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 captain. 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 Great 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.

By the time that contact came, on February 2, 1709, he was a different man; indeed, more of an animal than a man. He could barely speak but he could eat from the wild; he wore a self-made goatskin outfit which – along with his overgrown beard and hair – made him smell and look like a mad bear and he was super-humanly fit, the fastest thing on two legs over rocky terrain that any of his rescuers had ever seen ... faster indeed than the mountain goats he had had to chase and kill to feed and clothe himself. Yet he had also mellowed. He now had a finer appreciation of nature’s gifts and had even turned to the God whom he had (according to the Kirk) grossly offended in Scotland in his earlier life.

His rescuers first had sight of the island at seven in the morning of January 31, 1709, and from his look-out point on a high hillside – to which he climbed every day to scan the ocean – Selkirk first saw the suggestion of dirty white sails a little later in the day. His heart leapt as the darker smudges beneath them slowly became hulls of a familiar shape. He could barely contain his excitement as two frigates came closer and he began to hope, then realise, that they were English – or British as he could now call them – as unbeknown to him, the parliaments of England and Scotland had united to create the United Kingdom two years before. He jumped with joy and ran down the mountainside to greet them.

But they did not readily approach. They made such cautious progress towards the island that by noon the next day they were still four or five leagues off. It was then that they launched an exploratory pinnace to make for the shore. But it, too, made slow progress and as afternoon turned to evening and darkness fell to make landfall almost impossible, Selkirk saw the boat turning back and frantically built a bonfire among the trees to signal that there was a man awaiting to welcome them on the island.

He let it burn all night but in the morning they had come no nearer, and he began to wonder about the wisdom of the fire. He was right to as its flickering light had served merely to mystify and confuse the men aboard the English ships, who had assumed – and hoped – that the island was uninhabited. Now they wondered if the light was an enemy’s keep-away signal, perhaps from French ships at anchor in the bay or Spanish sailors camped near the beach.

The two English ships were the 30-gun Duke and 26-gun Dutchess, well-built frigates under the command of Captain Woodes Rogers and engaged on a privateering exercise similar to the one that had brought Selkirk here, all the way from Kinsale in south-west Ireland. They were a much more promising outfit, but they too were in a bad way. After nine weeks of hard sailing, down the east coast of South America and round the icy Cape Horn, they had been hard hit by scurvy, cold, hunger and exhaustion, with many men ill, three dead, and all of those living desperately in need of rest, clean water and fresh meat.

With the reappearance of the pinnace at around midnight, and its crew reporting that they had failed to get on shore, Captain Rogers was faced with a dilemma that haunted him all night, and in the morning, convinced the light on shore indicated the presence of an enemy force, he determined ‘to make our ships ready to engage ... we must either fight ‘em or want Water.’ He also knew rest and fresh food were essential for the very survival of the privateering mission of which he was in overall command, ‘for we have a great many Men down with Cold, and some with Scurvy.’

By dawn, he had decided to go ahead with his original plan to land on the island, but with two comforting factors now in play: broad daylight and battle-primed cannon. The Duke and Dutchess were set for action, with as many guns as possible pointing toward the island. And despite their fears, the tired and sick English sailors also loaded their muskets and prepared for hand-to-hand action, as they assumed they must either fight whoever was behind the strange light or forego their urgently required refreshments.

The Dutchess even raised a French ensign but on seeing no enemy vessel in the light of the morning of February 2, the Duke’s Captain Rogers was still convinced that they had company. ‘We guessed there had been Ships there but that they were gone on sight of us,’ he wrote later. There was nothing for it but to flush them out. At about noon Captain Rogers again sent a pinnace shorewards – this time with eight well-armed men – to try to identify the enemy and assess its strength or at least to establish the cause of the fire.

The men were prepared to be shocked, but what they were confronted with amazed them. From the island, a sleepless, ever-watching and increasingly agitated Selkirk had seen their boat leave the Duke and so, before the crewmen reached the shore, they first heard, then saw, this strange hairy creature running towards them, then shouting out incomprehensible words of joy and dancing up and down the beach. In his hand he had a piece of white linen tied on a small pole as a flag to attract their attention, and – to recount from John Howell’s 1829 telling of this poignant moment – ‘at length he heard them call to him, inquiring for a good place to land, which he pointed out, and, flying as swift as a deer towards it, arrived first, where he stood ready to receive them as they stepped on shore. He embraced them by turns; but his joy was too great for utterance, while their astonishment at his uncouth appearance struck them dumb.

‘He had at this time his last shirt upon his back; his feet and legs were bare, his thighs and body covered with the skins of wild animals. His beard, which had not been shaved for four years and four months, was of a great length, while a rough goat’s-skin cap covered his head. He appeared to them as wild as the original owners of the skins which he wore.’

The men were not struck dumb for long, however – though Selkirk was, to a considerable degree. As they fired questions at him – who was he, how long had he been there, how had he survived? – he seemed able only to form one word, ‘marooned’, which was in any way intelligible to them. His voice and vocabulary had been so out of practice that speaking normally seemed no longer possible. In the absence of conversational partners other than goats and cats, he tended to speak in part-words, apparently having forgotten the complete versions.

But he managed to communicate with the help of hand gestures. He offered them some goat’s meat he had cooked to welcome them – which most of them tucked into with great gusto – and ‘at length he invited them to his hut; but its access was so very difficult and intricate that only one man [chief lieutenant Robert Frye] accompanied him over the rocks which led to it.’

What Frye saw – after a trek of about two miles through thick undergrowth that only he among the crew was fit enough to manage – intrigued him. On a flat, elevated but sheltered point they came upon the castaway’s main living hut, a rough basic structure of tree branches covered over with local grass and lined with goatskins. Despite its simplicity and few furnishings – a makeshift table and a cat-strewn bed with some rough bedding, a sea chest, a crude knife, some navigational instruments and a tiny library – the interior seemed cosy and homely. There was also a cooking pot, although that may have rightly belonged in the second, smaller hut shown to Frye, which Selkirk said was his kitchen.

Alexander entertained the officer in the best manner he could and made ready more roasted goat’s flesh for the refreshment of the sailors who were awaiting his reappearance on the beach – and for those on the big ships who didn’t yet know what was going on. He presumed, as did Frye, that he would be taken aboard one of them later and ...

And what? Suddenly the overjoyed castaway was having second thoughts about returning to the modern world. And in his semi-fictional dramatisation of the story – The Monarch of Juan Fernandez, published in 1967 – author Martin Ballard imagined that moment of ambivalence ...

Wandering in and out of the huts and everywhere round about were goats and still more cats. In the centre of the clearing rose the smoke from the fire. The Lieutenant felt a hand grasp his arm and pull him towards a tree. A long brown finger pointed to some lines dug into the bark.

‘Fo’ yea’ an’ fo mon’s,’ said the man.

‘You have lived here for four years and four months?’ asked Frye. The man nodded and pointed higher up the tree trunk.

There was the name ‘Alexander Selkirk’ dug into the bark and under it was the date, September 1704.

‘That is your name: Alexander Selkirk?’ asked the Lieutenant. The man beamed and nodded more violently than ever.

‘You’ll certainly be pleased to get away with us. I don’t know how you’ve survived for so long. It must be dreadful having to live like this.’

Frye suddenly realised that he had said the wrong thing. The man’s face lost its flush of happiness ... Was he touchy about his camp? Frye felt that he could understand someone living like this because he had to, but surely no-one could actually enjoy it – all the same, if the man had lived in the place for four years he probably had some sort of affection for it.

‘It’s a good camp,’ Frye said reassuringly. ‘You are quite a builder and you have plenty of company.’

He smiled at Selkirk who was absent-mindedly caressing one of his cats.

‘Ma ca’s,’ Alexander stammered. ‘Keep awa t’ rats.’

You’ll be sorry to say goodbye to them, I expect.’

Din’ ken, I mi’ stay.’

You ...’ Frye could not believe his ears.

‘I mi’ stay here. It’s a goo’ life. Why sho’ I lea’?’

Despite the fact that Selkirk never seemed to be able to finish a word properly, his meaning was crystal clear.

We can’t leave you,’ protested Frye. I’ll tell you what to do. Come aboard the Duke. Meet Captain Rogers; he’s a good man. Then if you want to come back to live here when we sail away I promise that we will not keep you against your will.’

The man was still muttering ‘Din’ ken’ several minutes later as they went down the hill and rejoined the others, but he made no objection when they led him into the boat. He sat upright in the stern as the sailors took the oars and rowed out to sea.

As the pinnace – bearing gifts of goat meat and rattling crayfish – drew near the Duke, he was conscious of the ship’s rail being lined with curious eyes, and suddenly acutely conscious of his strange appearance. But he needn’t have worried. The crew’s curiousity was matched by more kindness than would normally be expected from a bunch of wild buccaneers. And if his disagreement with, and abandonment by, Captain Stradling all those years before was a stroke of ill luck, he was soon to discover that his luck had now changed wondrously for the better.

One of the faces looking down from the Duke was her pilot who, by a remarkable coincidence, was a famous if faded ancient mariner called William Dampier who had been the leader of the other ship in Selkirk’s first ill-fated expedition. And despite his having had some differences with Selkirk as well, Dampier warmly recommended Selkirk as ‘a very fine sailor’ to the Duke’s Captain Rogers. The captain’s uptake of that was to represent a dramatic enchancement of Selkirk’s career.

And not only that. The young Scot’s personal fortunes were to be even more enhanced – quite literally – by his inclusion on this particular privateeering mission. As he himself might have put it ...

Now an Old Man acting as Pilot aboard the Duke, Dampier explain’d to me Their Mission; that this was his final Privateering Expedition to the South Seas afore Retiring, and that the Moneys were put Forward by some Gentlemen of Bristol and the West Country giv’n Heart by the Government’s Abolishment of Taxes upon the Profits from such Ventures.

Having known of my Differences with Stradling on the Cinque Ports, some of which he owned he shared, he claim’d non the less to admire my Seamanship and Navigation Skills and Privateering Experience, and did warmly commend me to Captain Woodes Rogers; and afore I had fully made my Reengagement with the World and at least become again Accustom’d to the manners and food of Civilis’d Folk, I found my Self with the Responsibility of Mate upon the Duke, being the sister ship of the Dutchess on this Expedition.

In Immeasureable Contrast to my Previous Voyage, here was I among Men, and with a Plan, which were well worthy of Respect. Aye, and more there was to impress me. I was inform’d that thus did I qualify for a considerable Share of the Plunder, one-third of which should be allocated to the Crew in Portions according to Rank, and soon had my Thoughts turned from Simple Joys of Island Life to Sore Temptations of Wealth; though I cannot deny that at Times I did sorely bewail my Return to the World.

But first, there was his rescue and return to the sea and society to be seen to. Two of the senior mariners aboard the big ships later recorded the almost-theatrical – and certainly unforgettably dramatic – moment of Selkirk’s arrival aboard the Duke. One was Second Captain Edward Cooke of the Dutchess whose account – given in his book Voyage to the South Sea – was rather fleeting. He covered the event in little more than a few sentences, describing the figure of Selkirk as being ‘cloath’d in a Goat’s Skin jacket, Breeches, and Cap, sew’d together with Thongs of the same.’

But it is the on-the-spot account of Captain Rogers – from his book A Cruising Voyage Round the World – that gives the real flavour of the moment and could be said to be the seminal point of the Robinson Crusoe story. For the captain’s tale would have been widely read by many interested parties in England who no doubt included the journalist-playwright Richard Steele. Steele later interviewed Selkirk for his magazine The Englishman – a feature that in turn is confidently said to have inspired Daniel Defoe to do likewise as a real-life basis for his famous work of fiction.

So Woodes Rogers and Richard Steele are important names to remember when we talk about the genesis of the Robinson Crusoe story. In any event, as each of their accounts is fascinating in its own right and needs no modern commentary to embellish its essential sense of period and drama, I yield without apology to these two great gentlemen for their contemporary evocation of that historic moment ...

WOODES ROGERS

A Cruising Voyage round the World

1712

Febr. 2, 1709: Immediately our Pinnace return’d from the shore, and brought abundance of Craw-fish, with a Man cloth’d in Goat-Skins, who look’d wilder than the first Owners of them. He had been on the Island four Years and four Months, being left there by Capt. Stradling in the Cinque-Ports; his Name was Alexander Selkirk a Scotch Man, who had been Master of the Cinque-Ports, a Ship that came here last with Capt. Dampier, who told me that this was the best Man in her; so I immediately agreed with him to be a Mate on board our Ship. ‘Twas he that made the Fire last night when he saw our Ships, which he judg’d to be English. During his stay here, he saw several Ships pass by, but only two came in to anchor. As he went to view them, he found ‘em to be Spaniards, and retir’d from ‘em; upon which they shot at him. Had they been French, he would have submitted; but chose to risque his dying alone on the Island, rather than fall into the hands of the Spaniards in these parts, because he apprehended they would murder him, or make a Slave of him in the Mines, for he fear’d they would spare no Stranger that might be capable of discovering the South-Sea. The Spaniards had landed, before he knew what they were, and they came so near him that he had much ado to escape; for they not only shot at him but pursu’d him into the Woods, where he climb’d to the top of a Tree, at the foot of which they made water, and kill’d several Goats just by, but went off again without discovering him. He told us that he was born at Largo in the County of Fife in Scotland, and was bred a Sailor from his Youth. The reason of his being left here was a difference betwixt him and his Captain; which, together with the Ships being leaky, made him willing rather to stay here, than go along with him at first; and when he was at last willing, the Captain would not receive him. He had been in the Island before to wood and water, when two of the Ships Company were left upon it for six Months till the Ship return’d, being chas’d thence by two French South-Sea Ships.

He had with him his Clothes and Bedding, with a Firelock, some Powder, Bullets, and Tobacco, a Hatchet, a Knife, a Kettle, a Bible, some practical Pieces, and his Mathematical Instruments and Books. He diverted and provided for himself as well as he could; but for the first eight months had much ado to bear up against Melancholy, and the Terror of being left alone in such a desolate place. He built two Hutts with Piemento Trees, cover’d them with long Grass, and lin’d them with the Skins of Goats, which he kill’d with his Gun as he wanted, so long as his Powder lasted, which was but a pound; and that being near spent, he got fire by rubbing two sticks of Piemento Wood together upon his knee. In the lesser Hutt, at some distance from the other, he dress’d his Victuals, and in the larger he slept, and employ’d himself in reading, singing Psalms, and praying; so that he said he was a better Christian while in this Solitude than ever he was before, or than, he was afraid, he should ever be again. At first he never eat any thing till Hunger constrain’d him, partly for grief and partly for want of Bread and Salt; nor did he go to bed till he could watch no longer: the Piemento Wood, which burnt very clear, serv’d him both for Firing and Candle, and refresh’d him with its fragrant Smell.

