Some time after nightfall on July 31st, 1761, Jéan de Lafargue looked back and forth between two different maps. The commander of the French ship L’Utile, which translates to “Useful,” was in a hurry and having two maps of the same exact area of the Indian Ocean that contradicted one other wasn’t helping. After departing from the east coast of Madagascar, an island 250 miles, or 400 kilometers, to the east of mainland Africa, Captain Jéan was guiding his ship in complete darkness while up against winds of up to 20 knots. He didn’t need a map or the ability to see more than a few feet in front of him to know that his ship was off-course, but without an accurate and reliable map on the ship, he was left to figure it out using bad information. Considering this, the smart move would have been to slow down and wait until the sun came up the next morning so he could get his bearings, but time was not a luxury Captain Jéan could afford. Along with a crew of more than 140 men, Captain Jéan was charged with sailing west from the Isle of France, now called Mauritius, to Madagascar to retrieve a load of beef and rice. The ship was expected back in the Isle of France in a few days, but Captain Jéan had another stop to make first that only he and his crew knew about. His plan was for the ship to sail past the Isle of France to Rodrigues Island, where he’d drop off a load of unplanned cargo before returning to the Isle of France with the supplies he was sent to bring back. Payment for the beef and rice would be a nice sum of money, but Captain Jéan couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make a lot more.

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Below deck, 160 men, women, and children Malagasy — or natives of Madagascar — were locked in the cargo hold to be sold into slavery when Captain Jéan reached Rodrigues Island. The payday Captain Jéan would receive for the slaves went far beyond the worth of beef and rice, so he was anxious to make it to Rodrigues Island from the moment the Malagasy were forced aboard. Such a payload fetched a premium since the governor of the Isle of France ordered a ban on slave trafficking, so along with this being a lucrative trip, it was also a highly-illegal one since Rodrigues Island was within Isle of France rule. All these factors weighed heavily on Captain Jéan’s mind in his decision-making. While he tried to figure out where the ship was, the crew was busy executing his orders to keep the ship moving as planned. Waiting for daylight was not an option.

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Had Captain Jéan been more patient and at least waited until first light, he would have noticed the tiny island directly in the ship’s path. It wasn’t so much the island, known at the time as the Isle of Sand, that would have caused alarm; it was the reef that almost surrounded it just below the surface. Captain Jéan found out just how protective of the island it was when the choppy waters of the Indian Ocean caused the ship to collide with the reef. It was a fatal blow to the ship. The hull was smashed open and water overtook L’Utile within minutes. Captain Jéan and most of his crew abandoned ship and swam to the relative safety of the Isle of Sand, but 18 of the men were swept out to sea in the storm and drowned. Many of the Malagasy in the cargo hold had no escape from the rushing water and those who could get out did so through the hole the reef created. When L’Utile sank moments after the damage was done, it did so with almost half of the Malagasy still trapped in the cargo hold.

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As the sun rose over the Isle of Sand, the magnitude of the survivors’ predicament could finally be seen. More than 120 crewmen and between 60-and-80 Malagasy made it safely onto land after the wreck. When the survivors could finally see where they were as morning set in, they all must have felt an immediate sense of doom. The Isle of Sand was about the worst place in the world to be stuck. First discovered by France in the 1720s, the Isle of Sand is about 310 miles, or 500 kilometers, north-northwest of Reunion Island and 280 miles, or 450 kilometers, east of Madagascar. It’s essentially in the middle of nowhere in the Indian Ocean. The island was once a volcano that eroded over millions of years, maybe even longer, and sea levels 300 years ago, like those of today, didn’t leave much remaining above water. The Isle of Sand has a land area of about one-third of a square mile, or 1 square kilometer. Imagine an island the size of an average city block. 

The Isle of Sand is topographically dull, too. Its highest point is just 23 feet, or 7 meters, above sea level, so spotting any ships in the distance was out of the question. That’s no problem on an island with trees, but the “Isle of Sand” was a literal name. In fact, outside of a few blades of grass and a couple of shrubs that weren’t even knee-high, the island was devoid of vegetation. Since there are so few plant resources, animals aren’t exactly plentiful either. Fish were everywhere around the island since the surrounding reef provided for a thriving underwater ecosystem, but that same reef would make fishing extremely difficult. Seabirds, turtles, and their respective eggs were the most common signs of animal life on land — at least during the day. At night, the hermit crabs come out and swarm the island. 

