SURVIVAL CHALLENGE: Assumed Dead For 17 Years! (No Food, No Water, No Shelter)

This is one of the craziest stories of survival against all odds and it happened right here. After a tragic shipwreck a 14 year old boy was left here on the beach assumed dead and totally forgotten about for the next 17 years but what actually happened during that time is truly mind-blowing. This is the story of Narcisse Pelletier nicknamed Pierre. Now I'm putting myself in the exact location where all of this went down in order to gain a better understanding of the whole situation for my own survival challenge but also to share the story of everyone involved. So the year is 1858. A young Pierre, a 14 year old French cabin boy is on board a larger ship called the Saint Paul and while it was Pierre's turn taking a watch in the middle of the night fortunately they ran aground. He had failed his task of alerting the captain that there was danger up ahead. The boat was totally wrecked. Everyone made it ashore initially but the archipelagos fell under the control of a chief that had an appetite for violence and for human flesh and once they soon realized this the captain in the middle of the night he saw his only way out was to get on board their lifeboat with a few of his select crew and to sail off to try get away from this whole situation. But in the middle of the night young Pierre woke up through a little bit of commotion. He saw his ticket out of there. He went and got on the boat with the captain. They made a run for it. Over the next 12 days they traveled 1200 miles and the winds blow them into this section of the remote Australian coastline. At this point in time Pierre has got a crazy head wound. They are severely dehydrated. Basically Pierre is on his last breaths. So the crew come ashore looking for water. A lot of the crew are holding hard feelings towards Pierre. They believe it was his fault they ran aground. So they're not giving him any food rations. They're not giving him any water. They find a little soak with fresh water. They have a bit of a drink and then they tell Pierre there mate you wait here. Wait for that to refill with fresh water. We'll be back shortly. Crew then continue on. Jump on the life raft and continue sailing on. Pierre assumed dead and just a liability at this stage. He was just another mouth that was taking food rations and water rations. So he's left on the beach for dead. Now that little soak of fresh water never did refill and Pierre basically loses consciousness preparing to die. But then he's woken to a little bit of a shaking and he looks up and there's three figures standing over the top of him. Dark skin, fairly curious faces. These people are the Aboriginal people of Australia. Three women at this point. They actually tip a little bit of water into his mouth. In exchange he offers his one possession. He's got a little tin cup and this simple gesture might have just saved his life. According to him this set the whole tone that he was friendly. They then also showed their loving side and nurtured him over the next few days back to somewhat level of health. They put bush remedies on his injuries. They had a feast prepared for him and they basically took him in as a part of their clan, as a part of their tribe. And that's where Pierre then lives for the next 17 years. 17 years later the way this story then unfolds it does break your heart but we'll get to that as the episode continues. Now my interest is seeing the conditions that he would have been faced with when he came in here looking for water, looking for food and that's what we're going to do guys. Let's go for it. I do have one select item with me today. I've got the knife but that's it guys. That's literally the one piece of equipment I've got. I am going to throw a shirt and a hat on otherwise I'll end up bloody sunburnt like poor old Pierre waiting for a guardian angel to come and save me but let's get into it. Our first priority is going to have to be to try and get some food or water and then later on we'll worry about getting a fire going, getting a shelter, seeing if we can make a spear or kind of get a little bit more set up here. But for now let's cover some miles and see if there's any easy picking food. The first and most obvious thing would be all these big shells. They look like a like a big hippie shell. Some would call them a clam shell. There's just dead shells everywhere so surely that's an obvious place to look. It does seem though any of the ones out exposed and open are already dead and full of mud or nothing at all so we'll have to look see if there's an area we can find some live ones. One of the most fascinating things I find with this whole story and the book is that this was the first time these aboriginal people had ever seen a white person. So it was incredibly scary for both the aboriginal people initially and also young Pierre. Now that is the big nipper of what once was a giant mud crab. It's a good sign I suppose. Oh a clam like this would be an easy takeaway meal. But these are now protected these days because these grow into the big giant clams. Roughly so. So we'll have to leave this one back. Still looking for something we can eat though. Suntory whiskey. That's a pretty cool bottle. Holy. Look at the size of these ones. Actually this might be this might be alive. This might be still full this one. And check out this one. If we can find something this size that would be an incredible meal. Is it mud or is it living? I'd like to have a bit of a knock around with this one. Oh no. Heartbreak. Probably a decent spot to have a bit of a dig around though. I am wondering what Pierre would have been thinking. Just this is all completely foreign to a 14 year old boy from France. You know you'd have no idea whether there's crocodiles here, whether what type of animals, what you could eat, what you couldn't eat. Those mud crabs and all this type of thing would just be like completely like from another planet. Whereas the aboriginal people that took him in. Oh man I would love to walk through an area like this with them. You know up until that point they had what's believed to be sort of 70 000 years of learnings. They would know everything you could eat in here, where you could access water. Now