He might have had Fish enough, but could not eat ‘em for want of Salt, because they occasion’d a Looseness; except Crawfish, which are there as large as our Lobsters, and very good: These he sometimes boil’d, and at other times broil’d, as he did his Goats Flesh, of which he made very good Broth, for they are not so rank as ours: he kept an Account of 500 that he kill’d while there, and caught as many more, which he mark’d on the Ear and let go. When his Powder fail’d, he took them by speed of foot; for his way of living and continual Exercise of walking and running, clear’d him of all gross Humours, so that he ran with wonderful Swiftness thro the Woods and up the Rocks and Hills, as we perceiv’d when we employ’d him to catch Goats for us. We had a Bull-Dog, which we sent with several of our nimblest Runners, to help him in catching Goats; but he distane’d and tir’d both the Dog and the Men, catch’d the Goats, and brought ‘em to us on his back. He told us that his Agility in pursuing a Goat had once like to have cost him his Life; he pursu’d it with so much Eagerness that he catch’d hold of it on the brink of a Precipice, of which he was not aware, the Bushes having hid it from him; so that he fell with the Goat down the said Precipice a great height, and was so stun’d and bruis’d with the Fall, that he narrowly escap’d with his Life, and when he came to his Senses, found the Goat dead under him. He lay there about 24 hours, and was scarce able to crawl to his Hutt, which was about a mile distant, or to stir abroad again in ten days.

He came at last to relish his Meat well enough without Salt or Bread, and in the Season had plenty of good Turnips, which had been sow’d there by Capt. Dampier’s Men, and have now overspread some Acres of Ground. He had enough of good Cabbage from the Cabbage-Trees, and season’d his Meat with the Fruit of the Piemento Trees, which is the same as the Jamaica Pepper, and smells deliciously He found there also a black Pepper call’d Malagita, which was very good to expel Wind, and against Griping of the Guts.

He soon wore out all his Shoes and Clothes by running thro the Woods; and at last being forc’d to shift without them, his Feet became so hard, that he run every where without Annoyance: and it was some time before he could wear Shoes after we found him; for not being us’d to any so long, his Feet swell’d when he came first to wear ‘em again.

After he had conquer’d his Melancholy, he diverted himself sometimes by cutting his Name on the Trees, and the Time of his being left and Continuance there. He was at first much pester’d with Cats and Rats, that had bred in great numbers from some of each Species which had got ashore from Ships that put in there to wood and water. The Rats gnaw’d his Feet and Clothes while asleep, which oblig’d him to cherish the Cats with his Goats-flesh; by which many of them became so tame, that they would lie about him in hundreds, and soon deliver’d him from the Rats. He likewise tam’d some Kids, and to divert himself would now and then sing and dance with them and his Cats: so that by the Care of Providence and Vigour of his Youth, being now but about 30 years old, he came at last to conquer all the Inconveniences of his Solitude, and to be very easy. When his Clothes wore out, he made himself a Coat and Cap of Goat-Skins, which he stitch’d together with little Thongs of the same, that he cut with his Knife. He had no other Needle but a Nail; and when his Knife was wore to the back, he made others as well as he could of some Iron Hoops that were left ashore, which he beat thin and ground upon Stones. Having some Linen Cloth by him, he sow’d himself Shirts with a Nail, and stitch’d ‘em with the Worsted of his old Stockings, which he pull’d out on purpose. He had his last Shirt on when we found him in the Island.

At his first coming on board us, he had so much forgot his Language for want of Use, that we could scarce understand him, for he seem’d to speak his words by halves. We offer’d him a Dram, but he would not touch it, having drank nothing but Water since his being there, and ‘twas some time before he could relish our Victuals.

He could give us an account of no other Product of the Island than what we have mention’d, except small black Plums, which are very good, but hard to come at, the Trees which bear ‘em growing on high Mountains and Rocks. Piemento Trees are plenty here, and we saw some of 60 foot high, and about two yards thick; and Cotton Trees higher, and near four fathom round in the Stock.

The Climate is so good, that the Trees and Grass are verdant all the Year. The Winter lasts no longer than June and July, and is not then severe, there being only a small Frost and a little Hail, but sometimes great Rains. The Heat of the Summer is equally moderate, and there’s not much Thunder or tempestuous Weather of any sort. He saw no venomous or savage Creature on the Island, nor any other sort of Beast but Goats, &c. as above-mention’d; the first of which had been put ashore here on purpose for a Breed by Juan Fernando a Spaniard, who settled there with some Families for a time, till the Continent of Chili began to submit to the Spaniards; which being more profitable, tempted them to quit this Island, which is capable of maintaining a good number of People, and of being made so strong that they could not be easily dislodg’d.

Ringrose in his Account of Capt. Sharp’s Voyage and other Buccaneers, mentions one who had escap’d ashore here out of a Ship which was cast away with all the rest of the Company and says he liv’d five years alone before he had the opportunity of another Ship to carry him off. Capt. Dampier talks of a Moskito Indian that belong’d to Capt. Watlin, who being a hunting in the Woods when the Captain left the Island, liv’d here three years alone, shifted much in the same manner as Mr. Selkirk did, till Capt. Dampier came hither in 1684, and carry’d him off. The first that went ashore was one of his Countrymen, and they saluted one another first by prostrating themselves by turns on the ground, and then embracing. But whatever there is in these Stories, this of Mr. Selkirk I know to be true; and his Behaviour afterwards gives me reason to believe the Account he gave me how he spent his time, and bore up under such an Affliction, in which nothing but the Divine Providence could have supported any Man. By this one may see that Solitude and Retirement from the World is not such an unsufferable State of Life as most Men imagine, especially when People are fairly call’d or thrown into it unavoidably, as this Man was; who in all probability must otherwise have perish’d in the Seas, the Ship which left him being cast away not long after, and few of the Company escap’d. We may perceive by this Story the Truth of the Maxim, That Necessity is the Mother of Invention, since he found means to supply his Wants in a very natural manner, so as to maintain his Life, tho not so conveniently, yet as effectually as we are able to do with the help of all our Arts and Society. It may likewise instruct us, how much a plain and temperate way of living conduces to the Health of the Body and the Vigour of the Mind, both which we are apt to destroy by Excess and Plenty, especially of strong Liquor, and the Variety as well as the Nature of our Meat and Drink: for this Man, when he came to our ordinary method of Diet and Life, tho he was sober enough, lost much of his Strength and Agility. But I must quit these Reflections, which are more proper for a Philosopher and Divine than a Mariner, and return to my own Subject.

RICHARD STEELE

It was not long after Selkirk’s return to England in 1711 – seven long years after his departure from Bristol – that he was sought out by the London journalist and essayist Richard Steele to be interviewed in several meetings about his castaway experience for The Englishman magazine.

‘Alexander Selkirk’, The Englishman

1713

Under the Title of this Paper, I do not think it foreign to my Design, to speak of a Man born in Her majesty’s Dominions, and relate an Adventure in his Life so uncommon, that it’s doubtful whether the like has happen’d to any other of human Race. The Person I speak of is Alexander Selkirk, whose Name is familiar to Men of Curiosity, from the Fame of his having lived four years and four Months alone in the Island of Juan Fernandez. I had the pleasure frequently to converse with the Man soon after his Arrival in England, in the Year 1711. It was matter of great Curiosity to hear him, as he is a Man of good Sense, give an Account of the different Revolutions in his own Mind in that long Solitude. When we consider how painful Absence from Company for the space of but one Evening, is to the generality of Mankind, we may have a sense how painful this necessary and constant Solitude was to a Man bred a Sailor, and ever accustomed to enjoy and suffer, eat, drink, and sleep, and perform all Offices of Life, in Fellowship and Company. He was put ashore from a leaky Vessel, with the Captain of which he had had an irreconcileable difference; and he chose rather to take his Fate in this place, than in a crazy Vessel, under a disagreeable Commander. His Portion were a Sea-Chest, his wearing Cloaths and Bedding, a Fire-lock, a Pound of Gun-powder, a large quantity of Bullets, a Flint and Steel, a few Pounds of Tobacco, an Hatchet, a Knife, a Kettle, a Bible, and other Books of Devotion, together with Pieces that concerned Navigation, and his Mathematical Instruments. Resentment against his Officer, who had ill used him, made him look forward on this Change of Life, as the more eligible one, till the Instant in which he saw the Vessel put off; at which moment, his Heart yearned within him, and melted at the parting with his Comrades and all Human Society at once. He had in Provisions for the Sustenance of Life but the quantity of two Meals, the Island abounding only with wild Goats, Cats and Rats. He judged it most probable that he should find more immediate and easy Relief, by finding Shell-fish on the Shore, than seeking Game with his Gun. He accordingly found great quantities of Turtles, whose Flesh is extreamly delicious, and of which he frequently eat very plentifully on his first Arrival, till it grew disagreeable to his Stomach, except in Jellies. The Necessities of Hunger and Thirst, were his greatest Diversions from the Reflection on his lonely Condition. When those Appetites were satisfied, the Desire of Society was as strong a Call upon him, and he appeared to himself least necessitious when he wanted every thing; for the Supports of his Body were easily attained, but the eager Longings for seeing again the Face of Man during the Interval of craving bodily Appetites, were hardly supportable. He grew dejected, languid, and melancholy, scarce able to refrain from doing himself Violence, till by Degrees, by the Force of Reason, and frequent reading of the Scriptures, and turning his Thoughts upon the Study of Navigation, after the Space of eighteen Months, he grew thoroughly reconciled to his Condition. When he had made this Conquest, the Vigour of his Health, Disengagement from the World, a constant, chearful, serene Sky, and a temperate Air, made his Life one continual Feast, and his Being much more joyful than it had before been irksome. He now taking Delight in every thing, made the Hutt in which he lay, by Ornaments which he cut down from a spacious Wood, on the side of which it was situated, the most delicious Bower, fann’d with continual Breezes, and gentle Aspirations of Wind, that made his Repose after the Chase equal to the most sensual Pleasures.

I forgot to observe, that during the Time of his Dissatisfaction, Monsters of the Deep, which frequently lay on the Shore, added to the Terrors of his Solitude; the dreadful Howlings and Voices seemed too terrible to be made for human Ears; but upon the Recovery of his Temper, he could with Pleasure not only hear their Voices, but approach the Monsters themselves with great Intrepidity. He speaks of Sea-Lions, whose Jaws and Tails were capable of seizing or breaking the Limbs of a Man, if he approached them: But at that Time his Spirits and Life were so high, and he could act so regularly and unconcerned, that meerly from being unruffled in himself, he killed them with the greatest Ease imaginable: For observing, that though their Jaws and Tails were so terrible, yet the Animals being mighty slow in working themselves round, he had nothing to do but place himself exactly opposite their Middle, and as close to them as possible, and he dispatched them with his Hatchet at Will.

The Precaution which he took against Want, in case of Sickness, was to lame Kids when very young, so as that they might recover their Health, but never be capable of Speed. These he had in great Numbers about his Hutt; and when he was himself in full Vigour, he could take at full Speed the swiftest Goat running up a Promontory, and never failed of catching them but on a Descent.

His Habitation was extremely pester’d with Rats, which gnaw’d his Cloaths and Feet when sleeping. To defend him against them, he fed and tamed Numbers of young Kitlings, who lay about his Bed, and preserved him from the Enemy. When his Cloaths were quite worn out, he dried and tacked together the skins of Goats, with which he cloathed himself, and was enured to pass through Woods, Bushes, and Brambles with as much Carelessness and Precipitance as any other Animal. It happened once to him, that running on the Summit of a Hill, he made a Stretch to seize a Goat, with which under him, he fell down a Precipice, and lay sensless for the Space of three Days, the Length of which Time he Measured by the Moon’s Growth since his last Observation. This manner of life grew so exquisitely pleasant, that he never had a Moment heavy upon his Hands; his Nights were untroubled, and his Days joyous, from the Practice of Temperance and Exercise. It was his Manner to use stated Hours and Places for Exercises of Devotion, which he performed aloud, in order to keep up the Faculties of Speech, and to utter himself with greater Energy.

When I first saw him, I thought, if I had not been let into his Character and Story, I could have discerned that he had been much separated from Company, from his Aspect and Gesture; there was a strong but chearful Seriousness in his Look, and a certain Disregard to the ordinary things about him, as if he had been sunk in Thought. When the Ship which brought him off the Island came in, he received them with the greatest Indifference, with relation to the Prospect of going off with them, but with great Satisfaction in an Opportunity to refresh and help them. The Man frequently bewailed his Return to the World, which could not, he said, with all its Enjoyments, restore him to the Tranquility of his Solitude. Though I had frequently conversed with him, after a few Months Absence he met me in the Street, and though he spoke to me, I could not recollect that I had seen him; familiar Converse in this Town had taken off the Loneliness of his Aspect, and quite altered the Air of his Face.

This plain Man’s Story is a memorable Example, that he is happiest who confines his Wants to natural Necessities; and he that goes further in his Desires, increases his Wants in Proportion to his Acquisitions; or to use his own Expression, ‘I am now worth 800 Pounds, but shall never be so happy, as when I was not worth a Farthing.’

RETURN TO SEA AND SOCIETY

The rescued Selkirk was shorn, shaved, feted and made a fuss of by his rescuers, and – as he took on a host role while the Duke and Dutchess rested for two weeks at Juan Fernandez – the Englishmen even gave him the honorary titles of ‘governor’ or ‘monarch’ of the island in recognition of his intimate knowledge of it. But the most significant title was that of ‘mate’ of the Duke which, as Woodes Rogers explained, was given to him after the generous recommendation by William Dampier.

Dampier also brought Selkirk the news that the Cinque Ports had not quite sunk, as he had predicted, but had sprung a terminal leak after leaving the island and had just managed to limp to the edge of a mainland harbour where, at the mercy of the Spanish, the survivors were treated with such barbarity that all but a handful of them died.

Selkirk was thus very glad of his blessing in disguise, that he had not sailed on from the island with Stradling to a fate worse than death. And he had much more faith in sailing on with the men of the Duke and the Dutchess.

