In the winter of 1864, five seamen aboard the schooner Grafton wreck on the remote and icy Auckland Island, 285 miles south of New Zealand. It is a godforsaken place, with winds howling atsixty miles an hour, rain three hundred days a year, and an almost impenetrable coastal forest. It is an isolated speck in the Southern Ocean. Under the leadership of their captain, these men defy their slim chance of survival. With their bare hands they build a cabin and, incredibly, a forge, where they manufacture every single nail as well as most of their tools. Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the same island'”twenty miles of impassable cliffs and chasms away'”another ship wrecks during a horrible gale. Nineteen men struggle ashore. They succumb to utter anarchy, and only three survive, while all the Grafton men survive for nearly two years before finally building a getaway vessel and setting off on one of the most courageous sea voyages ever.