In early September 1865, Captain Thomas Musgrave and the crew of a small ship called the Flying Scud arrived at Port Ross, at the northern end of Auckland Island. Beside the ruins of a house, they found the body of a man who had been dead for some time. One of his feet was wrapped in wool rags. Next to him was a piece of roof slate with marks scratched into it. Musgrave thought that the man had perhaps made the marks while he was dying, but the only thing he could read was the name James.
Musgrave knew this island well. He had just spent more than eighteen months stranded there himself, and he had come back only to collect the last two of his own men.
Musgrave was born in Durham, in north-eastern England, and went to sea at 16. In 1858 he settled with his family in Australia. In 1863 he became captain of the Grafton, a small sailing ship. One of the men on board was a Frenchman, François Édouard Raynal. They sailed to the Auckland Islands to hunt seals. On the night of 2 January 1864, during a heavy storm, the anchor chains broke and the ship hit a rocky beach.
All five men got to land safely. They saved tools, food and some canvas, but they had food for only two months, so they lived on seal meat, birds and fish. Raynal had built huts before, and with only a few simple tools he helped the men build a strong cabin with a stone chimney. In the evenings Musgrave taught the men to read.
Musgrave also kept a diary, and it shows a man who was often unhappy. In February 1864 he wrote that he would never forgive himself for coming on the trip. He thought of his wife and children in Sydney, who probably believed that he was dead. On 1 January 1865, a year after the wreck, he wrote: “I have got quite grey-headed.” He believed that hard work was the only medicine they had, so he kept the men busy.
No ship came, so the men decided to save themselves. They made the Grafton‘s small boat bigger and stronger, and Musgrave made sails from the old canvas that had covered the cabin roof. The boat was not safe enough for five people, so two men, Harris and Forgés, stayed behind. Musgrave, Raynal and McLaren left on 19 July 1865. Soon a storm hit them. For five days and nights Musgrave stood on deck, holding a rope with one hand and pumping water out of the boat with the other. They reached Stewart Island on 24 July. There Captain Cross of the Flying Scud gave them food and a bed. People in the town of Invercargill collected money so that Cross could take Musgrave back for the other two men.
They found Harris and Forgés alive. On the way home they stopped at Port Ross, where they found the dead seaman. It was clear that he had died of hunger. The crew of the Flying Scud buried him on 3 September 1865.
Musgrave did not know that other men had lived on the island at the same time. In May 1864, four months after the Grafton, a ship called the Invercauld had hit the north-western end of Auckland Island in a storm. Six of her 25 men died in the wreck. The others had saved very little. They lived on roots and shellfish, and one by one they died of cold and hunger. In May 1865 a Portuguese ship, the Julian, stopped at Port Ross and took away the last three survivors. The two groups never knew about each other. All five Grafton men lived, but only three of the 25 men from the Invercauld did. Today, people believe that the starved man next to the slate was James Mahoney, an officer on the Invercauld.
Back home with his family in 1865, Musgrave promised his wife that he would never go far out to sea again. In 1869 he was put in charge of the lighthouse at Wilsons Promontory. For the rest of his life he looked after lighthouses on the coast of Victoria, and the last one was at Point Lonsdale.