Crusoe's Island

by Andrew Lambert

  NOTES

  1 Williams, The Great South Sea, p. 175.

  2 H. Heidenreich (ed.), The Libraries of Daniel Defoe and Phillips Farewell: Olive Payne’s Catalogue (1731), Berlin, 1970, pp. viii–xvi, xii fn 11, with p. xxii quoting Defoe’s Compleat English Gentleman.

  3 M.E. Novak, Daniel Defoe, Master of Fictions: His Life and Ideas, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001, p. 591. Tim Severin travelled to the relevant locations for several buccaneer tales, and to engage with the reality. Cordingly, Spanish Gold, pp. 90, 98–9; Souhami, Selkirk’s Island, pp. 176–8; J. Entick, A New Naval History, or a Compleat View of the British Marine, London, 1757, p. 671.

  4 Novak, Daniel Defoe, Master of Fictions, pp. 539–40, 687. However, Nicholls & Williams, in Sir Walter Raleigh, ignore this connection.

  5 Fernández-Armesto, Amerigo, p. 137.

  6 Skottsberg, The Natural History of Juan Fernández and Easter Island, vol. I, p. 122 offers the best assessment: ‘the famous Robinson’s cave, a favourite goal for visiting tourists. It is hardly probable that the cave, described in some detail by Guzman, served the recluse as his permanent abode.’ Of course Skottsberg, a scientist, actually means Selkirk.

  7 Novak, Daniel Defoe, Master of Fictions, pp. 546–7, 567–9, 571, 575, 582, 597.

  8 Novak, Daniel Defoe, Master of Fictions, pp. 637–40, 646, 669–71.

  9 D. Defoe, A Plan of the English Commerce, Oxford, 1927, p. 276.

  10 D. Defoe, Atlas Maritimus and Commercialis, London, 1728, p. 239; Novak, Daniel Defoe, Master of Fictions, pp. 687–8, 691–2; P. Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2009, pp. 3–61, esp. p. 59. The influence on Bolingbroke must also be acknowledged.

  11 C. Flynn, ‘Nationalism, Commerce, and Imperial Authority in Defoe’s Later Works’, Rocky Mountain Review (Fall 2000), pp. 11–24, here p. 13.

  12 Souhami, Selkirk’s Island, p. 196; J. Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, HarperCollins, London 1997, pp. 173–4 is remarkably thin on the oceanic dimension, ignoring Crusoe, Selkirk, Anson and Cook, while Sir Joseph Banks appears as a London figure, not a world traveller.

  6

  Shelvocke’s Sojourn

  While Defoe built an imaginary empire from the island narratives of marooned mariners, others tried to exploit that hard-won knowledge in pursuit of treasure. Woodes Rogers’s voyage revived the English dream that Juan Fernández ‘might be at first of great use to those who would carry on any Trade to the South Sea’. With Rogers’s text in hand another English privateer voyage headed for the South Pacific. John Clipperton and George Shelvocke set Juan Fernández as the squadron rendezvous and refreshment stop. The British investors secured an Austrian privateer commission to get round the problem that Britain and Spain were in perfect amity. Fortunately a brief Anglo-Spanish war relieved them of the need to get a flimsy cover story from Habsburg Ostend.1

  Any voyage to the little-known, lightly charted South Seas put a premium on local knowledge. Senior Captain John Clipperton had been Dampier’s chief mate on the St George, although he hardly endeared himself to the old buccaneer, deserting and stealing the legal commission or letter of marque. Predictably, the new voyage did not begin well; the two captains were at daggers drawn from the outset. Former naval officer Shelvocke was drinking heavily, while Clipperton refused to share the charts. From the outset it was obvious that Shelvocke wanted to operate alone, and he made sure the ships separated. Clipperton’s Success made a fast passage, arriving at Juan Fernández on 7 September 1719. After waiting a month for his companion, using the time to refit, revictual and refresh Clipperton set off on a successful raiding campaign. He left a message in a bottle for Shelvocke, while two of his men deliberately marooned themselves. They were captured by a Spanish landing party two months later, their presence betrayed by prisoners taken from one of Clipperton’s prizes. The Spanish also removed the bottle.

