DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY TWO

Looking up tropical islands a bit more - specifically, coral atolls - I found this gem about Henderson Island:

In 1957 a twenty seven year old American, Robert Tomarchin, lived the life of a castaway on the island for approximately two months, accompanied by a pet chimpanzee, apparently as a publicity stunt, until he was rescued by people from Pitcairn in two longboats.

Of course, I needed to know more.  First, of course(!), it coincided with the International Geophyiscal Year (IGY), a year of many discoveries and scientific feats, including the launch of Sputnik and discoveries related to solar flares and a lot of other things. Not sure why, but IGY was something I looked up yesterday. Probably has something to do with the islands, atolls and research stations.  Read that article, if only to appreciate the Russians who've edited the section on the Space Race and why the USSR really won... Or at least I think that's what the incoherent English is trying to say.

Anywho, I stumbled across this article, which lays out the history of the guy.

They're not really sure why he was on the island, but it may have been because he jumped ship from a yacht that was sailing near by.  After a bit of discussion, the nearby islanders of Pitcairn went on a rescue mission the Henderson, which has little potable water. Upon discovering him on the beach:

The islanders knew something was up, though, since he had an extremely well-supplied tent that looked like he wanted to camp out on a desert island for a while. The yacht he had been 'cast away' from later radioed Pitcairn to tell them Tomarchin had paid them to put him on the island, where he was incapable of cutting his way to fresh water.  As the Americans refused to bring him back with the chimp, the islanders took pity on him and brought him back to Pitcairn, where

Rob was a stranger, a very muscular and personable young man of 27 who had come dramatically onto the island. No wonder the girls who had only seen their relatives all their lives should be attracted to Bob, even though he didn't do a tap of work all the time he resided on the island.

He apparently liked his time on the island enough (or was insane enough) that he attempted to return after a directive from Fiji announced he had to leave.  However, sneaking in as a stowaway and being caught only resulted in a further directive prohibiting him from interacting with the islanders upon his eventual arrival.

The Pitcairners interest in seeing Bob again was intense, but Bob was locked away in the spare hospital room with a guard on watch and no one was allowed to see him or send a message. Charles Christian managed to get fruit to him. As they left the ship Clarence Young yelled out,Goodbye, Bob! And Bob stuck a hand out of the window and waved pathetically. 

The story just gets better and better, with Tomarchin eventually selling the chimp to a zoo, after which he thought the chimp was heartbroken and wanted to be reunited with him.  After the zoo refused to return it, he snuck into the zoo and left a check and an IOU, absconding with the chimp in a desperate attempt to get south of the border.  When he was eventually caught, instead of arguing insanity as I probably would have done - something is seriously not right with this guy - his attorney argued that his relationship with the chimp was akin to father and child.  The lawyer also compared this case involving a chimp to a case where a Jewish couple adopted a Catholic kid, because clearly the two are very similar. Of course.

If you want to read more, check out the links here and here and this picture here.