When we think of history, most folks picture people living and dying within a few miles of their own farms. Yet, across the ages, there have always been a handful of brave (or unlucky) souls who found themselves far beyond the borders of their familiar world. These ten remarkable fish‑out‑of‑water tales showcase the astonishing lengths some individuals went to, whether by accident, ambition, or sheer happenstance.
10. Jeronimo De Aguilar
Between 1509 and 1511 a Spanish vessel hunting for slaves was tossed about by a sudden Caribbean storm and smashed onto a reef. The surviving crew scrambled into a tiny skiff, drifting for two weeks before washing ashore on the Yucatán peninsula. Local Maya discovered them, offering corn, meat, and chocolate, but also imprisoning them in wooden cages. Legend has it that the captain over‑indulged, became enormously fat, and was eventually seized by warriors to be roasted alive. The remaining Spaniards escaped their cages, only to be captured by a different Maya group that chose to enslave rather than eat them. Most perished, but two survived: Gonzalo Guerrero and the priest Jeronimo de Aguilar.
Guerrero fully embraced Maya life, teaching them Spanish military tactics and marrying a local woman. Aguilar, a devout cleric, refused to marry into Maya society, becoming a source of ridicule despite generally fair treatment. His chastity even earned him the odd honor of overseeing the chief’s harem. While Guerrero fully assimilated—some accounts claim he died fighting fellow Spaniards—Aguilar never truly belonged.
His escape arrived with Hernán Cortés, who landed in Yucatán during his conquest of the Aztecs. Aguilar quickly became Cortés’s translator, despite only speaking Maya and not the Nahuatl of the Aztecs. Eventually his role was usurped by La Malinche, a Tabascan who spoke both languages and later became Cortés’s consort. As recompense, Aguilar received land in the Valley of Mexico, settled there in his later years, and, despite his earlier vow of celibacy, entered a relationship with a local woman, fathering two daughters.
9. Yasuke
Japan’s first contact with black individuals came via European traders in the 16th century. Dark‑skinned people were lumped together under the term kurobo, a catch‑all that also included southern Indians and Malay‑Indonesians. Curious crowds would flock to see a black visitor, sometimes even breaking down doors in frenzy. In 1581, a mob stormed the Jesuit residence in Kyoto after rumors spread of a young slave from Mozambique, causing several injuries.
Embarrassed, warlord Oda Nobunaga demanded to see the man, stripping and washing him to confirm his skin’s authenticity. Satisfied, and impressed by his massive size, strength, and his grasp of Japanese, Nobunaga christened him “Yasuke” and took him on as a retainer.
Yasuke later stood beside Nobunaga during the lord’s final stand against the treacherous Akechi Mitsuhide. Fleeing to Nijo Castle with Nobunaga’s heir Oda Nobutada, Yasuke kept fighting until Nobutada committed seppuku. Upon surrender, Yasuke reportedly handed over his sword, suggesting he had attained samurai status. Akechi spared his life, bluntly stating, “He is not Japanese.” Akechi supposedly sent Yasuke to a Kyoto church, but records of his fate vanish. Though Yasuke is the most famous African in Japan of his era, many daimyō employed Africans as soldiers, gunners, drummers, and entertainers. The Dutch settlement at Dejima also housed a few African slaves who mingled with locals, sometimes even keeping Japanese slaves and mistresses.
8. Jan Janse Weltevree
In 1627 three Dutch sailors, members of the privateer ship Ouwerkerck (operating for the Dutch East India Company), were cast ashore on Korea’s Jeju Island after a storm separated their vessel from a captured Chinese junk. The Chinese retook their ship and left, leaving the Dutchmen at the mercy of Korean authorities. Expecting execution, they instead found themselves recruited to manufacture cannon—on the condition they never leave the country.
Two of the men died during the Manchu invasion of 1636. The survivor, a towering red‑haired, blue‑eyed Dutchman named Jan Janse Weltevree, impressed the Joseon court with his firearms expertise. He was granted the Korean name Pak Yon, middle‑class status, a military post, and permission to marry a Korean woman. His offspring became gunsmiths and interpreters, benefiting from their father’s unique position.
