by Rick Wilson
For Logan and Willow
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 RESCUE FROM JUAN FERNANDEZ
2 A TALE OF TWO TALES
3 THE VILLAGE HE LEFT BEHIND
4 SURVIVAL ON THE ISLAND
5 HOW HE GOT RICH
6 THE THINGS HE BROUGHT BACK
7 HOMECOMING AND SOPHIA
8 LONDON AND THE END
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
About the Author
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks are due, for their invaluable help and advice, to Dr David Caldwell of the National Museums Scotland, Gerry Brooke and Mark Steeds of Bristol’s Long John Silver Trust, Scottish historian Mark Jardine and (no relation) Selkirk descendant Allan Jardine and his late mother, Ivy, whose unquenchable enthusiasm for her village’s famous son surely deserves the most honourable of mentions.
Introduction
ALEXANDER SELKIRK
Born 1676
Ran away to sea 1695, aged 19
Died 13 Dec, 1721 at the age of 45
Three hundred years ago, a wild-eyed, fast-running creature looking – and smelling – more like an agitated animal than a human being was rescued from a deserted volcanic island by an English ship 418 miles off the coast of Chile. He had broken teeth, a skeletal body, a long beard and hair and his ‘clothes’ were tattered goatskins. He had been marooned there for four years and four months.
So who was this castaway under his coat of many goatskins and behind his little white flag? As his rescuers soon established, he was a Scottish sailor from the Fife fishing village of Lower Largo who was about to become Daniel Defoe’s inspiration for one of the most popular stories ever published – Robinson Crusoe. His name was Alexander Selkirk, or Selcraig (as he was born), or Selchraig, Selchraige, Selcraige, or Sillcrigge (as he variously appeared in kirk session minutes); or Silkirk (in his two wills); or Selchrig (in his common-law wife’s plea to a minister).
But it is ‘Selkirk’ that has come down through the centuries, and a popular theory is that he chose it from all the spelling variations to make his name more pronounceable to his mainly-English employers as he charged across the years and across the oceans and, in the process, made his most memorable stop-over on the island of Juan Fernandez.
As an east coast Scot myself, I have long been fascinated by character and story of ‘the original Robinson Crusoe’. Indeed, I once penned the words of his imaginary spirit to colour a previous book, a device also occasionally employed in this one, in the absence of his own diary. Here and there the reader will find passages of my imagined words for Selkirk. Where did they come from? I don’t know, but I felt oddly gripped by that ‘spirit’, and the words flowed out in old language with such ease I found it difficult to return, when required, to modern language.
In the Eighties, as a magazine editor, I spent (perhaps too) much time hunting down the whereabouts of three potential ‘Crusoe’ muskets; and the one which eventually materialised was ‘brought home’ to the little museum which the vestigial elements of his family kept briefly in his home village.
I also remember, several years before that, plodding around the vast volumes of the people-packed Frankfurt Book Fair with a home-made dummy of a pictorial book on the man’s life. While I raised more perspiration than publishers’ interest then, I have more recently noticed quite a bit of international material in the subject. So I feel the time has come to, once and for all, stake a modest claim born of such ongoing interest; to put my own full point on this tale around which I have been tiptoeing for decades; to tell my own Scottish version of the adventures of my famous countryman.
Or should that be infamous? For the unpalatable fact is that, despite his romantic aura, Alexander Selkirk appears not to have been a very nice person; he was more of a loutish adventurer, a hard-drinking and rough-talking buccaneer, and ... well, to be frank, it has been quite hard in my enquiries for this book to quote anyone, from any period since his death, with much of a kind word to say about him.
As a seventh son thought by his mother to have been thus born lucky, the mariner is described as ‘spoiled and wayward’ in the 1829 biography by John Howell, who said he was made only worse ‘by the indulgence of his mother, who concealed as much as she could his faults from his father.’ Sometimes his father couldn’t miss these, however, as he often had to step in when the young Alexander had violent fights with his siblings and was brought before the disciplinarians of the Kirk to confess and repent his sins.