Before doing so, the tired men were rejuvenated and those with scurvy recovered well during their two-week rest on Juan Fernandez with Selkirk, while he tried to readjust to their way of life – not always successfully. When Captain Rogers first ushered him to his cabin and presented him with a celebratory glass of rum, the smell of it turned his stomach and he could not drink it. He was given fresh clothes and did not feel comfortable in them. Nor could he walk – or run – in the new shoes that were provided for him.

He could still run well enough in his bare feet, however. He was successful at leading the ships’ hunting parties to the best rock pools for crayfish, through the woods to the turnip patches and cabbage palms, up the mountainsides in pursuit of the two or three goats to make stew for the recovering sailors every day. They also lived off the lamb-like’ flesh of seals and sea lions with which they shared the beach. But however well they recovered, none of them could keep up with Selkirk’s speed. Indeed, his incredible fleetness of foot had become one of his most vital island survival techniques and there was general amazement that he could even outrun the ships’ bulldog.

Almost too soon, the busy little town that had grown up on the beach to clean and repair the ships was being dismantled – the tents of sail canopies brought down, the forge cooled, the fat of slaughtered sea lions bottled up, the goat’s meat, vegetables and water stored away. And on February 14, 1709, the well-restocked Duke and the Dutchess set sail on what was destined to be one of the most successful British privateering ventures of the 18th century.

Several accounts of the rescued castaway’s experience suggest that he retained a certain ambivalence in his feeling about returning to the sea and society. For a start, he had to relearn to speak, dress and eat and drink in the manner expected of a ship’s officer, and one wonders if – having tasted such pure island freedom and closeness to nature – he would have relished every aspect of the transition.

Certainly, as the ships sailed smoothly northward at the beginning of that great adventure, it would be a safe assumption that he watched with tears rimming his eyes as the rugged volcanic outline of Juan Fernandez faded away behind the horizon. He would never see his beloved cats again, or his goats, or his cosy huts that had given him such comforting shelter when times were hard and lonely. He had brought with him all the mementoes he could, to keep the memory strong of a life-changing experience of survival that would live with him forever. But he did not want to yield to sentimentality. He shook his head and wiped away the tears. There was not so much to weep about. After all, a golden future beckoned and he would think on that.

A few years later, he might well have written ...

‘Twas a sad moment, I own, the Parting of the Ways from Juan Fernandez. Yet I was not overly Disappoint’d when I thought on the Opportunities now abounding. To save a Lengthy Tale, suffice to say that Good Fortune accompanied Our Voyage at All times whilst it bore away from my Island and the West of the Americas, full up to California, across to Guam and Batavia, afore Turning for Europe and Home, and could be describ’d as Nothing Less than a Great and Memorable Success.

Upon our Return, laden with Treasure in abundance, we were then three Ships strong, having been augmented by a Great and Magnificent Prize in the Shape of the Hansome Spanish galleon, Nostra Senora de la Encarnacion Disengani. This I was honour’d with sailing over the north of Scotland (thus avoiding the dangers of the Warring French in the Channel) and past the Coast of my Native Fife in the Middle of 1711, and sore did I wish that my Family, so near yet so Far in Nether Largo, could have Known of it.

Chapter 2

A Tale of Two Tales

It happened one day about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition ... How it came thither I knew not, nor could in the least imagine.

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

It is one of the most famous scenes ever evoked by a novel: the moment when the marooned Robinson Crusoe finds the footprint in his island’s sand that will eventually lead him to Man Friday and some unexpected but welcome companionship.

One footprint: ‘I could see no other impression but that one.’ The cover of this book illustrates two such prints – of left and right feet – to make it clear that, despite unquestionably being the inspiration for Crusoe, Alexander Selkirk was quite a different animal. He would surely have seen footprints in the mud of his island, but they would have been his own. For the essential difference was that he and his remarkable story were real. Also, he was a working-class rough diamond from a Scottish fishing village background whose impetuous character contrasted starkly with that of Defoe’s Crusoe, a middle-class, genteel plantation owner. And there are dozens of other stark differences between the two stories. To mention but a few ...

Crusoe is the sole survivor of a dramatic shipwreck, while Selkirk’s abandonment was to some degree self-imposed – after he argued with his Captain Thomas Stradling, refused to sail further with him if their ship was not properly prepared, and had his bluff called.

Crusoe is rescued and taken home to England in 1686 after surviving 28 years, two months, and 19 days on the island, while Selkirk was marooned on his island for four years and four months before being rescued in 1709.

Crusoe spends his early castaway days shuttling on a makeshift raft between the beach and the shipwreck and manages to salvage endless piles of useful stuff – from muskets and powder through crowbars and hammocks, nails and clothes; whereas, after his abandonment, Selkirk was set on the beach with only limited personal possessions grudgingly allowed by the captain.

Crusoe enjoys the company not only of Man Friday but of a dog and a parrot, while Selkirk’s consoling companions were his domesticated goats and a veritable army of cats which he taught tricks.

Crusoe’s return home eventually sees him marrying and settling down with a family (before his wife’s death), while Selkirk’s childless love life was an extraordinary mess – he promised himself to one woman from his home village, married an English woman, and made wills to them both, so that his estate was bitterly fought over after his demise.

Crusoe’s fictional island was located by Defoe not in the Pacific Ocean (as was Selkirk’s factual island of Mas-a-Tierra in the Juan Fernandez archipelago), but in the Atlantic – ‘22 degrees of longitude difference west from Cape St Augustino’ so that Crusoe found he was ‘gotten upon the coast of Guiana, or the north part of Brazil, beyond the River Amazonas, toward that of the River Oronoque, commonly called the Great River.’

Tourism chiefs on the island of Tobago seem to think that means them, so they have generated a lively tourism industry around the myth of Crusoe’s presence there, which also includes ‘his cave.’ Here is some of Tobago’s present-day tourism publicity:

Tobago – Robinson Crusoe’s island

Tobago, also called Crusoe’s Island, is said to be the island on which Daniel Defoe modelled his famous book. The cave where the fictional character dwelled is near Crown Point.

Crusoe would have been very much at home here. The island is one of beauty and contrasts and in many areas is still unspoilt and even undiscovered by visitors. The traditional Tobago of golden sandy beaches and friendly local fishermen still remains. While the isand’s south-west corner has some lovely hotels of very high standard there is still a huge variety of smaller character hotels and quiet villas for visitors to enjoy.

Tobago has two distinct coastlines. The rugged Atlantic coast with its dramatic views and spectacular coast road is also home to some sheltered coves and beautiful beaches. This windward side of the island leads up to the wildlife paradise of Tyrrel’s Bay with the enchanting outcrops of Goat Island and Little Tobago just a short boat ride away.

By contrast the leeward Caribbean coastline is peppered with gentle golden sandy beaches, beautiful yet peaceful and undiscovered. The waters around Tobago are fed from the great Orinoco River whose warm currents sustain a marine life of incredible diversity.

Tobago has all the good things of the Caribbean so perhaps Robinson Crusoe did live here after all?

And here is how the genuine castaway’s Chilean island of Mas a Tierra is promoted after having been officially renamed Robinson Crusoe Island by the Chilean government in 1966; though it is still more generally referred to simply as Juan Fernandez.

Juan Fernandez: Robinson Crusoe Island

Robinson Crusoe Island was created by several volcanic explosions which gave life to the group of Juan Fernández Islands. The island was lived on for four years by the shipwrecked Alexander Selkirk, who motivated the writer Daniel Defoe to write the literature classic Robinson Crusoe.

Nature endows the island with a unique variety of flora and vegetables specific to this location. Also, there are animals like the fur seal and red hummingbird which are unique to this area.

The awe of such natural beauty gives one an appreciation and motivated the world authorities to pronounce the island as a national park and a world biosphere reserve. Existing under these 2 titles helps to secure conservation of its biodiversity.

Robinson Crusoe Island is unique to the other Juan Fernández Islands due to its permanent population concentrated in the city of San Juan Bautista. The local economy is based on lobster fishing.

From November to April the island is full of life. During this time, one can appreciate the birth of the fur seal babies who cordially observe the arrival of tourists and greet them with funny somersaults.

The story of Selkirk’s stay on the island has transformed it into a mysterious, exciting place. But its beauty has made it an unforgettable paradise.

Actually, there are three islands in the Juan Fernandez archipelago. Robinson Crusoe is the main one, with its small population, fishing industry and almost invisible airfield for daring visitors; the others are both uninhabited – the tiny Santa Clara and also-renamed Alexander Selkirk Island, which was never even visited by the Scottish mariner.

In any case, the two castaway islands, the real and the imagined one, are a huge distance apart and such radical differences in the two tales go on and on. Yet there is no dissenting voice, academic or otherwise, ever to be heard when the claim is made that the Scottish sailor’s experience inspired the classic story by Daniel Defoe, though he set it back 50 years and east into another ocean altogether.

However, if it is quite generally accepted that Defoe based his famous book on the exploits of Alexander Selkirk, some people might find it a little puzzling to discover just how little the two tales have in common. In some minds the stories are actually just one, so intertwined are they in the general consciousness: as with the renaming of Selkirk’s island to Crusoe; as with the Crusoe Hotel in Lower Largo where, despite the name, one would assume the focus would be on the local connection alone. But while a dedicated display room celebrates Selkirk and a novelty signpost outside also points to Juan Fernandez (7,500 miles away) well-fed diners in the restaurant can view an illustrated wall mounting that summarises the fictitious tale of Defoe’s hero.

So when you mention Selkirk’s name, many people say, ‘Oh, yes, Robinson Crusoe’ as if they were one and the same person. And yet the stories’ similarities seem fewer than their differences. Apart from his wearing of the goats’ skins as clothes when his own everyday clothes give out, one of Crusoe’s most striking similarities with Selkirk is the keeping of these animals, whose ancestors in the true story were initially imported to the island by a passing Spanish ship. This is from the Defoe’s novel:

My dog surprised a young kid, and seized upon it, and I, running in to take hold of it, caught it, and saved it alive from the dog. I had a great mind to bring it home if I could; for I had often been musing, whether it might not be possible to get a kid of two and so raise a breed of tame goats, which might supply me when my powder and shot should be all spent. I made a collar to this little creature, and with a string which I made of some rope-yarn which I always carried about me, I led him along, though with some difficulty till I came to my bower, and there I enclosed him and left him ...

Despite the natural riches of his island that gave Selkirk some happiness and most of his physical wants, he was occasionally stricken by severe bouts of melancholy and homesickness. And such moments would also envelope Crusoe ...

The anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me to think of the woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in; and how I was a prisoner locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, without redemption. In the midst of the greatest composures of my mind, this would break out upon me like a storm and make me wring my hands and weep like a child.

Selkirk may have had his troubles with the Church in his wild Fifeshire youth (see chapter 3), but in his isolated state he found himself turning to religion – as did Crusoe when feeling down:

I daily read the Word of God and applied all the comforts of it to my present state. One morning, being very sad, I opened the Bible upon these words, ‘I will never, never leave thee, nor forsake thee’; immediately it occurred that these words were to me; why else should they be directed in such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my condition, as one forsaken of God and man?

What the two figures also had in common was a recurring and disturbing ambivalence about the happiness or misery found on their imposed island home:

I began to conclude in my mind that it was possible for me to be more happy in this forsaken, solitary condition than it was probable I should ever have been in any other particular state in the world; and with this thought I was going to give thanks to God for bringing me to this place. I know not what it was, but something shocked my mind at that thought, and I durst not speak the words. ‘How canst thou be such a hypocrite,’ said I, even audibly, ‘to pretend to be thankful for a condition which however thou may’st endeavour to be contented with, thou wouldst rather pray heartily to be deliver’d from?’

The Selkirk spark for the classic book is accepted everywhere as a fact, the only doubt being whether he and the author ever met and, if so, where. The only person who appears to have been shy about acknowledging Selkirk’s input is Defoe himself, and more of that later. But it is first worth pointing out just what a massive literary achievement Robinson Crusoe was, coming at a time when the multitasking author – pamphleteer, tax inspector, journalist, economist, merchant, novelist and English government spy on Scotland before the Union – really needed a financial fillip.

For me, it was summed up by a visit to Waterstone’s bookshop in central Bristol no fewer than 290 years after the book was first published. ‘Would you have a copy of Robinson Crusoe?’ I enquired innocently. The female assistant with bright red hair looked at me askance. ‘Well, of course we do,’ she said, leading me to a display shelf where there were as many as three editions by three different publishers. ‘We also have several abridged editions for children – who often seem to appreciate them more than contemporary stories.’

Well. You can’t deny that’s quite something after nearly three centuries. It seems piratical adventures will never lose their appeal to the child in us all.

No doubt Defoe, the father of seven children, sensed that when he embarked into fiction in his late fifties, desperately broke and struggling to find rewarding work as a journalist. A prolific and versatile writer, in his time he produced more than 500 books, pamphlets and journals on a wide range of topics including politics, crime, religion, marriage, geography and psychology. None of these journalistic or literary efforts delivered him much financial security. Indeed, he often got into serious trouble – such as bankruptcy and imprisonment – because of his political intensity, his tendency to libel people, and his inability to stay out of debt.

It must have been an immeasurable relief to him when the publication of Robinson Crusoe created a sensation in London and far beyond. Published in 1719, the novel was a huge and immediate success. Everything about it seemed to be record-breaking, including its full title which was The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner; Who lived Eight and Twenty Years All Alone in an Uninhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River Oronoque ... An Account of How He Was at Last Strangely Delivered by Pyrates.

It was soon referred to simply as Robinson Crusoe, of course, and before the end of the year the first edition had run through four print runs. As is so often the case with blockbusters, many publishers had turned it down. But William Taylor, the publisher who accepted it, soon found demand so great he had to employ several printers simultaneously to produce the required number of copies. Often said to be the first English novel, Robinson Crusoe had, within a few years, reached a readership as wide as any book ever written in that language. By the end of the 19th century it had been published in at least 700 editions and translations. And it has remained enduringly popular throughout the world ever since. It is still the most widely read book after the bible, has been translated into virtually every known tongue, and sold tens of millions of copies.

Despite that huge achievement and all his undoubted talents, Defoe made little money out of it as he sold the copyright and still managed to die poor, probably hiding from his creditors. But in the creation of Crusoe he definitely hit a rich vein of abiding human curiosity. The idea of being separated from civilised society and having to fend for yourself all alone on a deserted island obviously has universal appeal. We all wonder how we would fare in such circumstances: would we go berserk, jump off a cliff from which we see no rescue ships, or buckle down and apply some practical self-discipline to the challenge and wait it out?

