Hermit's Fatal Encounter While Retrieving Food at Deliverance Island

Harry Envoldt, a Danish sailor who lived as a hermit on a remote Torres Strait coral island for 35 unbroken years from 1893 to 1928, died at age 78 in a shark attack while retrieving salted meat from an underwater cage — a richly documented case with an extraordinary backstory, including his practice of keeping a fire burning continuously for five years during WWI out of fear of running out of matches, making him one of the most historically remarkable individuals in the shark-incident record.

Harry Envoldt, a Danish sailor, had become something of a legend in Australian waters as the hermit of Deliverance Island, a small coral formation in Torres Strait near Cape York, North Queensland. After his vessel wrecked in the Torres Strait during the 1880s, Envoldt eventually established a solitary residence on the island in 1893 at age 41. For the next 35 years, he never once left the island, surviving primarily on turtle and fish meat, which he preserved by placing it in a wire cage anchored beneath the water off the beach. On January 27, 1928, the 78-year-old Envoldt was attending to one of his meat cages when he was attacked by sharks. Despite his age, he managed to struggle back to shore following the assault, but he collapsed upon reaching land from the severity of his wounds. His body was discovered by a visiting pearler. Much of what is known about Envoldt's life and final days comes from a detailed diary he maintained throughout his entire 35-year residence on the island, providing a rare historical record of isolated life in Torres Strait during this period.