Even today, his reputation in Lower Largo suffers from a very negative folk memory. In the village pubs, he is universally said to have been ‘a bad lad’. And to be specific, local artist Martin Anderson calls him ‘a rogue and a philanderer’ while Dorothy Shepherd, who lives in the house that replaced the sailor’s birth cottage, says he was a ‘very bad-tempered man’.
Perhaps the most positive comments about him were made by the journalist Sir Richard Steele who interviewed him about his solitary years on Jan Fernandez and wrote from his notes a famous article in The Englishman magazine in 1713. ‘He is a man of good sense,’ said Steele, who found Selkirk to be ‘quite communicative because he was familiar to men of curiosity.’ While he thought Selkirk’s aspects and gestures seemed as though he had been ‘much separated from company’, there was ‘a strong, cheerful seriousness in his look and a certain disregard to the ordinary things about him as if he had been sunk in thought.’
Steele said Selkirk felt his return to company was a mixed delight and quoted him as saying that, even though he was now worth £800 – which was quite a fortune in those days – he was never so happy as when he was not worth a farthing. Others seeking information from Selkirk found him less willing to talk about his time on the island. One said he found Selkirk ‘an unsociable, odd kind of man’.
What is clear is that Selkirk was no angel. Most books of this nature like to paint their central character as a hero. And much as I would like to think that way about the man whose experiences undoubtedly inspired Defoe to create his classic hero, I fear that what we have here is a bit of an anti-hero. Selkirk’s delinquent character does not sit comfortably with either that author’s nice English middle-class Crusoe or with our own wished-for image of a swashbuckling 18th-century braveheart triumphing with good over evil. Swashbuckling might have been a part of his life, but it is the ‘good’ part with which we have some trouble in painting Selkirk as a man to be admired.
He did have, nonetheless, many admirable qualities: Having been well educated in his village school, he was an excellent navigator on whose abilities world-ranging captains and their officers (with the exception of one) were happy to depend. He was a man who could improvise to survive, as his marooning on that remote island proved. He could, in the right mood, be quite commonsensical. He was also undoubtedly brave, albeit in a foolhardy way. And as we know from his attempts to recreate elements of his much-missed island back in Scotland, he could be quite sentimental, which suggests some sensitivity: ‘He frequently bewailed his return to the world, which could not, as he said, with all its enjoyments, restore to him the tranquillity of his solitude.’
But it can’t be denied that he was also selfish, egotistical, self-opinionated and ever-ready to pick a fight. A perverse blessing in disguise? After all, had he not been so headstrong he would not have fetched up on Juan Fernandez in 1704 to make it his home until 2 February, 1709, and thus inspire the Crusoe tale. On arrival there it was his stubborn conviction – that their ship was unable to go much further without thorough repairs – which caused the final break-up with his c
aptain. When he refused to go further if his advice was not taken, the Scot’s bluff was called by the captain abandoning him in disgust.
But in the event, the feisty Fifer was right. A few weeks later their leaking, weather-worn ship, the Cinque Ports, gave up the ghost off Peru with the loss of most of its crew, while back on his Chilean island the great survivor was unconsciously living through the catalytic moment that would give birth to one of the world’s great works of popular literature: Robinson Crusoe has been translated into every major language and has never been out of print since Daniel Defoe first published it in 1719, eight years after Selkirk came home as a very wealthy man.
And while his castaway experience had been the testing of the Scot, it was also the material making and dramatic changing of him after his rescuers – recognising him and his navigational abilities – put him to work on their richly successful seek-and-attack privateering mission against Spanish treasure ships plying along South America’s west coast.
(At the time, after the war of the Spanish Succession broke out, England faced Spanish, French and Portuguese forces, and in seeking to protect her global interests bolstered her fleet with privateers – government-sanctioned pirates encouraged to prey on enemy ships).
