Review of Save Our Souls: The True Story of a Castaway Family, Treachery, and Murder by Matthew Pearl Rating *****
A shipwreck. Survival on an uninhabited island in the Pacific. Then toss in some backstabbing and murder, and you have the story behind Save Our Souls. The island where the castaways find themselves is Midway, the scene of one of the more notorious battles of World War II. In 1887, however, it was uninhabited.
This castaway story is made even more interesting because it involves an entire family as well as the family dog. The Walker family consisted of the ship’s captain, Frederick, his wife Elizabeth, and their three teenage sons. There were also 24 crewmen who were also shipwrecked. While the size of the castaways helped in some ways, such as building shelter and eventually a ship built from salvaged materials, it also meant that the need for food was that much greater.
Of all of the characters in this story, the one that stands out the most is Elizabeth. She kept hope alive and maintained a level head throughout the ordeal. The main source of food was eggs from the many birds that called the island home, at least part of the year. That food source was supplemented with fish and crabs. A lack of vitamin C, however, meant that many of the survivors succumbed to scurvy.
There are a lot of shady characters in this story. One of those shady characters is Hans Jorgenson. The castaways find him living in a small shelter on the island. He had been marooned on the island months earlier. This is where the author goes into the back story of many of the characters. In Hans’ case, he had been marooned on the island by the crew of another ship because he had been suspected of murder.
The author expertly weaves in stories of other shipwrecks as well as comparisons to the fictional Robinson Crusoe and that book’s author. As in Robinson Crusoe, the survivors build a ship from salvaged parts from the original sailing vessel. That boat, however, is stolen by Hans and another crewmember. They make it to Hawaii but make up a fictional story to cover their trail of treachery, leaving the remaining survivors on the island to die.
When rescue finally does come, there is an added sense of injustice when the captain of the ship that finds them demands payment for their rescue. The final chapters of the book detail what happened to the many characters in the story after their rescue.
One thing I learned from this book is that the origin of SOS, the internationally recognized distressed signal, stands for Save Our Souls, or, in some references, Save Our Ship.