Tonight, we have a story of solidarity, hope, and finally survival in the face of adversity. It took place more than 50 years ago, but when it was rediscovered last year it caused a sensation. It is the story of a group of schoolchildren stranded on a remote, deserted island for more than 15 months. It might remind you of the famous novel: The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, but, as you will see, the outcome of this real-life story could not have been more different.
The story begins in 1965. Mano Totau and five of his friends were studying at a boarding school in Tonga, an island nation in the Pacific Ocean. Bored, rebellious, and eager for adventure — they stole a traditional whaling boat — and with reckless abandonment set out for Fiji.
Holly Williams: Did you have an engine?
Mano Totau: No, no engine.
Holly Williams: But Mano, Fiji isn’t about 500 kilometers from Tonga?
Mano Totau: A little less.
Holly Williams: Did you have a map or a compass?
Mano Totau: No. (RIVER)
The teenagers may have been educated at sea, but they soon realized that they had made a terrible mistake. The first night, a violent storm tore the sails off the mast and ripped the rudder off the boat.
For more than a week, his paralyzed ship drifted aimlessly. Sione Fataua, 17, the eldest in the group, told us they were convinced they would die.
Sione Fataua: There is no food, no water. We were adrift in the wind. And after eight days we saw the island.
It was a volcanic island, rising from the sea. As the ship approached, a wave sent it crashing into the rocky shore, leaving it in pieces. Exhausted teenagers fought on the ground.
Mano Totau: The only thing we do, get together and say a prayer, “thank you, God.”
Later, the schoolchildren discovered that they had drifted a hundred miles from where they had left and had landed on the island of Ata, on maps, nothing more than a little uninhabited.
It was such a remarkable story that later an Australian television team took the teenagers to ‘Ata to re-enact their experience. In the film, Sione, Mano and their friends show how they survived.
Movie “The Shipwrecked”: They were able to save an oar and a piece of wire, and with that they set out to catch what they hoped would be their first meal in 8 days.
They show how they ate the fish they fished raw and quenched their thirst by attacking seabird nests, drinking their blood and raw eggs.
Holly Williams: Any food, anything to drink.
Mano Totau: any food. As horrible and dirty as it is, it’s great to have it in this time.
When they regained enough strength, Mano and Sione told us, they climbed up to the island’s wooded plateau where they found a clay pot, a machete and chickens, all left behind by a small Tongan community living in ‘Even before she was snatched from her home by slave traders a century earlier.
But we were told that everything changed when they finally made a fire and started cooking hot food.
Holly Williams: How did you keep me from going out?
Sione Fataua: I tell the boys: everyone has a duty to fire. You have to take care of the fire and pray for that night and get up in the morning, it still goes on.
The runaway teenagers showed great ingenuity: building a shack out of palm trees, setting up a garden with bananas and beans, and creating a list to watch the passing boats. They even built a badminton court and a makeshift gym. They lived in harmony, they told us, most of the time.
Holly Williams: But come on, Mano. You were teenagers. He must have had arguments.
Mano Totau: We did and we didn’t agree.
They cooled off by walking to the opposite sides of the island, Mano says, though sometimes things escaped them.
Holly Williams: So if there was a fight, how did you stop it?
Mano Totau: You hit him with him or something and you say, “Shut up and cool off, sit down, listen.”
Holly Williams: There must have been times when you were depressed, when you thought you would never see your families again.
Sione Fataua: It was hard. And I was – pray to God and – and I promise, “if you could get me back, I’ll serve you, the rest of my life.”
For over 50 years, the true story of Sione, Mano and his friends was little known outside of Tonga … until The best-selling Dutch historian and author, Rutger Bregman, has come across it on the Internet. He flew around the world to meet Mano and turned history into the cornerstone of his new book, Humanity: A Hopeful Story.
Rutger Bregman: And I couldn’t understand how this hadn’t become, you know, one of the most famous stories of the 20th century. I just couldn’t understand it, because it’s extraordinary: six kids on an island for 15 months. And they survived, how?
Like millions of others, Bregman had read about it fictitious tale of abandoned schoolchildren, Lord of the Flies, which for generations has been taught in high schools around the world.
The novel, later turned into a film, is a nightmare story of a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island. They are divided into two competing tribes and descend into violence, culminating in chaos and murder.
