Ep 3: The Wreck of the Grafton
5/26/20261 hr 8 min
Francois Raynal and his buddy, Captain Musgrave, are looking for a rumored island full of silver when they end up stranded in the Southern Ocean, surrounded by thousands of belching sea lions. After surviving a year in the wilderness, they accept that the world won’t save them—so they develop an ingenious (and terrifying) plan to save themselves.
Sources for this episode include the books Island of the Lost, by Joan Druett; The Wreck of the Grafton from the Private Journals of Thomas Musgrave, by Thomas Musgrave; and Wrecked on a Reef or 20 Months on the Auckland Islands, by Francois Raynal.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsBlair Braverman· Host0:00
The only people who have ever made tongs without tongs are apparently God and Raynal. [gentle music] Welcome back to What to Carry, What to Burn. I'm your host, Blair Braverman. I'm a writer, an adventurer, and a long-distance dog sledder. And today, I'll be telling you a story that I think is really cool. I think it's one of the most successful survival stories I've ever heard. This podcast is still very new. I'm still experimenting with it. So for this episode, we don't have a guest. I'm just gonna be telling you the story directly. So thank you for joining me around the fire. Let's jump right in. [gentle music] Our hero's name is François Raynal, and he's born in 1830 in France to a family that's relatively well-off. And what that means is that instead of doing child labor as a kid, he and his siblings are able to go to school, and he loves school. He loves science, he loves math, he loves geography. He just loves studying and learning. And when he's 14 years old, his family abruptly loses their money, and he is yanked out of school, and his siblings are yanked out of school also. All of a sudden, he's the oldest child,