Strange Encounters

Five historical figures. Five strange encounters revealing that exploration and discovery are not always noble or glorious. Leaving isn't always the wisest choice.

French noblewoman Marguerite de la Rocque was abandoned on the Isle of Demons by her uncle after he discovered she was having an affair with one of his sailors. Her story of survival would inspire two different people - a queen and a cosmographer.

David Ingram, the Elizabethan explorer, was marched by his captors across North America. Once he was back in England, his wild stories, a blend of fact and the fantastic, set the stage for the English conquest of the New World.

In 1832 rumours circulate of a lost Dutch colony in the north west of Australia, descendants of survivors from a shipwreck. The rumours are quashed but a whisper of truth remains.

Charlotte Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain were two academics who travelled to Versailles in 1901. They claimed they travelled back in time to pre-revolutionary France, where they saw Marie Antoinette. Would anybody believe them?