The Man Who Was Robinson Crusoe

by Rick Wilson

  But tranquillity was not always an option in Seatoun of Largo, to give the village its Sunday name. When Alexander Selkirk was born here in 1676 it was a bustling fishing village of about a thousand souls, busily transporting herring – hard-won by the big fishing boats with up to seven crew, including oarsmen – around and out of town by horse and cart. Today the car may be ubiquitous, rather out of character, and you will have probably arrived by one; but despite finding relatively recent favour with well-heeled incomers, the village is probably quieter now than it was at various periods in its past. The serious fishing industry has long gone. And the train doesn’t call here anymore.

  One July between the world wars, as Largo and nearby Lundin Links became popular holiday destinations for ordinary folk from bigger towns and cities, as many as 5,000 day-trippers and holidaymakers arrived at the modest station high above the village. Though traffic on the coastal rail route thereafter began to decline – partly because of the failing herring industry, partly because of the rising popularity of foreign package tours – it was still a shock to locals when all rail stations between Leven and St Andrews, including Largo’s, were closed by the axe of Lord Beeching in his grim rationalisation programme of the 1960s. That saw the retreat of the pungent steam clouds from locomotives that once hovered over the village, and the crumbling of the station and its fine old metal pedestrian bridge, though thankfully the Railway Inn, with its low beams, cosy atmosphere and old pictures of trains serving the village, is still there – along with the line’s Romanesque viaduct that makes such a dramatic entrance to sweep under on your run down Harbour Wynd into the village.

  You could also have come by boat, of course. For with the departure of the herring, the fishermen and the nets and boats they depended on, there is room now in the old post-strutted stone harbour for craft unconnected with the fishing industry ... usually counting up to around a dozen.

  Your length-of-the-village exploration from the harbour to the sandy east end might start by chatting to a lone lobster fisherman whose mini-motor-boat, boasting a single crustacean on its deck, seems to be single-handedly upholding Largo’s sadly depleted fishing tradition that stretches back long before Selkirk’s time; to at least the 12th century, when a monk recorded an early mention of Largo Bay’s fishing grounds.

  Or, taking a few steps from the harbour’s edge where the ground changes to a customers-only concourse and car park for the Crusoe Hotel, you could be tempted by the foodie offerings at the establishment, which started life as a granary in 1824 and became a hostelry with its current name in 1875, indicating that the village’s prime movers have long been conscious of their ‘marooned man’ heritage, even if their real sailor has sometimes had to compete for attention with the fictional character. While the hotel’s modern interior boasts an impressive bedroom-size exhibition space with prints, historical notes and pictures illustating local lad Selkirk’s real-life story, a conspicuous wall-hanging in the dining room tells the Crusoe tale.

  Outside, however, on its corner with Main Street, a multi-armed signpost is an amusing reminder that the place of Selkirk’s marooning, Juan Fernandez Island, is 7,500 miles away (12,000km). It also points to ‘the Juan Fernandez Lounge and Family Bar’ and ‘the Castaway Restaurant’ inside the hotel

  Herring is still to be found on the menu here – pan-fried in oatmeal with pommery mustard sauce, potato and vegetables (£9.95), though you don’t like to ask where it swam in from. But having perhaps indulged yourself with Crusoe Hotel food or Railway Inn beer or both, you proceed from west to east along Main Street, soaking up the atmosphere and taking in only a few conspicuous landmarks.

  The quiet of a weekday, during which you will encounter a few visitors and even fewer natives on the end-to-end walk, is well and truly broken at the weekend – especially in summer – when family-packed Range Rovers, chunky BMWs and Nissan Qashqais pull their family yachts on trailers through the town. To rephrase that over-used magazine headline employed whenever a sailor suit is featured, it may be nautical but it’s not particularly nice.

  Yet I suppose the village can’t spend the rest of its life being a museum. And the level of watersport activities these days suggests that, even minus the fishing industry, the big river is still going to sustain the town in a more up-to-date fashion.