fortunately a lot of that knowledge was just cut with the horrible history that followed next with the sort of the colonization of Australia. It's just such a shame that knowledge wasn't appreciated then. Because there's no way there's no way in regaining a lot of what was lost there. We might be in luck here. This is actually a living one. The first time we found a chunk of meat in there. The best way to go about these is actually we'll try and get a couple and then put them straight on the fire and then that the heat of the fire will open them straight up and then they'll be ready to ready to eat. This one's the guy. I just wanted to take one minute to share something with you guys that has been a bit of a game changer for us on this trip. So this episode you're watching is part of a four-month adventure where we're striving to live from the land and the sea. But to be honest last time we tried this after about a month into the four-month trip man our bodies really started to struggle. We're managing to catch some pretty cool seafood but we were just lacking in all the other things that your body needs. Things like the vitamins, the minerals, the probiotics and I mean the list goes on. I found myself really lacking energy. I had no endurance and if I got any little cuts all over me they turned into some pretty nasty infections. So this time around I've made a constant effort to have AG1 every morning as part of my morning routine and man I've noticed a massive difference which you guys are going to see as the trip plays out. One of the things I love about it is by having it every morning it gives me that sustained energy throughout the entire day with no crash like I get from coffee. To be honest after filming this style of survival challenge episode leaves me pretty exhausted. My whole body feels pretty depleted like the food and hydration is generally pretty hard to come by. Check that out. Bugger all sleep it's generally pretty physically exhausting but once I've finished filming get back to the boat the first thing I do is I have one of these AG1s and that just manages to replenish all the nutrients that my body is lacking and being able to do that in one convenient scoop or a travel pack to me that is pretty priceless. If you'd like to try it now guys I'll leave a link below in the description and that link will also get you five free travel packs when you first sign up plus a year's supply of AG's vitamin D3 plus K2. Get on to it guys. Now back to the survival challenge. Yeah it definitely is. So to be honest this was actually one of my concerns when I was heading out to do this survival challenge. In this area this is a big crocodile site. You can see he's come up here sat underneath that tree for a little bit and come back down and this is something that Pierre wouldn't have had to worry about as much. He had a hell of a lot other things to worry about but back in the day the aboriginal people used to hunt the crocodiles and they kind of the crocodiles back then had a healthy respect slash fear for humans that they keep their distance. Now the crocodiles have been protected since the late 80s and their numbers have increased, their size have increased and all these areas where people would have been able to wade through the shallows and go hunting you wouldn't dip your big toe in now just because the risk of crocodiles. This is a substantial one. Needless to say I'm gonna have to be pretty careful as we go about our hunting here. Oh nice look at that. Pretty close to perfect Nautilus shell. What a find hey. Now I'm really keen to use this actually when Pierre was sort of ready to die he woke up being given a drink of water out of a shell and he was quite amazed that the aboriginal people used to use shells to carry water and store water so it does look like a few storm clouds around. I might put this in a likely spot and do a bit of a rain dance later on A couple of these nicer black-lipped oysters as I'm going along. Look at that. Open these up. Best way to eat these just down in one. They are very salty so they don't uh they definitely don't quench your thirst at all. Yum yum. To help get food I'm gonna try and make some type of a spear and that'll probably do for now and this sort of just looks more like a stick rather than a spear but you know what it might just work for what we need. See if we could find anything. Come back here mate. There's the barb there. Swinging his barb around. Look at him stabbing it. Oh this could be a good meal. You've got to be very careful. Before I can do anything I've got to disarm him here. This is how the aboriginal people used to do it. This is the barb off the back of the tail there. It's got a serrated edge. I'm going to try and use this for something else later. Very sharp and it's got a bit of a toxin on it so I'm going to be careful for the moment. Oh it's raining. I hope some of this collects in my cup. Oh yeah bring it on. We're getting some drinking water. It's pissing down. It's a good thing though. I hope some of this is collecting in our cup. This is going to be enough drinking water. We've got a little bit of it. I should have cleaned the sand out beforehand I just realized but oh yeah beautiful water and it was a shell similar to this that brought young Pierre back to life. Amazing hey. So the aboriginal people that lived and thrived in the area a lot of their diet was made up of things other than the animals other than the protein so things like fruits and nuts and roots of different trees are all edible. Once again I wish I was walking through here with one of those guys because man just the knowledge they have of what you can and can't eat is far superior to mine but I'm gonna have a dig around and see what bush tucker I can get a hold of. Now this digging for yams was what uh what the women used to do while the men were out hunting and they were very effective at finding the right plant digging down into the roots and then getting the yams. So this is the one I want to be following down down here and then digging just near it being careful not to lose track of the actual vine I'm following down. Oh there we go here we go so that is for after I guess sort of comparable to a potato or something like that that grows underground