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Organization Studies and
Posthumanism

This book aims at exploring the reception of critical posthumanist

conversations in the context of Management and Organization
Studies. It constitutes an invitation to de-center the human subject
and thus an invitation to the ongoing deconstruction of humanism.
The project is not to deny humans but to position them in relation to
other nonhumans, more-than-humans, the non-living world, and all
the “missing masses” from organizational inquiry. What is under
critique is humanism’s anthropocentrism, essentialism,
exceptionalism, and speciesism in the context of the Anthropocene
and the contemporary crisis the world experiences. From climate
change to the loss of sense at work, to the new geopolitical crisis, to
the unknown effects of the diffusion of AI, all these powerful forces
have implications for organizations and organizing. A re-imagination
of concepts, theories, and methods is needed in organization studies
to cope with the challenge of a more-than-human world.

François-Xavier de Vaujany is full professor of Organization

Studies at Université Paris Dauphine-PSL and researcher within DRM.
His research deals with the political and societal dimensions of (new)
ways of organizing work and their management. He is particularly
interested in the time-space of contemporary digital organization of
work. Post-phenomenologies and process philosophy are key
perspectives of his research, emphasizing the apocalyptic process of
digital management and organization.

Silvia Gherardi is senior professor of sociology of organization at

the University of Trento (Italy), where she founded the Research
Unit on Communication, Organizational Learning, and Aesthetics
(www.unitn.it/rucola). She is also professor II at the School of
Business, Society and Engineering, Mӓlardalens University (Sweden).
She received the degree of “Doctor Honoris Causa” from Roskilde
University (2005), East Finland University (2010), and St Andrews
University (2014). Her research interests include feminist new
materialism, entrepreneurship, epistemology of practice, and
postqualitative methodologies in organization studies.

Polyana Silva is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Sao

Paulo, where she is conducting research on the enmeshed aspects of
life in a digitalized and virtualized worlds. Her particular areas of
interest include virtual worlds, virtual beings, and metaverse
projects, which she approaches from a posthumanist perspective.
She has been part of organizing committees of research-oriented
events such as the Chaire France-Brésil USP, a Chaire devoted to
“Digitality and Management: Presence, Time and Space”, and the
Organizations, Artifacts & Practices (OAP) Workshop. She is a
member of the research groups “Public Sector Accounting and
Governance in Brazil (PSAG)” and Meta:lab – Metaverse Laboratory
for Research and Innovation.
Routledge Studies in Management,
Organizations and Society

This series presents innovative work grounded in new realities,

addressing issues crucial to an understanding of the contemporary
world. This is the world of organized societies, where boundaries
between formal and informal, public and private, local and global
organizations have been displaced or have vanished, along with
other nineteenth century dichotomies and oppositions. Management,
apart from becoming a specialized profession for a growing number
of people, is an everyday activity for most members of modern
societies.
Similarly, at the level of enquiry, culture and technology, and
literature and economics, can no longer be conceived as isolated
intellectual fields; conventional canons and established mainstreams
are contested. Management, Organizations and Society addresses
these contemporary dynamics of transformation in a manner that
transcends disciplinary boundaries, with books that will appeal to
researchers, students and practitioners alike.

Recent titles in this series include:

The Ethics of Sustainability in Management

Storymaking in Organizations
Kenneth Mølbjerg Jørgensen

Relational Capital in Business

Innovation, Value and Competitiveness
Rafał Drewniak, Urszula Słupska, Zbigniew Drewniak, Iwona
Posadzińska and Robert Karaszewski

Organizational Resilience in Hospitality and Tourism

Malgorzata Rozkwitalska-Welenc, Jacek Borzyszkowski, Beata A.
Basinska, Fevzi Okumus and Osman M. Karatepe

Organization Studies and Posthumanism

Towards a More-than-Human World
Edited by François-Xavier de Vaujany, Silvia Gherardi and Polyana
Silva
Organization Studies and
Posthumanism
Towards a More-than-Human
World

Edited by
François-Xavier de Vaujany, Silvia
Gherardi and Polyana Silva
First published 2024
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa

business

© 2024 selection and editorial matter, François-Xavier de Vaujany,

Silvia Gherardi and Polyana Silva; individual chapters, the
contributors

The right of François-Xavier de Vaujany, Silvia Gherardi and Polyana

Silva to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of
the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
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explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Names: Vaujany, François-Xavier de, editor. | Gherardi, Silvia, editor.
| Silva, Polyana, editor.
Title: Organization studies and posthumanism : towards a more-
than-human world / edited by François-Xavier de Vaujany, Silvia
Gherardi and Polyana Silva.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Series: Routledge
studies in management, organizations and society | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023049487 | ISBN 9781032614243 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781032617152 (paperback) | ISBN 9781032617169 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Organizational sociology. | Management--Social
aspects. | Technological innovations--Social aspects.
Classification: LCC HM786 .O7445 2024 | DDC 302.3/5--
dc23/eng/20231102
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023049487

ISBN: 978-1-032-61424-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-61715-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-61716-9 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781032617169

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Contents

List of contributors
Preface: Posthumanist organizing: Now!
FRANCESCA FERRANDO

General introduction: Too-human? Inquiring in-

between different disciplinary areas in
managing and organizing
SILVIA GHERARDI, FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE VAUJANY, AND POLYANA SILVA

PART I
Contextualizing the debate in a more-than-
human world

1.1 We are the missing people: On posthumanist

onto-epistemologies in organization studies
LINDA TALLBERG AND ASTRID HUOPALAINEN
1.2 Entrepreneuring as multispecies composting
BOUKJE CNOSSEN, ORLA BYRNE, PAUL LASSALLE, NEIL A. THOMPSON,
KAREN VERDUIJN, AND HURIYE YERÖZ

1.3 From legitimation to alegitimation: Inviting

posthuman and prehuman ontologies into
theories of institutions
FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE VAUJANY AND STEWART CLEGG

1.4 Posthumanism as a system of codifying events

XAVIER DEROY

PART II
Posthumanism in the world of management
and organizing

2.1 Mapping the posthumanist conversations in

Organization Studies
POLYANA SILVA

2.2 How practice theory participates in critical

posthumanist conversations
SILVIA GHERARDI

2.3 Posthumanism and sociomaterial organizing:

The case of Superbergamo’s aid practices
during the Covid-19 pandemic
LAURA LUCIA PAROLIN AND CARMEN PELLEGRINELLI
2.4 Between action and deliberation: Contributions
of a posthumanist practice theory approach
MARINE DE RIDDER, CHARLOTTE DURIEUX, AND ANNE ROUSSEAU

2.5 Deleuzoguattarian cartographies of work and

organizing in the human–robotic workplace
ANGELO GASPARRE AND LUCA PARESCHI

PART III
Posthumanism: History or becoming?

3.1 Monsters and myths: Transhuman temporal

narratives and mind/body problems
CARLOS MONTEMAYOR

3.2 Lacan’s challenge to posthumanism: The ethical

case for speaking subjects
EDOUARD PIGNOT AND MARK THOMPSON

3.3 Edith Stein’s realms amid posthumanism’s

evolving landscape: Conversations on the
subject of “Subjectivity”
GABRIEL J COSTELLO

3.4 From expertise to encounter: Repopulating the

inquiry for worldly healing
MIREILLE MERCIER-ROY, CHANTALE MAILHOT, AND EMMANUEL BONNET
General conclusion: The paradoxical invitation
of posthumanism to organization studies:
Between processuality and criticality
FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE VAUJANY, SILVIA GHERARDI, AND POLYANA SILVA

Index of names
Index of concepts and theories
List of contributors for the edited
book Organization Studies and
Posthumanism
(in alphabetical order)

Emmanuel Bonnet is an associate Professor at ESC Clermont. His

research deals with the experience of learning with troubled
situations. He's currently inquiring about sentinel territories of the
Anthropocene.