Decades later, Weltevree was dispatched back to Jeju to interview a new group of Dutch shipwrecked sailors under Hendrick Hamel. By then he had largely forgotten Dutch, making communication difficult, but the sailors were eventually enlisted as musketeers. Eight of them later escaped in a skiff to Japan. Hamel would later pen one of the first Western accounts of Korea. Weltevree’s later fate is unknown, though his name lives on in Jakarta’s Weltevreden district.
7. William Buckley
William Buckley was a towering Englishman who, after being wounded fighting the French in Holland, turned to bricklaying. In 1803 he was sentenced to transportation to Australia for stealing a roll of cloth worth only a few shillings. He helped lay the first brick of what would become Melbourne. Later, he escaped with a few companions, but while they soon returned to the colony, Buckley pressed on.
He trekked up the coastline, surviving on berries and shellfish, until he discovered an Aboriginal spear lodged in a sand mound. Using the spear as a crutch, he encountered two Wathaurung women. They mistook the spear for that of a deceased relative named Murrangurk, assuming Buckley was his reincarnated spirit, and welcomed him into their community. Buckley lived among the Wathaurung for thirty‑two years, learning their customs, taking wives, and fathering a daughter.
One day, Wathaurung children showed him colored cloth given by white men. Following their directions, Buckley surrendered to colonial authorities, but could no longer speak English. When offered a slice of bread, he suddenly remembered the word “bread” and, repeating it, gradually recalled more language. Surveyor John Wedge recognized the “WB” tattoo on Buckley’s arm, secured his pardon, and employed him as an interpreter between the British and the Wathaurung. Feeling mistrusted by both sides, Buckley eventually retired to Hobart, married a widow, and the phrase “Buckley’s chance” entered Australian slang to denote a slim possibility.
6. Edward Day Cohort
In 1845 the American ship Cohota left Shanghai when Captain Silas S. Day discovered two malnourished Chinese boys in the hold. The older boy died, but Day adopted the younger, whose original name was likely Moy. Growing up as a cabin boy aboard the Cohota, he eventually took the ship’s name as his own, becoming Edward Day Cohota.
In February 1864, Cohota enlisted in the 23rd Massachusetts Infantry, fighting for the Union in the Civil War. At the Battle of Cold Harbor he was struck by a rifle bullet that permanently split his hair, and later that same battle he rescued comrade William Low, carrying him to a field hospital after a jaw wound.
After mustering out, Cohota struggled to find work and re‑enlisted in 1865, serving for another twenty years across Texas, New Mexico, Illinois, South Dakota, and Nebraska. While stationed at Fort Randall, South Dakota, he guarded a captured Sitting Bull, describing him as a “friendly chief.” He repeatedly reenlisted despite a stint of banishment from Fort Sheridan for drinking and operating a gambling house. Eventually he settled with a Norwegian woman, fathered six children, opened a restaurant, and became a Freemason. Despite his achievements, anti‑immigrant Chinese Exclusion laws denied him citizenship. His story gained national attention, and in 2006 the House of Representatives formally honored Cohota and other Asian Americans who fought in the Civil War. Fellow Chinese immigrant Joseph L. Pierce also served for the Union, while the Confederacy conscripted Chinese such as Florida cigar salesman John Fouenty, who later fled to the Union and eventually returned to China.
5. Abram Petrovich Gannibal
Around 1705 a young African slave was purchased by the Russian envoy to Constantinople and presented to Peter the Great as a gift. The boy, born in present‑day Cameroon, had been captured by a rival tribe and sold to Arab slavers. Peter the Great took a personal interest, becoming his godfather at baptism and naming him Abram Petrovich Gannibal—taking his patronymic from Peter and his surname from the legendary Carthaginian general Hannibal.
