Crusoe's Island

by Andrew Lambert

  Sadly, Sutcliffe’s dream of Crusoesque dominion proved short-lived. Late on 19 February 1835, only five months after his arrival, he heard a low rumbling, which he thought indicated an earthquake. His officers disagreed, but just before noon the next day Sutcliffe, standing on the wall of Fort Santa Barbara, observed the boats floating in the normally dry boat house, and the mole almost covered with water. As he ordered the boats secured, the sea suddenly disappeared, leaving almost the entire bay between the headlands dry. With the drummer beating to quarters and the church bell ringing the alarm Sutcliffe ordered convicts to carry newly built boats uphill, a task they had hardly begun when a massive earthquake hit the island. Only one boat had been secured, hastily lashed to a fig tree outside the fort. The others were abandoned, and everyone rushed uphill screaming as the ocean, until now quite smooth, suddenly rolled back, like the parting of the Red Sea. No sooner had the people got off the beach than a tsunami surged in, and then out again, taking with it most of the smaller buildings at the water’s edge. Sutcliffe recorded four separate waves. High above the bay Felix Baesa was cutting timber; he heard and felt the shock of the earthquake, watched the bay empty and fill, and was lucky not to be hit by rocks falling from El Yunque.

  Once the waves subsided Sutcliffe launched the remaining boat and rescued several people from the bay. Two more boats were brought down to pick up furniture, pictures and other items left floating in the eerily calm sea, including Sutcliffe’s writing desk and papers, along with a portrait of his great-grandfather John Kay, inventor of the Flying Shuttle. Soon after he ‘observed a large column, something like a water spout, ascend in a rapid manner out of the sea … it proved to be smoke, which soon covered the horizon, and eastward point of the Bay, called Punta de Bacalao’. During the night the eruption included flames. Noisy, alarming aftershocks continued until the next morning, interspersed with lightning. Miraculously no one had been killed. ‘Had the earthquake happened during the night, scarcely a soul could have escaped.’11

  With the prison in ruins, and hardly a dry round of ammunition, Sutcliffe had to control 200 convicts, roaming around the wreckage of the village. Lacking the firepower to assert his authority Sutcliffe put on brave front, having his soldiers guard ammunition boxes surreptitiously filled with sand, while his staff recorded every detail of the earthquake and tsunami. The Chileans evinced none of their governor’s scientific curiosity, attributing the survival of the chapel and store house to Sutcliffe’s recent repair work.

  The first ship to arrive after the catastrophe, the American whaler Cyrus, provided Sutcliffe with much needed gunpowder and tools. Robert Simpson, commanding the Chilean naval brig Achilles arrived on 18 March, with more convicts and three months supplies.12 She was heading for Talcahuano, which had also been hit by an earthquake. With tools and timber scrounged from passing ships, Sutcliffe set to work to build:

  a new town, on the very spot where Commodore Anson had his tents pitched, according to an engraving I had in the history of his voyage round the world, which I called Anson’s Town; and to the beautiful and romantic valley in which it was situated I gave the name of Anson’s Dale.13

  Such Elysian visions were swiftly shattered; Sutcliffe observed the island was plagued with rats, despite liberal use of arsenic.

  Arsenic played a central role in the next drama to hit the island. Sutcliffe and his military subordinate Lieutenant Saldes, unable to maintain their equilibrium in the febrile atmosphere of the devastated, isolated prison camp, bickered over rank and authority. Saldes resolved the escalating spat by playing the national card, recruiting fellow Chileans, soldiers and the priest. On 1 August a half-hearted convict rebellion resulted in the deposition and expulsion of Governor Sutcliffe, despite his attempt to poison himself, and his persecutors, with some of his ample store. Sent on board a passing ship, he was landed at Talcahuano in late September 1835. The only British government of the island ended in a suitably melodramatic swirl of military punctilio and poison.14

  Cashiered and sent back to England, Sutcliffe tried to earn a living with his pen, waging a futile campaign to recover back pay and costs from Chile. Piqued by criticism of his government in the Nautical Magazine he compiled a pamphlet that combined a serious, if self-serving discussion of the tsunami with a long, rambling, justification of his conduct during the revolt – which takes far longer to read than the events it details merit. In 1843 he published a more substantial text on the story at the heart of the island’s enduring fascination: Crusoiana; or Truth versus Fiction Elucidated in a History of the Islands of Juan Fernández.