It seems Selkirk experienced a fair mix of these reactions, which no doubt gave Defoe some interesting and authentic detail to work on. But did he get it second-hand or from the man himself? Defoe denied ever meeting Selkirk, but there has long been a huge question mark over that assertion. In any case there were two others close to Selkirk who certainly influenced the creation of Crusoe – Captain Woodes Rogers and Sir Richard Steele. Their well-circulated and avidly-read accounts of the castaway’s adventures could not have been missed by such a diligent man as Defoe, keenly aware of current news events. He was in any case a friend of Steele, also a penny newspaperman and prodigious writer, who had met Selkirk, and they must have discussed the whole castaway saga together. Defoe was obviously taken by the ‘novel’ potential of the tale and (it is respectfully suggested) set about getting his own first-hand, horse’s-mouth interview with Selkirk who, after his return to England with a hugely bountiful Spanish treasure ship (see chapter 5), spent some time in Bristol awaiting another super-ambitious voyage with Captain Woodes Rogers.

The captain brought Selkirk from London into his Bristol home in leafy, elegant Queen Square partly to reserve and prepare him for this new voyage – with a new South Sea Company heralding peace and freedom of the seas between England and Spain – and partly to show him off as something of a promotional novelty to augment the undoubted impact of his (the captain’s) book, A Cruising Voyage round the World. ‘ A bizarre story is told,’ recalls the Western Daily Press feature writer and editor Gerry Brooke, ‘that while he was a guest of Woodes Rogers, Selkirk amused the local gentry by parading round the elegant square on a Sunday after church, decked out in his island goatskins.’

Today you can still see the area of Selkirk’s short residency (in the captain’s servant quarters) – at Queen Square, which is ageing gracefully in all its tree-lined glory, though the house itself has gone. A plaque at Nos 33-35 marks the place where it was ...

WOODES ROGERS

1679-1732

Great seaman, circumnavigator, colonial governor

Lived in a house on this site

While Selkirk was becoming a local hero, Defoe – wearing another of his many hats – was a frequent visitor to Bristol as a government excise commissioner for the glass duty, responsible for collecting the tax on bottle manufacture. But his writer’s hat was never far from his head. Had he heard from someone that Selkirk had ‘papers’ – presumably some kind of invaluable log of his adventure? Contrary to his own denial, there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that he did interview Selkirk – several times in a few different places – and that he took ‘papers’ from him. If he did not then return them, that would have been potentially scandalous and perhaps explain his denial of a meeting. Another theory is advanced by Bristol historian and pub owner Mark Steeds: ‘I believe Defoe denied having contact with Selkirk because he wanted to distance himself from him so that Robinson Crusoe would be perceived as all his own unassisted work.’

In any case, it is quite widely accepted in Bristol that Defoe and Selkirk met in the picturesque Tudor-style Llandoger Trow pub, a place which propels you magically back to the 18th century while gracing King Street at right angles to the Welsh Back quayside that saw much River Avon traffic from Wales. It is only a few hundred yards from the erstwhile home of Woodes Rogers.

On its wood-rich ground floor, next to a sumptuously carved period wooden mantelpiece, the pub boasts a pillar that stakes the claim:

The Llandoger Trow dates back to 1664 and is steeped in history and legend, the most famous of which are the literary connections to Daniel Defoe and Robert Louis Stevenson. It is said that Daniel Defoe met Alexander Selkirk, the marooned sailor on which he based the book Robinson Crusoe, here. A trow is a flat-bottomed sailing barge, and the Llandoger part of the name comes from a small Welsh village called Llandogo on the River Wye in Monmouthshire.

The Llandoger Trow is certainly one of the architectural gems in King Street along with the Georgian Bristol Old Vic theatre and vestigial traces of the city’s long maritime past. Diagonally opposite the pub is an early example of Bristol’s philanthropy, the St Nicholas Almshouse, the first multi-gabled building to be erected on a reclaimed marsh in 1652; while at the other end of the street is a second example – the infirm-looking group of Merchant Seamen’s Almshouses (from 1699) whose most visible outer wall bears the following poem:

Freed from all storms, the tempest and the rage Of billows, here we spend our age. Our weather-beaten vessels here repair And from the Merchants’ kind and generous care Find harbour here; no more we put to sea Until we launch into Eternity And lest our Widows whom we leave behind Should want relief, they too a shelter find. Thus all our anxious cares and sorrows cease Whilst our kind Guardians turn our toils to ease May they be with an endless Sabbath blest Who have afforded unto us this rest.

It is a convincing atmosphere and therefore very tempting to picture the two men huddled by candlelight in a corner of the pub – and to believe the bald statement on another of its wall mountings: ‘Many famous people have visited here and there appears to be no question that this is where Alexander Selkirk met Daniel Defoe of Robinson Crusoe fame.’

And what do local people think? The main bookseller in St Nicholas Market told me, ‘What do I know about the Defoe-Selkirk meeting at the Llandoger Trow? Only that it’s true. It must be true. From my schooldays I’ve grown up all my life with it.’

But perhaps this apparent certainty might be a little unfounded. Over the centuries ships’ crewmen of all sorts would have used the Llandoger Trow as their local and these might well have included Woodes Rogers and Alexander Selkirk. But it’s doubtful whether Defoe would have joined them there, as he was not keen on the good captain (or his well-received book) and had at one time called him and his fellow adventurer Captain William Dampier, ‘illiterate sailors.’

So pinning down the meeting place is not quite as simple as that. ‘I wouldn’t like to rule out the Llandoger as the place, simply because it’s possible,’ says Gerry Brooke, who is an enthusiastic member of the local Long John Silver Trust which studies and promotes Bristol’s maritime history. ‘But there were a couple of pubs off Castle Street that had better claims, and unfortunately they’re not there anymore. The Selkirk connection with the Llandoger seems to be a mid-20th-century discovery.’

His meaning is that the claim appears to have been something of a promotional ploy by previous post-war owners of the establishment, the Berni brothers, who were not shy about adjusting literary history to their commercial will. They even claimed that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island there, but he did half of that at Braemar in Scotland and the other half at Davos in Switzerland.

Historian Steeds, an equally energetic member of the trust, agrees and offers this: ‘Despite Defoe’s recorded denial, I think the two men definitely met – and probably a few times. Selkirk wasn’t always at Woodes Rogers’ house and when he lodged at the Cock and Bottle Inn in the lane of the same name off Castle Street there was a pub there called The Star where Defoe stayed. It seems to me quite probable that they met in the latter, which was known for its convivial wit.’

I think it is improbable that the two men could not have known each other. How could they have avoided meeting each other in the same street? But amid all The Star’s loud and witty banter, would an educated Englishman like Defoe have been able to understand the dialect of the Fifer? I believe he would for the author had not long returned south after spending some years in Edinburgh, firstly as an English government spy reporting on the Scots’ machinations before the 1707 Union; then in 1710 as editor of the Edinburgh Courant working from his Moubray House home, which was built in 1462 and still stands next to the John Knox House halfway down the Royal Mile. His ear would thus have been well attuned to Selkirk’s Scottish accent.

Meetings between the two were also said to have taken place in a private house in Bristol – that of Mrs Damaris [or Daniel] in St James Square and Steeds claims that there were sworn affidavits by witnesses ‘who saw Defoe take Selkirk’s papers away.’ That there were indeed Selkirk ‘papers’ seems to be confirmed by my visit to Bristol Central Library where I found the following ‘Evidence of the meeting of Alexander Selkirk and Daniel Defoe’ on a couple of faded typewritten sheets with the prompting of a yellowing card-indexing system in a venerable wall-side cabinet.

Extract from The Bristol Mirror, Saturday, March 1, 1851 To the Editor of the Bristol Mirror. Sir, – Having accidentally taken up an old paper of yours (October 20th, 1849), I found it stated, in a very interesting account of the Duke and Dutchess privateers, that my grandfather, Alderman Harford, ‘was the first person who proved that De Foe composed Robinson Crusoe from papers given him by Alexander Selkirk’ and that you would be glad of any further information on the subject.

I have much pleasure in confirming the account there given, having often heard my father say, ‘that an old lady [Mrs Daniel, a daughter of the celebrated Major Wade] told my grandfather that Selkirk had informed her that he had placed his papers in De Foe’s hands.’

My grandfather purchased many of the things which were sold on the return of the Duke and Dutchess, with the rich prize of the Manilla ship (mentioned by Woodes Rogers in his account of the voyage, in which Selkirk was found, on the island of Juan Fernandez); they are now in my possession, and consist principally of very handsome china, which was going to the Queen of Spain, with curious articles, in tortoise shell and Indian ink. Captain Rogers [then] lived at Frenchay, in the house now the residence of Mrs Brice.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, Henry Charles Harford.*

Further items from this source suggest Selkirk did indeed have ‘papers’ and undertook meetings with Defoe. Extract from F Brown’s History and Antiquities of Nailsea Court (1876).

… In these ships [the Duke and Dutchess] Captain W. Woodes Rogers also brought away Alexander Selkirk from Juan Fernandez, whose papers being put in the hands of Daniel Defoe were drawn out into the story of Robinson Crusoe.

Extract from Gloucestershire Notes and Queries 1881.

Mr Walter Wilson’s opinion is, that when Defoe was lodging at a public house in Castle Street, Bristol, he met with Capt. Rogers or Alexander Selkirk himself, and so got the framework of Robinson Crusoe.

Extract from SH Evans’ The Book of Nailsea Court.

Damaris [Daniel] married three times, in each case to men of wealth and standing ... When she was an old lady, living at 16 St James’ Square, the widow of her third husband, Thomas Daniel, she often told how Defoe and Selkirk met at her house.

The question of whether or not Defoe and Selkirk ever met has been a big challenge for research talents for many years. I do not pretend to have the definitive answer, but I find the idea of the existence of Selkirk’s ‘papers’ quite electrifying and, try as I might, I can’t shake off the convincing circumstantial evidence for both their existence and the meetings between Defoe and Selkirk. Another development. Mark Steeds assures me he can match the circumstantial evidence with some of the references he has found over the years. Between pulling pints at the Beaufort Arms at Hawkesbury Upton, Gloucestershire, he managed to dig these out, and within a day of talking to him, I received the following email:

‘Further to our conversations of today, please find below some references that might be of some use to you.’

From Bristol Past and Present Volume II (1881) page 137 – ‘Daniel Defoe and Robinson Crusoe’ The present spot has further associations with the memories of Robinson Crusoe. Nearly opposite the north-east end of St Peter’s Church [now just a shell after heavy bombing] is Cock and Bottle Lane, wherein stands the Star Inn, a tavern that in the last century was a sort of local Mitre to all the convivial wits of Bristol. This inn stands, or rather stood, for it has been lately altogether transformed, upon the site of the Northern Keep of the castle ... Our purpose in mentioning the inn, however, is to remark that among its guests in the early part of the last century was Daniel Defoe. He had fled from London to escape his creditors, and was known amongst his acquaintance in Bristol as the ‘Sunday Gentleman’, from the fact of his daring to appear in the streets only on that day. His biographer, Mr Wilson, states that a friend of his resident in the city relates, ‘that one of his ancestors remembered Defoe, and sometimes saw him walking in the streets of Bristol, accoutred in the fashion of the times, with a fine flowing wig, lace ruffles and a sword by his side.’ The same writer adds that ‘one Mark Watkins who left the Red Lion in Castle Street, which Defoe also used to visit, was wont to entertain his company in after times with an account of a singular personage who made his appearance in Bristol, clothed in goat skins, in which dress he was in the habit of walking the streets, and went by the name of Alexander Selkirk or Robinson Crusoe.’

From Life of Selkirk, Isaac James, 1861.

To place, says Mr Harford, beyond the dispute of any twelve impartial persons the fact that Selkirk placed his papers in Defoe’s hands, and that from them he wrote Robinson Crusoe, it was related by Mrs Daniel (a granddaughter of Major Wade, who was wounded in the battle of Sedgemoor) to Mr Joseph Harford, of Dighton Street, Bristol ... that ‘she knew him well, and that he told her such was the case.’

From Bristol Past and Present Volume III(1882).

We have already given some particulars of Defoe’s residence in Bristol. The following will not be without interest to those who have – as who has not? – found in his Robinson Crusoe one of the finest prose epics that the world has yet seen. Defoe, when in Bristol and in communication with Alexander Selkirk, used the Star Inn, Cock and Bottle Lane. Defoe, with all his talent, was ever in difficulty ... His Robinson Crusoe was, after many refusals, first published in the London Post; it began in the 125th number, and closed in the 289th. The publisher made £1,000 profit by it, and in forty years it went through forty editions; yet Defoe died, in 1731, not only poor, but insolvent.

From Daniel Defoe, Master of Fictions by M. Novak, 2001.

Defoe was to refer to Dampier and Woodes Rogers as ‘illiterate sailors’ in his Compleat English Gentlemen, arguing that an imaginative and creative student of geography could follow these two circumnavigators of the world while learning ‘a thousand times’ more than they put down in their texts ... Dampier had a good eye for detail and Rogers had the fascinating account of Selkirk to enliven his narrative; but, unburdened by the necessity to relate history and truth, Defoe could always draw upon his imagination to write an exciting series of adventures.

Bristol and its Famous Associations by S Hutton, 1907.

Robinson Crusoe – a work that will be as enduring as the English language itself, and of which Lander said, ‘Achilles and Homer will be forgotten before Crusoe and Defoe’ – was a frequent visitor to Bristol, his favourite haunt being the Star Inn, Cock and Bottle Lane, Castle Street.

All of this has raised other questions in my mind. Let’s assume that Selkirk’s ‘papers’ did exist – as there are plenty of references to them – and that Defoe took them away to help in his Crusoe creation. He would surely have promised to return them; but it seems that he did not. It has to be said that, even then, even before he wrote his great classic, they must have been worth a pretty penny, for Selkirk was already famous through the book written by Woodes Rogers. And what form did they take, these ‘papers’? Were they loose or were they bound in a volume as a journal of the day would have been? It seems unlikely that he would have had two sets of notes about his adventures, so what was his wife talking about when (presumably acting on information imparted to her by Selkirk before he died) she asked for the return of his ‘journal’ in a letter to the then Duke of Hamilton around 1722. (See chapter 8)

That Yr Grace’s Petitionr is the widdow of Alexander Selkirk who was left on the desolate island called Ferdinando where he continued alone four years and four months all which time he kept a journal of his observations as also of the Voyages he made with Capt. Dempiore as also in the Duke which took the Aquaperlea Ship in the South Sea which ship Yr Petitionr’s husband had in his charge as Commander to bring to England and upon his arrival his late Grace Yr most noble Father then desireing to see the abovesaid journal of Petitionr’s said Husband did leave it with him after which, proceeding again to leave on another voyage, died in the same.

