The Malagasy even managed to construct a small lookout tower to watch ships.
But thankfully, despite all of these amenities they had created,
finally, their ordeal had come to an end.
When Captain Jacques brought the women and one infant on board,
and the Dauphin pulled away from the island,
it was the first time the Malagasy had been anywhere but the Isle of Sand in 15 years.
The women were then brought to the Isle of France and welcomed by its new empathetic governor.
He immediately declared them free and arranged to have them taken back to Madagascar,
but the women actually refused to go.
It's unclear whether the refusal had to do with the potential of being part of another shipwreck
or something else, but the governor accepted their decision
and instead gave them citizenship on the Isle of France.
The infant and his mother and grandmother were eventually taken in by the governor
and went on to live with him on his estate.
He also renamed and baptized each of them, making them a part of his family.
Then, after the others settled on the Isle of France, history lost track of them,
and that was sort of the end of their story.
For his successful rescue of the Malagasy,
the Isle of Sand was renamed in honor of Captain Jacques to "Tromelin Island",
which is what it is still named today.
And the little sandy island is still sitting in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
And because of its unlucky inhabitants 300 years ago, it's become an important archeological site.
Since 2006, four archeological expeditions have taken place
to uncover how the Malagasy managed to survive for 15 years
in a place that's almost completely uninhabitable.
The first expedition documented and examined the remains of the shipwreck,
and by then, the only signs of it were the items that couldn't be lifted to the surface
like anchors, cannons, ammunition, and rigging.
Otherwise, the Malagasy had managed to use everything else they had at their disposal.
The next expedition focused on locating artifacts
and the remains of those who died while stranded.
Archaeologists would go on to discover three of their buildings,
including one that almost certainly was used as a kitchen.
It contained the oven that was built when they were first stranded,
and a stack of copper bowls that the Malagasy got from the ship.
The bowls showed obvious signs of both wear and repair,
which was a significant accomplishment considering what they had available to them.
Fixing the copper bowls required bolting a patch of copper over a hole,
but the Malagasy had no loose copper, bolts, or many tools.
But despite this, they managed to source copper from the shipwreck,
and then melt it and mold it to create a bowl patch.
For rivets, they rolled up thin sheets of copper and drilled holes into the patches
by using a combination of bone and other metal tools.
Handmade spoons were also found, as was an iron tripod that held cookery over an open fire.
There was also a large bowl made of lead found among the kitchen artifacts,
leading archaeologists to conclude that the survivors likely dealt with the consequences
of lead exposure at some point later in their lives.
Then along with the cooking vessels, the dig uncovered pieces of jewelry made of copper,
which included rings, necklaces and bracelets found in the sand.
There was even a comb that had been fashioned from copper to be used to untangle hair.
These might seem like inconsequential discoveries,
but these were signs that the Malagasy established a small society on the little barren island.
And somehow, against all odds, they managed to survive some of the worst conditions imaginable.
As far as the other details about the 15 years the Malagasy spent on Tromelin Island,
they've been lost to history.
A series of interviews was done with each of the survivors,
but any record of the details of their first-hand experience has never been located.
If you made it this far, thank you so much for watching.
We have a whole bunch of other historic expedition videos on the channel
similar to this if you enjoyed it, so make sure to check those out.
If you have a story suggestion, feel free to submit it to the form found in the description,
and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.