  Shelvocke paid a high price for his laggardly voyage; the Speedwell’s passage round Cape Horn proved long and terrible. As hope faded, Simon Hatley, the gloomy, superstitious mate, shot an albatross, providing Samuel Taylor Coleridge with the plot for his verse epic ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.2 While Shelvocke was understandably anxious to make Juan Fernández, a near mutinous crew, seduced by French misinformation, insisted on a diversion to Concepción, which Shelvocke used to justify abandoning his instructions.3

  Speedwell finally arrived off Juan Fernández on 11 January 1720. Despite the sickly state of his crew Shelvocke displayed little interest in the ‘magical’ island, belatedly sending a boat ashore on 15 January. He found no sign of Clipperton, and after waiting four days for the Success cruised over to the mainland, where he picked up some small prizes. With the crew in better spirits, although rather scorbutic, the Speedwell returned to the islands in May, initially fetching up near Más Afuera on the 6th, and at Juan Fernández on the 11th. Even so Shelvocke was unwilling to anchor in Windy Bay; he preferred to stand on and off while a boat went ashore for water. Later he claimed that they were unable to get enough water to replenish the casks and reluctantly decided to anchor, to raft the large water butts ashore. The butts were filled in a single day, but then the weather turned and the Speedwell was trapped in the Bay for four days. On 25 May the anchor cable failed during heavy gales from the seaward, which Shelvocke noted was ‘a thing very uncommon’ and the ship was wrecked. From Shelvocke’s description ‘if we had struck but a cable’s length further to the eastward, or westward of the place where we did, we must inevitably have perished’ it appears Speedwell had been anchored off Bahía Pangal, the usual watering place, which lies between two sheer rocky cliffs, while the rest of the bay has a relatively gentle beach gradient. Speedwell’s hull was stove, and all three masts went over the side, the crew used them to build a raft and reach the shore. Only one man was lost. Shocked and stunned, the castaway captain forgot the well-known fecundity of the island, recalling ‘the dread we had upon us of starving on the uninhabited isle we were thrown upon’, ‘the remotest part of the earth’. At least he managed to save his privateer commission, some bags of bread and most of the gunpowder. That night a huddle of wet, frightened men were:

  saluted by the melancholy howlings of innumerable seals on the beach, who lay so thick that we were obliged to clear our way of them as we went along, and nothing presented itself to our sight but rocky precipices, inhospitable woods, dropping with rain, lofty mountains, whose tops were hid by thick clouds, and a tempestuous sea, which had reduced us to the low state we were now in.4

  Misery and despair transformed the expedition into a tale of shipwreck, chaos and recrimination. Marine Captain William Betagh claimed Shelvocke deliberately wrecked the ship, to defraud the investors. Although Betagh had reason to hate Shelvocke, and was nowhere near the island at the time, his claim demands closer attention. The rarity of onshore winds in this area, and Shelvocke’s troubling character make the accusation plausible – but the case remains unproven.5

  With the ship in pieces the social structure of the new islanders changed. Shelvocke’s commission, the basis of his authority over the crew, concerned an irretrievably wrecked ship. Released from legal obligation, the men proved reluctant to work, or even acknowledge his leadership. Among his few methods of exerting control the erstwhile Captain found 1100 silver dollars the most effective. The rest of the plundered cash, securely stowed below the bread room was hopelessly lost. By playing on the men’s fears of falling into the hands of Spanish, and being sent to the mines of Potosi Shelvocke managed to pull them together, up to a point. The camp was set up half a mile from the sea, with a good water supply and plenty of wood to build huts and make fires. This may have been the site of the original Spanish settlement at Bahía Pangal, and even if it was not, five months occupation, tree fe
lling and burning by seventy men quickly cleared a space to be grazed by the ubiquitous goats. Soon the officers were comfortably situated, dining on roast crayfish.

  Getting off the island would prove more difficult. Salvaging timber and equipment from the wreck helped, while charcoal for forges was created by burning local timber. Soon after laying the keel, made from the Speedwell’s bowsprit, the carpenter refused to work. Shelvocke had to bribe him to carry on. Cutting timber proved tedious, ‘we were obliged sometimes to go a great way from the water-side, and after having cut it down, it must be dragged up steep hills and other fatigues which tired the people to a great degree. But in two months we made a tolerable show.’6 With the men working day on and day off, bolstered by a good diet all promised well for an early departure.

  Then the men refused duty, the officers backed them, and Shelvocke lost control of the weapons and the island. After two months Juan Fernández was weaving another kind of magic, the magic of mutiny. Just like the better-known Bounty mutiny sixty years later, the crew began to identify with their island home, disputing authority figures from their previous existence. They seemed indifferent to their fate, unconcerned at the prospect of a long stay. In the absence of a ship the men assembled at a large tree, standing in for the mainmast, and adopted the old Jamaica buccaneer rules of prize distribution, in defiance of their erstwhile captain and the investors at home. Speedwell’s voyage was over; the men would strike out on a new basis, led by erstwhile cobbler Morphew. Morphew complained Shelvocke was too much the man of war officer, ‘too lofty and arbitrary for a private ship’.