  I cannot refrain from mentioning the great eagerness that was displayed by every visitor who arrived there during my government to ramble upon a spot so familiar to their youthful recollections; many an inquirer has asked ‘where was Selkirk’s residence’ or ‘what information can you give respecting the Scotch Mariner?’15

  The book is something of a grab bag, combining published material, personal information and a few useful illustrations. Cowper’s poem was given in full, while Sutcliffe traced the idea that Defoe stole Selkirk’s journal back to John Entick. His control of the evidence began to slip when he reached Anson’s voyage. The eighty-page account is almost entirely edited quotation, with a major digression on the loss of the Wager, a ship that never reached the island. He reported the visits of Carteret and Moss, who ‘found the colony in a flourishing condition’, along with more recent views, including Maria Graham and his own earthquake pamphlet.16 As a pioneer compilation, Crusoiana provided a useful résumé for later authors.

  Sutcliffe died in 1849, poverty stricken, mad and quite forgotten, but his pioneering scientific record of the earthquake and tsunami echoed Dampier’s curiosity. The centre of his map of Cumberland Bay was occupied by a strikingly original fish, found in a wardrobe that washed ashore after the wave had passed. The map, one of four bold, if not entirely reliable lithographs of the island that illustrated Sutcliffe’s pamphlet, was the most substantial addition to island images since Anson. The opening dramatic view shows a heroic Sutcliffe directing the response to the first wave, getting his boat uphill while the priest comforts his flock, and the smoking volcano erupts in the middle distance. A night view of the eruption added immediacy to the phenomenon. The charming view of San Juan Bautista from Cumberland Bay shows another settlement at Bahía Pangal.

  While Sutcliffe’s text advanced his version of events, and his claim for compensation, his images reflected another agenda. The map applied British names to the island. Anson was awarded a Dale and a Town, Puerto Inglese was renamed Selkirk Dale, with an imaginary Selkirk Town located on the rocks above the site of ‘Selkirk’s Cave’. It is not clear how far Sutcliffe created the mythic narratives that have dominated perceptions of the island since the 1830s, but his aggressive application of names misled those who followed, much as his play-acting with arsenic misled his rebellious subjects. Soon American visitors were repeating Sutcliffe’s names, recasting freshly minted words into ancient facts, upon which they based fresh layers of myth-making and wonder. Sutcliffe’s writings, on Juan Fernández and other subjects, contain much misrepresentation and not a little straightforward dishonesty. He cannot be considered a reliable witness for events that reflect on his own conduct, or the career of his illustrious ancestor, but his record of the 1835 tsunami remains a unique record of a momentous event. His ‘strange genius’ still hovers over the island.17

  In truth Sutcliffe was well away. The year after he left Chile and Peru were at war; a small Peruvian force captured the island, burnt the town he had so recently erected and then withdrew. The fifty-man garrison, in truth only a prison guard, surrendered without a fight. The Peruvians released the political prisoners, hoping to destabilise Chile, leaving the common criminals and the garrison to buy a passage back to Valparaiso aboard a passing American whaler. Despite rumours that an American lessee would take over, Juan Fernández remained uninhabited for the next five year, slowly crumbling into a roman
tic ruin. Human habitation made little sense once Chile and Peru opened their ports for business. Whaling vessels from America, Britain and France were frequent visitors, looking for water and fresh food. They traded goods with the garrison, but were equally pleased with an unoccupied island. The French naval expedition of Captain Dumot d’Urville visited in June 1838.18

  In 1842 Archibald Osborne, another irascible Scot, took up residence, having left a whaleship in the bay after a dispute. His occupation did not end well. A Chilean family with title to the island returned the following year, and Osborne recruited a handful of fellow drifters, leaving the tiny island divided between rough Anglophone seafarers and the Chileans. Anticipating an attack, the Chileans struck first, capturing the sailors. Osborne was wounded in the fracas, and swiftly executed. His ‘followers’ left soon after. The Chilean Supreme Court acquitted the family of murder. Once again Juan Fernández was empty, seemingly too small for a dozen people to live in amity.

