Peter Warner with his crew, six of whom he
had rescued, shipwrecked on a non longer inhabited Tongan Island
I fancy myself a man of the sea, though the last time I was really at sea was fifty four years ago - for five days on a fishing boat like the one below in the Arabian Sea as a Peace Corps Volunteer, assigned to St. Peter's Fishermen's Cooperative Society in Bassein, a bit north of Bombay, Maharashtra State.
So when encountering the real thing, it's time for humility and respect. The Australian Peter Warner was the real thing - and he had the poetic grace to be swept from his boat by a rogue wave at 90. - GWC
Typical fishing boats,
Maharashtra, India
By Clay RisenPeter Warner, an Australian seafarer whose already eventful life was made even more so in 1966 when he and his crew discovered six shipwrecked boys who had been living on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific for 15 months, died on April 13 in Ballina, New South Wales. He was 90.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Janet Warner, who said he had been swept overboard by a rogue wave while sailing near the mouth of the Richmond River, an area he had known for decades. A companion on the boat, who was also knocked into the water, pulled Mr. Warner to shore, but attempts to revive him were unsuccessful.
The story of the 1966 rescue, which made Mr. Warner a celebrity in Australia, began during a return sail from Nuku’alofa, the capital of Tonga, where he and his crew had unsuccessfully requested the right to fish in the country’s waters. Casually casting his binoculars at a nearby island, ‘Ata, which was thought to be uninhabited, he noticed a burned patch of ground.
“I thought, that’s strange that a fire should start in the tropics on an uninhabited island,” he said in a 2020 video interview. “So we decided to investigate further.”
As they approached, they saw a naked teenage boy rushing into the water toward them; five more quickly followed. Recalling that some island nations imprisoned convicts on islands like ‘Ata, he told his crew to load their rifles.
But when the boy, Tevita Fatai Latu, who also went by the name Stephen, reached the boat, he told Mr. Warner that he and his friends had been stranded for more than a year, living off the land and trying to signal for help from passing ships.
