How 10 Whalers Survived Three Years Shipwrecked in the South Pacific

History Unplugged Podcast · Jun 11, 2026 · 54m

In 1832, a New Bedford whaleship called the Mentor struck a reef in the remote Pacific archipelago of Palau. The tiny, 100-foot-long ship began sinking immediately, and the 22 men who made up its crew were thrown into one of the most extraordinary survival ordeals in American maritime history. Ten men vanished the night of the wreck and were never seen again. The survivors found themselves stranded among island peoples with their own complex politics, rival confederations, and fifty years of complicated history with Western ships that the castaways knew nothing about. What followed was a…