Maybe the most famous castaway case is Jose Salvador Alvarenga.

He was documented to have been adrift at sea for 438 days.

It's one of the most miraculous stories of survival in history, and it's easy to see why.

Beyond just the grueling physical aspects, there's something innately identifiable about the mental struggle of drifting endlessly in the open ocean.

As incredible as his story is though, and although it's often cited as the longest time of drift at sea,

there is another story from two centuries earlier that if the records are accurate is the true record for the longest time of drift. This is the

horrifying and tragic story of the Tokujo Muru.

In the early 1800s at a time when ocean travel was making the world smaller and more

accessible, Japan was a country moving in the opposite direction.

Rather than opening itself to the world, it had chosen to turn inward.

The period was known as the Edo era named after the city that served as the seat of power

for the Shogun, who was a military ruler.

Although Japan still had an emperor, he was by this point a symbolic figure and real authority

actually rested with the Shogun's military government. It was this government that had concluded

that outside influence was dangerous. The memory of European missionaries and traders from the

1500s still lingered. Christianity

had spread quickly into certain regions and with it came loyalties that did not align directly

with the Shogunate, and from the government's perspective this was unacceptable. By the 1600s,

strict measures were in place and foreign missionaries expelled, and most foreign ships were turned away.

Japanese citizens were even forbidden from traveling abroad, and those who left were not allowed to return.

Only limited exceptions existed.

The Dutch were permitted to trade with a tiny artificial island in Nagasaki harbor under heavy supervision,

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