Orla Byrne is an assistant professor in Entrepreneurship at UCD

College of Business. Her research focuses on the lived experience
of entrepreneurship – both in terms of the practices which
underpin day-to-day events and the ways in which entrepreneurs
are impacted and respond to significant challenges they face.
This latter work has led to much research on business failure and
recovery of entrepreneurs, as well as the resilience of
entrepreneurs and their businesses during Covid. She is a firm
believer in second-chance entrepreneurship and an advocate for
greater support for entrepreneurs if their businesses fail.
Stewart Clegg was a distinguished professor of Management and
Organization Studies at the University of Technology Sydney
before joining the Department of Project Management in the
Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sydney in 2021. He is
a virtual visiting professor at University of Stavanger, Norway, and
at Nova School of Business and Economics, Portugal. In the past,
he has held Chair appointments at the University of New
England, University of St. Andrews, and University of Western
Sydney, as well as many Visiting Appointments, including at the
Universities of Cambridge, Stanford, Newcastle (UK), and Aston
and Copenhagen Business School. He is widely acknowledged as
one of the most influential contributors to organization studies
and project management, recognized as such by numerous
Fellowships, as well as being one of the most significant
contemporary theorists of power relations.

Boukje Cnossen is a professor of Entrepreneurship, Organization,

and Culture at Leuphana University in Lüneburg, Germany. Her
research focuses on organizing practices in the arts and other
creative settings, with a specific interest in how organizations
come into being. She has a specific interest in the role of space
and materiality in bringing new social collectives into being and
likes to use a relational lens to study how social phenomena such
as organizations are maintained through practice.

Gabriel J. Costello was a lecturer and researcher at the Atlantic

Technological University (Galway City campus – formerly GMIT)
from 2001 to 2022. His research interests include the
management, theory, philosophy, and teaching of innovation and
design, and the philosophical underpinning of Artificial
Intelligence, Transhumanism, and Posthumanism. He is a
member of the International Association for the Study of the
Philosophy of Edith Stein (IASPES).

Xavier Deroy is a professor of Strategy and Organization Studies.

His main areas of research are events and management,
 complexity and management, and organizational evolution.

Charlotte Durieux is a PhD candidate in Management at ICHEC &

UCLouvain. Her research is focused on responsible management.

Francesca Ferrando teaches Philosophy at New York University

(USA), NYU-Program of Liberal Studies, as an adjunct assistant
professor, and is the founder of the Global Posthuman Network.

Angelo Gasparre is an associate professor at Universtà di Genova.

His research is focused on organization studies.

Silvia Gherardi is a senior professor of sociology of organization at

the University of Trento (Italy), where she founded the Research
Unit on Communication, Organizational Learning, and Aesthetics
(www.unitn.it/rucola). She is also professor II at the School of
Business, Society and Engineering, Mӓlardalens University
(Sweden). Her research interests include feminist new
materialism, entrepreneurship, epistemology of practice, and
postqualitative methodologies in organization studies.

Astrid Huopalainen is an assistant professor at Aalto University.

She is a qualitative researcher working in creative and cross-
disciplinary ways. She studies the interrelations and potential
clashes between arts and organizing.

Paul Lassalle is a lecturer at the Hunter Centre for

Entrepreneurship of the University of Strathclyde. Trained in
qualitative research methods at the Centre de Sociologie des
Organisations at Sciences Po – CNRS (France), he has experience
in conducting research fieldworks in different industries and
national contexts in order to deliver impactful research for
policymakers.

Chantale Mailhot is a full professor at HEC Montréal. Her research

is focused on organizational and social transformations analyzed
from practice-based perspectives.
Mireille Mercier-Roy is a candidate at HEC Montréal. Her research
explores topics such as management and organization studies,
pragmatism, posthumanism, and human–animal relationships.

Carlos Montemayor is a professor of Philosophy at San Francisco

State University. His research focuses on the intersection
between philosophy of mind, epistemology, and cognitive
science.

Luca Pareschi is an associate Professor at the University of Rome

Tor Vergata, in the department of Law and management. His
research delas with Qualitative Social Research, Management of
Arts and Culture, and Organizational Studies.

Laura Lucia Parolin is an associate professor at Department of

Culture and Language (SDU). Her research deals with new
materialism and posthumanism.

Carmen Pellegrinelli is a PhD fellow in Social Science at the

University of Lapland. Her PhD is about sociomateriality in
collective theater creation with a practice-based studies
approach. She is also interested in socio-cultural creativity,
performance studies, studies on activism and social movements,
and intersectional feminism.

Edouard Pignot is an assistant professor of Management and

Organizational Psychology at EMLV Business School. His research
investigates the place of affect and emotions in the digital space,
namely, the relationship between information technologies and
our ways of organizing. His empirical inquiry draws on
ethnographic studies of digital phenomena (e.g. gamification,
blockchain, algorithmic management), plus observation and
archives, to develop new theories to the information and
organizational discipline.

Marine De Ridder is a postdoctoral researcher at ICHEC Brussels

Management School. She achieved a PhD in 2021 at UCLouvain
 about “Deliberation on Work in the Self-proclaimed Liberated
Firms: Investigation of the Deliberative Spaces”.

Anne Rousseau is a professor at Université Catholique de Louvain

and ICHEC. Her research explores organization change. She
questions the humanization of work at stake in managerial
practices.

Polyana Silva is a PhD candidate at Universidade de São Paulo

(USP), researching the effects of technologies on practices and
routines in everyday life.

Linda Tallberg is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lapland.

Her research focuses on human–nonhuman animal relations in
business and organization, with a focus on ethics, care, and
justice. Her co-edited book “The Oxford Handbook of Animal
Organization Studies” (Oxford University Press, 2022) creates a
new field and agenda for animal inclusion and consideration in
the field of business and organizing.

Mark Thompson is a professor of Digital Economy at INDEX

(Initiative for the Digital Economy). Mark’s research draws on
practice-based theories to investigate the intersection between
emerging digital business models and organizational innovation
and transformation.

Neil Thompson is an associate professor in Entrepreneurship and

Organization Studies at the School of Business and Economics
(VU). His ongoing research covers topics about Entrepreneurship
as Practice; Organizational Creativity; New Venture Creation;
Sustainable Development; Organization Theory; Institutional
Theory; Organizational Change; New Industry Development;
Economic Sociology; and Historical Methods.

François-Xavier de Vaujany is a full professor of organization

studies at Université Paris Dauphine-PSL and a researcher at
DRM (UMR CNRS 7080). His research deals with the societal and
 political dimensions of (new) ways of organizing work and their
management. He has recently published Apocalypse managériale
(Belles Lettres) and Organization as Time (Cambridge University
Press).

Karen Verduijn is an associate professor at the School of Business

and Economics of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Department of
Management and Organization). Her research projects revolve
around understanding the intricacies and politicality of
entrepreneurial everyday life. She is editor-in-chief of the
Scandinavian Journal of Management, a board member of the
Entrepreneurship Studies Network (special interest group of the
Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship), and the
International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business.

Huriye Yeröz is a senior lecturer in entrepreneurship at De

Montfort University. Her research interests are broad enough to
fit within critical management and entrepreneurship studies, and
are interdisciplinary at heart. Her core research area concerns
migrant, refugee, and female entrepreneurship.
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Preface: Posthumanist organizing:
Now!
Francesca Ferrando

What is posthumanist organizing? How can posthumanist modes of

managerial processes be achieved? These are necessary questions in
the field of Posthuman Studies, now that Posthumanism has turned
into a philosophy of life. Existing is a process that requires constant
organizing; being part of a species means, more clearly, being able
to coexist. Humanity has a long history of egalitarian organizing.
Paleolithic and most neolithic archeological findings demonstrate a
type of social organization that was not hierarchical – prehistory
counts as 99% of our history as a species. Similarly, prehistorical
votive figurines show a complete integration between the human
and the natural world: most of them are hybrids, human bodies with
the peak of a bird, the tail of a snake, and the motif of leaves. We
must remember our past to know who we are and where we want to
go. These premises are not offered to dream of going back to
prehistoric futures. Instead, their presence allows us to recognize
something very important: anthropocentric hierarchies are historical
constructions.
Everything can change and usually does. The anthropocene is
showing us that modes of anthropocentric organizations are no
longer feasible. We must rethink our diverse humanity in relation to
the world we are part of, including nonhuman species and
technology. As an example of anthropocentric ways of managing
space, rarely do urban planners consider migrating animals in the
development of cities; plants are present as forms of human leisure.
This anthropocentric worldview shows in the ecological unbalance
we are witnessing. On the other hand, a technocratic shift is favoring
the dream of high-tech futures that could solve the climate crisis.
The current trend in managerial outcomes is to trust technology and
the dataist motto; algorithmic predestination – and algorithmic bias
– thus become the norm. Yet, technology is not separated from
humanity: unresolved issues within our societies necessarily
converge in virtual settings. Posthumanist managerial approaches
are mindful of all these factors: organizing becomes a path of
existential poiesis in multispecies awareness that embraces
technology but is not subjected to technology.
Awareness in the 21st century means to know who we are as
individuals, societies, a species, and beyond. To be aware also
means to know that we are the ways we organize: we are, on some
levels, super-organisms. Posthumanism calls for egalitarian modes of
existence not out of rhetorics of justice, but out of the
understanding that we are the others (unfairness erodes social
stability and, eventually, brings society to a collapse). Posthumanist
organizational modes are to be manifested at all levels: from the
inner circle of families, tribes, and friends to the workplaces and
political arenas. Listening to all voices is key; listening to the voices
that cannot talk is also fundamental – even though some voices do
not speak human languages, we can still understand each other. In
order to do this, speciesist biases must be detected and
deconstructed.
This book offers a rich and generous contribution to the field of
Posthumanist Management. This is a gift not only to the academic
community, but to our society at large, in its current search of
different ways of managing that are no longer rooted in privilege (be
it human or nonhuman), but in awareness. May all readers benefit
from these brave new paths of posthumanist managing and
organizing. The time is now!
General introduction
Too-human? Inquiring in-between
different disciplinary areas in managing
and organizing1
Silvia Gherardi, François-Xavier de Vaujany, and
Polyana Silva

