Real life tale of terror-The Tyrant of Clipperton Island
Surfing the planet on Google Earth. I'm at home in bed with a cold.
Find a tiny island of the coast of central America-real tiny. Clipperton Island. Decided to do a Google search & YIKES!
https://www.damninteresting.com/the-tyrant-clipperton-island/
1914
-A small Army platoon was sent from Mexico to establish the claim to rights on the Island. A political upheaval on the mainland stopped the supplies they relied on.
"At this point there were approximately 26 people on Clipperton Island: 13 soldiers, about 12 women and children, and a reclusive lighthouse-keeper named Victoriano Álvarez who lived alone at the base of a sheer cliff below the lighthouse that the Mexicans had constructed in 1906. The island’s vegetable garden had been lost to the elements, and the only types of food available from the island itself were birds, bird eggs, and fish. There were also a few coconuts every week, but these were not a sufficient source of Vitamin C, and the islanders—especially the adult men—began getting sick with scurvy. One by one, they started dying; their fellow islanders buried their bodies deep beneath the sand in order to make them inaccessible to the crabs. Arnaud was mildly alarmed, but he was reluctant to abandon the island. At any rate, he knew that any attempt to reach the mainland would probably end badly; the one boat that the islanders owned did not have enough fuel for a trip over to Acapulco, and rowing it would be extremely difficult with only five men remaining on Clipperton, all of them suffering the effects of undernourishment and vitamin-deficiency.
The situation took another turn for the worse when Arnaud spied a distant ship, and talked the three other soldiers into joining him in the rowboat and going to the ship for help. Out on the water there was no sign of any such ship; it is quite possible that Arnaud had been deceived by an illusion. Angry, the three other soldiers attempted to overpower Arnaud and seize his weapon. Several of the wives watched helplessly from shore. The struggling mass of men fell overboard, and all of them drowned in the waves. Only hours later, two unrelated emergencies arose almost at once: a hurricane appeared offshore, and Arnaud’s heavily pregnant widow went into labour with the couple’s fourth child. The women and children took refuge in the cramped basement of the Arnauds’ house, and Alicia Rovira Arnaud gave birth to a son, Angel. Mother and baby survived, but the islanders emerged from the basement to find their buildings torn to pieces.
Just then, Álvarez the hitherto-unassuming lighthouse-keeper abruptly arrived at the destroyed settlement, collected the weapons, and threw them into the deep waters of the lagoon. Saving one rifle for himself, he announced to the women and children that he was now the king of the island. With that, he began a campaign of enslaving the women for whatever purposes he desired. One mother-daughter pair who refused to obey him were raped and shot to death. The rest were given regular beatings at the minimum."
To paraphrase and avoid copyright issues-
This went on for 9 years!!
And when one of the women finally killed the bastard they were rescued by a boat the next day.
Head shaking horrible but true.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Thanks so much for posting, it was an interesting story with a happy ending, sort of.
When I very first starting reading it I was briefly reminded of a book I read ages ago, The Sex Life of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific. Turns out, it was nothing like that but thought you might still enjoy the book. It's a modern travelogue about a couple voluntarily stuck on an unpleasant atoll. The true story has nothing to do with cannibals, so I think the title was meant as a hook. It also has very little sex, except for the incessant procreation of all the stray dogs around the couple's hut. It's actually a quite funny read.
Hope you feel better soon!
