Reuben Keith Green, Black Officer, White Navy. A Memoir

Reviews 425 as the Nanina could be a valuable prize in an admiralty court.Perhaps the Americans should first have learned how many people needed to be rescued.Because of the political war situation, they perhaps should have sailed off and left the shipwrecked people behind, even if doing so went against every humane impulse and certainly international maritime convention.Five of the men, separated from the main party, survived as Falkland castaways, both together and apart, for 543 days.This complex tale evolves into many sub-plots: a mini rescue via Young Nanina (Nanina's shallop), minor sexual dalliance, deceit, marooning of members of the parties, and detailed accounts of hunts.Added to this are clever survival tactics, moral relapses, reprieves, and forgiveness.Also an arduous voyage to Uruguay, followed by a rescue out of Argentina via Nancy, a Royal Navy brig, but with a potential substantial monetary reward as an incentive.This multi-faceted story, with a sizeable dramatis personae, comes to a reasonable and largely just wrap-up.In a thought-provoking epilogue, the author brings the multiple story lines to their real-life conclusions.The primary sources for this meandrous tale were Charles Barnard's logbooks of the Nancy and Nanina, plus Barnard's 1829 published narrative of his sufferings and adventures at the Falkland Islands, a journal of Henry Igman Defrees, and Richard Lundin's narrative of a voyage published in Scotland in 1846.This unusual story is captivating and, like Dolin's many other works, erudite and well-written.Some of the undertakings where the men are moving from island to island and harbor to harbor are difficult to follow.This may be a function of the map that shows multiple names for places, some of which are entirely missing.One might assume this is a function of the centuriesold sources that Dolan had to edit into modern prose.The reader would be well advised to remember that it was the taxing survival events that were important and not necessarily their exact geographic locations.Left for Dead is a fascinating if somewhat disheartening segment of the maritime history that took place in one of the world's most remote and inhospitable lands.