Left For Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World, Dolin - B

               Charles Barnard, veteran mariner and sealer working for the NY firm of Murray and Sons, set sail on April 12, 1812 on the brig Nanina for the Falklands, which they reached  five months later.  The crew set to work killing and skinning as many seals as possible. In early 1813, they learned that the US and Great Britain were at war. Unbeknownst to the Americans, the HMS Isabella, sailing from Australia to England, had faltered nearby, and the crew and passengers were stranded. Six Britons set sail in a longboat and reached Buenos Aires, 1200 miles to the northwest, Soon a brig, the HMS Nancy, was dispatched to rescue the castaways. Meanwhile, the Americans and British had met and agreed that the Nanina would take the Britons to the mainland, in exchange for the goods on the Isabella.

             Upon arrival in the Falklands, the Nancy's captain, William D'Arandra, viewed the Americans as enemies and not saviors, refuted the agreement, took the Nanina as a prize, and declared all of the Americans to be prisoners of war. He directed the Nanina to sail to London and he took the Nancy to Buenos Aires. The Nanina was so overcrowded that the prize master decided to sail to Buenos Aires as well. The US consul negotiated freedom for the Americans, and was almost able to recover the ship, but it sailed for London.

           D'Arandra had left five men, including Capt. Barnard, on the Falklands without explanation or remorse. After two years, they were rescued by a British whaler. A few months later after the whaler sailed to the Pacific, the men went ashore in Peru. Barnard boarded an America ship which sailed to Hawaii and China, where he boarded another ship that took him home, four and a half years after he had departed.

          The prize court in London awarded the Nanina to D'Arandra, but Murray and Sons appealed the decision as soon as the war ended. In 1818, the Admiralty reversed itself and ruled in the Americans favor.

          Most of the principals in this story quickly faded from view. In 1829, Barnard published memoir of his story with a second edition following a decade later. There is a small museum named after him the Falklands.