Shipwrecked in the Arctic: A Lesson in Exposure Therapy
The Auckland Islands are not advertised as an ideal honeymoon location. Consisting of an uninhabited archipelago with arctic tundra and barren conditions, they aren’t good for much at all—and they aren’t usually home to anyone other than seals.
In 1864, a parallel survival story took place when two shipwrecks occurred on different ends of the main island. Despite being marooned and isolated for an overlap of more than a year, the two groups never had any contact with each other. Only later were researchers able to piece together the remarkably different experiences they had.
The first shipwrecked group was a case study in survival. They banded together, constructed a shelter, and even crafted a forge in which they could hammer out makeshift tools and weapons. After a year and a half of waiting in vain for a ship to come for them, the captain and two crew members sailed for help on an unsteady sailboat that the group constructed from timbers they had saved in the original shipwreck.
Navigating five days of rough waters, they were taken in by another vessel, then transported to New Zealand. The survivors raised funds and returned to collect the rest of the crew, who were no doubt overjoyed to see them, since they literally had no other option to hope for at that point.
All told, the saga lasted more than six hundred days in precarious conditions—and every crew member lived to tell the tale.
Unfortunately, the outcome for the second group was much worse: out of nineteen shipwrecked sailors, only three survived. These three lived on the island for more than a year until a chance visit from a Portuguese ship led to their rescue. The others all met harrowing deaths from starvation, drowning, and even murder as all sense of humanity broke down among the group.
So what was the difference?
No doubt there were several variables that factored into the final outcome, including luck. The first group had landed in the southern hemisphere summer, when temperatures were “only” −10 °C and not even colder, as they were during the winter. They scavenged more materials from the initial shipwreck, and made several more visits to gather as much as they could before it sunk completely.
Moreover, leadership mattered. The captain in the first group held fast, assigning tasks and dividing rations as if they were all merrily sailing along on a Caribbean cruise. After the immediate crisis had passed, they settled into months of foraging whatever food they could, several times approaching near-starvation. Yet they did whatever they could to keep their spirits up. The captain made a serviceable chess set and instituted an evening storytelling time. The first mate found a way to ferment his own microbrew, which in addition to providing some variety from seal’s blood, helped to ward off scurvy.
It’s not how you’d choose to spend six hundred days of your life, but given the alternative of a slow, painful death, every man from the first shipwreck chose it.
The captain of the second group, however, effectively abandoned his charge to lead on day three, causing the others to scatter and fend for themselves in smaller units.
But in addition to these factors—or, to be fair, perhaps because of these factors—journals that were kept and preserved by members of each group pointed to a key factor: the group that survived was determined to do so. Sadly, much of the other group just gave up hope and waited to die.
At a certain point, several members of the second group discovered an abandoned settlement. Fifteen years earlier, settlers from New Zealand had attempted to establish a colony, before giving up and going home.
When the shipwrecked sailors from the second group found the settlement, they briefly rejoiced. Maybe someone lived there! Sure, the settlement was empty and run down, but perhaps the residents were just out for a walk.
After a day or so, their spirits fell again. The settlement was the arctic equivalent of a desert mirage. It was obvious that it had been abandoned long ago, and there wasn’t anyone coming back.
Still, some of the crew refused to accept this reality. They just didn’t move, even though there was no source of food anywhere nearby. Two of them sat down in a drafty shelter and refused to get up.
Weeks later, two of the other sailors came back to find that their shipmates had died in the same spot, not having moved from their shelter in the abandoned village. No doubt they hoped for a different outcome right until the very end—but they didn’t do anything, so reality soon caught up to them.
Exposure Therapy
Learning to see situations as they really are—not how you might want them to be—can be painful at first. Yet here is a hard, beautiful truth: the much greater pain is to remain stuck by denying reality.
Exposure therapy is a psychological treatment that is used to help people confront their fears. At its most basic level, it can be helpful in treating a phobia. Afraid of going outside? Begin going outside, and instead of fleeing for the comforts of home right away, push yourself to adjust to the environment for as long as you can. Similar treatments can be used for fear of flying, heights, snakes, or any number of phobias.
Beyond the basics, however, exposure therapy (I’m using it as a general term here, not a clinical one), can help with much more than just snakes and needles.
In a future post, I’ll say more about how confronting your fears (aka truly facing them) is powerful for dealing with regret, loss, and grief of all kinds.
A few years ago, I learned to do this with much more accuracy than I’d ever done before. At first, it was painful and difficult. Soon thereafter, however, I realized how incredibly effective it was.
The stakes don’t get much higher than they did for the two groups of sailors in the arctic. The group that survived did two things very differently from the group that perished: first, they faced the facts. No one was coming to rescue them, at least not for a long time, so they had to take matters into their own hands instead of clinging to false hopes.
Second, they had to TAKE ACTION on this reality. They had to find a way to live no matter how difficult the conditions were, and eventually find a way off the island.
Which group would you like to be in? What does it take to face reality in the most difficult of circumstances?
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*The full story of the shipwrecked sailors can be found in the book Island of the Lost: An Extraordinary Story of Survival at the Edge of the World.