  There are two maturing churches, St David’s and the Largo Baptist Church, diagonally across from each other; and next to the latter nearly half of a street that leads to the shore is occupied by several laid-up examples of the 38 yachts of the Largo Sailing Club, located a few numbers up with a back door nicely placed for launches on a flat, sandy inlet between an envelope of rocks. It’s a spot enthusiastically used by some cub members’ kids, swishing silently and speedily around in their wheeled yachts, known as Blokarts.

  Back on Main Street there’s a charming craft shop/café on the left called Very Crafty, followed by the village’s most special monument (of which more later) and on the right, a small studio-with-window where artist Martin Anderson makes ‘a decent living’ selling his colourful local scenes, mainly to visitors. He has long been intrigued by the Selkirk connection and has even visited Juan Fernandez, but he is under no illusions about Largo’s famous son. In common with many other villagers, he echoes the local folk memory that the ancient mariner was ‘a rogue and a philanderer.’

  An exception to the bad-mouthing rule among residents was the energetic Mrs Ivy Jardine, who lived in Cardy House with her farmer husband Allan until his death in 1984. Cardy is a high-set imposing Victorian walled pile that places an emphatic full-point at the eastern end of Main Street (see chapter 6). Ivy eventually passed away in 2001.

  I remember visiting the house once and being impressed by the huge brass telescope that looked out of the main window across the Forth. Described as ‘something of a Victorian time capsule’, the house was created in 1871 to his own design by David Selkirk Gillies – a direct descendant of David Selcraig, eldest brother of the famous Alexander – as the evident fruit of his initiative in setting up the Cardy Works, the nearby (and linked) net and sailcloth factory which at one point had 36 machines and employed as many as 60 women. It is now a stylish ultra-modern beachside home devoted to holiday lets by current owners, Mr and Mrs M Rolland.

  Before they took the over these buildings, the succession went like this: having seen the demise of his once-booming business along with the ever-dwindling number of herring and sailboats calling for nets and sails, old man Gillies died in 1923 and was succeeded by his son James. After James’s death in 1973 the house and the networks’ building passed to his nephew, Allan Jardine and his wife, the aforementioned Ivy. The line was continued through their son, also Allan, who also visited Juan Fernandez with his mother in the 1980s to set up a plaque there. That was confirmation, if it were needed, that Ivy was proud of the family link and, while grudgingly admitting that Selkirk was ‘no angel’, she did not agree that he was all bad and did her very best to promote his connection as a potentially invaluable asset to the village. She mounted Selkirk anniversary celebrations with local and international dignitaries, created a short-lived Selkirk-themed museum, visited the castaway’s island, wrote her own book about the man and their family connections, and even at one point was instrumental in having the statue removed from its plinth on the cottage at the site of Selkirk’s birthplace for a few months’ display at the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival.

  Before being transported there, the apparently monumental life-size statue was brought down to street level – and down to size. On seeing it up close and personal, the neighbouring Very Crafty shop ladies were taken aback. ‘It was much smaller than we thought,’ said one, ‘coming up to only about shoulder height.’

  In any case, this striking piece of bronze is the village’s most important tourist attraction, well worth a second – and even a third – look as you retrace your steps back along Main Street to find it about halfway along. Proud and dramatic, it takes central pride of place on the fi
rst-floor exterior of the red-stone Victorian house that replaced the sailor’s birthplace when owner David Selkirk Gillies judged it to be ‘tottering to its fall’ in 1865. Did the villagers appreciate what he did then? Probably not, as all the generations since Defoe’s book have been very aware of the cultural importance of the Crusoe connection. Did they nag him about the demolition? Probably. And he probably chastised himself for being more interested in a viable property than a cultural treasure. In any event, 20 years later he felt sufficiently guilty about removing such an important landmark cottage from the village to commission from sculptor T. Stuart Burnett ARSA this heroic bronze to be placed into an alcove on the façade of the new building. When it was unveiled by the Earl of Aberdeen in 1885, six floral arches marked the route of the ceremonial procession that passed in great, concerted admiration.

