Desperate journeys, abandoned souls : true stories of castaways and other survivors

Foreword / Sterling Seagrave

Introduction

Prologue : found alone

pt. I. Monarchs

1. His hair was weedy and his bear was long : Pedro de Serrano off the coast of Peru

2. Among the cruelest savages : Peter Carder in the Brazils

3. To live upon this barren shore : the "poor Englishman" off the coast of Scotland

4. A singular naval man : William Dampier : adventurer, author, survivor

5. On a piece of stone : Alexander Selkirk on greater land

6. The occupation of mischief : Philip Ashton on Roatán Island

7. Heaven's gracious justice : an unknown man on Ascension Island

8. A country people with Christians : Marguerite de la Roque on the Isle of Spirits

9. The calming effect of rum and true religion : John Byron on the shores of Patagonia

10. The utility of a fashionable hat : the sloop Betsy adrift near Tobago

pt. II. The delicate question which

11. The pleasure of God : Richard Clarke in the Admiral's boat

12. The carpenter's remains : John Dean on Boon Island

13. The ownership of a plank : David Harrison on the wreck of the Peggy

14. The weaning from all vain enjoyment : Ann Saunders on the wreck of the Francis Mary

15. The cruel death I did sustain : the wreck of the William Brown

16. The headhunter's casket : a caesura

pt. III. Lords of the fowl and the brute

17. "He wouldn't oblige by dying" : Hugh Glass on the Great Plains

18. A certain illusion, a trick of light : the Stefánsson Polar Expedition of 1913

19. Maine Tarzan : Joseph Knowles in the North Woods

20. The sands' glorious prisoner : Antoine de Saint-Exupéry down on the Libyan Desert

pt. IV. The charms of solitude

21. Risk and recreation : a chronology