and they're a good source of carbohydrates so we'll cook these up I'll keep moving. Reading this book it flooded back a whole heap of memories that I hadn't thought about for a long time actually so when I was actually a couple years younger than Pierre at the time he got found our family upped and moved to Papua New Guinea and he speaks in his book about how the kids and they all thought that he was a ghost with his white skin and it just brought back all these memories where I had the exact same when we were in New Guinea and every village we went to it would start with the kids would cry in terror thinking I'm a ghost and run off it was incredibly intimidating for me combined with a lot of them had the big beetle nut smile so they chew a nut which goes bright red and it looks like you know blood through their teeth of course we did have very different experiences I do remember having similar feelings he writes about there's a period where he finally believes he gained some acceptance he turns into a pretty impressive hunter and he starts to learn the different bush taco and that type of thing just as we go in here I noticed this is the the tree where I remember we used to grow up grow up eating the nuts of this in New Guinea I still remember I when I learned that I remember when my hunting skills improved a little bit and I could speak the language and that brought back some pretty fond memories of being accepted into a culture that was initially so foreign but then became family and friends and the point in time I didn't know any other way hello Australia so this is the beach almond I'll grab a pocketful of these and we'll go crack a few over down the beach later on for a snack and let's try and get a fire going so in the book Pierre speaks about using sticks rubbed together to get a fire going I reckon I know which tree he was talking about there's a specific tree here that you can use even when it's green and you give it enough grunt you can get a friction fire going with it let's try it out the aboriginal people just use basically a hand drill with one straight object one base plate rub this together fast enough and you're going to get an ember a light here put that in your tinder pile kabooska onto the fire that's the idea we'll see how we go I've got a second plate underneath which will catch the shavings and hopefully catch the ember once it does eventually light there we go getting some smoke we're close there we go that smoke is staying there now see that little bit of smoke here we go find a bloody leaf we're away all right here is the prize catch of today anyone who's been watching our channel would know that we don't commonly eat stingray but back to the indigenous people back in the day they were a main staple food source so firstly I'm just going to take his guts out and then we'll cook him up all right here's the day's catch that stingray all ready to go plus we've got these two mud mussels and two yams a little bit underwhelming with on the yam front but I'm happy to have some carbohydrates in the diet anyway I'll get these coals ready and then get him straight on there I'll show you just how the aboriginal people used to cook them all right just get him straight on there like that there he goes we'll get these big piles on there at the same time well now we're cooking as those mud mussels start to heat up they just crack open like that then that beautiful smoky flavor can get inside them yum yum so after being first saved and then cared for by the aboriginal people he then was given his own local name he eventually learned the local language the local culture even went through the full male initiation process and he's got the tattoos and scars across his chest to prove it he really had a very very unique insight into the australian aboriginal way of life the ceremonies the culture so his stories which were then later put into a book is an amazing glimpse into what life was like back then I have these little yams as an entree I don't think they're meant to be that burnt but I was distracted with another fire yeah it tastes starchy like a like a potato nice just needs a little bit of butter salt pepper and it'd be pretty good the stingray is going to need a little bit more heat just turn the oven up a little bit on the side there and we'll get him on top and then I can't wait to try him next course I got the mud mussels see they're just opened up nicely look at that beautiful bit of shell grip unfortunately but pretty good just tastes like a big oyster only crunchier all right this guy's starting to smell like he's cooked anyway surely that counts for something seems to be a bit of a delicate operation here oh yeah that's peeling away nicely so all this stringy stuff here is the meat and the flaps of the stingray heaps of meat up here look at that yeah that's nice that's really nice I'm trying to think of a something to compare it to yum yum got like a rich taste like a rich seafoody scallop type of setup tomorrow guys I am keen when we wake up to make uh make a real spear make a real spear and that was one of the reasons I was keen to get a stingray today I want to utilize that barb as the point of a spear I reckon that'll give us a better chance to get some fish get to the other side all right now I must admit when you just cook straight on the coals like that you think that um you're gonna get nothing in your mouth except sand and charcoal but nature's got a way of giving itself a pretty good protective layer that peels off just like this and then you can get all that nice meat there pretty well sand free actually yum yum so one of the Pierre first noticed on his first few nights with the aboriginal people is they seem to live nowhere or everywhere and they just pretty well lived out in nature and what they prioritized is rather than spending all your energy setting up a shelter that would be rather nomadic and move around across their country every day depending on the tides and what food source was where and what water source and it did mean they never overexploited one area they're constantly on the move it worked for them for tens of thousands of years so I reckon something quite simple but up here out of the wind a little bit away from potential crocodile threats keep