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The Isle of Sand lies just south of the equator and is classified as having a mild tropical climate, but with no trees or shade, temperatures on the island are anything but mild during most of the year. July and August are the only months when average temperatures just barely dip below 80 degrees fahrenheit, or 27 celsius. From September to June, average temps were consistent if nothing else. Temperatures average 85 degrees fahrenheit, or 29 celsius, or higher six months out of the year. The Isle of Sand’s size and lack of protection from the elements mean that even the most comfortable days are windswept. Violent cyclones and tropical storms pop up relentlessly during the summer months, but they at least contribute to the generous 42 inches, or 1,073 millimeters, of precipitation that fall on the island each year. That’s of particular importance to anyone planning on spending any time on the Isle of Sand since it had no source of freshwater.

 

From the moment Captain Jéan washed up on the island with the rest of the survivors, his behavior grew increasingly erratic. The stress and pressure of smuggling slaves illegally and being lost in the Indian Ocean was more than enough to deal with, but now, he not only wouldn’t be getting that big payday he was looking forward to; he also wouldn’t be able to conceal what he was up to. If or when they were rescued from the island, Captain Jéan would have to face the Isle of France governor, who was not known for giving many breaks to those who defied his orders. The only break Captain Jéan would get in the aftermath of the wreck was the one that separated him from reality. Something in him snapped and the crewmen believed he was suffering a nervous breakdown. Captain Jéan was relieved from his charge, which was unceremoniously handed over to first lieutenant Barthelemy Castellan du Vernet, who began organizing survival efforts. Many of them gathered up anything from the ship that washed up on the island while others swam out to the wreck and retrieved supplies still inside. They managed to stockpile a considerable amount of wood, food, and various items that could come in handy. Something that should have been the top priority, sourcing drinkable freshwater, was overlooked. Since the crew had control of all the food and drink, there was little reason for them to address it at the start of their ordeal. Eight Malagasy died from dehydration in the first few days. In response, Barthelemy ordered the crew and the Malagasy to dig a well.

 

Despite their shared circumstances, the social divide between the two contrasting classes remained in place. They shared the work side-by-side in necessary survival tasks, the construction of an oven for cooking, and a forge for melting metal, but very little of the food and water stores retrieved from the ship were shared with the Malagasy. The crew even placed a literal divide between them and the Malagasy by setting up camp on the opposite end of the island. The differences between them were no more evident than when Barthelemy ordered that a ship be built with the wreckage of L’Utile. Make no mistake: the order wasn’t to build a raft with scrap wood; it was to build a literal ship from scratch. When it was done, they even gave the resulting ship a name, dubbing her The Providence. On September 27th, 1761, The Providence was loaded up and departed the Isle of Sand, leaving all the surviving Malagasy behind with only Barthelemy’s promise to send a ship back to rescue them.

 

After four days at sea, The Providence arrived in Madagascar. During the journey, a tropical illness spread throughout the ship and killed some of the crewmen, including Captain Jéan. With the commander responsible for everything now dead, Barthelemy was summoned to answer to the Isle of France governor when the crew returned home. The governor was furious and Barthelemy got an earful, but his only concern was convincing the governor to send a ship back to the Isle of Sand. In no mood to grant requests, the governor denied Barthelemy each time he brought it up during the tongue-lashing. At the time, France was embroiled in the Seven Years War with Britain for global dominance and not a single ship could be spared. 

 

In the first months after The Providence left the island, the 60 or so Malagasy waited eagerly for a rescue ship that never seemed to show up. Those left behind had little choice but to make the inhospitable Isle of Sand home. Without many natural resources to work with, the Malagasy dug pits in the sand they would fortify with coral rocks to serve as shelter, which was a macabre approach to survival when considering their customs. It was common for the Malagasy at the time to bury their dead in buildings similar to mausoleums we see in cemeteries today. They’d dig large holes and build interior walls from the bottom of the pits to a few feet above ground. The structure was then covered by a stone roof to complete the small, self-contained underground building intended to house the dead for eternity. On the Isle of Sand, the Malagasy castaways essentially lived inside graves.