  And if a little less well cared for today, it still has considerable impact. Perched about 15ft (4.6m) from the ground atop the four-apartment building’s two red-painted doors numbered 99 and 101, it almost jumps out at you, the brave goatskin-clad figure, clutching a musket with one hand and shading his eyes with the other. Under his ‘skin’ moccasins, an inscription reads:

  In memory of Alexander Selkirk, mariner, the original Robinson Crusoe who lived on the island of Juan Fernandez in complete solitude for four years and four months. He died in 1723 [sic], lieutenant of HMS Weymouth, aged 47 years [sic]. This statue is erected by David Gillies, net manufacturer, on the site of the cottage in which Selkirk was born.

  I wonder what that cottage was like? Old drawings show that it was small, thatched and white-plastered with two doors, four windows, a small extension on the side (an outside loo?) and two smoky chimneys. Author Robert Chambers, who once visited it, observed in his 1827 book The Picture of Scotland:

  The house in which this remarkable person was born still exists. It is an ordinary cottage of one storey and a garret. It is situated on the north side of the principal street of Largo, near a pump called the Craig Well. It has never been out of the possession of his family since this time. The present occupant is his great-grand-niece, Katherine Selkirk or Gillies, who inherited it from her father, the late John Selkirk.*

  Mrs Gillies, who has very properly called one of her children after her celebrated kinsman, to prevent, as she says, the name from going out of the family, is very willing to show the chest and cup† to strangers applying for a sight of them. The chest is a very strong one, of the ordinary size, but composed of peculiarly fine wood, jointed in a remarkably complicated manner and convex at top. The cup is formed out of a cocoa nut, a small segment cut from the mouth ...

  There are no more descendants of Selkirk still living in the village though the Jardines’ son, art college technician Allan, lives just across the water in Edinburgh (see chapter 6). A trawl of the Fife telephone directory lists about a dozen Selcraigs but it’s not known who, if any, is related. However, the Edinburgh phone book reveals another Alexander Selcraig, a Musselburgh plumber – who is understandably proud of his name and says his New Zealand-based brother Edward has researched the family tree and found them to be descended from one of Alexander’s brothers ... but which? That’s a question that perplexes Edward, as one can tell from a recent e-mail to Alexander: ‘Much as I have tried to go further into the family history, I can’t verify with actual proof past 1761 when a John Selkirk married Elizabeth Yuil in Largo on Christmas day. They are our four-times great-grandparents. I have proof of this, but as to who his father is, I’ve hit a brick wall.’

  Barbara Cyrkowicz, 63, a resident of Largo’s neighbouring Lundin Links, is probably the nearest thing to local Selkirk family – having had a Polish father and a mother named Teresa Gillies, whose father was David Gillies, a great-nephew of the great net-maker and statue commissioner. ‘I think the navigator’s genes show through,’ she told me, ‘as my brother is superb at maths and just loves the sea.’

  Lower Largo was visited in recent years by an American relative, Bruce Selcraig – directly descended from Alex’s oldest brother, John. Bruce, a journalist, calls his famous ancestor a ‘pirate, lout and hero’ but nevertheless seems proud of the family link. He rightly bemoans the lack of museum or any kind of Selkirk-themed informational display in the village, though he is oddly unimpressed by that ‘curious’ statue depicting Alexander dressed in goatskins, ‘looking out to sea as though he had lost a golf ball.’

  Most people would assume, rightly, that he is depicted looking out to sea (in this case the Firth of Forth) in the hope of spotting a rescue ship. Today, the statue is illuminated at night with a striplight donated by the community council and, while it certainly adds to the dramatic effect, it can also expose the statue’s lack of maintenance and you can imagine that the brightness might be quite an annoyance to the resident within.

  Well, is it? I thought I’d ask. The woman who lives in that quarter of the building, accessed from the rear, is octogenarian Mrs Dorothy Shepherd, whose family has had long historic connections with the village and who came back ‘to die’ after many years in England. ‘I don’t mind the light,’ she says. ‘It’s a good statue, I’m very well at ease with it. Selkirk was a very bad-tempered man but I’m quite happy to have his statue in my window – I’m not like him; I’m very easy going.’

  Her one-bedroom back apartment comes with a nicely kept little garden whose focal point is an ornate, grey-painted wooden bench. Is it perhaps covering a ‘cave’ indent in the ground? Had she ever heard the story that, after his triumphant return to Lower Largo as a rich man, Selkirk became homesick for his island and dug himself a cave in the ground behind his family’s cottage to try to relive his great adventure on Juan Fernandez? ‘I wish I had never left thee,’ he was supposed to have said of it.