Were the ‘papers’ and ‘journal’ one and the same thing? We will probably never know, as Frances Selkirk did not get an answer from the Duke, and the current Duke of Hamilton has been unable to help find what, if they exist at all, must now be among the most valuable written documents on earth – whether or not they contributed minimally or greatly to the creation of Robinson Crusoe. I can say no more than this and allow readers to come to their own conclusion.

Daniel Defoe was always broke. As an English spy in Scotland before and at the time of the 1707 Act of Union and a resident sometime thereafter, he would surely have made the acquaintance of the Duke of Hamilton, who was a prime mover in the debate – first on resisting the union and then accepting it. ‘I’m quite sure that Defoe the spy would have gone out of his way to make it his business to get to know the duke,’ says Scottish historian Mark Jardine. So did Defoe, in Bristol or London in 1713, have reason to seek out an old acquaintance, preferably a prominent and wealthy Scotsman, who might have been interested in buying the papers of a famous fellow Scot? I only ask ... and if I am wrong, I beg forgiveness from a great writer.

We can get the measure of Defoe’s literary achievement by recalling the arrogant words of Captain Edward Cooke, the subordinate colleague of Captain Woodes Rogers who, on their return to England with their treasure ship, raced his senior colleague into print with a book that barely mentioned the rescue of Alexander Selkirk from Juan Fernandez. It was not well received, and when the Woodes Rogers’ account came out with its colourful chapter on the rescue, it revealed the stark difference between a writer and a non-writer, who could only record:

To hear of a man’s living so long alone in a desert island seems to some very surprising and they presently conclude he may afford a very agreeable relation of his life, when in reality it is the most barren subject that nature can afford.

Nine years later, having mulled over the story at great length and named it after his preacher friend Tomothy Cruso, the masterly Defoe was to sharpen up that difference a hundredfold, applying his fluid pen, vivid imagination and dozens of examples of seemingly authentic details to create an unforgettable adventure tale destined to live forever.

As Stephen Collett wrote in Relics of Literature in 1823:

It has been too much the fashion to calumniate De Foe, as having surreptitiously made use of the information given him by Alexander Selkirk, who, as every one knows, passed four years and four months on the then uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez, in the South Sea.

The fact however is, that had it not been for the admirable manner in which De Foe dressed up the narrative in the immortal tale of Robinson Crusoe, Selkirk and his sufferings would have been long ago forgotten.

So what exactly were his sufferings? As will become clear later in this book, they were quite short-lived and eventually overtaken by his melancholy enjoyments.

Chapter 3

The Village he left Behind

Oh, but it’s pretty. When you descend into the heart of Alexander Selkirk’s Lower Largo today, down under the arches of the unused railway viaduct towards the little stone harbour that once pumped its piscatorial lifeblood, it’s not exactly like going back in time. One or two scenes remind you that this is the 21st century: the few leisure craft bobbing on the dock water; the first-corner shop with modest pretensions to be a mini superstore, the bumper-to-bumper parked cars, including gleaming high-range 4x4s, which line the snaking form of Main Street; and the occasional garden with resting, tarpaulin-wrapped yachts. Yet there can be no denying that the old-fashioned shape and run of the largely white-walled village must still be very much as it was when the famous mariner grew up there.

The location is like a romantic film set. You can easily imagine a period drama being played out here. The glittering expanse of the Forth estuary is visible from every close and garden, and huddled into the shoreline that follows the sandy, rock-punctuated crescent of Largo Bay, the street’s parallel lines of four-square little sandstone houses, with orange pantiled roofs or charming and original crowstep gables, are the stuff of picture postcards. Some are very smart, others unselfconsciously iffy around the edges in that inimitable Scottish way, with flaking paint and neglected grooming. And if the visitor needed reminding that this was a place by the sea, many boast evocative names like Beach House, Waterfront, Sea View, Sea Forth, Rock View, Seashell Cottage, and Inch View, for the mid-estuary island of Inchkeith is often in view from the shore and, on his return later in life, might well have served as a poignant reminder to Selkirk of the island paradise he once called home.

On most clear days you can also see the seabird-white volcanic plug of the Bass Rock as a far-off dot to the south-east; and, looking across the great river the other way, if you are on high enough ground – nearby Largo Law, rising to a height of 1000 feet (305m), is conspicuous for many miles from all surrounding areas – you can just glimpse Scotland’s ancient capital of Edinburgh making its looming presence felt behind the famous road and rail bridges, just out of the picture.

Visitor ... it’s a word that brings out mixed feelings among the village’s more permanent residents, for an increasing number of the characterful homes here have been bought by well-off incomers for occasional visits – no doubt taking in the occasional round of golf at St Andrews only 12 miles distant – while others proclaim themselves available for holiday lets. The indigenous residents are left to ponder and weigh the advantages of incoming wealth as opposed to private peace and tranquillity.

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 first-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-mentioned 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.

This is to be found at the side of the path leading from the top of the twelve entrance steps to the North transept. The stone is small, about two feet high, leaning at a ten-degree angle in a bed of white seashells, and very weather-worn. On the front can be read the initials JS and EM, standing for John Selcraig and Euphan Mackie, the parents of Alexander Selkirk; and on the back is the name Andrew Selkirk.*

On the church’s front wall that overlooks the venerable village homes that seem to rise up and almost embrace it, there is a high stone panel with a faded winged angel-face that says simply FEAR GOD with the date 1623 at the foot of it. That date was 53 years before Alexander Selkirk was born, so although the site has housed a church since the 12th century, this building was of course a relatively new place when it called him to order so repeatedly as a young man.

Did the boy fear God enough and attend the kirk as assiduously as his family? It seems unlikely, as it is generally agreed by all his chroniclers that the young Selkirk was of ‘a most unruly disposition’, with a violent temper; and the damning word ‘fornication’ appears among the church’s records pertinent to him.

In the absence of police control, the parish churches tended to be the moral arbiters and punishers of the wayward in Selkirk’s time. A look back on their early 18th-century records throws illumination on the extent of their power and influence then over their parishioners, who were God-fearing in the most literal sense of the phrase. Ministers, often with the zealous help their under-officials, were like civil magistrates, who used a subject’s terror of a humiliating public sentence in front of the congregation to help check the progress of vice, mischief and perceived immorality.

So it’s not hard to imagine that, as a troublesome teenager, the spoiled and unruly young Alexander didn’t always relish the trek up the hill to count his largely unappreciated blessings and listen to the interminable diatribes of the fire-breathing minister, the Revd Alex Moncrieff.

Indeed, it was when that firepower was specifically aimed at him that he decided, before the chastising kirk session was done, that he might not wait around to find out what punishment they had in store for him. He was 19 years old when called to account over an incident that was to prove catalytic to his career, giving him a real taste for the salty life.

1695, August 25 – The same day the Session mett.

Alexr. Selchraige to be summoned.

The qlk day Alexr Selcraige, son of John Selcraige, elder, in Nether Largo, was dilated for his undecent beaiviar in ye church; the church officer is ordirred to ga and cite him to compear befoor our Session again ye nixt dyett.

What had he been up to that so offended the church? One account says was accused of having ‘thrawed his mouth’ at the minister. What did that mean? A couple of definitions of ‘thraw’ offered by the Concise Scots Dictionary might give us a clue. One is ‘a twisting of the face; a wry expression’; the other a more full-on ‘fit of obstinacy or ill-humour; the sulks.’ But indecent behaviour in the church? It sounds worse than insolence or the sulks, and modern writer Amanda Mitchison in her eponymous children’s book on Alexander Selkirk, suggests that it was. She writes that the previous Sunday, as his rasping and droning about Hell and damnation had gone on for almost three hours, the minister grew untypically quiet as he became aware of the spreading sound of muffled giggling among the pews, followed by a distinct splashing sound; then he noticed that the cheeky and uncontrollable Alexander Selkirk appeared to be relieving himself within the sacred walls of the church. To judge from the outrage on the minister’s face, when a suitable punishment was decided, Hell would have no comparable fury.

True or not, it can be assumed that Alexander had never been popular with the church officers. At the age of 13, six years before this entry in the kirk records, he and older brother John had dared to lead a popular community protest against the minister of that time, who had raised funds for the poor but had been somewhat tardy about passing them on. The records of that minister are on display in the church today and recount that the Revd John Auchenleck was ‘ousted by the rabble between 29th May and 2nd June, 1689, being obstructed in his duty by a great mob armed with staves and bludgeons.’

So when the boy was summoned to appear before the 1695 kirk session, and reluctantly did so along with his furious and humiliated father, John, he was no doubt relieved to find his punishment ‘dilated’ – or delayed – until a further meeting two days later. But according to that day’s recorded entry, he did not attend to take his medicine and had simply decided to run off to sea.

August 27 – Ye Session mett.

Alexr. Selcraige did not compear.*

The qlk day Alexr Selcraige, son to John Selcraige, elder, in Nether Largo, called, but did not compear, being gone away to ye seas; this business is continued ’till his return.

In any case, like many a young man of his age, he had to get away; not just from the finger-wagging kirk but also from parental pressures. His father had wanted him to continue in the family’s successful tannery and shoemaking business, while his mother had more ambitious hopes for her seventh son, as in these days – to quote John Howell – ‘the superstition is not yet entirely given up in Scotland that the seventh son is endowed with much of which others are destitute ... he was thought to have the second sight or a foreknowledge of events; even at the present day male fortune tellers always pretend to be seventh sons.’

In any case, Alexander’s mother had good reason to believe that he had some promise as ‘at a proper age he was sent to school [the parish school at Kirkston] where he made considerable progress, more especially in navigation, as the whole bent of his mind was to go to sea.’

Howell adds: ‘He was of quick parts but a spoiled and wayward boy, frequently engaged in mischief and reckless in the extreme. This was much increased by the indulgence of his mother, who concealed as much as she could his faults from his father, who was a strict disciplinarian; she having formed the most extravagant hopes from the circumstances of his birth, as being a seventh son, or lucky lad.

‘These foolish hopes led her to encourage his going to sea, that he might obtain the good fortune on which her superstitious dreams were fixed. This was the cause of much domestic strife and bickering because it thwarted her husband’s attentions with regard to Alexander; his wish being to keep him at home to assist him in his trade.’

There was another important point to consider of course – what Alexander himself wanted. Not that it would have carried much weight with either of his parents. But being so independent and headstrong, he would surely not have been content to buckle down to their expectations if he had other plans for himself. And he clearly did. There was little doubt that much of the volition that had pushed him ‘away to ye seas’ came out of his own head and heart.

It is not known exactly on which ship or voyage he went on after leaving Largo for the first time, but he probably left from Edinburgh’s port of Leith and some have speculated that he signed up to take part in Scotland’s infamous year-long Darien expedition to Panama which, being a spectacular failure still etched painfully in Scotland’s history, was aborted in 1699. But if he got back from that, he must indeed have been a lucky lad, for only one ship out of 16 returned.

But wherever he roamed, by November 7, 1701, he was back in Seatoun of Largo ... and in trouble again, this time with the relatively new minister, James Makgill. Basing himself again in the family’s Largo cottage, presumably a good deal hardened and experienced in the business of ship-sailing – otherwise he wouldn’t have got the job that later took him to his island – it could not be said that he had mellowed much. He had been home only a short while when a furious family quarrel resulted in a serious breach of village peace which in turn saw his reappearance before the kirk disciplinarians. What was this latest incident all about? It’s not difficult to imagine how tensions would rise and erupt quickly in the dark, crowded, smoky little family house, even though most of his brothers had now found homes of their own, and the village has never forgotten, to this day, that furious family row in which Alexander beat his brother Andrew with a wooden staff and assaulted his father, his brother John and even John’s wife Margaret Bell. To quote Robert Chambers’ 1827 book again:

The following is the accredited family narrative of that event ... Alexander, coming home one evening and feeling thirsty, raised a pipkin of water to his mouth in order to take a drink. It turned out to be salt-water, and he immediately replaced the vessel on the ground with an exclamation of disgust. This excited the humour of his brother [Andrew], who was sitting by the fire, and with whom he had not lately been on good terms. The laugh and jibe were met on Alexander’s part with a frown and a blow. Both brothers immediately closed in a struggle, in which Alexander had the advantage. Their father attempted to interpose; but the offended youth was not to be prevented by even paternal authority from taking his revenge. A general family combat then took place, some siding with one brother and some with the other; and peace was not restored till the whole town, alarmed by the noise, was gathered in scandalised wonderment to the spot.

We can presume that, being ‘accredited’ by the family and based on the church records, this is a fairly accurate account of the unforgotten fracas that sent Alexander back to sea again – and into history as the legendary Robinson Crusoe – though it is a touch incomplete. While it avoids the embellishment later used by many inventive writers, it errs on the conservative side. It does mention Alexander beating Andrew with a wooden staff, but not – as recorded by the church – his threatening to go up to the upper part of the house and get his pistol, or of challenging his brother to ‘a combate of Neiffells’ – bare-knuckled fisticuffs.

Rather than stand and fight, Andrew fled the house to call for the help of his eldest brother John – who rushed to the house to find his distressed father blocking the door and Alexander throwing off his coat as if to come for him. As their father got between them, John’s wife Margaret Bell appeared to fight him free, shouting back at Alexander: ‘You fals loun, will you murder my husband and your father both.’

Such domestic dramas were inevitably deemed fit for the attention of the kirk session. Alexander Selkirk, generally seen as the prime cause of the quarrel, was accordingly summoned before that venerable body and commanded to expiate his offence by standing for a certain number of Sundays in the church as a penitent, to be rebuked by the clergyman. Any seeker of the unalloyed version of the event ought really to go straight to the horse’s mouth and refer to the still-extant records. Readers can then judge for themselves.

So where do we find the papers? They lurk in a strongroom in the bowels of St Andrews University’s modern library on North Street that contrasts sharply with the town’s many ancient academic buildings. Also on the lower floor, ensconsed in an office and chained to a big desk overflowing with papers – the evidence of much hard work – head of special collections Norman Reid is happy to help interested students or writers examine the actual 1691-1707 Kirk Session Minutes. As I leafed through the six precious yellowing pages between the 13-inch-long rebound brown covers, I was watched keenly by his colleagues. Curiously I was not asked to wear any gloves, rubber or otherwise, ‘as the lack of tactile sensation makes it likely that you could drop or tear something’, Norman said.

