He was a
28-year-old pirate and a hot head, and he was not the inspiration for Daniel
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.
Veteran
navigator Alexander Selkirk left no written account of his solitary abandonment
for nearly five years on Mas a Tierra, a volcanic island in the Pacific 400
miles west of Chile.
Thomas
Stradling, the captain of his privateer, the Cinque Ports, left him on this forbidding 29-square-mile island on September
1704. He would not be rescued until January 31, 1709, when Woodes Rogers, the
captain of another privateer saw his signal fire. (Privateer is a genteel word
for pirate ship, and in those days the British delighted in harassing Spanish
merchants at sea.)
What we
know of Selkirk comes from Rogers' book "A Cruising Voyage Around the
World" and an interview he gave to essayist Richard Steele in 1711 for a
magazine article.
He grew up
in a Scottish fishing village and had a tempestuous relationship with his
father and brothers before running away to sea at the age of 19. Eight years
later he held the rank of sailing master (or navigator).
He sensed
that his ship was less than seaworthy condition. Its captain had passed away
and his successor Stradling had been his 21-year-old lieutenant. The veteran
Selkirk told the green captain that the mast and decks were so worm-eaten and
in such a state of perilous decomposition that they demanded swift repair or
else the ship would likely sink.
The
argument grew to such a terrible pitch that Selkirk demanded to be put ashore on
nearby Mas a Tierra (which Chile in the 1960s for touristic purposes renamed
Robinson Crusoe Island).
Most sadly mistaken
Soon
thereafter he thought the better of his ultimatum, but Stradling would have no
more of him. He made an example of Selkirk, and if he thought some of his
shipmates might accompany him ashore, he was most sadly mistaken. (The ship did
indeed later founder. Most of its crew drowned, and those few who survived were
imprisoned by the Spanish.)
The captain
did kindly allow Selkirk to take with him the following items: Several books,
including a Bible; a hatchet; a knife; bedding; clothes; several utensils; a
musket along with bullets and a pound of gunpowder; mathematical instruments
(presumably of a navigational nature); cheese; jam; some rum; and two pounds of
tobacco.
His first
months on the island were horrendous. Thousands of massive southern elephant
seals, some nearly 20 feet long, had massed on the beaches to mate. Their bleating
and honking drove him to distraction, forcing him to moved inland. Selkirk,
wrote Rogers, "had to bear up again Melancholy, and the Terror of being
alone in such a desolate place." It may be that he contemplated shooting
himself to end his miseries.
For the
next four years and five months, Selkirk saw not another soul, except on two
occasions when Spanish ships anchored off shore. They sent parties ashore for
fresh water and to hunt wild goats. He dared not surrender to them for fear
that they would torture him to death or consign him as a slave to a Peruvian
mine.
On one
occasions, the Spaniards spotted him, and Rogers wrote that the sailors
"not only shot at him but pursued him into the Woods, where he climb'd to
the top of a Tree, at the foot of which they made water." Apparently they
did this not as an insult but because they were unaware he clung for dear life
high above them.
Time
passed, and he became accustomed to his solitary life. Rogers wrote, "We
may perceive by this Story the Truth of the Maxim, That Necessity is the Mother
of Invention."
From time
to time, Selkirk made fires at high elevation to attract ships (and that is how
Rogers ultimately spotted him). He built two huts, covered them with grasses
and lined them with goat skins. He made fire by rubbing sticks together.
Food was
plentiful. He shunned fish "because they occasion'd a Looseness, except
Crawfish, which are there as large as our Lobsters." He feasted on turnips
and cabbages.
Most of all, he depended on wild goats for sustenance. They roamed
the island in great numbers having been left there by ships' crews many years
earlier. He kept track of how many he killed over the years—500.
When he ran
out of bullets, he chased them down. On one occasion, his zestful hunt nearly
killed him. He tackled a goat so close to the edge of a cliff that both he and
his prey tumbled over the precipice. He was "so stun'd and bruis'd with
the Fall, that he narrowly escap'd with his Life, and when he came to his
Senses, found the Goat dead under him." Selkirk lay there for a full day
before crawling to his hut where he convalesced for another 10 days.
He stayed
in excellent physical condition. Walking and running "clear'd him of all
gross Humours, so that he ran with wonderful Swiftness thro the Woods and up
the Rocks and Hills." Rogers noted that "his Feet became so hard,
that he ran every where without annoyance."
After his
period of early "Melancholy" and "Terror," his mental
condition became robust. To amuse himself, he sang Psalms and prayed. He told
Rogers "he was a better Christian while in this Solitude than ever he was
before, or then, he was afraid, he should ever be again."
"Cherish the Cats"
He was,
however, plagued by rats. They "gnawed his Feet and Clothes while
asleep." Mercifully, he had at hand an ancient solution for this woe.
Countless cats also inhabited the island. The midnight marauders "oblig'd
him to cherish the Cats…[they] became so tame they would lie about him in
hundreds, and soon deliver'd him from the Rats."
When his
clothes fell to tatters, he remembered the skills his father, a tanner, had
taught him. He painstakingly preserved goat hides and made for himself "a Coat
and Cap of Goat-Skins" using a nail as a needle.
When Rogers
first spied the castaway draped in such garments, he said Selkirk "look'd
wilder than the first Owners of them."
The
experience made Selkirk a better man—physically and spiritually. He "bore
up under such an Affliction, in which nothing but the Divine Providence could
have supported any Man," Rogers wrote. "By this one may see that
Solitude and Retirement from the World is not such an unsufferable State of
Life as most Men imagine."
The sea
captain took pains to note that "It may likewise instruct us, how much a
plain and temperate way of living conduces to the Health of the Body and the
Vigour of the Mind, both of which we are apt to destroy by Excess and Plenty,
especially of strong Liquor and the variety as well as the Nature of our Meat
and Drink."
In his
magazine article, the essayist Steele concluded "he is happiest who
confines his Wants to natural Necessities…or to use [the castaway's] own
Expression, I am now worth 800 pounds, but shall never be so happy, as when I
was not worth a farthing."
Selkirk
swiftly returned to the pirate life. After sailing around the world, he briefly
became a landlubber, enjoying the proceeds of the booty he had taken at sea.
For reasons unknown, he decided to go straight and joined the Royal Navy. It
was aboard one of its ships off the African coast that he died of yellow fever
in 1721.
Scholars
believe that Daniel Defoe would have surely known of Selkirk's experience, but his
famed novel is more likely based on the blended experiences of many such castaways
whose stories were well known in those days.
MORAL: Don't let events get your goat.
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