#WHERE TO WATCH CAST AWAY FULL#

She was eventually rescued in 1923 and became known in some accounts as the female Robinson Crusoe. The animals in the area included seals, arctic foxes and polar bears, which would have been all she had to hunt after rations from the ship ran out.

Unlike Tom Hanks in the film, she was left trying to survive in cold climates, with just a cat who had been aboard the ship for company. They include Ada Blackjack who was stranded on Wrangel Island near Siberia in 1921 after a mission aboard a ship where she was a seamstress, went wrong. There were several more real life castaways over the years, some of whom had ended up in isolation by force, and others of their own accord. What other real life castaways were there? He later spent more time at sea, continuing his privateering voyages and returned to London for some time, where his story became well known.Īccounts of Selkirk’s experiences were later published in newspaper articles of the times and in books by his former shipmate Edward Cooke and the leader of the expedition on the ship that had rescued him, Woodes Rogers. He was eventually rescued in 1709, four years after his arrival, when a ship came by and took him aboard. He built huts out of materials he found on the islands, made his own clothes from animal skins and chased prey.

#WHERE TO WATCH CAST AWAY FULL#

It was not an easy existence, and his time on the deserted land was full of loneliness and remorse, as well as physical challenges such as attacks from rats – though feral cats proved useful in keeping the rodents at bay. The story goes, that he was forced from the shores of the island further inland after masses of sea lions came to the beaches for mating season. Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe is supposedly based on Selkirk’s experiences (Photo: Getty/Hulton Archive) Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk (1676 – 1721), on the uninhabited island of Mas a Tierra in the Juan Fernándes Islands, where he lived alone for four years.

He took a few items with him from the ship, including a knife, bedding and a Bible, and was left to hunt for his own food which included lobsters and feral goats. He chose to be left on the uninhabited Juan Fernández archipelago near Chile, as he feared the ship he had travelled on was too dangerous to continue the journey. Selkirk travelled around the South Pacific in the early 1700s, taking part in buccaneering pursuits. While the exact story of Cast Away is not thought to be a true story, there are several real-life accounts of people who spent time on uninhabited lands that may have provided inspiration.Īmong the most famous is the story of Alexander Selkirk, who is known by some as a real-life Robinson Crusoe, inspiring the Daniel Defoe novel. The name was Wilson was simply the brand of the ball. It was during this time, that he also came up with the idea for Wilson the volleyball companion, as a ball washed up on the beach he was staying on and he began to talk to it.

While there, he made himself find his own food, water, which included breaking open coconuts and eating speared stingrays, and building shelter made of bamboo and palm leaves. It was going to be an emotional, spiritual one as well,” he told the publication

“I realized it wasn’t just a physical challenge. In the creation of the film, screenwriter William Broyles Jr spent a few days alone on an isolated beach near Mexico’s Sea of Cortez, to get an idea of what it was like.Īccording to reports in The Austin Chronicle from 2000, the experience taught Broyles more about what it really means to be lonely. How did the film’s makers research Cast Away?

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