The tightly curlicued copperplate penmanship on the old paper looks initially impressive but the reading of it is less easy on the eye. The sentences are almost impenetrable, even to a Scot familiar with old words and phraseology; but when transcribed from handwriting to type, the reports are a good deal easier to follow – and fascinating:

1701, November 25, the Session mett.

John Selcraige compeared

The same day, John Selcraige, elder, called, compeared, and being examined what was the occasion of the tumult that was in his house, he said he knew not, but that Andrew Selcraige, having brought in a cane full of salt water, of qch his brother, Alexr did take a drink through mistake, and he laughing at him for it, his brother Alexr came and beat him, upon qch he rune out of the house, and called his brother. John Selcraige, elder, being againe questioned, what made him to site one the floor with his backe at the door, he said it was to keep down his sone Alexr, who was seeking to go up to get his pystole; and being enquired what he was to do with it, he said he could not tell.

Alexr. Selcraige compeared not.

The same day Alexr Selcraige, called, compeared not, because he was at Coupar, he is to be cited, pro secundo, again the nixt Session.

John Selcraige, younger, compeared.

The same day John Selcraige, younger, called, compeared, and being questioned concerning the tumult that was in his father’s house on the seventh of Novr, declared, that he being called by his brother Andrew, came to it and when he entered the house, his mother went out, and he seeing his father sitting on the floor, with his back at the door, was much troubled, and offered to help him up, and brang him to the fire, at which time he did see his brother Alexr in the other end of the house casting off his coate, and coming towards him, whereupon his father did get betwixt them, but he knew not what he did otherwayes, his head being born down by his brother Alexr, but afterwards being liberate by his wife, did mak his escape.

Margaret Bell compeared.

The same day Margaret Bell, called, compeared, and being enquired what was the occasion of the tumult which fell out in her father of law’s house, on the seventh of Novr, she said, that Andrew Selcraige came running for her husband John, and desiring him to go to his father’s house, which he doing, the said Margaret did follow her husband; and coming into the house, she found Alexr Selcraige gripping both his father and her husband, and she labouring to loose Alexr’s hands from her husband’s head and breast, her husband fled out of doors and she followed him, and called back againe, you fals loun, will you murder your father and my husband both?’ whereupon he followed her to the door, but wither he beat her or not, she was in so great confusion, she cannot distinctly tell, but ever since she hath a sore pain in her head.

Andrew Selcraige compeared.

The same day Andrew Selcraige, called, compeared, but said nothing to purpose in the foresaid business. This business is delayed until the next Session, ’till further enquiry be mad yrunto.

November 29, the Session mett.

Alexr Selcraige compeared.

The qlk day sederunt, the minister, moderator, John Lundine of Baldastard, Magnus Wilsone, James Beat, James Smith, in the Kirktowne, William Beat, John Guthrie, James Smith, in Drummechee. Thomas Ness, Thomas Mortone, and William Jervies. After prayer, Alexr Selcraige, scandalous for contention and disagreeing with his brothers, called, compeared, and being questioned concerning the tumult that was in his father’s house, whereof he was said to be the occasion, he confest that he, having taken a drink of salt water out of the cane, his younger brother, Andrew laughing at him for it, he did beat him twice with a stafe; he confest also, that he had spoken very ill words concerning his brothers, and particularly he challenged his eldest brother John to a combate, as he called it, of neiffells, then he said he would not come to do it even now, which afterward he did refuse and regrate; moreover he said several other things, whereupon the Session appointed him to compeare before the pulpit again tomorrow, and to be rebuked in the face of the congregation for his scandalous carriage.

One can but imagine ‘the several other things’ he said before the grim-faced session of censorious elderly men with their self-righteous hand-wringing, and it would seem almost miraculous that he appeared before the pulpit the next day ‘to be rebuked’ before the congregation. But whatever Alexander Selkirk was, he was not stupid. So while he was first tempted to refuse to submit to so degrading an experience and stand by his pride, the entreaties of his friends and his own fear of excommunication brought him at least to the idea that by this humiliation – and perhaps by feigning some contrition – he could at least keep his options open when it came to the Final Judgement. But first had to come the final judgement of the kirk session, which was made in this manner:

Alexr Selcraige’s public compearance before the Pulpit. November 30 – Alexr Selcraige, according to the Session’s appointment, compeared before the pulpit, and made acknowledgement of his sin in disagreeing with his brothers, and was rebuked in face of the congregation for it, and promised amendment in the strength of the Lord, and so was dismissed.

Unsurprisingly, it was not a happy young man who then trudged down the hill resolved to make his escape – again – from the ‘mortifying censure of the church in all its contemptible detail’ and what he regarded as the small-minded people of his native parish. He resolved that as soon as circumstances would allow, he would make his way back to the broad ocean to find the space he needed, and of course his fortune.

He resolved that he would be back to make his point and rub their noses in it one day, to show them that he was a bigger man than they had ever given him credit for. When that finally happened, it was to be a memorable moment (see chapter 7).

If his spirit ever returns today to that church on the hill, it must truly wonder about the irony of the little gravestone to be found just beyond and to the left of the pretty building’s exterior entry steps. Its reverse is perhaps its most interesting surface; under a faded depiction of an angel’s head with wings, you can just make out the words ‘Here lyes Andrew Selkirk.’ Admittedly, brother Andrew was hard done by but was respected enough in the community to finally earn his angel wings, as it were. On the other hand, Alexander had made much trouble and many waves – waves so great that his story’s impact on world culture still resonates 300 years later.

The interesting question that arises here is: if the famous castaway had not died at sea but in his home town, would the ever-disapproving church have given him such a place in this graveyard?

Maybe not, but I suspect he still had a place in his family’s heart. For the Selkirk name that he adapted from the old Selcraig – presumably to be more easily pronounced down south and in faraway places – was already famous by the time Andrew died. Clearly the beaten sibling had then decided to adopt it, perhaps even with a small degree of fraternal pride.

Chapter 4

Survival on the Island

Doubts concerning the Seaworthiness of Cinque Ports grew apace after my joining her as Sailing Master in the year 1703, venturing out to the Spanish Americas with William Dampier’s Privateering Expedition. I felt it prudent at first to pass no remark but bore Unease from the Outset.

Aye, and with my Captain Pickering dead and the incompetent Lieutenant Stradling in his place, I was accurs’d with a Dreadful Dream which warned me of the Ultimate Wreck of the Ship and the Miserable Failure of the Expedition.

Additional to the Incompetence of the Vessel and her Men. I saw small chance of Success for a Venture so quickly riven with Rivalry and Bitterness that even the captains could not settle a common Course of Action. Having therefore parted from Dampier and our companion ship St George, a bickering council came, none the less, to Conclusion of sorts; the Cinque Ports should make sail Direct for Juan Fernandez Island there to do our Revictualling; whereupon she might venture Farther North, parallel to the Coast of South America, where the place of Rich Golden Pickings was to be found, among Spanish Trading ships and Settlements.

Yet the leaking Vessel needed more than careening and stocking alone. ’Twas nothing short of folly, in my opinion, to venture further without Radical Repair.

Was I not to say it?

Now he regretted speaking his mind, for he had simply changed it. Wet to the skin and shivering from running into the sea after his resolution failed on his ship’s departure, Selkirk suddenly realised what he had done with his threat to the so-called captain Thomas Stradling – ‘repair the ship properly or go without me’ – who just wanted to push on regardless; and who had then called his bluff. The mutinous castaway now saw that he had invited his own abandonment and severance from society It was an alarming realisation.

He fell to his knees, raked his hands desperately through the grey shingle of Cumberland Bay and roared out an animalistic Scottish curse that echoed up into Mas a Tierra’s high volcanic hills. The lolling seals about him waddled away in fright, as the ship unfurled its sails and slowly disappeared into the distance, ignoring his pleas to come back. No doubt Stradling was laughing now. But he wouldn’t be laughing long, by God. Or so Selkirk believed.

He dragged himself up by his sea chest with a deep sigh, wrenched his focus from the fading white sails and looked around and above the great bay in which he stood. It, too, was suddenly alarming; an environment somehow chillingly different from the spot with which he had become increasingly familiar, over the past month, among his recuperating shipmates.

It was not his first visit to Juan Fernandez. The two-ship expedition had stopped off there in early February 1704, seven months before, when there was almost a mutiny, with 42 men quitting the Cinque Ports in dispute with Captain Stradlng and resolving to stay ashore. Was Selkirk among them? Probably. And he was doubtless sizing up the island’s residential potential when the sudden appearance of a French ship mobilised everyone to defend their own vessels and perhaps then give chase. In the rush, five men were left behind. Three were later taken prisoner by other visiting French ships, while two concealed themselves for six months, eventually rejoining the Cinque Ports on this visit. As Howell noted: ‘Their account of the manner in which they had spent their time fixed the resolution that Selkirk had formed before, to leave the ship and remain upon the island.’

This time – apart from his dealings with the so-called captain – the place had not seemed unfriendly and there had been no fear even as he leapt ashore from the longboat for the last time and ‘with a faint sensation of freedom and joy, shook hands with his comrades and bade them adieu in a hearty manner’ – though there was some disappointment that those who had shared his concerns about the ship and its captain had chosen not to join him.

Now that he stood totally alone on Mas a Tierra, he saw it as awe-inspiring and frightening – jagged peaks, laced with waterfalls, rising abruptly behind him; dark valleys and high wooded enclaves which were home, no doubt, to many monstrous creatures with equally monstrous appetites. He was scared. This was not how it was meant to be. The plan had been for the two-ship convoy of the St George and the Cinque Ports to seize and plunder Spanish ships and settlements to the serious enrichment of the English sailors. But the disillusionment of Alexander Selkirk had begun even before his ship reached the Juan Fernandez archipelago in early September 1704. Along with most of the rest of the crew, he had quickly developed a serious lack of confidence in the leaking vessel and the 21-year-old whippersnapper Stradling, the lieutenant who had taken the captaincy after Captain Charles Pickering’s sudden death. But well before that happened, Selkirk had awoken from a remarkable dream in which he was warned of the total failure of the expedition.

When it came to the crunch, he spoke up. Whatever else he was, the Scot was bluntly honest and knew he had to make his opinion known to the captain. As ship’s master, he insisted on a major overhaul of the badly leaking hull, honeycombed as it was with worm holes. Expedition leader William Dampier might have circumnavigated the world three times but he had made a big mistake before the outset of this voyage, by asserting that the ships’ hull timbers needed no sheathing against the sea worms they might encounter. In the event, the worms had practically devoured the Cinque Ports’ oak frames and the pumps had been manned day and night. Selkirk insisted that the ship – and certainly he – could sail no further unless the beasts were killed off by heating and scraping, and certain timbers replaced.

Stradling was having none of it. The captain’s adamant refusal to agree then resulted in Selkirk being set on the beach of Cumberland Bay on the last day of September 1704, accompanied only by (see chapter 6) the clothes he stood up in, his sea chest, bedding, a musket, a pound of powder, a bag of bullets, several pounds of tobacco, a knife and hatchet, a cooking pot, some cheese and quince marmalade, a flint and steel, a small batch of books including navigational studies and a Bible given to him by his mother in Lower Largo; and his precious navigational instruments.

Thus, 130 years after the Spanish captain Juan Fernandez discovered it, the island of Más a Tierra (meaning closer to land) received what was to be its most famous visitor, a 28-year-old Scottish tanner’s son, who would one day be responsible for the renaming of it as Robinson Crusoe Island. That day it would be something of a visitor magnet and paradise; but for this solitary visitor, staring up and into its forbidding interior on this black day, the island was alive with nightmarish visions and fears.

What ghastly secrets did its dark woods and valleys hold? He would not venture soon or willingly into such deathtraps. Yet he would have to eat. He saw fur seals playing on rocks and, seal flesh being his least favourite food, he hoped they did not represent his future diet. He groaned and looked back out to sea. It had all just been a bit of theatre, hadn’t it, and soon Stradling – realising that he couldn’t operate the Cinque Ports without its sailing master – would be soon turning back to pick him up. Wouldn’t he?

But by sunset, the ship had not returned and he would have to sleep on the beach – under a makeshift tent made from discarded sails – with one eye shut, while the other scanned the moonlit horizon. As he clung fast to his loaded musket, the wailing and bellowing of ‘monsters of the deep’, combined with the crashing waves and high-pitched whine of the winds rushing down through the valleys, had all the makings of a scream-plagued nightmare. He slept not a wink and shook with fear all night. He was almost surprised to be alive and unmolested by animals – or even cannibals – in the morning; but he would do this again and again. Inland, it would be far worse at night, among the moving dark shadows and alarming noises of trees breaking and falling under the force of the winds. He did not intend to leave the beach until he saw the sail of the returning Cinque Ports, or some other rescuer. He would run from England’s Spanish enemies, but anyone else could happily have the pleasure of his company.

Why was he so confident of being picked up? This island was well known to English privateers as a safe and reliable refuge. Many stopped off to restock with its small lobster-like crayfish, goat meat, water, fish and a berry-like fruit from the so-called cabbage palm. He supposed these would serve this castaway well enough until his day of salvation, though he would miss his bread and salt. The crayfish were particularly easy to catch and their flesh was delicious, at least to begin with, but if he ate too many fish he found they ‘occasion’d a Looseness’ in his bowel. Not that it mattered much as there was no-one else to witness his discomfort. He was the reluctant monarch of all he surveyed, but what monarch could live by wild fruit and crayfish alone, he thought, as he began to long for some real red meat. Knowing there were goats in the hills – descendants of those left by earlier visiting Spanish sailors – Selkirk was driven by hunger into the hinterland with his musket, to seek out and shoot one in daylight. It was easier than he thought and he brought the beast back to the beach in triumph, hung around his shoulders.

To cook it, to warm himself and to hope he might be seen by a rescuer, he lit a fire with the firelock of his gun. It was fuelled with the fragrant wood of pimento trees, giving a long, steady flame which he then found comforting to tend through the noises of the night. The flesh of the goat served him well, giving him food for days on end, including a robust soup which he enhanced with local vegetables radishes, watercress and turnips. It lacked only salt and bread, he thought, but it was still nourishing and tasty and he used the leaves of the cabbage-palm plant as bread.

There were such compensations, but no-one to share them with. Without sight of a friendly sail, far less a friendly face, the isolation quickly became unbearable. And those night-time horrors! What would he do about them? Had he exchanged one deathtrap for another? How long could he survive like this? Over the weeks and months as the horizon remained stubbornly empty, save for a few white spots of sails that always passed the island by, he grew weak and dejected and much less hopeful that he could escape the clutches of the wild animals that he had convinced himself roamed the interior.