  NOTES

  1 P.A. Longley, Virtual Voyages: Travel Writing and the Antipodes 1605–1837, Anthem Press, London, 2010, pp. xvii–xxiii, 4, citing an unpublished 1996 lecture by Jonathan Lamb.

  2 Longley, Virtual Voyages, p. 133; J. Cameron, ‘John Barrow, the Quarterly Review’s Imperial Reviewer’, in J. Cutmore (ed.), Conservatism and the Quarterly Review: A Critical Analysis, Pickering & Chatto, London, 2007, pp. 133–50.

  3 R. Dampier, To the Sandwich Islands on HMS Blonde, ed. P.K. Joerger, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, HI, 1971, p. 13, quote at p. 79.

  4 B. Gough (ed.), To the Pacific and Arctic with Beechey: The Journal of Lieutenant George Peard of HMS Blossom, Hakluyt Society, Cambridge, 1973, p. 69.

  5 P.P. King, Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle between the Years 1826 and 1836: The First Expedition, 1826–1830, London, 1839, preface, & pp. 298–308.

  6 King, Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships, pp. 298–308.

  7 King, Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships, pp. 298–308.

  8 L. Dawson, Memoirs of Hydrography, vol. II, pp. 26–8. HMS Beagle, Juan Fernández: ADM 344/2255.

  9 Charles Darwin to Captain Robert Fitzroy, HMS Beagle, 28 August 1834, in F. Burkhardt & S. Smith (eds), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Volume 1: 1821–1836, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985, pp. 406–7. The editors of the volume did not uncover Sutcliffe’s suitably fabulous history.

  10 ‘A Modern Crusoe’, The Times (9 May 1835), p. 7, col. B.

  11 T. Sutcliffe, The Earthquake of Juan Fernández as it Occurred in the Year 1835, Advertiser Office, Manchester, 1839, pp. 6, 9. Severely wounded at Waterloo, Sutcliffe joined the Columbian revolutionaries, but was detained by the Spanish at Havana. He was released in 1821 and joined the Chilean army the following year.

  12 Robert Winthrop Simpson (1799–1877), British-born Chilean naval officer, arrived in Chile with Lord Cochrane and became rear-admiral of the Chilean navy.

  13 Sutcliffe, The Earthquake of Juan Fernández, p. 9, col 2.

  14 The Times (1 February 1836), p. 3 col. A; Woodward, Robinson Crusoe’s Island, pp. 155–67.

  15 Sutcliffe, Crusoiana, preface.

  16 Sutcliffe, Crusoiana, pp. 112–92 on Anson and the Wager, p. 194 for Moss.

  17 For more about Thomas Sutcliffe (1790?–1849) see www.oxforddnb.com/view/printable/26793.

  18 The Times (20 October 1837), p. 3, col. B; Skottsberg, The Natural History of Juan Fernández and Easter Island, vol. II, p. 798; J.S.-C.D. D’Urville, An Account of Two Voyages to the South Seas, Volume II: The Astrolabe and Zéléé 1837–1840, tr. & ed. H. Rosenman, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1987.

  18

  An American South Pacific

  By the end of the eighteenth century the South Pacific was slowly leaving the realms of magic as British navigators and explorers filled in the blanks, and exploited the whales, seals and sea otters to make their fortunes. After the division of the English-speaking world in 1783 it did not take the Americans long to find the Pacific. As economic opportunities increased America approached the ocean in ways that were shaped by their British heritage, and commercial interests formed under British rule. Soon American whalers and traders were rounding Cape Horn. By this time the British had reduced their South Pacific to order, they no longer needed to dream of power; they were in command. Instead it would be the Americans who developed a new vision of the Pacific, one of old tales, and great whales. For sixty years, years in which the oceans were America’s dreamscape, the South Pacific provided an ideal setting for heroics and horror. It was a space where nature fought back.

  The American Pacific grew out of the dynamic maritime culture of New England. In the Pacific, American ships were free from the restrictions on trade and navigation imposed by the East India Company; restraints that kept independent English traders out of the Chinese and Indian markets, developing a trade network that produced profits on as many legs of the voyage as possible. These enterprising, literate Yankees raided the library for information about markets and routes. They found a few shelves of useful English language texts, from Exquemelin and Dampier to Anson and Cook, combining solid navigational information about where to stop for water, refreshment and antiscorbutics, with the location of fur seals, sea otters and whales.