 

The stranded survivors were all from the central highlands of Madagascar, far from the coastline that surrounds the country. Growing and capturing food near the ocean was different than they were used to further inland, which was made all the more difficult by dramatically few resources available to them. On top of that, one of those few resources, turtles, were considered taboo to eat in Madagascar, but any reservations about it didn’t last long. The good news, if there was any in their situation, is that turtles didn’t have to make up the bulk of their diet; neither did fish, although evidence suggests the Malagasy became skilled fishermen while on the island. The castaways mostly lived on seabirds since they were the most plentiful food source available.

 

Even though food, water, and shelter were addressed early on and the Malagasy adapted where they needed to, the island’s population was dwindling. Not long after the crew left the island, a large raft was constructed by the Malagasy. When it was complete, 18 of them climbed aboard and paddled away from the island, never to be seen again.

 

Time passed and months of waiting became years of residency for the Malagasy on the Isle of Sand. After three years, most of them were dead. It’s estimated that only 13-to-15 of the initial 60-or-so were still alive.

 

Throughout that time, Barthelemy was a pebble in the shoe of the Isle of France. A year after The Providence landed in Madagascar, Barthelemy left the island to return to France, but he continued to hound officials in the Isle of France. The governor held firm every time a correspondence from Barthelemy arrived, but Barthelemy didn’t limit himself to the governor. He targeted anyone with any kind of political sway who could authorize a rescue effort for the Malagasy and his nagging eventually grew too much for the Isle of France minister of marine affairs to stand any longer. In 1772, 11 years after L’Utile sank, Barthelemy was finally successful. The minister of marine affairs agreed to send a ship to rescue the Malagasy. Another three years would pass before any ship from the Isle of France left port for the Isle of Sand. Not even a reported sighting of the Malagasy by a passing ship in 1773 or Barthelemy getting the French media involved were enough to spark any action by the Isle of France government.

 

When the first ship was finally sent to the Isle of Sand in 1775, it made it to the outer edge of the protective reef before turning back. It would be another year before a second attempt was made. That ship took a different tact and got as close to the island as the reef would allow and then anchored in place. The crew dropped a rowboat into the water and two of them hopped in and began rowing toward shore. A storm began to blow in shortly before the rowboat departed the ship and, as if anyone needed any more proof of how dangerous the reef was for ships, the rowboat was tossed into the reef by whitecaps and shattered to pieces, tossing the two sailors into the ocean. One swam back to the ship; the other swam to shore, and then watched his ship pull up its anchor and abandon him there.

 

The crewman became part of the small community on the island and led another project to build a raft. The only difference between this raft and the one made more than a decade earlier was its feather sail. When the craft was done, the sailor was joined by six Malagasy and the raft floated into the Indian Ocean. Neither the raft nor its passengers were ever heard from again.

 

The remaining Malagasy returned to their solitude when the raft left, hopeful that it would reach land and they’d soon be saved, but as months went by, it became clear that no one was coming to save them. By now, they had grown accustomed to rescue attempts of every kind failing. They finally accepted that they would never leave the Isle of Sand and continued on with whatever normal life they established after being left behind by the French crew.

 

Everything changed for the Malagasy on November 29th, 1776. That was the day when a small French warship called the Dauphine pulled into the island under command of Captain Jacques Marie Boudin de Tromelin. What he and his crew found was shocking. Of the 60-to-80 Malagasy who survived the shipwreck, only seven women remained. One of them was holding an eight-month-old baby that had been born on the island and all of the women were wearing clothes made from seabird feathers they braided together. Captain Jacques surveyed the conditions the Malagasy had been living in and could hardly believe his eyes. There were small buildings clustered together and a shed had been built from coral stones to store food. The Malagasy even managed to construct a small lookout tower to watch for ships.