His early optimism about rescue now looked badly misplaced, and he let depression take a strong grip on him. He turned to his Bible for comfort and consolation, beginning a daily routine of morning and evening prayer services at which he spoke out loud, if only to keep his voice in practice. ‘I was a better Christian while in this solitude than I ever was before, or that, I am afraid, I should ever be again,’ he said later.

When he was particularly low he even began to contemplate suicide. One night, as dusk was falling, he measured out the options that his musket and limited supply of powder and bullets gave him. There were only three: 1. Use it on himself now to avoid the slow, lingering death or animal attack he feared. 2. Keep shooting whatever he could for food in the hope of a rescue ship turning up sooner rather than later and, if not saved before the bullets ran out, use the last one on himself. 3. After powder exhaustion, struggle on weaponless, making do and hoping for the best. At the moment, the first option was looking the most appealing. But he quickly realised that was probably what Stradling had in mind for him – in the tradition among offended captains of putting troublemakers on sandbanks with a one-shot pistol. They could then shoot themselves or wait for the sharks to take them.

It wasn’t quite the same, but if this was what Stradling had been hoping for, Selkirk wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of killing himself. With his spirit so weakened, it was a big challenge to maintain the will to live, but he had to do it. The misery of his marooning at this time was probably well imagined by the poet William Cowper in the poem published in 1782 as ‘Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk During His Solitary abode in the Island of Juan Fernandez’:

I am monarch of all I survey,

My right there is none to dispute,

From the centre all round to the sea,

I am lord of the fowl and the brute.

Oh, solitude! where are the charms

That sages have seen in thy face?

Better dwell in the midst of alarms,

Than reign in this horrible place.

I am out of humanity’s reach,

I must finish my journey alone,

Never hear the sweet music of speech,

I start at the sound of my own.

The beasts that roam over the plain

My form with indifference see;

They are so unacquainted with man,

Their tameness is shocking to me.

Society, friendship, and love,

Divinely bestow’d upon man,

Oh, had I the wings of a dove,

How soon would I taste you again!

My sorrows I then might assuage

In the ways of religion and truth,

Might learn from the wisdom of age,

And be cheer’d by the sallies of youth.

Religion! what treasure untold

Resides in that heavenly word!

More precious than silver and gold,

Or all that this earth can afford.

But the sound of the church-going bell

These vallies and rocks never heard,

Ne’re sigh’d at the sound of a knell,

Or smiled when a sabbath appear’d.

Ye winds, that have made me your sport,

Convey to this desolate shore

Some cordial endearing report

Of a land I shall visit no more.

My friends, do they now and then send

A wish or a thought after me?

O tell me I yet have a friend

Though a friend I am never to see.

How fleet is a glance of the mind!

Compar’d with the speed of its flight

The tempest itself lags behind,

And the swift-winged arrows of light,

When I think of my own native land,

In a moment I seem to be there;

But alas! recollection at hand

Soon hurries me back to despair.

But the sea-fowl is gone to her nest,

The beast is laid down in his lair,

Ev’n here is a season of rest,

And I to my cabin repair.

There is mercy in ev’ry place;

And mercy, encouraging thought!

Gives even affliction a grace,

And reconciles man to his lot.

But life had to go on. Hunger being the mother of courage, as necessity is of invention, his forays from the beach and into the hinterland became more frequent and, meeting nothing there more dangerous than agitated goats, he started to believe there might be nothing to fear in the woods. He had already realised that the bellowing from the seaward side was nothing more than the nocturnal calls of the fearsome-looking but cumbersome two-ton sea lions and he gradually realised that this was a benign and truly verdant island on which to be cast away.

Though it was 18 months before he could absent himself for a whole day from the beach, he gradually became ‘reconciled to his lot.’ It was not long after that, however, that he took the goat by the horns, as it were, and hauled his stuff two miles up into the mountains, found a secluded clearing with a fine view over the bay to the horizon, and proceeded to build two huts – one to live in, one to use as a kitchen. Goatskins covered their pimento-tree framework and although not especially robust, they were soon cosy enough to call home. Here he was able to keep himself in food while still keeping watch for the telltale signs of sails entering the great bay. He also found a lookout point higher up the hill which he would visit every day for an even better view. The distance between the campsite and the lookout point was only about half a kilometre, but probably twice that distance if he followed the zig-zags of the present-day path. The going is difficult, uphill all the way, and it would have taken him at least half an hour to reach it.

But he did so unmolested and the exercise gave him such strength that his fitness reached unimaginable levels. It was clear to him now that he was not threatened by any wild animals. Above him in the skies there were hawks, puffin-like pardels, albatrosses, owls and humming birds the size of bees. The most annoying ground animals he had to deal with were rats and feral cats (from previous visiting ships) that were attracted to his warmth and his food, nibbled about his body and tore at his clothes while he slept. Being most irritated by the aggressive rats, he started to encourage the cats by offering them titbits, and soon he had an army of them stationed around his camp – with some of them even cuddled up in his bed. The cats took care of the rats.

In the absence of human company, the cats soon became much-loved affectionate friends as he played with them, taught them tricks, and talked and sang to them in an effort to keep his voice alive. He even taught them to dance and ‘often afterwards declared, that he never danced with a lighter heart or greater spirit any where to the best of music, than he did to the sound of his own voice with his dumb companions.’

He was friendly, too, with the goats, though that was a more complex relationship as he needed them for food and he tried not to get too fond of them before they had to be killed. But he did not always shoot them. He would sometimes catch the kid goats by hand, an exercise that helped maintain his fitness. He would chase them barefoot up and down the hills, along the craggy tracks and through the forest with great fleetness of foot until he could grab them by the hind leg and bring them ‘home’ to a pen where he would cripple them and keep them until required. It was a way of keeping food fresh that owed something to his shipboard way of life. He varied his diet, however reluctantly, with seal meat and shellfish, and at every meal the cabbage-palm was a substitute for bread.

Every time he ate a goat, he would keep its skin which he used, most famously, to clothe himself. When his ship clothes eventually wore out, he dried the skins of the goats he had killed and then, with his knife and a sharp nail for a needle to draw slender thongs of leather, he shaped and sewed the goat-skins into garments that hardly resembled what they were meant to be: jacket, breeches and a cap. What did he look like? As his beard had not been shaved since he was put ashore, his own brown hair mingled with his goatskin clothes and he looked as animal-like as his four-legged companions. But he was comfortable in his second skin, which would eventually become the world’s accepted image of a marooned man.

I calculate that I must have been senseless for the space of three Days, the length of which time I measur’d by the Moon’s Growth since my last observation of it. It had happened that, running on the summit of a Hill, I had made a Stretch to seize a Goat, with which under me, I fell down the Precipice. I awoke to find its lifeless Carcass still beneath me, and I gave praise to my Lord for this, the Beast having broken my Fall ... Though bloodless and only Bruis’d, my wound gave me such a Degree of Pain that I fear’d I could no longer walk upon the Leg; that it had broken, and that I would thus never leave the Precipice Alive. Yet I brought myself in a crawl over a great distance to return again to my Hutt, my Beasts, and my joyous Life of Tranquillity.

A joyous life of tranquillity? Yes, it was true. Eventually, as he slowly got used to ‘this horrible place’, as Cowper’s poem called it, turned out to be less and less horrible to Selkirk and perhaps even more than pleasant. Nobody could deny that the island, which is 14 miles (2.2.5km) in length and nearly four miles (6.4km) in breadth, is remarkably beautiful, and it was – and is – not short of benign natural resources. Despite its sometimes unpredictable weather, it is generally warm. In Selkirk’s time huge pimento pepper trees as tall as a ship’s mast and cotton-wood trees with massive trunks formed the main elements of the forest that rose up from the edge of the beach and into the mountains. The floor of the forest was very fertile, dotted with familiar European vegetables like parsnips (the legacy of earlier voyages) while watercress grew abundantly in the streams. There was fruit too, the sweet white package from the tall cabbage-palm tree, and a type of small black plum, sharp and delicious, which became his favourite, although it was quite elusive, growing as it did on the steep rocky sides of the mountains.

There are not many islands offering such advantages to a castaway, and perhaps, with the help of his Bible, Selkirk had learned to appreciate that. He had conquered his melancholy. But how did he then amuse himself to while away those many hours of solitude? Surprisingly enough, his days could be very full. There was his daily reading of the Scriptures; his keeping of a calendar carved on a tree to keep an exact account of the days, weeks and months and to be sure of when to celebrate the Sabbath; his study of his navigation books; the sewing of clothes; the making of fishing lines; the tending of his ‘goat farm’; the dancing with his cats; the carving of his name on his musket butt and the daily visits to his lookout spot to keep his eye on the horizon.

Whether Selkirk’s time passed quickly or slowly, we shall never know, but his life was certainly not dull. There were, for instance, his many exciting life-or-death races with goats; he had run down and killed over 500 of them before he left the island. So precarious were some of the crag-to-crag climbs and high runs he did in pursuit of them, it was hardly surprising that he had a bad accident, which was reported by Howell:

Selkirk was so stunned and bruised by the fall that he lay deprived of sensation, and almost of life. Upon his recovery he found the goat lying dead beneath him. This happened about a mile from his hut. Scarcely was he able to crawl to it when restored to his senses; and dreadful were his sufferings during the first two or three of the ten days that he was confined by the injury. He lay stretched upon his bed, unable to move but with extreme pain. There was no human being to reach him a drink of cold water, or to do the smallest service for him: yet he did not despair; his heart was at ease and he poured it forth in prayer; he felt a peace of mind which religion can alone bestow and, even in this forlorn and painful situation, a ray of hope enlivened the gloom with which he was surrounded.

That was a serious reminder of his mortality; and he was keen to stay alive if only because, much as he liked them, he did not trust his cats and imagined that if he died in his bed, they would simply eat his body. It was a very troubling thought. And although he was now very comfortable with his island life after two years of it, he knew death was always lurking round the next tree. What if he fell ill? There was no one to help him recover.

Soon, he was to have another brush with death when, from his look-out spot, he saw two ships, one of which was peeling off and heading for Cumberland Bay, two miles beneath him. In anticipation, he made his way stealthily through the undergrowth down towards the beach, getting closer and closer while he tried to establish its nationality ... French or Spanish? By the time he had recognised the vessel as Spanish, he had been seen and assumed to be English.

Six sailors landed and gave chase; bullets whizzed past his head, but his speed of flight put enough distance between them so that he could give them the slip as he disappeared into the trees and climbed up a tall cabbage palm. He pulled the big leaves about him until he was completely hidden. They came beating behind him, though, as if they were trying raise a brace of grouse, and he could see two musket men reloading. But as the party approached his hideout they began to slow down, to take a rest and – in one man’s case – loosen his breeches and relieve himself. Selkirk could actually smell the urine and hear it dribbling on the bark, as the obese Spaniard relieved himself against the trunk of the tree.

The next thing he heard was the crack of a musket shot. He jerked with shock, quickly examined himself to see that he had not been the target, and peered through the branches again. He saw the carcass of a large white goat being pulled across the ground. Then there was another crack, followed by an animal’s cry of distress. He saw a second goat being manhandled away, and the whole party heading back towards their ship.

He realised with a sigh of relief that he was of no more interest to them but he waited until the ship had left the refuge of Cumberland Bay and rounded the point of the bay out of sight before he dared to move from the tree.

When he finally climbed down and breathed more easily, he wondered how much of his fear had been less of the Spanish Inquisition but more of leaving his island. He would have been less afraid of a French landing party, but would he have gone willingly with them? And more pertinent still, if it had been an English ship with no reason to hurt him, would he have been happy to join them and be taken back home?

The crux of that question would plague him for the rest of his life – the word ‘home.’ Where was his home now? Was it Scotland? Was it London? Was it this remote island which had, in the end, been very kind to him; where he had wanted for nothing except the company of fellow men and a woman?

Of course, when the Duke and Dutchess appeared in early 1709 with their promise of salvation and a return to society, his heart leapt with excitement. As pleased to see them as they were surprised to see him, he was welcomed aboard and offered hospitality comfort, and answers to his many questions: Yes, Queen Anne still reigned. No, the Cinque Ports hadn’t made it, as he predicted. And Scotland? How fared it after the great Darien catastrophe? It had now joined with England in the union of 1707, he was told. He felt his face grimace slightly at that bitter fact, presented to him as if it were good news. But the biggest question of all was one that he would eventually have to answer himself. After his initial euphoria had settled down and he rejoined the world of people with all its political and power machinations, would he miss his goats and his cats and his now-beloved island?

It was a question he would never quite be able to answer. But every time he asked it of himself, a tear came to his eye.

THE NEW VISITORS

So what is it like today, Selkirk’s island? And are there any traces of his existence still to be found there? These are questions that have long prompted many people to venture there, a few of them even from the ancient mariner’s home village in Scotland some 7,500 miles distant (12,000km) as well as his relative Bruce Selcraig from America.

He decided to visit the island in 2005 but was initially wary of the eight-seat Piper Navajo prop plane that took him there from a suburban Santiago airfield – despite the pilot’s assurance that ‘we only go when we know it’s safe.’ In fact, if the weather is tolerable the plane goes twice a week ‘across 400 miles of frigid Pacific’ to Juan Fernandez, and Selcraig, mostly concerned about answering that first question, reported:

Thus assured, I put my trust in a 1979 craft whose outer skin seems no thicker than a beer can. With surprisingly little turbulence we finally climb over the city of six million, humming past the jagged Andes and across the ocean at 6,000 ft, just above foamy white clouds. We also carry school textbooks and new diapers; returning, we’ll take lobsters and octopus to Santiago restaurants.

So far, not too hair-raising. But another visitor, Selkirk enthusiast Dr David Caldwell of National Museums Scotland, confessed to being ‘seriously worried’ by crosswinds and fuel consumption during his flight as ‘there’s not enough fuel to turn back if anything goes wrong’ and by the precarious nature of the short landing strip which cuts at right angles across the island’s narrow jutting end with sheer cliffs to the sea at either end. ‘It’s pure Biggles stuff,’ he said. ‘You’re very conscious that, because of the brevity of the strip, the pilot is trying to descend quickly with the wheels touching down right on the edge of the cliff. I don’t deny I was hanging on tight. But as far as I know there have never been any accidents.’

