Alexander Selkirk is usually credited as being the original
of the character of Robinson Crusoe in Daniel Defoe’s novel of 1719. Although
Defoe’s book was fictional, and owed much to the author’s vivid imagination, it
did contain elements of fact which relate to the life of Alexander Selkirk, as
relayed by word of mouth and written accounts at the time of his rescue from
having been marooned on a remote island for more than four years.
Alexander Selkirk’s early career
Alexander Selkirk was born in 1676 in Lower Largo,
Fife, Scotland. He was the seventh son of a shoemaker. He made it clear at an
early age that he wanted to go to sea, which he did in August 1695.
In May 1703 he was appointed master of the privateer
“Cinque Ports”, which was under the command of Captain Charles Pickering.
Together with the “St George”, commanded by William Dampier, the renowned
explorer, the ship set sail for the South Pacific Ocean on 11th
September. Britain was at war with France and Spain (the War of the Spanish
Succession), and privateers were being encouraged to capture and raid ships
belonging to those two countries.
When Captain Pickering died after reaching Brazil,
Thomas Stradling was appointed to succeed him. Selkirk seems to have found the
new commander difficult to deal with and may have been among those officers and
crew who mutinied after the ships reached the Juan Fernandez islands, some 400
miles west of Chile.
However, the crew seems to have been pacified following
a successful engagement with a French ship, after which both British ships
continued to explore northwards in the hope of finding more rich pickings,
although these proved hard to come by.
By the end of May 1704 the two commanders found that
they could no longer work together so the two ships parted company, with
Selkirk staying on Stradling’s ship.
How he became “Robinson Crusoe”
The “Cinque Ports” sailed up and down the coast of
Central and South America until August, with relations between Selkirk and
Stradling becoming increasingly fraught. When they returned to Juan Fernandez
in September for repairs, Selkirk declared that the ship was not in a seaworthy
enough condition to continue its voyage and that he would rather stay ashore
than sail in her. He therefore gathered together some essentials and disembarked.
The list of items he took with him was later given as:
‘his
clothes and bedding, with a firelock, some powder, bullets, and tobacco, a hatchet,
a knife, a kettle, a Bible, some practical pieces, and his mathematical instruments
and books’.
It would appear that, once he had realised what he
had done, he changed his mind almost immediately but Stradling refused to let
him back on the ship. However, Selkirk’s move turned out to be a blessing in
disguise because the “Cinque Ports” sank a month later. He had been correct in
his assessment of the dangerous condition of the ship.
Selkirk now had to survive as best he could on his
own. The island in question (renamed “Robinson Crusoe Island” in 1966; another
island in the group being named “Alejandro Selkirk Island”) was large enough
(nearly 40 square miles) to support him in terms of food, especially as it had
a population of wild goats which he could hunt, firstly using his musket and
later catching them on foot. When he had been on the island for some time he
tamed some of the goats and “farmed” them for milk and meat. His fear was that
he would never leave the island and that he would eventually be too old to
catch anything wild.
He also bred cats from the feral specimens that had
escaped from ships that had called in the past. These not only provided company
but helped to keep him safe from the rats that had also populated the island
thanks to the occasional visits of sailors.
Having nobody to talk to was one of his worst
privations, and he preserved the power of speech by reading his Bible aloud to
himself and singing psalms to tunes that he remembered from his boyhood days in
the church at Largo.
On one occasion he was lucky to survive a fall over
a precipice when chasing a goat. When he came round he found that the goat was
lying dead underneath him, having cushioned his fall and probably saved his
life.
His hopes of being rescued lay with the possibility
of a ship visiting the island, much as the “Cinque Ports” had done. When two
Spanish ships did so, he was spotted by the sailors who sent a boat ashore and
fired a gun in his direction. His knowledge of the island, and his physical
agility, enabled him to escape and hide until they gave up the chase.
Rescue and further voyages
Selkirk was eventually rescued when two privateers
from Bristol, the “Duke” and the “Duchess” called at the island in February
1709 in search of water. Selkirk had a fire burning, and this was seen by an
observer on the “Duke”, whose commander, Captain Woodes Rogers, sent a boat
ashore to investigate. When Selkirk was brought aboard the ship, dressed in
goatskins and barely able to speak coherently, he was recognised by the man who
was acting as pilot on board the ship, none other than William Dampier.
Dampier remembered Selkirk as having been an
excellent ship’s master and recommended that Captain Rogers should make use of
his services. Selkirk was thus not only rescued but he also found himself with
a job, namely as mate of the “Duke”.
The two ships made a capture on 26th
February which was renamed the “Increase”, with Selkirk being appointed by
Rogers to be its master. In December an even richer prize was seized, this
being the “Nuestra Señora”, a Spanish galleon which was renamed the “Bachelor”.
Again, Selkirk was given the job of being its new master, with Captain Thomas
Dover in command.
On 10th January 1710 the fleet of four
ships then set sail to cross the Pacific, a voyage of 6000 miles. They arrived
in Batavia (modern Jakarta) in June, where the booty was shared out and Selkirk
received 80 pieces of eight.
After the ships were refitted they sailed on to Cape
of Good Hope where they stayed put for three months before heading home as part
of a larger fleet, eventually reaching the Shetlands in July 1711 and London in
October. When Alexander Selkirk eventually stepped ashore he had been away from
Britain for more than eight years, with four years and four months of that time
spent in total isolation.
Later life
He found it very difficult to adjust to a normal
life. After telling his story to anyone who was willing to listen, and there
were many such, he eventually returned to Largo, where he found it necessary to
build a cave in his father’s garden where he could be alone and meditate.
However, he also became infatuated with a local
woman, Sophia Bruce, with whom he eloped back to London, living with her for
some time (possibly as husband and wife) and making a will in her favour in
January 1718.
The call of the sea eventually became too strong for
him and he embarked on HMS Weymouth on 20th October 1720, as
master’s mate. A factor in his decision may well have been the appearance in
1719 of Defoe’s novel, and the extra attention that would have come his way.
For a man who had become used to solitude it must have seemed that this was
going to be denied him for ever and it was time to escape to the world he knew
best, namely that of ships and the sea.
HMS Weymouth was based at Plymouth, where Selkirk
appears to have forgotten all about Sophia Bruce in that he married Frances
Candis, a widow, on 12th December 1720, when he also drew up a new
will that left everything to his new, maybe bigamous, bride.
From March to December 1721 Selkirk served aboard
HMS Weymouth in operations against pirates off the coast of Africa. He died of
disease aboard ship on 13th December, leaving the two women in his
life to fight over his will, a fight which Frances Candis won.
Apart from those four years and four months spent on
Juan Fernandez, Alexander Selkirk’s life was not all that remarkable, in that
many sailors of that time could have told a very similar story of sailing
around the world and serving on privateers and naval ships. However, it is as
the original of Robinson Crusoe that he has gained immortality.
The most accurate account of his “Crusoe years” is
in Woodes Rogers’s “A Cruising Voyage Around the World”, which was published in
1712 with a second edition in 1718, but the best-known is clearly Defoe’s
novel, despite its fictions. Defoe almost certainly met Selkirk in London, and
there were stories that he tricked Selkirk into allowing him to use Selkirk’s
own journal, but there is no evidence that this is true.
There is an unproven report, that may well be true,
that Selkirk once complained that, although he was now a wealthy man, he was
much happier when he did not have a farthing to his name. Even if this was an
invention it would not have been out of character for a man whose best years,
in retrospect, were spent entirely on his own on an island in the Pacific
Ocean.
© John Welford
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