 

When Captain Jacques brought the seven women and one infant aboard and the Dauphine pulled away from the Isle of Sand, it was the first time the Malagasy had been anywhere but the Isle of Sand in 15 years.

 

The women were brought to the Isle of France and welcomed by its new, empathetic governor, Jacque Maillart. He immediately declared them free and arranged to have them taken back to Madagascar, but the women wouldn’t go. It’s unclear whether their refusal had to do with the potential of being part of another shipwreck or something else, but the governor granted them citizenship on the Isle of France. The infant and his mother and grandmother were taken in by Governor Maillart and lived with him on his estate. He renamed and baptized each of them, making them part of his family. After the others settled on the Isle of France, history lost track of them. For his successful rescue of the Malagasy, the Isle of Sand was renamed in honor of Captain Jacques to Tromelin Island.

 

Tromelin Island is still sitting in the middle of the Indian Ocean today and its inhabitants 300 years ago made it into an important archeological site. Since 2006, four archeology expeditions have taken place to uncover the mysteries of how the Malagasy managed to survive for 15 years in a place that’s almost completely uninhabitable. The first expedition documented and examined the remains of the shipwreck and the only signs of it were the items that couldn’t be lifted to the surface, like anchors, cannons, ammunition, and rigging. The Malagasy managed to use everything they had at their disposal. The second expedition focused on locating artifacts and remains of those who died while in exile. Archeologists discovered three of their buildings, including one that almost certainly was used as a kitchen. It contained the oven that was built when they were first stranded and a stack of copper bowls that the Malagasy procured from the ship. The bowls showed obvious signs of both wear and repair, the latter of which was a significant accomplishment considering the island’s many limitations. Fixing copper bowls requires bolting a patch of copper over a hole, but the Malagasy had no loose copper, bolts, or many tools. Even at such a disadvantage, they managed to source copper from the shipwreck, then melt and mold it to create a bowl patch. For rivets, they rolled up thin sheets of copper and drilled rivet holes into the patches by likely using a combination of bone and other metal tools. Handmade spoons were found, as was an iron tripod that held cookery over an open fire. There was also a large bowl made of lead found among the kitchen artifacts, leading archeologists to conclude that the survivors likely dealt with the consequences of lead exposure at some point in their later lives. Along with the cooking vessels, the dig uncovered pieces of jewelry made of copper. Found in the sand were rings, necklaces, and bracelets. A tip comb had been fashioned from copper and was used to untangle hair. They may have seemed like inconsequential discoveries, but these were signs that the Malagasy established a small society on the Isle of Sand.

 

One thing the expeditions couldn’t find much of, though, was human remains. During an expedition in 2008, two sets of remains were found, but archeologists had reason to believe they had been moved to that location in more recent decades. There’s no confirmation as to why or how, but the exhumation and reburying of the skeletons was likely done during construction of a weather station on Tromelin Island. It’s still home to a weather station today, in fact, as the island’s location and consistently-hazardous conditions make it an excellent place to observe and track Indian Ocean weather. The first weather station was built there in 1954 by the French, but two years later, a cyclone blew through the island and destroyed it. The French rebuilt it and the very same one is still standing today.

 

The explanation for the relocation of bones during construction might not be what you’re thinking, though. It wasn’t simply that the remains were uncovered and then reburied by construction workers to create space for the station. The theory actually comes from an old legend of a pirate called The Buzzard, who left behind a cryptic treasure map when he was hanged in 1730. Some believed that the map led to Tromelin Island. When contractors dug into the sand and discovered bones and building foundations, they likely assumed they had uncovered a pirate hangout, so they abandoned the construction of the weather station to dig for treasure. While focused on the prospect of becoming instantly rich, the workers likely tossed bones and artifacts from the buildings they dug into without even noticing them. Once they failed to find a buried chest, they either left the site as it was or haphazardly refilled the holes. Considering that the expeditions found no artifacts inside any of the buildings they likely dug into, there’s reason to believe this was the case.

 

As far as other details about the 15 years the Malagasy spent on Tromelin Island, they’ve been lost to history. A series of interviews was done with each of the survivors, but any record with the details of their firsthand experience has never been located.