  In 1788 the Columbia and the Lady Washington sailed to Oregon via Cape Horn, linking Northwest Coast sea otter pelts with the Chinese market and a return cargo of luxury goods. They came in the wake of the British, heirs to the knowledge and expertise of centuries, captured in printed texts that were the common heritage of the Anglophone seafaring community. One of the Columbia’s junior officers, Robert Haswell, referenced the buccaneer voyages, John Hawkesworth’s edition of Cook, Byron and Carteret’s account of Más Afuera in his log.1 In April 1788 the Columbia sighted Más Afuera. A ‘great many streams’ were seen from the ship, cascading down into the sea, but landing was ‘excessively dangerous and a dependence on this place for either wood or water will be highly imprudent in any navigator that may hereafter follow our track’. Water ought to be topped up at the Falklands Islands or the Strait of Le Maire, while no well stowed ship should run out of wood before reaching the Northwest Coast. Juan Fernández was the ‘proper place’ to water. Although it was occupied by about 500 Spaniards and Chileans, ‘most of them convicts’, water was easy to obtain. Cumberland Bay ‘abounds with excellent fish’, and there was plenty of ‘anti-scorbutic’ to restore the health of any of the crew that had begun ‘declining’.

  Haswell, with a good eye for economic opportunities, suggested Juan Fernández would be an ideal base for ‘future adventurers in this very remote clime’. He was equally impressed by fur seals, ‘in greater abundance than at any place I ever saw’. That said any visiting mariner should ‘be careful not to put himself in the power of the Spaniards. To this end Captain Gray had been ordered to water at Mas Afuera’. While the Columbia visited Juan Fernández the ship remained under weigh. Rather than land and risk seizure they moved on to San Ambrosio, where a boat crew landed on 3 May 1788, they ‘killed a vast number of seals, and sea lyons, which were incredibly numerous’. The blubber was rendered down for oil, and the skins dried before the ship moved on three days later. San Félix was reported to be more habitable than San Ambrosio, but neither ever attracted a settled population, only raiding gangs of sealers, annihilating animals for profit.2

  On the Columbia’s second voyage Captain Gray landed at Juan Fernández, seeking food, water and an opportunity to repair storm damage incurred rounding the Horn. He met a cordial welcome from the governor, who was promptly sacked by the Viceroy of Peru,3 making it unlikely any more American ships would call at the prison colony. Instead American voyagers deliberately sought uninhabited islands. The new voyagers were quickly into their stride, generating windfall profits that helped to create the first American millionaires.

  Whalers soon followed the fur traders into the Sou
th Pacific. Like every American ship rounding the Horn, they needed to stop for food, water and refreshment. The Juan Fernández Islands, which featured in so many familiar British texts, were the obvious place. That Más Afuera also contained a massive seal colony was a bonus. The sustained assault on the seal colony for the Chinese market began in 1793, when the ships of Captain Stewart and Captain Obed Paddock of Nantucket anchored at Más Afuera to harvest Pacific seals. Having filled the ship with dried pelts and seal oil Paddock sailed for Canton where they were highly prized. In January 1798 Captain Edmund Fanning arrived in the Betsey, the cargo packed into his 100-ton ship generated a profit of $12,000, after covering the cost of the ship. Little wonder more followed. In 1800 Matthew Folger arrived in the Salem ship Minerva, only to encounter fellow American Amasa Delano in the Perseverance.

  By this time up to a dozen American sealers could be seen anchored off Más Afuera, slowly working their way through a population so dense that in the early days it had been hard to find a footing on the beach. Delano reckoned there had been three million seals, and that his ship alone took 100,000 pelts to China. Delano also visited the San Ambrosio group. Turning the cash into Chinese luxuries, silk, porcelain, spices and tea, ensured a profitable round trip. Like so many of his British and American precursors Delano wrote for the information of other seafarers, describing the anchorages, watering places and food supplies of the Juan Fernández Islands, before shifting to the mechanics of slaughtering seals. Payment per skin ranged from 35 cents to $3.4 Delano also recounted a horrific tale of mutiny, murder and cannibalism that Herman Melville would develop in Benito Cereno. While sealers and whalers made ample use of Más Afuera they tended to avoid Juan Fernández, where the garrison was as likely to seize the ship as offer assistance. This was imperial policy.5