DOI: 10.4324/9781032617169-1

Humanity and humanism are old topics in social sciences and

humanities. These notions are particularly polysemic, and
paradoxically, posthumanism both does not mean a specific stance
about these debates or a choice about a possible meaning.
To begin our exploration, we can start with a definition of the field
in which posthumanism is conceived as a discourse:

humanism is a discourse which claims that the figure of ‘Man’

(sic) naturally stands at the centre of things. It is entirely
distinct from animals, machines, and other nonhuman entities.
It is the origin of meaning and history; and shares with all other
human beings a universal essence. ‘This figure of MAN implies
that Man is absolutely known and knowable to himself’.
Moreover, these absolutist assumptions imply that humanist
anthropocentric discourse relies upon a set of binary
oppositions, such as human/inhuman, self/other,
 natural/cultural, inside/outside, subject/object, us/them,
here/there, active/passive and so on.

(Castree et al., 2004, p. 1345).

Posthumanism, as an interdisciplinary field, questions the

dominant position of the human subject in society and culture,
challenging the humanist belief in the essential, conscious, and
intentional human as the primary source of agency (Badmington,
2000). It acknowledges that while there is little consensus on the
extent to which an essential, conscious human subject can actively
create change, humans do participate in the process of change.
Since the neologism posthumanism (with or without hyphen) made
its appearance, the question is: how to understand “the human”?
And it is still an open question: is there something exceptional about
the human?

Posthumanism as a field of inquiry and

experimentation
When in 1995 Pepperell was writing about the “posthuman
condition”, he clearly stated that it was not about the “End of Man”
but about the end of a “man-centred” universe. In other words, it is
about the end of “humanism” that long-held belief in the infallibility
of human power and the arrogant belief in our superiority and
uniqueness. Posthumanism is “about how we live, how we conduct
our exploitation of the environment, animals, and each other. It is
about what things we investigate, what questions we ask, and what
assumptions underlie them” (Pepperell, 1995, p. 171). In this
definition, we can notice how the politics of knowledge was present
in the posthumanist discourse since its inception and was later
expanded in the form of critical posthuman knowledges (Braidotti,
2017, 2019b; Ferrando, 2020).
 The posthuman condition is linked to the conditions of advanced
capitalism, on one side, and to the awareness that human activity
has had a geological influence (the Anthropocene debate) on the
other. Critical posthuman knowledge is thus opening a space of
theorization both as more-than-capitalist (Roelvink et al., 2015) and
post-anthropocentric (Calás & Smircich, 2023). Let's take as a
reference point of the contemporary debate the Posthuman Glossary.
We find a working definition of the posthuman as “a field of inquiry
and experimentation that is triggered by the convergence of
posthumanism on one side and post-anthropocentrism on the other”
(Braidotti & Hlavajova, 2018, p. 1). This convergence is producing a
dynamic new field of “post-disciplinary” scholarship, characterized by
critique and creativity, a critique of humanism (in particular of any
essentialist view of subjectivity and subjectivation), and a variety of
alternative responses.
We can start with Philosophical Posthumanism (which is still a
philosophy in the making2). It is presented as a recent development
of critical and cultural posthumanism, whose genealogy in literary
criticism dates from the first appearance of the term (Hassan, 1977)
until the 1990s and the publication of the key text How We Became
Posthuman (Hayles, 1999). Philosophical Posthumanism has
developed a specific philosophical approach from the beginning of
the twenty-first century until today. Braidotti (2020b) traces its
origins from the Letter on Humanism (Heidegger, 1947) and The
Question Concerning Technology (Heidegger, 1953), passing through
postmodernism, the studies of the difference (including, among
others, gender studies, critical race studies, queer theory,
postcolonial studies, disability studies), and cyborg theory. It is
genealogically related to the radical deconstruction of the “human”,
which began as a political cause in the 1960s, passing through the
notion of technologies of the self (Foucault, 1988), turning into an
academic project in the 1970s, evolving into an epistemological
approach in the 1990s, and results in a multiplication of situated
perspectives deconstructing the dualism Self/Others.
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 BOATS WERE FILLED WITH MEN WHOSE ONLY THOUGHT WAS TO
SAVE THEIR SKINS

There were intrepid men in the Medusa who bullied the others
into helping make a raft. The best that they could do was to launch
a pitiful contrivance of spars and planks held together by lashings. It
was sixty-five feet long and twenty broad, not even decked over,
twisting and working to the motion of the waves which slapped over
it or splashed between the timbers when the ocean was smooth. As
soon as it floated alongside the frigate, one hundred and fifty
persons wildly jammed themselves upon it, standing in water to their
waists and in danger of slipping between the spars and planks. The
only part of the raft which was unsubmerged when laden had room
for no more than fifteen men to lie down upon it.
The weather was still calm, and the ship rested solidly upon her
sandy bed, the upper decks clear of water. It seems incredible that
no barrels of beef and biscuit were lashed to the timbers of the raft,
no water-casks rolled from the tiers and swung overside. A kind of
mob hysteria swept these people along, and the men of resolution
were carried with it. They were unaccustomed to the sea, and a
frenzied fear of it stampeded them. The flimsy, wave-washed raft
floated away from the Medusa with only biscuit enough for one
scanty meal and a few casks of wine. The stage was set, as one
might say, for inevitable horrors.
One of the boats which was not so crowded as the others had
the grace to row back to the ship with orders to take off a few, if
there were men still aboard. To the surprise of the lieutenant in the
boat, sixty men had been left behind because there was not even a
foothold for them upon the raft. The boat managed to stow all but
seventeen of them, who were very drunk by this time and preferred
to stand by the ship and the spirit-room. The fear of death had
ceased to trouble them.
For the moment let us shift the scene to survey the fate of these
seventeen poor wretches who were abandoned on board of the
Medusa. The five boats reached the African coast and most of their
company lived to find Sénégal. The governor bethought himself that
a large amount of specie had been left in the wreck, and he sent a
little vessel off; but lack of provisions and bad weather drove her
twice back to port, so that fifty-two days, more than seven weeks,
had passed before the Medusa was sighted, her upper works still
above water.
Three of the seventeen men were found alive, “but they lived in
separate corners of the hulk and never met but to run at each other
with drawn knives.” Several others had sailed off on a tiny raft which
was cast up on the coast of the Sahara, but the men were drowned.
A lone sailor drifted away on a hencoop as the craft of his choice,
and foundered in sight of the frigate. All the rest had died of too
little food and too much rum, after the provisions had been lost or
spoiled by the breaking up of the ship.
It was understood that the raft, with its burden of one hundred
and fifty souls, was to be taken in tow by the five boats strung in a
line, and this flotilla would make for the nearest coast, which might
have been reached in two or three days of favoring weather. After a
few hours of slow, but encouraging, progress, the tow-line of the
captain’s boat parted. Instead of making fast to the raft again, all
the other boats cast off their cables and, under sail and oar, set off
to the eastward to save themselves. The miserable people who
beheld this desertion denounced it as an act of cruelty and perfidy
beyond belief. It may have been in the captain’s mind to make haste
and send a vessel to pick up the castaways, but his previous
behavior had been such that he scarcely deserves the benefit of the
doubt.
On the makeshift raft there were those who knew how to die like
Frenchmen and gentlemen. What they endured has been handed
down to us in the personal accounts of M. Correard and M. Savigny,
colonial officials who wrote with that touch, vivid and dramatic,
which is the gift of many of their race. Even in translation it is
profoundly moving. When they saw the boats forsake them and
vanish at the edge of the azure horizon, a stupor fell upon these
unfortunate people as they clung to one another with arms locked
and bodies pressed together so that they might not be washed off
the raft.
A small group in whom nobility of character burned like an
unquenchable flame assumed the leadership, attempting to maintain
some sort of discipline and decency, to ration the precious wine, to
make the raft more seaworthy. One of the artisans had a pocket
compass, which he displayed amid shouts of joy, but it slipped from
his fingers and was lost. They had no chart or any other resource of
the kind.

