Daily Weird News Report
In 1761, the French ship Utile wrecked on the Isle of Sand, a small sandbar in the Indian Ocean located about 280 miles from Madagascar. The vessel had been illegally transporting Malagasy men, women and children to be sold as slaves.
The shipwreck left the surviving passengers and crew facing an immediate struggle for survival. Over the following two months, they used material from the Utile to build a smaller boat. But the new vessel could not carry everyone stranded on the island.
The 122 surviving French crew members eventually sailed away, leaving 60 Malagasy men and women behind. According to Neatorama’s account, the crew promised that a ship would return for them. No rescue vessel came at that time.
The abandoned group had to survive on Tromelin Island while waiting for help that did not arrive. The account does not describe how they obtained food, water or shelter during the 15 years that followed, but says they continued making do on the remote sandbar.
When a ship finally managed to dock at Tromelin Island 15 years later, it found only seven women and a baby among the people who had been left behind. The report does not state what happened to the others.
The episode began with a shipwreck and an overcrowded escape vessel, but became an extended abandonment in which the promised rescue never occurred. The survivors’ presence on the island was discovered only after more than a decade had passed.