Peter intended Gannibal’s education to demonstrate that anyone could become a learned and valuable asset through hard work. Gannibal joined the Tsar’s military entourage, accompanying Peter on campaigns for a decade before being sent to France for further schooling. He served in the French army, studied mathematics and engineering, and amassed a library of roughly 400 books despite a modest stipend.
Promoted to engineer‑lieutenant, Gannibal later instructed Russian officers in military engineering and artillery. After Peter’s death in 1725 he became tutor to Peter II, but clashed with Prince Menshikov, the Empress Catherine’s advisor. Menshikov, jealous of Gannibal’s influence, exiled him to Siberia to build fortifications at Selenginsk. Following Menshikov’s fall, Gannibal returned, married a Greek woman Evdokia Dioper—who objected to the match because he was “not our breed.” Their marriage turned sour, with accusations of infidelity and torture, leading to a 21‑year divorce saga.
Gannibal later remarried Christina Regina von Schoberg, daughter of a Swedish army captain, and fathered seven children. He was recalled from retirement in 1741 to serve as a military engineer in Revel, and a year later Empress Elizabeth promoted him to general. He died in 1781, remembered as a key figure in Imperial Russian military affairs and as the great‑grandfather of poet Alexander Pushkin. Recent scholarship by Beninese historian Dieudonné Gnammankou suggests Gannibal may have been the son of a chief from the Logone‑Birni sultanate.
4. T.E. Lawrence
Born in 1888, Thomas Edward Lawrence grew up as a secretive, curious, skeptical child with a fascination for medieval history and archaeology. As a teenager he scoured building sites for pottery shards, restoring them for museums. After studying at Oxford, he joined an archaeological dig in Palestine, learning Arabic and developing sympathy for the Arab laborers under Ottoman rule. His interest in the daily lives of these workers set him apart from other British scholars.
World War I interrupted the dig, and Lawrence was sent to Egypt as an intelligence officer. In 1916 Emir Hussein of the Hejaz launched a revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Lawrence traveled to Arabia, winning the trust of Hussein’s third son and chief commander, Faisal, through his deep knowledge of tribal politics. Appointed liaison to Faisal, he joined tribal strategy meetings and became a respected insider.
As the revolt grew, Lawrence wrestled with guilt, aware of the secret Sykes‑Picot agreement between Britain and France that would limit Arab independence. He betrayed the British by revealing the plan to Faisal and leading an Arab force to capture the Ottoman port of Aqaba in a daring, camel‑mounted assault—during which he famously shot his own camel in the head. Anticipating an Anglo‑French amphibious assault, Lawrence bluffed the British about the size of his Arab force, causing the French to be sidelined and the British‑Arab coalition to push north.
Lawrence was briefly captured and tortured by the Turks, emerging hardened and ruthless toward captives. After the fall of Damascus in October 1918, he lobbied for Arab independence, only to discover Britain and France had already rejected a unified Arab state. Disillusioned, he avoided the spotlight, serving under assumed names in the RAF and the Tank Corps. He died in a motorcycle accident in 1935.
3. Hasekura Tsunenaga
In 1613, Japanese lord Date Masamune dispatched an embassy—known as the Keichō Mission—to Spain and the Vatican, seeking direct trade links with Spanish Mexico. This was Japan’s second delegation to Europe, the first having been four Japanese princes sent to Rome in 1582. The 1613 mission, led by Masamune’s retainer Hasekura Tsunenaga and Franciscan friar Luis Sotelo, set sail on a European‑style vessel built in Japan, crossing the Pacific, stopping in Mexico and Cuba, before arriving in Europe.
The mission’s official purpose was trade and a request for more Christian missionaries, though Masamune also hoped papal recognition would secure European weapons and bolster his autonomy from the Tokugawa shogunate. Hasekura spent eight months in Spain, where he was baptized and met high‑ranking officials, but failed to secure trade deals or missionaries due to Spanish concerns over rising anti‑Christian sentiment in Japan.