In any case, his post-castaway mission made Alexander Selkirk rich beyond even his mother’s wildest dreams. Not that he would remain ‘made’ for long. He may have made his fortune, been briefly celebrated in London and other ports of the land, and enjoyed a moment of triumph on his reappearance as a gold-laced, silver-buckled gentleman in the village of his youth. But what should have been a happy ending of sorts, as he delivered on his I’ll-show-you promises to his old local enemies, disintegrated into just another case of the novelty wearing off for him...
Having gone through some extreme adventures and experiences and seen the world, almost literally, it was inevitable that his impatience with his small home village people would eventually send him off again – this time to London, enlistment in the newly-formed British Royal Navy, and to the appalling betrayal of the young Largo lass who accompanied him as his ‘wife’ but was not even dignified with the title of ‘widow’ after he died at the age of 45 aboard HMS Weymouth off Africa in 1721. Unknown to her, he had, in the meantime, married someone else.
An anti-hero then? Yes and perhaps a little bit No. In telling the story of the man and his colourful adventures, I would hope that a fairly unalloyed portrait of him comes through, as he left no painted portrait and very little written record by himself. And, let’s face it, nothing in real life is ever quite so black and white. Nothing says you can’t be a hero with his kind of background. Neither are you disqualified by being headstrong, stroppy and unfaithful. These were rough old times.
In the east-coast Scottish fishing community I come from, further up the coast north of the River Tay, it was also thus. Even as a boy in the middle of the 20th century, I could sense the hard life that had been, and still was, around me; and the hardness that the people needed to cope with it; to battle with the elements and with those who didn’t wish you well. For there was also hostility not just between families but whole communities. Indeed, before there was a big ferry or bridge across the Tay, it was said that the neighbouring county, Selkirk’s Fife, was a frighteningly dark kingdom to venture into, where people would spit and throw stones at entering strangers.
What can’t be denied is that that Alexander Selkirk’s story is a remarkable one. Perhaps – because it is real – it is even more compelling than that of Crusoe. The irony is that Selkirk would not have been so famous if Daniel Defoe had not so brilliantly elaborated on his real-life adventures with Crusoe. So did Defoe and Selkirk ever meet? The writer denied it , but there is plenty of evidence that they did – outlined in this book – and that, at the very least, the Scottish sailor’s experience was an igniting spark. In the end there are very few similarities between the stories – Selkirk did not have a Man Friday, for instance – but no doubt is ever expressed about the fact that Robinson Crusoe was inspired by the adventures of Alexander Selkirk.
As such, in his current island paradise in the sky, the Scottish sailor must feel some satisfaction from being almost as recognised, if not as revered, as his fictional counterpart.
Chapter 1
Rescue from Juan Fernandez
On 2nd February, 1709, at the age of Three and Thirty years I was taken off the Island by the Pinnace of a Privateeering Vessel, the Duke, captain’d by one Woodes Rogers whose subsequent Short Account of my Island Exploits recall’d to Him would serve as Inspiration to one Daniel Defoe, author and pamphleteer, in the writing of his Strange and Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; a Book which well reflect’d my Experience, yet of which I could make some Commentary if that were to my present Purpose; but as ’tis not, I resume ...
To my great Surprize, as I enter’d the ship causing Great Consternation among the Men with my Cloaths wretchedly taylor’d from the skins of God’s Creatures I had perforce kill’d, notably Goats, and my locks Four and a Half Year unshorn, yet I was made welcom by her Pilot, none Other than William Dampier, who had led and lost us on the Expedition which had brought me Here; and who inform’d me that the Cinque Ports, my Companion to his ship of that time, had, as I had foreseen, come to Grief not long after abandoning me on the Island, with the loss of close all her Men.
These imagined words of Alexander Selkirk evoke the moment of his salvation after four and a half years of enforced solitude on a verdant and fertile Pacific island that would seem, even today, to be everyone’s dream of paradise ... but which could also be terrifyingly lonely. Indeed, its ‘monarch’ did not truly appreciate its abundant delights until his rescuers came to take him away and he watched its rugged silhouette fade out of sight behind the churning wake of his saviour-ship. Then there were tears in the weather-beaten rims of his eyes.
