This tiny flat island was once home to a group of stranded enslaved people for 15 years. (Image: Getty)
Some 280 miles east of lies the tiny flat island of Tromelin, once called the Isle of Sand, in the Indian Ocean.
Tromelin Island forms part of the Scattered Islands and a district of the South and Antarctic Lands, meaning it is a French Overseas Territory. , however, also claims sovereignty over the island.
Today a site for scientific expeditions, a weather station, and a breeding ground for birds and green sea turtles, it was also the home of a group of stranded Malagasy people who managed to survive there for 15 years before their rescue.
Standing at just 1.1 miles long and 700 metres wide, the area is dominated by octopus bucy and surrounded by coral reefs. Due to a lack of fresh water and heavy winds, very little other flora can grow here.
In July 1761, the French ship Utile – a frigate of the French East India Company – transporting slaves from Madagascar to Mauritius ran onto the reefs of the island. As it was a frigate, not a slave ship, it was not equipped with the shackles and chains usually found on the latter to stop it from becoming a .
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In July 1761, a French ship carrying many slaves shipwrecked off Tromelin Island. (Image: Getty)
Carrying 160 Malagasy men, women and children, the crew and about 60 people managed to reach the island. The rest, locked in the hold, drowned.
The crew retried various equipment, food, and wood from the wreckage and dug a well for drinking water. They survived off salvaged food, turtles and seabirds.
Two camps were built – one for the crew and one for the slaves – as well as a forge and an oven with the materials recovered from the wreckage. They then set about constructing a boat.
After around two months, the French sailors left Tromelin, leaving the surviving slaves on the deserted island but promising to return and rescue them. They reached Madagascar just over four days later, during which time several men died of tropical diseases.
When they reached Mauritius, they requested that colonial authorities send a ship to rescue the Malagasy slaves from the island, but this was refused by the governor on the justification that France was fighting a war and had no ships so spare.
The captain, Barthelemy Castellan du Vernet, who returned to France in 1762, always hoped to return to Tromelin Island and rescue the people.
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A 1,200-metre airstrip now provides a link to the outside world. (Image: Getty)
However, it was not until 1773 that a ship passing close to Tromelin located the slaves and reported them to the authorities. Several rescue attempts were made, but only in 1776 – 15 years after the shipwreck – were the survivors rescued. This is the date from which the French claimed sovereignty of the island.
By this point, only seven women and an eight-month-old child remained. Upon arriving there, Tromelin-Lanuguy (after whom the island is named) discovered that the survivors were dressed in plaited feather clothes and that they had managed, during all these years, to keep a fire lit despite the fact there were no trees on the island. They had also built a shed out of coral stones. The slaves were freed on their arrival in Mauritius.
A 1,200-metre airstrip now provides a link to the outside world. In the early 2000s, an expedition entitled “Forgotten Slaves” took place, to search for traces of the shipwreck.
Among the items recovered were six copper bowls and a pebble used to sharpen knives. Subsequent expeditions uncovered the remains of several bodies, kitchen utensils, tinder lighters and flints and other tools.