Rutger Bregman: This is a really old theory of Western culture, according to which our civilization is just a thin layer. And that when something bad happens (say there is a natural disaster or you are shipwrecked on an island and you have the freedom to establish your own society), people reveal who you really are. You know, people deep down are selfish.
Holly Williams: And you’re saying that the basic idea behind the novel, The Lord of the Flies, is wrong? Are you saying this would never happen?
Rutger Bregman: Well, if tens of millions of children around the world still have to read The Lord of the Flies at school today, I think they also deserve to know this time of the whole history of the world where the real castaways are. on a royal island. , because this is a very different story.
A story of cooperation, hope and, finally, salvation. In September 1966, after 15 long months, Australian lobster fisherman Peter Warner was sailing near ‘Ata when he saw a burnt patch. As he approached, he was surprised to see a human figure.
Peter Warner: And that first figure swam towards us doing the Australian crawl, as I call it. And then five other bodies jumped off the cliff into the water and followed him.
They boarded and told the crew how they had escaped from the boarding school and ended up shipwrecked. Peter broadcast a radio in Nuku’alofa, the capital of Tonga, to see his story.
Peter Warner: And the operator said with a lot of tears, “That’s right. These guys were students at this university. They’ve been given up for dead. Funerals have been held. And now you’ve found them.” So it was a very emotional time for all of us.
Holly Williams: So you knew you were going home.
Mano Totau: Yes
Holly Williams: How did that feel?
Mano Totau: How to go through the door of heaven.
But heaven would have to wait: when they returned to port they were immediately arrested.
Holly Williams: So Peter Warner rescued you and took you back to Nukuʻalofa, where everyone thought you were dead. And then they arrested you?
Sione Fataua: Yes. We are arrested because we stole the boat. (RIVER)
Peter Warner told us that he paid the owner of the stolen ship and eventually sailed with the school fugitives to his home island, accompanied by the Australian television crew that had flown to film his story. They captured the teen’s reunion with their families.
Movie “The Shipwrecked”: Our boys are back …
Sione Fataua: My mother, I was swimming before I got off the boat. I’m the first one to go to the beach and hug.
Movie of “The Shipwrecked”: There had never been so much joy …
Peter Warner: The entire population of this small island was on the beach, hugging the boys. The parents were crying. Then the party began. Six holidays.
The story has never been forgotten on these islands, but when a British newspaper published a chapter in Rutger Bregman’s book last May, the story of Tongan teenagers went viral: 7 million people read it in a few days . Hollywood studios went into a bidding war for film rights.
Holly Williams: Why did so many people around the world be surprised and captivated by the storytelling?
Rutger Bregman: Maybe we needed to hear it? Maybe especially right now, in the middle of a pandemic? It’s that people were looking for a story that would give them hope about a different way of living together, that a different society would be possible. That it is not just about violence, selfishness and greed within human nature, but that we can build on something different. Maybe that’s why.
It has been 55 years since the shipwrecked schoolchildren were rescued. They have never had any doubt about how or why they survived.
Sione Fataua: I think the culture we come from. We are close. Very close family. We share everything. We are poor, but we love each other.
The teenagers had no interest in returning to the classroom, at first they worked for Peter Warner, who set up a fishing business in Tonga. Sione, as promised, later became a minister, now the head of the Tongan church in America. Mano trained as a chef and moved to Australia. For half a century, he and Peter Warner have been best friends — whenever they can, they go sailing — they retreated forever to the Pacific Ocean where their friendship began.
Holly Williams: Why are you doing so well, you know, all these years after the rescue?
Mano Totau: I think we feel firmly in ourselves that we have something to help each other.
Peter Warner: Yes, and also …
Mano Totau: teaching each other.
Peter Warner: And besides, we have some common beliefs that have led you to this trial on the island, you know, love, compassion and …
Mano Totau: Yes.
Peter Warner: Justice, unity.
Mano Totau: We both believe in the same thing.
The teenagers composed a song when they were on the island of Ata – Siosionoa – without seeing anything every day. Mano goes back to a time when they longed for home, and before they could ever imagine it history can have lessons for all of us.
Produced by Michael H. Gavshon. Associate producer, Nadim Roberts. Broadcasting partner, Annabelle Hanflig. Edited by Daniel J. Glucksman.