This island was Mas a Tierra, the main one of the Pacific archipelago of Juan Fernandez, which lies 418 miles (669km) off Chile’s coast and which – in deference to the (still) celebrated publication of Robinson Crusoe and the modest tourism that was brought in its wake – was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island. Another island in the volcanic group, 90 miles (144km) west, is now called Alexander Selkirk Island, but the Scottish sailor never set foot upon it.
The larger, 14-mile-long island became home for the 28-year-old sailing master of the shoddy privateering frigate Cinque Ports after he quarrelled with her arrogant 21-year-old replacement captain, Thomas Stradling, as she put in there in a desperately unseaworthy state for a much-needed rest in September, 1704, having parted from her equally troubled companion ship, St George, under expedition leader William Dampier.
Thanks largely to the Cinque Ports’ ill-prepared hull – her unsheathed oak timbers were drastically eaten away by marine worms – she was leaking profusely and her already struggling expedition did not seem, to Selkirk’s eye, to have much future with a ship that had little or no sailing left in her – ‘our vessel was in Deplorable Condition with Sails resembling Rags and Everywhere aleaking.’
After the ship found refuge in the safe anchorage of the island’s Cumberland Bay, the motions of careening and refitting were gone through. But Selkirk felt that, if not properly repaired with new timbers, masts and rigging, the Cinque Ports would not be just unfit for any battle necessary to take a prize but would soon sink of her own accord. And not long after arriving on the island, with long-term tensions between him and Stradling (who had taken over after the original captain, Charles Pickering, died), the Scot decided to voice his opinion in no uncertain terms, just as the no-nonsense people of his native village in Scotland’s east-coast county of Fife would have done. It was how he was raised ...
The sullen captain Stradling, being unwilling to waste time (as he saw it), did not appreciate his pushy sailing master’s advice. But on being told to hold his tongue lest it be cut from his throat, Selkirk ‘could no longer hold my tongue and truly did lash him therewith, denouncing his Gre
at Haste and foolhardy Disregard for Others in his Charge.’
It was by no means the first time that the headstrong young man’s tongue had got him in trouble. And perhaps, on reflection, he was lucky not to lose it from his head, though he had also tried vainly to persuade some crewmen to join his cause. But the sentiments his spiky tongue had expressed were as good as a request to be left out of any further privateering among the ‘Rich Golden Pickings’ offered by the Spanish trading ships and settlements up the north-west coast of South America. Thus he was unceremoniously abandoned.
As he sat on the beach with his seaman’s chest and a few precious belongings, Alexander Selkirk should not have been too regretful as he watched the oarsmen in the small boats launch out to join, and give some seaward tow, to the leaky Cinque Ports. But as her sails filled and she slowly pulled away without him, he abruptly stood up and wailed out a desperate, echoing cry. For while he was sure the expedition had no future, he was suddenly gripped by a remorseful panic and found himself running into the sea behind the ship, begging the captain to change his mind. It was later written that ‘his heart yearned within him and melted at the parting with his comrades and all human society at once.’
But Stradling would have nothing more to do with this cantankerous troublemaker and let the Cinque Ports sail relentlessly on without her sailing master. The water reached Selkirk’s breast before shocked acceptance of his fate came over him. He returned to the beach, groaned, and fell trembling to his knees by his sea-chest with his head buried deep in his hands. He knew the next few days were to be the hardest of his life, realising the extent of his loneliness and adjusting to survival with no obvious means of sustenance, defence or shelter, save what he could manage from his own initiative. Nevertheless, he did expect to be rescued within weeks, if not months. But as it happened, the young navigator was to find himself playing out that role of self-survival which intrigues each of us when we imagine how we would react to such a situation; and he was not to have any further human contact for another four and a half years.