How to escape a desert island – from messages in bottles to JFK's engraved coconut

Three men found on a south Pacific island pulled off a text-book escape by writing 'HELP' in the sand. But other castaways have been even more inventive

What would you do if you were stranded on a desert island? Keep calm and wait for Man Friday? Finally decide on those Desert Island Discs? Fashion a boat out of nothing but a washed-up piece of portable toilet and some Hollywood-sized chutzpah a la Tom Hanks in Cast Away? Wish you were as handy, or at least as good looking, as the cast(aways) of Lost? Or would you take a different palm leaf out of the Book of Desert Island Rescue Motifs (one imagines it has a foreward written by Bear Grylls), write HELP in the sand with it, and wait "

Related: Three men rescued from deserted island after spelling 'help' with palm leaves