“The first day passed in a manner sufficiently tranquil. We

talked of the means by which we would save ourselves; we
spoke of it as a certain circumstance, which reanimated our
courage; and we sustained that of the soldiers by cherishing in
them the hope of being able, in a short time, to revenge
 themselves on those who had abandoned them.... In the
evening our hearts and our prayers, by a feeling natural to the
unfortunate, were turned toward Heaven. Surrounded by
inevitable dangers, we addressed that invisible Being who has
established the order of the universe. Our vows were fervent
and we experienced from our prayers the cheering influence of
hope. It is necessary to have been in similar circumstances
before one can rightly imagine what a solace to the hearts of the
sufferers is the sublime idea of a God protecting the afflicted.”

Such were the reflections of a little group of devout and high-

minded Frenchmen whose example helped to steady the rest of the
castaways in the early hours of their ordeal. During the first night
the wind increased, and the sea became so boisterous that the
waves gushed and roared across the raft, most of which was three
feet under water. A few ropes were stretched for the people to cling
to, but they were washed to and fro, and many were caught and
killed or cruelly hurt between the grinding timbers. Others were
swept into the sea. Twenty of the company had perished before
dawn. Two ship’s boys and a baker, after bidding farewell to their
comrades, threw themselves into the ocean as the easier end. A
survivor wrote:

“During the whole of this night we struggled against death,

holding ourselves closely to those spars which were firmly bound
together; tossed by the waves from one end to the other, and
sometimes precipitated into the sea; floating between life and
death, mourning over our misfortunes, certain of perishing, yet
contending for the remainder of existence with that cruel
element which had determined to swallow us up. Such was our
situation till break of day.”

Already the minds of some of the castaways were affected.

When the day came clear and beautiful, they saw visions of ships, of
green shores, of loved ones at home. While the ocean granted them
a respite, the emotion of hope strongly revived, and their manifold
woes were forgotten as they gazed landward or waited for sight of a
sail.

“Two young men raised and recognized their father who had
fallen and was lying insensible among the feet of the soldiers.
They believed him to be dead and their despair was expressed
in the most affecting manner. He slowly revived and was
restored to life in response to the prayers of his sons who
supported him closely folded in their arms. This touching scene
of filial piety drew our tears.”

The second night again brought clouds and squally weather,

which agitated the ocean and swept the raft. In a wailing mass the
people were dashed to and fro and were crushed or drowned. The
ruffianly soldiers and sailors broached the wine-casks, and so lost
such last glimmerings of reason as terror had not deprived them of.
They insanely attacked the other survivors, and at intervals a battle
raged all night long, with sabers, knives, and bayonets. The brave M.
Correard had fallen into a swoon of exhaustion, but was aroused by
the cries of “To arms, comrades! Rally, or we are lost!” He mustered
a small force of loyal laborers and a few officers and led them in a
charge. The rebels surrounded them, but were beaten back after
much bloodshed. The scenes were thus depicted by the pen of M.
Savigny:

The day had been beautiful and no one seemed to doubt

that the boats would appear in the course of it, to relieve us
from our perilous state; but the evening approached and none
was seen. From that moment a spirit of sedition spread from
man to man, and manifested itself by the most furious shouts.
Night came on, the heavens were obscured by thick clouds, the
wind rose and with it the sea. The waves broke over us every
moment, numbers were carried into the sea, particularly at the
ends of the raft, and the crowding towards the centre of it was
so great that several poor people were smothered by the
pressure of their comrades who were unable to keep their legs.
Firmly persuaded that they were all on the point of being
drowned, both soldiers and sailors resolved to soothe their last
moments by drinking until they lost their reason. Excited by the
fumes acting on empty stomachs and heads already disordered
by danger, they now became deaf to the voice of reason and
boldly declared their intention to murder their officers and then
cut the ropes which bound the raft together. One of them,
seizing an axe, actually began the dreadful work. This was the
signal for revolt. The officers rushed forward to quell the tumult
and the mutineer with the axe was the first to fall, his head split
by a sabre.
The passengers joined the officers but the mutineers were
still the greater number. Luckily they were but badly armed, or
the few bayonets and sabres of the opposite party could not
have kept them at bay. One fellow, detected in secretly cutting
the ropes, was immediately flung overboard. Others destroyed
the shrouds and halliards of the sail, and the mast, deprived of
support, fell upon a captain of infantry and broke his thigh. He
was instantly seized by the soldiers and thrown into the sea, but
the officers saved him. A furious assault was now made upon
the mutineers, many of whom were cut down.
At length this fit of desperation subsided into weeping
cowardice. They cried out for mercy and asked for forgiveness
upon their knees. It was now midnight and order appeared to be
restored, but after an hour of deceitful calm the insurrection
burst forth anew. The mutineers ran upon the officers like
madmen, each having a knife or sabre in his hand, and such
was the fury of the assailants that they tore with their teeth the
flesh and even the clothing of their adversaries. There was no
time for hesitation, a general slaughter took place, and the raft
was strewn with dead bodies.
 There was one woman on the raft, and the villains had thrown
her overboard during the struggle, together with her husband, who
had heroically defended her. M. Correard, gashed with saber-wounds
as he was, leaped into the sea with a rope and rescued the wife,
while Lavilette, the head workman, swam after the husband and
hauled him to the raft.
THE BRIG, WHICH HAD MADE A LONG TACK AND WAS NOW
STEERING STRAIGHT TOWARD THE RAFT
 The first thing the poor woman did, after recovering her
senses, was to acquaint herself with the name of the person
who had saved her and to express to him her liveliest gratitude.
Finding that her words but ill reflected her feelings, she
recollected that she had in her pocket a little snuff and instantly
offered it to him. Touched with the gift but unable to use it, M.
Correard gave it to a wounded sailor, which served him two or
three days. But it is impossible to describe a still more affecting
scene,—the joy this unfortunate couple testified when they were
again conscious, at finding they were both saved.

The woman was a native of the Swiss Alps who had followed the
armies of France as a sutler, or vivandière, for twenty years, through
many of Napoleon’s campaigns. Bronzed, intrepid, facing death with
a gesture, she said to M. Correard:

I am a useful woman, you see, a veteran of great and

glorious wars. Therefore, if you please, be so good as to
continue to preserve my life. Ah, if you knew how often I have
ventured upon the fields of battle and braved the bullets to carry
assistance to our gallant men! Whether they had money or not,
I always let them have my goods. Sometimes a battle would
deprive me of my poor debtors, but after the victory others
would pay me double or triple for what they had consumed
before the engagement. Thus I came in for a share of the
victories.