that fire burning throughout the night and then just set up like a bit of bedding here with leaves I think it'd probably be your best bet for the night we'll get into it bright and early in the morning all right I'm reading the book and hearing about what their prized foods were back in the aboriginal times number one on the top of that list was the dugong actually close second was the turtle uh those two are both off limits these days mud crab I believe was uh not too far behind and that's one we can get walking around looking at the base of these these are pig tracks and pig diggings you can see them come back through here oh man there's few better things than pork so pork or bacon or whatever you want to call them pigs some pretty serious pig diggings all through here this is all pigs they're one of the most damaging pests actually the pigs in this part of the world they eat all the young mangrove roots as well as a heap of other native plants and outcompete any of the native animals so if you see one you're encouraged to do your best to take it out shell middens obviously cracked open so this is spider conch shell and it's kind of eerie walking around here that um the people that would have been eating these are the aboriginal people I'm reading about um that have you know since sort of been moved on from the area unfortunately but it's pretty amazing that their remnants are sort of everywhere and one of the special things about this part of the world is that the nature side of things is largely unchanged since uh these early explorer days you know a couple hundred years ago the landscape really is the exact same there's no high-rise buildings no land developments here this is the kind of ground those mud crabs love this muddy muddy bottom but it holds itself together that they actually dig really good holes in it anywhere up under here no one home i was too slow and he just bloody dumped back into his hole that was a big beautiful blue button i wanted i'm really starting to tire now like every step either sinking into mud or tripping over rocks so i really need to find something soon and then try to get out of this heat of it yeah this one looks pretty there's a nice big hole there and then all this kind of coral rubble is white i think something here turning it over recently i reckon there's a good chance it's a big crab in this one let's have a little poke down there and see what we can find nothing home he must be out somewhere oh yes oh oh yes yes we are eating tonight we are eating very well big blue mud crab what a beauty man he always got me off shaking from that yes oh oh yes but he was ready to rumble with his claws out like that what an absolute beauty but just while i'm waiting for that fire to burn down a nice coal base i want to work on a spear you'd see this is sort of as crooked as a politician at the moment it's not going to be too handy for a spear but what we're going to do we're going to try and bend it into place make it nice and straight take that outside bark off quite satisfying this also guys i just wanted to say that i'm uh by no means an expert at this type of survival stuff trying a lot of the things for the first time and hopefully we can learn together some things will work some things might not work but just wanted to get that out there this isn't a do it this way type of survival video this is me just learning on the go i want to keep a bit of a fire going on that side so i can continue working on my spear this big mud crab is going to go straight on have we got the the claws on him anyone that's been following this survival challenge series you'll know how lucky we've got with the mud crabs each of these scenarios so far they've managed to get themselves in a bit of strife where there's big giant mud crabs which has really worked in our favor all right let's get him on there now as you put heat into this wood it'll allow you to bend and shape it hopefully we can get some of the bends out of it so that's a bit straight so this bit here needs to come down see my crab is done now as well so i'm gonna get him off and let him cool down now look at that oh man i can't wait to rip into you know what it's getting straighter definitely getting straighter no just gonna say it's starting to look a little straighter i've just bloody got a bit impatient too much force back to square one so this was that really bent bit at the start so the technique works just needed to go slow and steady i got a bit impatient oh time to get into this big mud crab that is why they're one of the most prized catchers because of this big nipper there so much meat now to continue the story our mate pierre the 14 year old french cabin boy he then basically evolves almost like a caterpillar evolves into a butterfly into anglo the white hunter that's feared basically all across the land amongst the other clans he goes on to marry a couple of times he goes on to have kids he has an affair as another kid with someone he shouldn't have and for that affair he paid with what was seemed to be a fair price a spear in the upper thigh the judiciary system must have been a little bit different back then but that's what the that's what the going um consequence was oh yeah yum yum it takes my mind off the spear failure just momentarily now i think the truly tragic part of this story is 17 years after he was first saved by the aboriginal people he was then saved again basically kidnapped at gunpoint and taken against his will against the will of his adopted family back to france and he was sort of given his unwanted 10 minutes of fame he was the newspapers had him as the king of the cannibals and they showed off his tattoos across his chest his vertical stripes on here were the amount of enemies he'd killed in his battle they found that very interesting scars across his chest were how many wives he'd had but from all reports he went on to live a fairly depressed um unsatisfied life back in civilization he did marry again he had further kids having spent a bit of time in both worlds he was far happier out here on the beaches living back to basic that stingray barb spear is going to have to wait for another time thanks so much for joining me guys i hope you enjoyed this episode cheers see you on the next one