'Save Our Souls' is a gripping tale of a 19th century Pacific shipwreck

On the night of Feb. 3, 1888, a fishing boat named the Wandering Minstrel ran aground on the coral reefs surrounding Midway Atoll, then one of the most remote and least hospitable specks of land in the Pacific Ocean. For Captain Frederick Walker, this disaster was made all the more harrowing due to the presence of his family on board — his wife, Elizabeth, and their three sons, 17-year-old Freddie, 15-year-old Henry, and 14-year-old Charlie. By luck, they managed to escape the sinking ship and in the morning washed up on Midway. Surprisingly, the family and the ship’s 23-man crew found themselves in the company of a man named Hans, who’d been stranded alone on the island sometime before.

With an intimate knowledge of the island’s resources, Hans quickly offered aid to the Walkers and their crew, who were grateful for his assistance. What they didn’t know, however, was that Hans wasn’t just any castaway. Hans, it turns out, was a murderer.

This is the improbable but all-too-true story behind Matthew Pearl’s latest nonfiction effort, “Save Our Souls: The True Story of a Castaway Family, Treachery, and Murder.” Pearl, a bestselling author of both fiction and nonfiction who was named the Best Author in Boston in 2013 by Boston magazine, takes readers on a rollicking adventure through the 19th-century Pacific with a page-turning historical true-crime narrative reminiscent of the works of David Grann or Nathaniel Philbrick.

When I spoke to Pearl about the book, he likened the situation on Midway to a philosophical thought experiment, with the survivors separating into two camps — one group determined to stick together through adversity, the other prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure its own survival. "It's almost like a parable,” Pearl told me. “What is our responsibility to each other and how much of life is just thinking about yourself?"

Eventually, Hans’ true colors are revealed, and he makes common cause with Walker’s first mate, John Cameron, a disreputable figure with a checkered history of smuggling and kidnapping. The two conspire to escape Midway together along with a young ship’s hand (who Cameron later admits he only brought in case they needed to eat him). In order to cover up their treachery, Hans and Cameron determine not to send help for the others when and if they make it back to civilization.

Pearl immerses readers into the tumultuous atmosphere of the Pacific, and his narrative draws on a rich tapestry of primary sources—many of the main players left behind written narratives describing their thirteen-month ordeal in great detail; newspapers of the time extensively covered the mysterious disappearance of the Wandering Minstrel and revelled in the family’s sensational rescue. Cameron was even interrogated by Robert Louis Stevenson, who used the first mate’s account as source material for his 1892 novel, “The Wrecker.” (Pearl smartly uses excerpts from Stevenson’s novel to provide color and context to his story, bringing things full circle.)

For Europeans, the Pacific was the final frontier — a large, heretofore unexploited resource brimming with potential, but also with great danger and uncertainty. More than once, the sailors speak of their experiences on the ocean in terms of wonder, fear and isolation, as if they were traveling in deep space. "For the men and women who were sailing, they were often traveling in parts of the ocean where there had never been any people,” says Pearl. “While there were plenty of places that were already populated, many of the atolls and islands, like Midway, had not been. It was the sort of unpredictable journey that really lent itself to some of what we see in the fictional literature of the time."

What’s remarkable about “Save Our Souls” is how Pearl manages to center the deeply fascinating story of the Walkers while also making time to explore the broader context of the world in which they travelled. Readers are treated to an array of engrossing tangents and compelling anecdotes that reveal an environment rife with lies, betrayals, and lawlessness — including kidnapping, opium smuggling, insurance fraud, and political conspiracies, as well as wanton crimes against indigenous people and the thoughtless exploitation of natural resources. The familiar tropes of pirate fiction even make an appearance — not just a message in a bottle, but also a mysterious map meant to lead to a buried treasure. What emerges is a portrait of a frontier society where everyone has a hidden agenda, no one is exactly who they seem, and trust is a luxury few can afford.

Pearl pays particular attention to Elizabeth Walker, who played an important role on both the ship and on the island. While captain’s wives did occasionally go along with their husbands on long voyages, it was far from common and, according to Pearl, few embraced it with as much zeal as Elizabeth. “She really took to it,” says Pearl. “That’s not to say it wasn’t difficult. But she had a quiet passion for it. A lot of women who chose to accompany their husbands would return and say ‘I’m never doing this again.’” Pearl notes that Elizabeth served as a spiritual center for the men, a civilizing influence who helped bring order to what were often very motley crews.

“Because these were merchant ships, a crew would be assembled ad hoc,” says Pearl. “They'd almost never use the same people, and they'd end up with a selection of men with different backgrounds, different cultures, different religions, even different languages. Elizabeth was a very strong person and she tried to help unify these often very disjointed crews.” Indeed, her resolve helps to keep things on an even keel when things become desperate on the island.

In the years following the Walkers’ saga on Midway, the enterprising merchants and malevolent marauders who sailed the Pacific were largely made obsolete. Within a decade, steamships, staffed by professional crews, brought an end to the age of sail. Imperial navies from Great Britain and the United States began to impose a certain kind of order on the exploitation of the Pacific and its peoples. The age of unfettered exploration had come to an end. With “Save Our Souls,” Pearl provides a fitting tribute to the Walkers and their astonishing era, one that’s appropriately attuned to both its inspiring virtues and its appalling vices.