It was during a lull of the dreadful conflict among these pitiful

castaways that M. Savigny was moved to exclaim:

The moon lighted with her melancholy rays this disastrous

raft, this narrow space on which were found united so many
torturing anxieties, a madness so insensate, a courage so heroic,
and the most generous, the most amiable sentiments of nature
and humanity.
 Another night came, and the crazed mutineers made an attack
even more savage. It was not altogether impelled by the blind
instinct of survival, for again they tried to tear the raft apart and
destroy themselves with it. They were so many ravening beasts.
Those who resisted them displayed many instances of brave and
beautiful self-sacrifice. One of the loyal laborers was seized by four
of the rebels, who were about to kill him, but Lavilette, formerly a
sergeant of Napoleon’s Old Guard, rushed in and subdued them with
the butt of a carbine and so saved the victim of their rage.
A young lieutenant fell into the hands of these maniacs, and
again there were volunteers to rush in against overwhelming
numbers and effect a rescue, regardless of their grievous wounds.
Bleeding and exhausted, M. Coudin had fallen upon a barrel, but he
still held in his arms a twelve-year-old sailor-boy whom he was trying
to shield from harm. The rebels tossed them both into the sea, but
M. Coudin clung to the lad and insisted that he be placed upon the
raft before he permitted himself to be helped.
During these periods of hideous combat among men who should
have been brethren and comrades in tribulation, as many as sixty of
them were drowned or died of their wounds. Only two of these
belonged to the little party of finely tempered souls who had shown
themselves to be greatly heroic. They had withstood one onslaught
after another, and there were never more than twenty of them, in
honor preferring one another, untouched by the murderous delirium
which had afflicted the others.
True, they saw phantasms and talked wildly, but the illusions
were peaceful. M. Correard imagined that he was traveling through
the lovely, fruitful fields of Italy. One of the officers said to him, quite
calmly, “I recollect that we were abandoned by the boats, but there
is no cause for anxiety. I am writing a letter to the Government, and
in a few hours we shall be saved.” And while they were babbling of
the cafés of Paris and Bordeaux and ordering the most elaborate
meals, they chewed the leather of the shoulder-belts and cartridges,
and famine took its daily toll of them. In these circumstances it was
inevitable that sooner or later they would begin devouring one
another for food. The details are repugnant, and it is just as well to
pass over them. With this same feeling in mind, one of the survivors
confessed:

It was necessary, however, that some extreme measure

should be adopted to support our miserable existence. We
shudder with horror on finding ourselves under the necessity of
recording that which we put into practice. We feel the pen drop
from our hands, a deadly coldness freezes all our limbs, and our
hair stands on end. Readers, we entreat you not to entertain, for
men already too unhappy, a sentiment of indignation; but to
grieve for them, and to shed a tear of pity over their sad lot.

On the fourth day a dozen more had died, and the survivors
were “extremely feeble, and bore upon their faces the stamp of
approaching dissolution.” Shipwrecked crews have lived much longer
than this without food, but the situation of these sufferers was
peculiarly dreadful. And yet one of them could say:

This day was serene and the ocean slumbered. Our hearts
were in harmony with the comforting aspect of the heavens and
received anew a ray of hope. A shoal of flying fish passed under
our raft and as there was an infinite number of openings
between the pieces which composed it, the fish were entangled
in great numbers. We threw ourselves upon them and took
about two hundred and put them in an empty barrel. This food
seemed delicious, but one man would have required a score.
Our first emotion was to give thanks to God for this unhoped for
favor.

An ounce of gunpowder was discovered, and the sunshine dried

it, so that with a steel and gun-flints a fire was kindled in a wetted
cask and some of the little fish were cooked. This was the only food
vouchsafed them, a mere shadow of substance among so many,
“but the night was made tolerable and might have been happy if it
had not been signalized by a new massacre.”
A mob of Spaniards, Italians, and negroes had hatched a plot to
throw all the others into the sea and so obtain the raft and what
wine was left. The black men argued that the coast was near and
that they could traverse it without danger from the natives and so
act as guides. The leader of this outbreak was a Spaniard, who
placed himself behind the mast, made the sign of the cross with one
hand, waved a knife in the other, and invoked the name of God as
the signal to rush forward and begin the affray. Two faithful French
sailors, who were forewarned of this eruption, lost not a moment in
grappling with this devout desperado, and he was thrown into the
sea along with an Asiatic of gigantic stature who was suspected of
being another ringleader. A third instigator of the mob, perceiving
that the plot was discovered, armed himself with a boarding-ax,
hacked his way free, and plunged into the ocean.
The rest of the mutineers were hardier lunatics, and they fought
wildly in the attempt to kill one of the officers, under the delusion
that he was a Lieutenant Danglass, whom they had hated for his
harsh manners while aboard the Medusa. At length they were
repulsed, but when the morning came only thirty persons remained
alive of the one hundred and fifty who had left the frigate.
Occasional glimpses of reason prevailed, as when two soldiers were
caught in the act of stealing wine from the only cask left, and were
put to death after a summary courtmartial conducted with singular
regard for form and ceremony.
Among those who mercifully passed out at the end of a week
was the twelve-year-old sailor-boy, whose name was Leon. M.
Savigny describes it so tenderly that the passage is worth quoting:

He died like a lamp which ceases to burn for want of

aliment. All spoke in favor of this young and amiable creature
who merited a better fate. His angelic form, his musical voice,
the interest inspired by an age so infantile, increased still more
 by the courage he had shown and the services he had
performed, (for he had already made a campaign in the East
Indies), moved us all with the deepest pity for this young victim.
Our old soldiers, and all the people in general, did everything
they could to prolong his existence. Neither the wine of which
they deprived themselves without regret, nor all the other
means they employed, could arrest his melancholy doom.
He expired in the arms of his friend, M. Coudin, who had not
ceased to give him the most unwearied attention. Whilst he had
strength to move he ran incessantly from one side to the other,
loudly calling for his mother, for water and for food. He trod
upon the feet and legs of his wounded companions who in their
turn uttered cries of anguish, but these were rarely mingled with
threats or reproaches. They freely pardoned all that the poor
little lad caused them to suffer.

When the number of the living was reduced to twenty-seven, a

solemn discussion was held, and a conclusion reached upon which it
is not for us to pass judgment. It was evident that fifteen of the
number were likely to live a few days longer, which gave them a
tangible hope of rescue. The other twelve were about to die, all of
them severely wounded and bereft of reason. There was still some
wine in the last cask. To divide it with these doomed twelve was to
deprive the fifteen stronger men of the chance of survival. It was
decided to give these dying people to the merciful obliteration of the
sea. The execution of this decree was undertaken by three soldiers
and a sailor, chosen by lot, while the others wept and turned away
their faces.
Among those whose feeble spark of life was snuffed out in this
manner was that militant woman, the sutler who had followed
Napoleon to the plains of Italy. Both she and her husband had been
fatally wounded during the last night of the mutiny, and so they
went out of life together, which was as they would have wished it.
More than once in war the hopelessly wounded have been put out of
the way in preference to leaving them in the wake of a retreat or
burdening a column with them. In this tragedy of the sea the
decision was held to be justifiable when the French Government
investigated the circumstances.
With so few of them remaining, the fifteen survivors were able
to assemble themselves upon a little platform raised in the center of
the raft and to build a slight protection of plank and spars. To
rehearse their sufferings at greater length would be to repel the
modern reader. It is only in fiction that shipwreck can be employed
as a theme for romance and enjoyable adventure. The reality is apt
to be very stark and grim. It is more congenial to remember such
fine bits as this, when the handful of them huddled upon the tiny
platform in the final days of their agony:

On this new theatre we resolved to meet death in a manner

becoming Frenchmen and with perfect resignation. Our time was
almost wholly spent in talking of our beloved and unhappy
country. All our wishes, our prayers, were for the prosperity of
France.

It was the gallant M. Correard who assured his comrades that

his presentiment of rescue was still unshaken, that a series of events
so unheard of could not be destined to oblivion and that Providence
would certainly preserve a few to tell to the world the melancholy
story of the raft. In the bottom of a sack were found thirty cloves of
garlic, which were distributed as a precious alleviation, and there
was rejoicing over a little bottle of tooth-wash containing cinnamon
and aromatics. A drop of it on the tongue produced an agreeable
feeling,

and for a short time removed the thirst which destroyed us.
Thus we sought with avidity an empty vial which one of us
possessed and in which had once been some essence of roses.
Every one, as he got hold of it, respired with delight the odor it
 exhaled, which imparted to his senses the most soothing
impressions. Emaciated by privations, the slightest comfort was
to us a supreme happiness.