  If Morphew played the part of John Adams, Lieutenant Brooks was happy to be Fletcher Christian, lending a fig leaf of gentlemanly character to proceedings. This ‘gang of Levellers’ made Shelvocke sign their articles. Despite later claims that he tried to defend the interests of the investors, Shelvocke’s words were a smokescreen for deeper schemes. Work on the new vessel slowed to a crawl, while only a single black man, a descendant of Will, was left to fish and forage for the captain’s table. This mattered because without food Shelvocke’s ‘family’ of supporters shrank as quickly as his pot. His repeated warnings of Spanish cruelty finally took effect on 15 August, when a large ship came in sight. In an instant Shelvocke recovered his authority, directing the sailors to remove the black and Indian men from the beach, to prevent them betraying the castaways. In the event the vessel did not come close enough to spot the remains of the Speedwell, the new ship, or the crew. With the men answering his command Shelvocke reminded them that a life of slavery at Potosi was the only reward the Spaniards would offer them. Eventually the older sailors, those with most to lose at home accepted his authority, and work on the ship was pushed to completion. Even so eleven of the more advanced ‘levellers’ decided to stay on the island, abandoning the camp for the interior.

  One small cannon had been salvaged from the Speedwell’s quarter deck to arm the suitably recondite Recovery, along with a pump, essential to keep the leaky, ill-caulked ship afloat. On 5 October the ship was launched with her casks already in place, and most of the rigging up. Wasting little time, she sailed on 6 October, every spare inch of the hull of the ramshackle barque crammed with smoked conger eel, the only fish or meat they had been able to preserve. They also carried four pigs, fed on putrid seal meat. The eels were fried in seal oil and eaten with the last of the cassava flour salvaged from the wreck.7

  When the ship crept out of Windy Bay twenty four men were left behind, the ‘levellers’ and the black and Indian men recruited after the ship left England, who had no choice in the matter. This colony of maroons was removed as soon as the Spanish learned of their presence. William Betagh named eleven ‘levellers’. The ultimate fates of John Wisdom, Joseph Manero, William Blew, John Biddleclaus, Edmund Hyves, Daniel Harvey, William Giddy, John Robjohn, Thomas Hawkes, John Row and Jacob Bowden are unknown.8

  Four days after departing Juan Fernández the Recovery, on course for the Bay of Concepción spotted a Spanish ship. Desperate to escape their overcrowded, evil-smelling, un-seaworthy craft they made short work of the capture.9 After that the expedition resumed privateering, preying on local shipping and returned home with a solid, rather than fabulous prize fund. Arriving in England in 1722 officers and disappointed investors began quarrelling over money, authority and power. Several resorted to print. While Shelvocke had the best of the literary and financial exchange doubts about his integrity persist. He cleared £8,000 as his personal share of the prize fund of £137,000. Despite a successful voyage, ruinously expensive litigation ensured the investors did not share in the proceeds. This would be the last Pacific privateer voyage.

  This was not what Shelvocke had expected; he framed his book, once he had explained the loss of his ship and the failure to reward the investors, as a guide for future expeditions. Amid the self-justification and rancorous abuse of his officers were competent passages on navigation, complete with a global track chart of the world re-encompassed, including a suitably spacious ‘Great South Sea’ and navigational fixes. He also discussed the resources of Juan Fernández, the key to any British Pacific venture. Shelvocke’s description of Juan Fernández as a fruitful, wholesome healthy location, one where dying men recovered, and ‘levellers’ returned to their proper station, helped cement its place in the mental world of subsequent Pacific voyagers. Shelvocke knew his place in the literary imagining of the island; he followed Defoe, Dampier, Rodgers and Selkirk, works that ensured the island was sufficiently well known to feature in the long title of his book. Clearly Juan Fernández fascinated his audience.

