4/4: Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World Hardcover – May 7, 2024 by Eric Jay Dolin (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 2 November 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
4/4: Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World Hardcover – May 7, 2024 by Eric Jay Dolin (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Left-Dead-Shipwreck-Treachery-Survival/dp/1324093080
In Left for Dead, Eric Jay Dolin―“one of today’s finest writers about ships and the sea” (American Heritage)―tells the true story of a wild and fateful encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig, and a British warship in the Falkland archipelago during the War of 1812.
Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, the incident left three British sailors and two Americans, including the captain of the sealer, Charles H. Barnard, abandoned in the barren, windswept, and inhospitable Falklands for a year and a half. With deft narrative skill and unequaled knowledge of the very pith of the seafaring life, Dolin describes in vivid and harrowing detail the increasingly desperate existence of the castaways during their eighteen-month ordeal―an all-too-common fate in the Great Age of Sail.
A tale of intriguing complexity, with surprising twists and turns throughout―involving greed, lying, bullying, a hostile takeover, stellar leadership, ingenuity, severe privation, endurance, banishment, the great value of a dog, the birth of a baby, a perilous thousand-mile open-ocean journey in a seventeen-foot boat, an improbable rescue mission, and legal battles over a dubious and disgraceful wartime prize―Left for Deadshows individuals in wartime under great duress acting both nobly and atrociously, and offers a unique perspective on a pivotal era in American maritime history.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI on the world. |
| 0:06.9 | I'm visiting with Eric J. Dole, and his new book is Left for Dead, which is sealing, |
| 0:11.5 | which is the war of 1812 to 1814, Madison's War, which is also the prize court, a rastfully member of the Royal Navy, |
| 0:24.0 | who is not in any way corrected by the prize court, a rastfully member of the Royal Navy, who is not in any way corrected by the prize court for quite some time. And our heroes, the Barnard's family, but most important, |
| 0:31.6 | I'll get right to it. Charles eventually survives, and they're rescued by two ships coming in who take them back to |
| 0:39.4 | South America, Buenos Aires, I believe. But what happens to scent, Eric? Do we know his fate? |
| 0:46.8 | Yeah. They are rescued by two British whale ships that keep going on their whaling voyage, |
| 0:52.5 | take Barnard and the other men along with |
| 0:54.6 | scent. But when they're in the Pacific Ocean, they actually come into Lima, Peru. And while |
| 1:01.8 | there, Barnard has some conversations with some other whaling captains. And one of the whaling |
| 1:08.8 | captains, the British whaling captain, took a real shine to scent. |
| 1:13.2 | And even though Barnard loved his dog, he knew that he had an arduous, uncertain voyage back to America |
| 1:19.8 | when the war was still going on. |
| 1:21.8 | It ultimately took him almost two years to get back to New York City. |
| 1:25.3 | So he did not feel it was proper for him to take scent with him on this uncertain voyage with minimal, you know, he didn't have control over everything. |
| 1:34.7 | And if he gave it to this British whaling captain who really liked scent, he would have a much better life after all of the difficulties that he had been put through. |
| 1:45.4 | So regretfully, but with an earnest dedication, Barnard gave his dog to this British whaling captain. |
| 1:54.6 | I don't know what happened after that. |
| 1:56.4 | I'm sure Sent had a nice life, however long it lasted. |
| 2:00.7 | But he was a great character in the book and really was critical to their survival. |
| 2:07.7 | It's my reading of your very careful research that without Scent, they've got a much, |
| 2:14.4 | a much tougher road ahead and might have quit. |
... |
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