On the ninth day they saw a butterfly of a species familiar to the

gardens of France, and it fluttered to rest upon the mast. It was a
harbinger of land and an omen of deliverance in their wistful sight.
Other butterflies visited them, but the winds and currents failed to
set them in close to the coast, and there was never a glimpse of a
sail. They existed in quietude, with no more brawls or mutinies, until
sixteen days had passed since the wreck of the Medusa. Then a
captain of infantry, scanning the sea with aching eyes, saw the
distant gleam of canvas.
Soon they were able to perceive that it was a brig, and they took
it to be the Argus of their own squadron, which they had been
hoping would be sent in search of them. They made a flag out of
fragments of clothing, and a seaman climbed to the top of the mast
and waved it until his strength failed. The vessel grew larger through
half an hour of tears and supplication, and then its course was
suddenly altered, and it dropped below the sky-line.
Despair overwhelmed them. They laid themselves down under a
covering of sail-cloth and refused to glance at the ocean which had
mocked them. It was proposed to write their names and a brief
account of their experience upon a plank and affix it to the mast on
the chance that the tidings might some day reach their government
and their families in France.
It was the master gunner who crawled out, two hours later, and
trembled as he stared at the brig which had made a long tack and
was now steering straight toward the raft. The others dragged
themselves to their feet, forgetting their sores and wounds and
weakness, and embraced one another. From the foremast of the brig
flew an ensign, which they joyously recognized, and they cried, as
you might have expected of them, “It is, then, to Frenchmen that we
shall owe our deliverance.”
 The Argus, which had been sent out by the governor of Sénégal,
rounded to no more than a pistol-shot from the raft while the crew
“ranged upon the deck and in the shrouds announced to us by the
waving of their hands and hats, the pleasure they felt at coming to
the assistance of their unfortunate countrymen.”
Fifteen men were taken on board the brig of the hundred and
fifty who had shoved away from the frigate Medusa a little more
than a fortnight earlier. There was no more fiddling and dancing on
deck for “these helpless creatures almost naked, their bodies
shrivelled by the rays of the sun, ten of them scarcely able to move,
their limbs stripped of skin, their eyes hollow and almost savage,
and the long beards giving them an air almost hideous.”
They were most tenderly cared for by the surgeon of the Argus,
but six of them died after reaching the African port of St. Louis. Only
nine of the castaways of the Medusa’s raft, therefore, lived to return
to France. Their minds and bodies were marked with the scars of
that experience, which you will find mentioned very frequently in the
old records of shipwreck and disaster. It was an episode in human
history, the best and the worst of it, and a reminder of man’s eternal
conflict with the sea.
 CHAPTER IV
THE WRECK OF THE BLENDEN HALL, EAST
INDIAMAN

IN this harassing modern age of a world turned upside down and

bedeviled with one more problem after another, fancy turns with
fond regret to those lucky sailormen who lingered on little, sea-girt
isles and lorded it as monarchs of all they surveyed. Many an old
forecastle had a Robinson Crusoe, hairy and brown and tattooed,
who could spin strange yarns of years serenely passed among the
untutored natives of the Indian Ocean or the South Seas. Now and
then one of them had lived in more solitary fashion on some remote,
unpeopled strand, a hermit cast up by the sea, and was actually
contented because he had freed himself of the tyranny of bosses
and wages and trousers and all the other shackles of civilization.
Alas! there are no more realms like these. The wireless mast lifts
above the palm-trees, and the steamer whistle blows to recall the
tourists from the beaches where the trade-winds sweep. There are
still some very lonely places on the watery globe, however, and one
of them is the tiny group of three volcanic islands in the South
Atlantic which is known as Tristan da Cunha. These bleak rocks lie
two thousand miles west of the Cape of Good Hope and four
thousand miles to the northeast of Cape Horn. They loom abruptly
from a tempestuous ocean, which lashes the stark, black cliffs, and
there are no harbors, only an occasional fringe of beach a few yards
wide.
Tristan, the largest of the group, lifts a snow-clad peak almost
eight thousand feet above the sea as a warning to mariners to steer
wide of the cruel reefs. It has a small plateau where green things
grow, and living streams and cascades of fresh water. The islands
were discovered as early as 1506 by the Portuguese admiral, Tristan
da Cunha, and in later years the Dutch navigators and the pioneers
of the British East India Company hove to in passing, but it was not
thought worth while to hoist a flag over the group.
It remained for a Yankee sailor, Jonathan Lambert of Salem, to
choose Tristan da Cunha as his abiding-place and to issue a formal
proclamation of his sovereignty to the other nations of the world.
Said he, “I ground my right and claim on the sure and rational
ground of absolute occupancy.” This was undeniable, and the British
Empire rests upon foundations no more convincing. Jonathan
Lambert was of the breed of Salem seafarers who had first carried
the American flag to India, Java, Sumatra, and Japan, who opened
the trade with the Fiji Islands and Madagascar, who had been the
trail-breakers in diverting the commerce of South America and China
to Yankee ships. They had sailed where no other merchantmen
dared go, they had anchored where no one else dreamed of seeking
trade.
It was therefore nothing extraordinary for Jonathan Lambert to
tire of roving the wide seas and to set himself up in business as the
king of Tristan da Cunha which had neither ruler nor subjects. What
his ambitions were and how a melancholy end overtook them is to
be found in the sea-journal of Captain John White, who sailed the
American brig Franklin out to China in 1819. He wrote:

On March 12th we saw and passed the island of Tristan da

Cunha which was taken possession of in 1810 by Jonathan
Lambert. He published a document setting forth his rights to the
soil and invited navigators of all nations whose routes might lie
near that ocean to touch at his settlement for supplies which he
anticipated his industry would draw from the earth and the
adjacent sea. He signified his readiness to receive in payment
for his produce, which consisted of vegetables, fruit and fish,
 whatever might be convenient for the visitors to part with which
could be in any way useful to him.
In order to carry out his plan, Jonathan Lambert took with
him to the island various implements of husbandry, seeds of the
most useful plants, tropical trees for transplanting, etc. After he
had been on his island for about two years it was apparent that
his efforts would be crowned with success, but unfortunately he
was drowned, with his one associate, while visiting one of the
nearby islands.

Another adventurous seaman, Thomas Currie, succeeded to this

lonely principality by right of occupation, and was joined by two
others. They lived contentedly and raised wheat and oats and pigs
until in the War of 1812 the American naval vessels began to use
Tristan da Cunha as a base from which to harry British commerce in
the South Atlantic. Then Great Britain formally annexed the group,
and kept a garrison of a hundred men there for two years.
When the garrison was withdrawn, Corporal William Glass of the
Royal Artillery was left behind at his own request, with his wife and
children, and two privates decided to join him as the beginnings of a
colony. A few other rovers or shipwrecked sailors drifted to Tristan
da Cunha from time to time, and they found girls at St. Helena and
Cape Town who were willing to marry them, so that there was
created a peaceful, unworldly little community on this far-away
island over which Corporal William Glass ruled as a wise and
benevolent patriarch.
The Blenden Hall was a stout ship bound out from England to
Bombay in 1820, an East Indiaman of the stately fleet that flew the
house flag of the Honorable Company. Their era was soon to pass,
with all its color and romance, the leisurely voyage, the ceremonious
formality and discipline, the pleasant sociability. The swifter Yankee
merchant ships, hard driven under clouds of cotton duck, used to
rush past these jogging East India “tea-wagons,” which shortened
sail at sunset and snugged down for the night. They carried crews
for a man-of-war, what with the midshipmen, the purser, the master-
at-arms, the armorer, the calker, the butcher, baker, poulterer,
gunner’s mates, sail-maker, six officers to assist the commander, and
Indian servants to wait on them.
The passengers enjoyed more comfort and luxury in these
handsome old sailing ships than the modern reader might suppose.
The cabins were much more spacious than the liner’s state-rooms of
to-day, the saloon was ornate with rugs and teakwood, with silver
plate and the finest napery, and dinner was an elaborate affair, with
a band of music, and the commander and the officers in the
Company’s dress uniform of blue coat and gold buttons, with
waistcoats and breeches of buff. Wines, ale, beer, and brandy were
served without cost to the passengers, and the large staff of cooks
and stewards was able to find in the storerooms and pantries such a
varied stock of provisions as beef, pork, bacon, and tongues, bread,
cheese, butter, herrings, and salmon, confectionery, oatmeal,
oranges, and dried and preserved fruits, while a live cow or two
supplied cream for the coffee, and the hen-coops stowed in the
long-boat contributed fresh eggs.
The Blenden Hall was commanded by Captain Alexander Greig, a
sailor and a gentleman of the old school, who had laid by a
comfortable fortune during his long service. The trading ventures
and perquisites of the master of an East Indiaman often yielded an
income which a modern bank president would view with profound
respect. The captain’s son, young Alexander Greig, sailed as a
passenger on this last voyage of the Blenden Hall. He was a high-
spirited lad, bound out to join the army in India, and life was one
zestful adventure after another. The modern youngster may well
envy him his luck in being shipwrecked on a desert island, where he
wrote a diary, using penguin’s blood for ink and quill feathers for
pens.
If the tale were fiction instead of fact, the beginning could be no
more auspiciously romantic.
 Captain Greig and his son left their English country home in their
“travelling carriage” for the journey to Gravesend to join the ship.
While crossing Bexley Heath they made their pistols ready, for the
stretch of road was notorious for highwaymen, and as young
Alexander Greig enjoyably tells us:

I soon observed that my father’s attention had been

attracted by two horsemen riding across the Heath at full gallop,
and notwithstanding the postilion was evidently exerting himself
to outstrip our pursuers, they appeared to gain fast upon us.
And in fifteen minutes they called loudly to him to stop, one of
them at the same time discharging a pistol to bring us to. My
father, after urging the postilion to drive faster (and we seemed
then almost to fly across the Heath) told me to be prepared to
receive the man on the left, “for,” said he, “we will give them a
warm reception, at any rate.”
I was just about to follow his advice when I fancied that the
men allowed us to gain ground and were out of pistol-shot, as I
could see them curbing their horses while they discussed the
prudence of keeping up the pursuit. It was fortunate for them
that they did so, for one of them would have received the
contents of my Joe Manton, as I was resolved not to fire till he
came so close to the carriage that I could make sure of my man.

