Mementos, Notes, and Fragments

In the mid-nineteenth century, before construction of the Panama and Suez canals, clipper ships sailing to Europe from Australia or New Zealand had to round South America’s Cape Horn, braving treacherous seas and ferocious westerly winds. Navigation was difficult in the frequently stormy skies and charts were unreliable, so ships regularly ran aground on unseen reefs and islands. After a string of shipwrecks from 1864 to 1866 marooned dozens of sailors on sub-Antarctic islands, a provincial government in New Zealand had a cozy idea: It built little depots on the largely inhospitable Auckland, Campbell, Antipodes, and Bounty islands and stocked them with provisions for the inevitable castaways clawing their way ashore.

Each depot was supplied with food (usually tinned meat and biscuits), clothes, medicine, tools, fishing gear, and guns to hunt the pigs, rabbits, and sheep let loose on the islands as self-sustaining sources of