[WilNeuton]

Two significant differences make that real life story totally different from Lord of the Flies.

(1) In that story the boys are friends who ran away from boarding school and stole a boat with the intention of catching fish and sailing to someplace that would be more fun than boarding school. IOW all of them were probably of fairly similar ages, disposition, and character type. And they they were the kind of kids who would think doing that was a good idea.

(2) In Lord of the Flies, the boys are a typical mixed bag of British boarding school boys including young ones, big ones, jocks, wimps, nerds....

Middle School anywhere is often a civilized version of Lord of the Flies, and any grade in a 1940s British boarding school was worse, as attested to by CS Lewis. So the outcome in each of those stories is totally consistent with reality.

I was a student at a fairly lenient military boarding school in 8th and 9th grade, and my experiences there confirm the veracity of how the Lord of the Flies ends.