At the next tavern they described the adventure, and when

young Greig mentioned that one of the rascals wore a red waistcoat
with white stripes, the landlord exclaimed:
“Jem Turner, by the Lord Harry! Aye, as sure as fate! There is
two hundred pounds reward for him, dead or alive. The boldest
rascal that rides the Heath!”
Captain Greig concluded, no doubt, that he was safer at sea
again. The Blenden Hall was ready to sail, and several of her
passengers came on board at Gravesend, while the others were
taken on from Deal while the ship tarried in the Downs. Sixteen in all
were of a social station which permitted them to meet at the cuddy
table for dinner while the ship’s band played “The Roast Beef of Old
England” and Captain Greig pledged their health in good Madeira.
With a most precocious taste for gossip, young Greig managed to
portray his fellow-voyagers in an intimate manner that would be
hard to match in the true tales of the sea.
It is just as well to let you gain some slight acquaintance with
them before the curtain rises on the tragedy of the shipwreck. The
most conspicuous figure was Mrs. Lock, wife of a commodore
somewhere on foreign service. She was very fat, with a hurricane of
a temper, and of mixed blood in which the tar brush was undeniable.
Her English was badly broken, and her manners were startling. She
had been the commodore’s cook in his Indian bungalow, so the
rumor ran, until for reasons inscrutable he decided to marry her.
Such a person was enough to set the ship’s society by the ears.
Social caste and station were matters of immense importance. The
emotions of Dr. Law, a fussy old bachelor of a half-pay naval
surgeon, were quite beyond words, although he was heard to
mutter:
“A vulgar black woman, by Jove! And, damme, she flung her
arms around me when she was taken seasick at table.”
There was also consternation among such exclusive persons as
Captain Miles, and six assistant surgeons in the Honorable
Company’s military service, Major Reid of the Poonah Auxiliary
Forces, and Quartermaster Hormby and his lady, of his Majesty’s
foot. The dignified commander of the Blenden Hall felt it necessary
to explain that passage for the chocolate-hued spouse of the erring
commodore had been obtained under false pretenses. As if this were
not enough, another social shock was in store.
Lieutenant Painter, a bluff, good-humored naval man, had come
on board at Gravesend. While the ship was anchored in the Downs,
he was one of the passengers who asked the captain to set them
ashore in the cutter for a stroll in Deal. When they returned to the
boat, Lieutenant Painter was missing. Nothing whatever was heard
of him for two days, and Captain Greig felt seriously alarmed. Then a
boatman brought off a letter in which the gallant lieutenant
explained that he had been

most actively engaged not only in beginning but in finishing a

courtship and that it was his intention to join the ship before
dinner when he would do himself the honor to introduce Mrs.
Painter to the captain and passengers. He requested that a
larger cabin could be prepared, in which he could “stow away
his better half.”

There was great excitement and curiosity in the cuddy of the

Blenden Hall as the dinner-hour drew near. The impetuous romance
of the brisk Lieutenant Painter was sensational. At length a boat was
pulled alongside, and a chair rigged and lowered from the lofty deck.
The boatswain piped, and the lovely burden was safely hoisted to
the poop, followed by the beaming lieutenant, who scrambled up the
gangway. First impressions were favorable. The bride was young and
handsome. Her physical charms were so robust, however, that she
stood a foot taller than her bantam of a husband, and the audience
was amused when she grasped his arm and heartily exclaimed:
“Come, little Painter, let me see this fine cabin of yours.”
It was soon perceived that the vigorous Mrs. Painter was not a
lady. The dreadful truth was not revealed, however, until a grizzled
Deal boatman was discovered lingering at the gangway. When one
of the mates asked him his errand, he answered:
“Why, I only want to say goodbye to my gel, Bet, but I suppose
the gold-buttoned swab of a leftenant has turned her ’ead. Blowed if
I reckoned my own darter ’ud forget me.”
Hiding in her cabin, the daughter wished to avoid such a farewell
scene, but she could hear the old man ramble on:
“She ’as no occasion to feel ashamed of her father. I’ve been a
Deal boatman these fifty years and brought up a large family
respectably, as Captain Greig well knows.”
At this the emotional Mrs. Painter rushed on deck to embrace
her humble sire and weep in his gray whiskers, a scene which the
fastidious passengers found too painful to witness. Henceforth,
through varied scenes of shipwreck and suffering, the dominant
figures were to be the youthful, upstanding Mrs. Painter and the
dusky and corpulent Mrs. Lock, heroines of two rash marriages, and
foreordained to hate each other with a ferocity which not even the
daily fear of death could diminish. In the presence of such
protagonists as these, the ship’s company was like a Greek chorus.
There was something almost superb in such a feminine feud. It was
no peevish quarrel over the tea-cups. Moreover, it could have no dull
moments, because both women had vocabularies of singular force
and emphasis. The forecastle of the Blenden Hall could do no better
in its most lurid moments.
It began with an affectionate intimacy, then squalls and
reconciliations, while the stately East Indiaman jogged to the
southward and the band played on deck for dancing after dinner.
How far these two stormy women were responsible must be left to
conjecture, but there seems to have been a vast deal of squabbling
and bad blood among the passengers, as indicated by the following
entry in the journal of young Alexander Greig, the captain’s son:

Although I endeavored to detach myself, as much as

possible, from any particular party (by giving two entertainments
a week in my private cabin and sending around a general
invitation) I received one or two polite requests to meet the
writers at the first port we might touch at and to grant them the
satisfaction due from one gentleman to another, &c., &c., for
alleged affronts that I had unconsciously committed. For the life
of me I could not have defined what the affronts were, but I
wrote each party an answer that I should be happy to accept,
and then deposited their beautiful gilt-edged little notes in my
desk.
 There was an occasional diversion which patched up a truce,
such as meeting with an armed brig which was suspected to be a
pirate. The chief officer, in the mizzen-rigging with a telescope,
shouted down that the brig was cleared for action. The second mate
rushed forward and yelled to the boatswain to pipe all hands on
deck. The gunner served out pistols and cutlasses to the seamen
and the passengers, boarding-pikes were stacked along the heavy
bulwarks, and the battery of six eighteen-pounders was loaded with
grape and canister. Things looked even more serious when the brig
hauled down a British ensign and tacked to get the weather gage of
the East Indiaman.
Some of the passengers were frightened, and others professed
an eagerness to engage in a “set-to.” Dr. Law, the half-pay naval
surgeon, strode the deck with a drawn sword. He was filled with
valor and Scotch whisky, and offered to wager any man a hundred
guineas that he would be the first to board the enemy. Mrs.
Commodore Lock waddled about uttering loud lamentations, and
vowed that a friend of hers had been eaten alive by pirates. Nightfall
closed down, however, before the brig could overtake the Blenden
Hall, which surged before the wind with studding-sails spread.
Captain Greig was in some doubt as to his reckoning, because of
thick weather, when the ship had entered the lonely expanse of the
South Atlantic, and he therefore steered for a sight of Tristan da
Cunha in order to make certain of his position. He proceeded
cautiously, but soon after breakfast, on July 23, 1820, breakers were
descried close at hand. The wind died, and the ship was drifting.
Anchors were let go, but the water was too deep to find holding-
ground, and a dense fog obscured the sea. The ship struck in
breakers so violent that the decks were swept, the boats smashed,
and the houses filled with water. The masts were promptly cut away,
but the Blenden Hall was rapidly pounding to death with a broken
back. All hands rushed forward and crowded upon the forecastle just
before the rest of the ship was wrenched asunder and floated away.
 Two seamen had been killed by falling spars, but all the rest of
the ship’s company, eighty souls of them, were alive and praying for
rescue. After several hours of misery, a few sailors managed to
knock a raft together and so reached the shore, which had disclosed
itself as frightfully forbidding and desolate. The ship had been
wrecked among the reefs of Inaccessible Island, one of the Tristan
da Cunha group. By a sort of miracle the bow of the ship finally
detached itself from among the rocks and washed toward the tiny
strip of beach. Clinging to the stout timbers of the forecastle, all the
survivors were safely delivered from the terrors of the sea.
Through the first night they could only shiver in the rain and
wonder what fate had befallen them. At dawn they began to explore
the island, which appeared to be no more than a gigantic rock, black
and savage, which towered into the clouds. Fresh water was found,
but hunger menaced them. The first bit of flotsam from the wreck
was a case of “Hibbert’s Celebrated Bottled Porter,” which was a
beverage with a kick to it, and for the moment life looked not quite
so dismal. On the beach were huge sea-lions, creatures twenty feet
in length, but there was no way to slay and use them for food. Many
sea-birds were killed with clubs and eaten raw, which postponed
famine for the time.
And now there floated ashore bales of red broadcloth, which was
promptly cut up for clothing. It was grotesque to see the sailors and
passengers parading in gorgeous tunics and robes of crimson, with
white turbans fashioned from bolts of muslin. With bamboo-poles,
also washed from the ship, Captain Greig set his men to making
tents for the women. There was very little material, however, and
most of the people sat around in a sort of wretched stupor,
drenched, benumbed, hopeless. Several barrels of strong liquors
came rolling in with the surf, and the sailors, of course, drank all
they could hold. One of them, an old barnacle named John Dulliver,
showed a streak of marked sagacity. After tapping a barrel of
Holland gin and guzzling to the limit of his stowage space, he stove
in one end, emptied the barrel, and crawled snugly into it to
slumber. This seemed such a brilliant notion that as fast as the ship’s
water-barrels drifted ashore they were tenanted by castaways who
resembled so many hermit-crabs.
For six days the party forlornly existed in continuous rain, with
no means of kindling a fire, and eating raw pork that was cast up by
the sea and such birds as they could obtain. Then a case of surgical
instruments was found on the beach, and it contained a providential
flint and steel. Fire was made, and spears were contrived of poles,
with knives lashed to them, so that the monstrous sea-lions could be
killed and used for food. There were millions of penguins, and their
eggs could be had for the gathering. It was hard, revolting fare, but
other castaways had lived for months and even years on food no
worse, and the horrors of famine were averted.
Captain Greig was taken ill, and his authority therefore
amounted to little. His officers were not the men for such a crisis as
this, and they do not appear to have been able to master it. The
sailors were insolent and lazy, no doubt of it, and young Mr. Greig
devotes many pages of his diary to abuse of them. It is quite
evident, however, that the officers and passengers felt themselves to
be superior beings and expected the sailors to wait on them as
menials. In such a situation as this one man was as good as another,
and the doctrines of caste and rank properly belonged in the discard.
It was rather pitiful and absurd, as one catches glimpses of it in the
ingenuous narrative of the very young Mr. Greig.

For a few days after the wreck it was hail fellow, well met,
but Jack, once put upon an equality, began to take
unwarrantable liberties, and as familiarity is generally the
forerunner of contempt, so it proved in this case. Quarrels soon
began and the passengers now took the opposite course of
attempting to issue orders to the sailors and treating them as
servants. This exasperated the crew and they swore that no
earthly power should ever induce them to render the least
assistance to the passengers. Large sums of money were offered
the sailors to forage for provisions, but I am firmly persuaded
 that the man who accepted such an offer would have been
murdered by his comrades. Mrs. Lock, for instance, incensed a
seaman by telling him,—“You common sailor, why you no wait
on lady? You ought to wait on officer’s lady! You refuse me,
captain will flog you plenty.”

Inaccessible Island was properly named, and one week after

another passed without the sight of a sail or any tangible hope of
rescue. Flimsy shelters were contrived, and nobody died of cold or
hunger, but they were a gaunt, unkempt company, with much illness
among them. Arrayed in their makeshift garments of crimson
broadcloth, the camp was more like a travesty than a tragedy. No
hardship could dull the militant spirits of Mrs. Commodore Lock and
that young and handsome virago, Mrs. Lieutenant Painter. During
one of their clashes, which was about to come to blows, the little
lieutenant was trying to drag his strapping spouse into their tent
while several passengers laid hold of the ponderous Mrs. Lock. Poor
Captain Greig was heard to murmur:
“Thank God we have almost no respectable ladies with us to
witness such scenes as these!”
Mrs. Lock had two small children with her, and it pleased the
fancy of Mrs. Painter to say that, in her opinion, the paternity of the
offspring would have been better established if the commodore had
offered marriage a few years earlier. Mrs. Painter put it even more
forcefully than this. At the deadly insult Mrs. Lock broke out in
impassioned accents:

“What you think? That vile hussy of a Painter woman, she

say me no Commodore Lock’s wife. Me lose my—what you call it
—wedding ’tifcate on board ship, so me no have proof now—but
when we come to Bombay, my commodore he kicks dirty little
Painter out of the service, and me get ten thousand rupees of
defamation damage. That Painter woman’s father am a
common, dirty boatman!”
 At this Mrs. Painter, with lofty disdain, let fall the remark:
“Behold the she-devil and her two little imps!”
The sailors felt so little respect for the commodore’s wife that
one of them coarsely observed, within her hearing:
“If we run short of them penguins’ eggs, Bill, and there ain’t
nothin’ else to eat, we’ll pop the old girl’s young ’uns into the pot for
a bit of broth.”
This was reported to Captain Greig by the explosive Mrs. Lock,
who declared that the sailors had called her names much stronger
than “old girl.” The chivalrous commander was resolved that no man
of his crew should insult a woman and go unpunished, wherefore he
mustered the seamen loyal to him, and they maintained order while
the boatswain gave the chief offender fifty lashes on the bare back
with a rope’s-end. The dreary exile was further enlivened by the
discovery that Lieutenant Painter’s tent had been robbed of jewelry
and other valuables. A formal trial was held, with young Alexander
Greig as judge and a water-cask as the official bench. A sailor
named Joseph Fowler was accused of the theft, and Mrs. Lock
surged into the proceedings by announcing that, in her opinion, the
relations of Mrs. Painter and this common sailorman had been a
public scandal.
“Very ladylike of you, I’m sure, Mrs. Lock,” cried Mrs. Painter,
“but what could a person expect?”
Such episodes as these were trivial when compared with the
tragic problem of survival and escape from Inaccessible Island.
Exploring parties had climbed the lofty peak, and in clear weather
were able to discern the snow-clad summit of the larger island of
Tristan, only fifteen miles distant, which was known to be inhabited.
It might have been a thousand miles away, however, for the lack of
tools and material had discouraged any efforts to build a boat. In a
mood of despair a flagstaff was set up on the southwestern
promontory, which faced the open ocean, and a bottle tied to it
which contained this message:
 On the N. W. side of this island are the remaining part of the
crew and passengers of the Blenden Hall, wrecked 23rd July,
1821. Should this fall into the hands of the humane, we trust, by
the assistance of God, they will do all in their power to relieve
us, and the prayers of many unfortunate sufferers will always be
for them.
Signed,
Alexander Greig, Commander.

This was a month after the shipwreck. Another month passed,

and the ship’s cook, Joseph Nibbs, a colored man, had begun to
build a clumsy little cockle-shell which he called a punt. For tools he
managed to find a hand-saw, a chisel, a bolt for a hammer, and a
heavy iron hinge ground sharp on the rocks for an ax. It seems
extraordinary that this enterprise should have been left to a sea-
cook, what with the carpenter and all the officers who should have
taken the initiative. At any rate, this handy Joseph Nibbs pegged his
boat together and went fishing in it. This appears to have shamed
the others into activity, and the carpenter set about building a larger
boat. It was the heroic cook, however, who decided to risk the
voyage to Tristan in his little floating coffin, and his farewell speech
was reported as follows: