After talking with a US Coast Guardsman who was on the scene, the true story is more horrific than heroic. The father and son abandoned the daughters while they went to look for a cabin. The males found the cabin 10 miles away stocked with food and firewood. The did not return to retrieve the girls. The girls survived for a week in freezing weather with no food and only a bit of sailcloth to wrap up in. The coastguardman involved in the rescue described the girls as looking like death camp survivors. Merely skin and bones literally on the verge of death.
Review of Anything to Survive