  ‘I’ve heard that story, but never seen any evidence of it,’ says Mrs Shepherd. ‘There is no patch like that, just the banked side of the old railway track up behind the bench.’

  Ah, but of course! If there had ever been a cave there, high on the hill behind the cottage, the blasting through of the railway cutting in the 19th century would have seen the last of it. Investigation concluded.

  ‘But I do know of a very old well in the garden,’ adds Mrs Shepherd, ‘and would be glad to show it.’

  Could this be the Craig Well referred to by Robert Chalmers in his reference to the cottage in his 1827 book? We are minded to agree on that as she moves into the garden a few steps to the right from her back steps and removes the wooden cover of the stone-rimmed vertical hollow, about the width of a football, that seems to go down forever into the depths of the earth. But there is water in it no more.

  Someone who might have the answer to the ‘cave’ question is gardener 78-year-old Drew Wishart, who knows the garden well. His answer is quite unequivocal. ‘I’ve never seen anything remotely resembling an old cave there,’ he says – and there isn’t anything about the village that he doesn’t know.

  More credible is the story that the materially enriched but emotionally impoverished Alexander used to go out frequently to find local spots to fish or just camp, while looking wistfully out to sea and imagining he was back on his now much-missed Juan Fernandez. ‘He apparently just couldn’t stand the busyness of the village and always wanted to make his escape from society again,’ says Mrs Shepherd’s downstairs neighbour, Louise Robb.

  Another matter of controversy has been ownership of the statue, as some residents argued in the past that it was a gift to the village and its people, and did not necessarily go with any of the four apartments incorporated in the building. The building’s owners also have a claim, of course, and that was asserted when the Jardines owned the whole thing and had their little Selkirk museum in the lower left apartment (see chapter 6). Fairly recently, however, the lower right-hand, one-bedroom flat was put up for sale and the estate agent’s blurb just happened to mention in passing that the statue above it was included in the price.

  It was bought as a holiday home by the above-men
tioned Louise, a self-employed facilitator and trainer familiar with the village as a member of the nearby sailing club. But was the attendant ownership of the statue an added incentive buy? ‘To be honest, I didn’t realise that it was on my title until I read the missives during the legal buying process,’ she recalls. ‘But I liked the idea of it being on the building anyway and I’m delighted that I’ve become Alexander’s custodian.’ But does she think the statue enhances the value of the house? ‘I’m sure it would if it were properly marketed; if people were more aware of it. Which is not to say it goes unnoticed. Foreign tourists make a beeline for it. In summer, there’s someone outside the door every five minutes and you get a lot of flashing cameras. It doesn’t bother me, generally speaking, though I wasn’t too pleased when it happened with a group of Japanese tourists at two o’clock one morning.

  And it has to be said that the statue and I have a funny relationship. When I come back from the Railway Inn of an evening, he will look down at me disapprovingly as if to say: “See you’ve been to the pub again”.’

  Not that Alexander himself would have had much room to moralise.

  Returning to the flesh and blood man, it was while the young Alexander was living in his family’s old thatched cottage at this site that he had his many legendary troubles with the church … troubles that have largely accounted for the less-than-positive folk memory he has left to this day in the village.

  The Presbyterian church he grudgingly attended, when he and his family were called Selcraig – or versions of that – is not located in the street where he lived or anywhere near it. About a mile up along Serpentine Walk (which first follows the shadow of the old railway line) and into the elevated hinterland, Largo and Newburn Parish Church stands high on a hill in what considers itself the separate hamlet of Upper Largo. With a superb view from its elevated grounds across the Firth of Forth, the grey-stone church is quietly imposing and squatly handsome with a modest spired tower. It is neatly kept outside and in, with a congregation of about 100 taking up the red-baize-upholstered pews to listen to the sermons of the Revd John Murdoch every Sunday. It has a distinctly gentle, peaceful feeling about it and is surrounded by ancient gravestones – including one that commemorates the Selkirk family.