The delegation then proceeded to Rome, where Hasekura was granted an audience with Pope Paul V. The Pope’s nephew, Scipione Borghese, commissioned a portrait of Hasekura (shown above), pairing his family crest with a crown to symbolize honorary Roman aristocracy. Unwilling to contradict the Spanish, the Pope also declined Hasekura’s requests. Returning to Japan, Hasekura discovered Christianity had been banned and Masamune had abandoned plans for independence. He renounced Catholicism and died in 1622; his family was largely destroyed in subsequent anti‑Christian purges. Japan thereafter limited European contact to the Dutch. A trace of the mission remains in Coria del Río, Spain, where some Japanese retainers settled; their descendants still bear surnames “Japon” or “Xapon.”
2. Ahmad Ibn Fadlan
In 921, Abbasid Caliph Jafar al‑Muqtadir dispatched a diplomatic mission to the Volga Bulghars. The embassy’s secretary was Ahmad ibn Fadlan ibn al‑Abbas ibn Rashid ibn Hammad—commonly known simply as Ibn Fadlan. His chronicles provide an astonishing record of the peoples he encountered, including the Bulghars, Khazars, and various Finno‑Ugric tribes.
In 922 Ibn Fadlan encountered a group of Viking traders and produced one of the earliest detailed written accounts of the Norse. Fascinated, he devoted roughly a fifth of his chronicle to describing their appearance, customs, behavior, dress, trade relations, table etiquette, and even sexual mores.
He praised their physical stature, calling them “tall as date palms, blonde and ruddy,” yet lamented their hygiene, labeling them “the filthiest of God’s creatures” who lacked modesty in defecation and urination, and never washed after impurity or meals. Ibn Fadlan also witnessed a Viking chieftain’s cremation. During the ritual a Viking, through an interpreter, told him: “You Arabs are fools. You bury your dear ones for worms; we burn them at once so they enter paradise immediately.” This account later inspired Michael Crichton’s novel The Eaters of the Dead, which became the film The 13th Warrior.
1. Ranald MacDonald
Ranald MacDonald, a young Native American born in 1824 at Fort George (now Astoria, Oregon), became the first English teacher in Japan. His father, Archibald MacDonald, a former Hudson’s Bay Company employee of Scottish descent, married Koale’xoa, a Chinook woman also known as Princess Raven or Princess Sunday. After Koale’xoa died shortly after his birth, Ranald was initially raised by his grandfather, Chief Com‑Comly, before attending school in present‑day Portland.
Growing up, MacDonald was immersed in a multilingual environment—French, English, Gaelic, Chinook, Iroquois, and other Indigenous languages surrounded him. In 1832 a Japanese fishing boat, the Hojun‑maru, drifted across the northern Pacific and landed near Cape Flattery. Its three surviving crew were captured by the Makah, then rescued by the Hudson’s Bay Company, which hoped they could help open Japan to trade. The story of these fishermen sparked MacDonald’s fascination with Japan.
Defying his father’s wish for him to become a banker, MacDonald joined a whaling ship, the Plymouth, operating out of Hawaii. While whaling off Hokkaido, he loaded a small boat with 36 days of provisions and a modest library, then set off alone for Japan. He landed on Rishiri Island, where the Ainu—Japan’s Indigenous people—found him. Though they welcomed him, MacDonald dismissed them as “uncouth and wild” compared to the “clean, refined, cultivated” Japanese. The Ainu eventually handed him over to Japanese authorities.
The Japanese were intrigued by his Native American appearance, which resembled their own, and his bag of textbooks impressed his captors. Quickly taking notes on the Japanese language, he befriended his jailers. After a brief visit to the capital, he was sent to Nagasaki, confined in a small temple where he taught English to Japanese interpreters. In 1849, the USS Preble arrived in Nagasaki seeking stranded American sailors. The Japanese asked MacDonald to explain the U.S. ranking system so they could meet the Preble’s captain with an appropriate official. While doing so, he introduced the concept of American democracy.
MacDonald eventually left with the Preble, later working in Australian gold mines, traveling widely, and finally settling in Washington, D.C., where he wrote his memoirs. His final words to his niece were a heartfelt “Sayonara, my dear, sayonara.”