  After excusing his failure to provide ‘an exact description’ of the entire island, six months had not been enough time, given the need to build a barque and deal with a mutinous crew, Shelvocke’s fifteen-page survivor guide stressed the island was rocky, and vertical, ‘insomuchas that there is no walking a quarter of a mile without going up or down a steep declivity’. He advised future navigators to avoid getting close to the shore, and warned that previous accounts, which minimised the risk of northerly winds, were unreliable:

  In going in, beware of the flaws which come down the narrow valleys so violent as to be often times dangerous; these too in the night, are surprising as you lie at anchor … it is my opinion, that the anchorage is far from being safe.10

  After the wreck the weather had been so bad that they could not fish, nor could they abide the taste of seal meat, so they lived on seal offal. The sheer scale of destruction necessary to feed seventy men in such an inefficient way quickly drove the seals away, forcing the castaways to eat seal meat; they avoided the fishy taste by stripping away the fat and roasting the steaks ‘till they were as dry as a chip’. Like any Briton abroad, Shelvocke lamented the absence of alcoholic beverages to help digest these ill-conditioned husks. The men found better eating among the descendants of Selkirk’s cats, easily caught by the ship’s dog. Only the Captain balked at such feline fancies. With little powder or shot, or shoes to clamber about in the rocky heights where they lived, goat meat was hard to come by. There were plenty of goats, despite the packs of wild dogs. The dogs, no better equipped to catch mountain goats than the newly arrived British sailors, also dined on seal flesh. After losing the only boat crude fishing coracles were constructed from sea lion hides. Crayfish were caught with seal guts, simply attaching the offal to a line brought in any number of hungry crustaceans. The fish was fried in seal oil, and eaten with a little wild sorrel. Among the other vegetables only the cabbage palm was worthy of note, each tree providing no more than two pounds of edible material. The sailor’s dwellings were of the Selkirk type, branches, grass, scraps of sail and animal skins, easily blown away by storms.

  When he came to describe the island, Shelvocke repeated much that was already known, but neatly reinforced with telling personal detail. Seventy men lived there for five months without a day’s illness, while stout and gouty Shelvocke, deprived of alcohol and salt, recovered his health and vigour. He added
an updated list of flora and fauna, crediting previous buccaneers with sowing turnips, pumpkins, sorrel, watercress and other crops. Fresh water dominated every account of South Pacific navigation down to the end of Spanish rule, and Shelvokce was no exception. ‘Water was plentiful at the western end of the bay, and kept as well as any in the world.’ Having set out the qualities of the place, and the value it possessed as a healthy and fruitful strategic base for operations against Spanish trade and settlements Shelvocke was moved to lyrical heights by the scenery:

  down the Western peak, contiguous to the Table Mountain [El Yunque], descend two cascades at least 300 foot perpendicular, close by one another, about 12 foot in breadth, (which probably supply most of the other runs of water). What with the rapid descent of these waters, and the palm-trees which grow quite up close by the edges of them, adorned with vast bunches of red berries, it yields as agreeable a prospect as can be seen.11

  The soil was loose, making the burrows of flightless birds, pardelas, dangerous to the unwary. When it came to natural wonders, Shelvocke gave pride of place to seals and elephant seals. Bull elephant seals would provide a butt of oil each:

  if this island lay nearer to England, 2 or 3 large ships out of the River Thames, or elsewhere, might find a lading [cargo] of train oil, since, in the winter months, there is an infallible certainty of finding them there.

  In short, every thing that one sees or hears in this place is perfectly romantick,– the very structure of the island, in all its parts, has a certain savage irregular beauty, which is not to be expressed; the many prospects of lofty inaccessible hills, and the solitariness of the gloomy narrow valleys, which a great part of the day enjoy little benefit from the sun, and the fall of waters, which one hears all around, would be agreeable to none but those who would indulge themselves, for a time, in a pensive melancholy. To conclude, nothing can be conceived more dismally solemn, than to hear the silence of the still night destroyed by the surf of the sea beating on the shore, together with the violent roaring of the sea-lions repeated all around by the echoes of deep vallies, the incessant howling of the seals, (who according to their age, make a hoarser or a shriller noise) so that in this confused medley, a man might imagine that he heard the different tones of all the species of animals upon earth mixed together. Add to these the sudden precipitate tumbling of trees down steep descents; for there is hardly a gust of wind stirring that does not tear up a great many trees by the roots, which have but a slight hold in the earth, especially near the brinks of precipices. All these, or any one of these frightful noises would be sufficient to prevent the repose of any who had not been for some time inured to it. Thus have I given an account of such parts of this Island as I have had a sight of, and of every thing worthy observation on it, which occurred to me; but this only relates to the Northern half, the mountains being impassable to go to the Southern parts of it, therefore I can say nothing of them.12