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Celebrity guests on Radio 4’s legendary show Desert Island Discs – celebrating its 80th anniversary this week – famously imagine which luxury item they’d want with them if they were ever left stranded.
Monty Python star John Cleese joked he’d like to take a stuffed Michael Palin, politician Boris Johnson chose French mustard and TV mogul Simon Cowell asked for a mirror!
But some folk have become real-life castaways, just like Tom Hanks’ character in the hit 2000 film. Here James Moore looks at six gripping tales.
THE REAL ROBINSON CRUSOE
The author Daniel Defoe is reckoned to have been inspired to write his 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe by the incredible true story of Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk.
Fifteen years earlier he was marooned on the tiny uninhabited island of Mas a Tierra, 400 miles off Chile in the Pacific Ocean after falling out with the captain of the ship he was working on.
Selkirk was left with little more than a musket, cooking pot, knife, a flask of rum and a Bible.
Yet he managed to survive for four-and-a-half years hunting feral goats and harvesting wild turnips, despite being attacked by rats and once falling off a cliff.
Eventually an English ship happened to anchor off the island to find supplies and picked him up. Selkirk could hardly remember how to talk…but made it back to Britain to tell his tale.
ALONE IN THE ICY WASTES
In 1921 hardy Alaskan native Ada Blackjack became the only woman on an Artic expedition to freezing Wrangel Island, 100 miles north of Siberia, working as a cook and seamstress.
The five-strong team aimed to stay there long enough to claim it as Canadian territory.
But when their rations ran out three of the men set off to get help and promptly disappeared in the ice.
Meanwhile Ada, 25, learned how to set traps for wild animals, shot birds and seals for food while fending off polar bears and caring for the remaining man, suffering from scurvy, until he died.
She survived on the island until August 1923 before being rescued – and lived to be 85!
A FAMILY ALL AT SEA
When struggling farmer Dougal Robertson decided to buy a yacht with his life savings and take his family on it around the world, the adventure nearly ended in tragedy.
Leaving the UK in January 1971, aboard the Lucette, 47-year-old Dougal was accompanied by wife Lyn, sons Douglas, 18, daughter Anne, 17 and twins Neil and Sandy, nine.
For 18 months they sailed the high seas but on June 15, 1972, the boat was suddenly sunk by a pod of killer whales in the Pacific Ocean.
The family were left adrift in a 10ft dinghy lifeboat with little water or food.
But they caught turtles, ate flying fish and drank rainwater and turtle blood while punching menacing sharks, before luckily being picked up by a Japanese trawler 38 days later.
STRANDED FOR 20 YEARS
Juana Maria became known as the Lone Woman of San Nicolas – stranded alone on an island off the Californian coast for nearly 20 years.
The native American was born on San Nicolas but after otter hunters massacred most of the islanders, she was mistakenly left behind by a rescue mission in 1835.
She spent the next 18 years alone there, fishing and making dresses from bird feathers.
When Juana was finally found in 1853, she was living in a hut made from whale bones. Sadly she died just weeks later on the mainland aged 42, from dysentery, unable to cope with a rich diet.
GIRL FRIDAY
The racy 1986 film Castaway was based on the real-life tale of writer Gerald Kingsland, 49, played by Oliver Reed.
He’d placed a magazine advert for a “wife” who would share life with him on a desert island.
Office worker Lucy Irvine, 25, played by Amanda Donohoe in the flick, agreed to become his “Girl Friday”.
In 1982 the pair married and headed to the deserted, mile-long island of Tuin between Australia and Papua New Guinea.
They spent much of the time naked, but had a stormy relationship. Gerald suffered from a leg infection and Lucy nearly died when she ate poisoned beans.
The island also had little water and, 13 months on, they had to be rescued by nearby native islanders after nearly dying of thirst.
THE ISLAND HERMIT
In 1989 Italian ex-teacher Mauro Morandi became caretaker of Budelli, a beautiful island off the coast of Sardinia famed for its pink beach.
There he stayed, hermit-like, for 32 years, living alone in a stone hut.
But in 2021, when the island’s owners wanted him to relocate, he had to move back to a nearby inhabited island.
Yet the 82-year-old has no regrets saying: “I have rediscovered the pleasure of living the good life and enjoying everyday comforts.”
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