by Tim Severin
My working copy of The Strange Surprizing Adventures was the Norton Critical edition prepared by Michael Shinagel (1994). Professor Pat Rogers’s urbane Robinson Crusoe (George Allen, 1979) provided a wideranging field guide to further reading. Defoe’s mysterious and incredibly productive life continues to fascinate biographers, and I am grateful to J. R. Moore, Daniel Defoe: Citizen of the Modern World (University of Chicago, 1958); Paula R. Backscheider, Daniel Defoe, His Life ( Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); Richard West, The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Daniel Defoe (HarperCollins, 1997); and Maximillian Novak, Daniel Defoe, Master of Fictions (Oxford University Press, 2001).
Of the writings of four sea captains that provided essential source material, two works—Captain George Shelvocke’s A Voyage round the World, with notes by W. G. Perrin, and Captain Nathaniel Uring’s Voyage and Travels, with notes by Captain Alfred Dewar—were rescued from oblivion when they were reissued by the Cassell’s Seafarers’ Library. Both editions appeared in 1928, as did the third and better-known captain’s narrative when G. E. Mainwaring provided a new edition of Captain Woodes Rogers’s A Cruising Voyage Round the World. The fourth work by a captain is the one by William Dampier; I have used extracts from the sixth edition of his classic New Voyage Round the World as they appear in Dampier’s Voyages, edited by John Masefield (E. Grant Richards, 1906). Of the two surgeons who wrote about their experience as maroons, Lionel Wafer’s A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America was meticulously prepared by L. E. Elliott Joyce for the Hakluyt Society (1934). Henry Pitman’s A Relation of the great suffering and strange adventures of Henry Pitman, Chirurgeon has not received a modern edition since Edward Arber’s quaintly named English Garner (1903). (When quoting from seventeenth—and eighteenth-century sources I updated spelling and punctuation where necessary for the convenience of the modern reader.)
In the South Sea my main guides were R. L. Megroz, The Real Robinson Crusoe (Cresset Press, 1939); Ralph Lee Woodward, Robinson Crusoe’s Island (University of North Carolina Press, 1969); and Professor Glyndwr Williams, The Great South Sea (Yale University Press, 1997). Both Woodward and Williams have outstanding bibliographies. I would also like to thank Tod Stuessy of the Herbarium, Vienna University, for help with the identification of the flora of Juan Fernandez Island; William Lopez Forment for similar expertise about the plants Henry Pitman found on Salt Tortuga; and Hector Maldini of Santiago, Chile, for his dogged persistence in pursuing the question of miniature coconuts.
In the Caribbean I was generously given access to the transcripts of interviews with Andrew Powery created and held by the Cayman National Archive. This section of my book, including Andrew Powery’s quotes, draws heavily on the account of Andrew Powery’s experiences as recounted in The ’32 Storm, compiled and edited by Heather R. McLaughlin and published by the National Archive in 1994.
DHL Worldwide Express were so kind as to provide me, once again, with logistical support on the maritime sector of my travels, and special mention is due to Bernardo and Gabby Meyer for assistance with revictualing Ziska on Margarita island. Professor Glyndwr Williams and Dr. James Kelly, both expert in seventeenth—and eighteenth-century Caribbean and Pacific history, generously took time to read through my text and, with Nick Blake, my desk editor, pointed out lurking errors that required a course correction. But if my text has still hit rocks of historical inaccuracy, this is my responsibility, not the pilots’.
My colleagues on different sectors of my search for Robinson Crusoe have already been met—the crew of Ziska, Kendra McSweeney, Murdo Macdonald, and Trondur Patursson. Their excellent company made my journeying very enjoyable as well as instructive.