Once there, with your heart and breath back, there is more stomach-churning fun to com. First a bumpy Land Rover ride to the shore, then a two-hour trip across rough waters to the other side of island in a big rowing boat with an outboard motor, before getting to the fishing-village settlement of San Juan Bautista. That’s where most of the 600 Chilean inhabitants live, descendants of Spaniards who settled on the island 40 years after Selkirk had left. Their buildings are gathered mostly around Cumberland Bay and described by Bruce Selcraig:

Along deeply rutted dirt roads, there are eight or nine summer cabins and basic bed-and-breakfast operations – several hundred tourists came to the village last year – with a few in-home convenience stores, three churches (Evangelical, Mormon and Catholic), a leaky gymnasium, a lively school serving first through eighth grade, a city hall, a small Crusoe museum with translations of the novel in Polish and Greek, and an adjoining library with a satellite internet connection, thanks to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The homes are wooden bungalows for the most part, weathered but neat, with small yards and big leafy palm or fruit trees. Nearly everyone has TV, which consists of two Santiago channels. There’s neither visible poverty nor glaring wealth, with barely two dozen cars on the whole island. My guide told me: ‘There are fewer and fewer lobster, more and more tourists.’

Dr Caldwell, who stayed for a month on the island in one of those ‘bed-and-breakfast operations’ – run by a ‘splendid, jolly woman’ – was intrigued by the friendly islanders’ way of life and dependence not just on lobsters, not just on the little plane coming in twice a week, but on regular visits by the little supply steamer Navarino, a Clyde puffer lookalike which, after a voyage of two or three days from Santiago, would pull in at the pier to unload provisions to a crowd of villagers waiting to fill their wheelbarrows. ‘After it arrived,’ he recalled, ‘there would be a big flurry of fruit and chicken from the mainland; then it would all run out again.’

He believes the influence of human habitation and tourism has changed the island somewhat since Selkirk’s day – the great bay is peppered now with working boats and private yachts rather than fields of lolling seals, though these are still around ‘jumping out of the sea to look at you.’ Thanks to its long isolation over millions of years, Más a Tierra once had – in the manner of the Galapagos Islands – much unique flora and fauna. ‘There was no evidence of humans stepping on the island before the 16th century, and many species were special.’ But no more. ‘Inland from the settled area, there are introduced species such as eucalyptus and spruce trees before you get to the indigenous forests. And the only animals left that are different are the humming birds.’

It remains an awesome place, however, with its high jagged mountain ridges rising to 3000ft (914m) and flanked by dramatic cliffs; and a bountiful, beautiful place. ‘If you’re going to be a castaway, it’s the place to choose,’ he said. ‘It has a warm climate all the year round, there are berries that you can eat safely, and abundant fish and other resources.’

But what was Dr Caldwell actually there for? His visit was more about trying to answer that second question: are there any traces of Selkirk’s existence still to be found on the island? And after his stay with three expert colleagues, led by explorer Daisuke Takahashi, the following news item seemed to answer it.

SELKIRK’S REFUGE FOUND

The Times, September 17, 2005

British, Japanese and Chilean archaeologists have discovered the spot where Alexander Selkirk, the model for the castaway Robinson Crusoe, survived in solitude for four years and four months, writes Richard Lloyd Parry in Tokyo.

After a 13-year search, the team, led by Daisuke Takahashi, a Japanese explorer, believe that they have identified where the 18th-century sailor camped, cooked and kept a lonely look-out. The crucial breakthrough was the discovery of a fragment of one of Selkirk’s navigational instruments.

The real-life Crusoe’s place of exile was Más a Tierra in the Juan Fernandez archipelago, off the coast of Chile. The identity of the island has long been known; the Chilean Government renamed it Isla de Robinson Crusoe in the hope of attracting fans of Daniel Defoe’s novel. But until now, no one knew where exactly Selkirk had lived.

Last January Mr Takahashi took a team of four scientists to the remote spot where he suspected Selkirk’s camp had been. There they found traces of a fire, animal bones and holes in which Selkirk appears to have placed poles to support a shelter.

But the decisive evidence was a 16mm piece of copper, discovered by David Caldwell of the National Museums Scotland, and identified by him as the point of a pair of 17th-century dividers. Dr Caldwell said: Selkirk was a navigator, and the account of his discovery states that he had his navigational equipment with him. In archaeological terms that is as good evidence as you are going to get.’

The evidence may have been tiny and tenuous but it was still a triumph of probability. It looked very much as if the expedition had achieved its leader’s objective of finding the location where Selkirk had lived. Daisuke Takahashi had been obsessively devoted to the challenge since he read Robinson Crusoe as a child, to the point where he had not only written a book In Search of Robinson Crusoe but asked to be marooned himself on the uninhabited Alexander Selkirk island, with only a gun for company, so that he might experience and report on the sensation first-hand (his request was turned down). This was 2005 and his third visit to Juan Fernandez – he first explored it in 1994-95 – and, although he had his hunch as to where the Selkirk encampment might have been, he needed to pull in not just sponsorship for the trip (which was forthcoming from National Geographic magazine) but expert archaeological help who could, with fortune, make his theory stick.

That was where, with local government backing, three Chilean archaeologists and Dr Caldwell came in. When they arrived they knew at least where not to look. ‘There is a cave at Puerto Ingles – a spot almost impossible to reach from Cumberland Bay – which since the 19th century has acquired a reputation for having been Selkirk’s Cave,’ said Caldwell. ‘But it has been excavated to hell and there is nothing there; no sign of human habitation; nothing. Certainly not treasure – which is not good news for a treasure-hunting group that’s been digging away there funded by an American millionaire.’

Instead, Takahashi’s team focused on the area of Aguas Buenas. His hunch had been backed up by an elderly islander who showed him overgrown traces of a building on his 2001 visit. The man had discovered these in 1955 and they had remained unknown and unvisited ever since. Takahashi realised that the location – a flattish spot about two miles into and above the back of Cumberland Bay, reached by a hard, zigzag climb – corresponded well with his views on where he thought Selkirk’s campsite might be located and he believed the ruins were worthy of further examination. It was roughly en route to the higher spot that has long been well established as Selkirk’s Lookout, high above the harbour of San Juan Bautista and where there are a couple of memorial plaques, one left by a 19th-century Royal Navy party, reading:

In memory of Alexander Selkirk, mariner

A native of Largo, in the county of Fife, Scotland.

Who lived on this island in complete solitude

For four years and four months.

He was landed from the Cinque Ports galley,

96 tons, 16 guns, A.D. 1704, and was taken off in

the Duke, privateer, 12th Feb, 1709.

He died Lieutenant of HMS Weymouth,

A.D. 1723, aged 47 years [sic].

This tablet is erected near Selkirk’s Lookout,

By Commodore Powell and the officers of

HMS Topaze, A.D. 1868.

And one left by his relatives Ivy and Allan Jardine on their visit in the 1980s, reading:

Tablet placed here by Allan Jardine

Of Largo, Fife, Scotland,

Direct descendant of Alexander Selkirk’s brother David

Remembrance

‘Till a’ the seas gang dry

And the rocks melt in the sun’

January 1983

It would have been a familiar daily shuttle for Selkirk between this point, with its wide clear view of the horizon beyond the bay, and the spot half-a-kilometre below where the experts reckoned he had built his two huts. It made perfect sense. The challenge was, if not to prove the idea, certainly to put it beyond reasonable doubt.

And what of the holes in which Selkirk appears to have placed poles to support a shelter? Their discovery at the site helped Dr Caldwell to imagine that the Scot would have built his huts in the Scottish tradition of the shieling.* This entailed the setting up of branches as a framework, pulling them together at the top, then covering with broad-leafed branches, grass and sods – or in Selkirk’s case here, probably goatskins.

The relatively easy access from the camp to the lookout spot was one of the points in favour of Takahashi’s theory. Other points were a good supply of water nearby, level ground, shelter from both sun and rain, room to keep goats, a good view of the bay and any approaching vessels and also enough distance from the bay ‘to scarper and hide if enemy sailors came looking’, according to Dr Caldwell.

But where was the hard evidence? There were some traces on the site of a stone building’s foundations probably of Spanish construction and therefore post-Selkirk. ‘We thought we were looking at an old church,’ recalled Dr Caldwell. ‘But we were later informed from an old Spanish map that it had been a gunpowder magazine. It made no sense – why would there be such a thing there? But anyway, we’re archaeologists, so we have to dig further, and that’s what we did.’

Digging through the floor of the building they came across a hearth that pre-dated it. ‘Hearths are quite easy to find, actually. Once burnt material has been created it’s always going to be there – and of course it lies in a shallowed-out basin shape full of layers of ash. They also have pretty obvious features, such as being surrounded by stones, and they can yield valuable pieces of evidence, such as animal bones, and date information.

‘It was among these stones around one of the hearths – we actually found two, corresponding to the two-hut theory – that we unearthed the little strip of metal that proved to be part of navigational dividers that could have been used by Selkirk.

‘It was the only artefact we found of a date earlier than the occupation by the Spanish settlers.’

The archaeologists’ 17,000-word report describes the item like this:

A small piece of copper alloy with various layers of rather powdery green/blue/grey corrosion recovered from a thin layer of sandy silt surrounding the hearth. It is about 16mm long and has a square cross-section at one end about 3mm by 3mm. Here it appears to have been cleanly broken before the onset of corrosion. From this end to the other it tapers on three of its four sides to form a point.

The report also reminds us that Alexander Selkirk was an accomplished navigator – when he took off his goatskins, became a sailor again and focused on his ship’s maps, he could, to give a singularly remarkable example, find the tiny island of Guam at the end of a vast ocean! It was therefore no surprise to have it tacitly confirmed that his navigational instruments had been among his most prized possessions during his abandonment.

The divider fragment is minuscule but the significance of its discovery cannot be underestimated. In all probability it has established the location of Alexander Selkirk’s ‘home’ on Juan Fernandez. If you doubt it, you simply have to ask: how many sailing-ship navigators might have been camped up in that particular spot at that particular time?

Chapter 5

How he got Rich

February was in summer here, and as the long, jagged silhouette of Juan Fernandez faded away, the sun came out with a pleasant breeze as if to welcome them to the deep blue yonder. Relieved of his goatskins, shorn of his beard and now bare-chested, Selkirk lent against the prow rail and, almost mesmerised, watched the Pacific Ocean cleave into white around and under the hull of the speeding full-sailed Duke. He breathed in the salty air, relished the idea of being a sailor again, and supposed he should be grateful to William Dampier for recommending that he be given a senior role in an operation that had an indefinable feeling of confidence about it. In view of how disastrous the first expedition had been, with Dampier then in charge of the companion ship St George, and tacitly the whole operation, this feeling was surprising, especially as their admiration was not exactly mutual. Of course, Dampier was a man of high reputation, having been round the world twice and written compelling accounts of his experiences, but now approaching 60 he was no longer a young man, and that was beginning to show, if his empty-handed adventure of 1704 with its unhelpful navigational aberrations was anything to judge by. He was lucky to have got home to England, in Selkirk’s opinion, and even luckier to be sailing again, albeit on his last expedition.

But Selkirk was not going to let doubts about the man bother him. There were bigger fish to catch – a new and realistic chance to become truly rich, for instance. In any case, Dampier was not the leader of this project – though he had managed to have it funded again by Bristol businessmen seeking treasure in a similar way to the last one – or captain of either the Duke or the Dutchess. He had been brought along as a guide or ‘first pilot for the South Seas’ and Selkirk, having honed his navigational skills on his island, simply hoped Dampier’s role would not conflict with his. There would be, he decided, a wary and respectful distance between them.

Indeed, that would be how he would approach the whole project. To make sure it went as well as possible for him and his future fortune, he would not become emotionally involved. He would control his ready temper, conduct himself well, slavishly obey orders, hold his tongue, rigidly refrain from ‘profane oaths’ and (with the help of some faith taken from his island Bible-reading), behave as much as possible like a true Christian.

It took only a few days of boredom to confirm to him that he was on the right track. Seeing that the men were already listless and gambling, and sensing that the perennial greedy sailor’s problem of lack of instant gratification could easily lead to reduced motivation when required, Captain Rogers made a pre-emptive strike on the encroaching mood. Calling the men and officers together amidships, he made it clear to all that this expedition would be a tightly disciplined fighting force from the start. Selkirk buttoned up his jacket, fell in line among the officers and nodded gravely as the captain slapped down on the gambling so that none would have lost his fighting spirit by having already pledged his share of any plunder; he also banned swearing on board or during any exercise on land, on pain of being beaten with a rod; no prisoners would be spoken to without an officer’s permission; and there would be severe punishment for any man concealing and keeping plunder due to be shared.

He reminded the men too that, though they sailed and fought for profit, they were British sailors lawfully commissioned by Queen Anne, not pirates or buccaneers; and he exhorted them, in gentlemanly fashion, to ‘maintain the standards of our service.’ He ended, to cheers from the men: ‘We now sail in Spanish waters and any day now we will see an enemy ship. There is a reward in gold for the man who first spots a prize.’

Pushing steadily north about 20 miles off the west coast of South America, the mission had certain ideal objectives – to win as many prize vessels as possible, hopefully laden with Spanish gold – but, failing that, to raid Spanish settlements and relieve them of their riches; and failing that, to take whatever treasure trove was unfortunate enough to cross their path. None of which was particularly gentlemanly behaviour, thought Selkirk, but when he considered how the Spanish had acquired their golden coastline and seemingly private ocean, he quickly excused his sponsors, his captain, his crew, his queen, his national government and himself.

In the wake of Christopher Columbus, having raided the gold of the Aztec and Inca civilisations, the merciless soldiers of Spain had conquered large areas of central and South America, from California in the north down through Mexico and New Granada (today’s Colombia) and all the way down to the heel of a Peru much larger than we know today. Much native American blood was spilled in this process and the Spanish opened up mines in the last two countries, forcing natives to work them till they dropped of exhaustion or disease, while regularly sending shiploads of silver and gold back to Spain.

These were the ships which Woodes Rogers and his fellow captain (of the Dutchess), Stephen Courtney, were hunting down like a pair of deadly sharp-eyed hawks. Having sailed from Bristol on August 1, 1708, in their frigates with worm-resistant, double-sheathed hulls – a lesson learned from the Dampier expedition – they had already had an eventful voyage, quelling and punishing some rebellious men. But they were both still well focused and well equipped: the 300-ton Duke boasted 30 guns and 170 men, and the 270-ton Dutchess 26 guns and 151 men. And they coveted one prize target in particular, the Manila-Acapulco galleons, which, once or twice a year, brought – via the Philippines, colonised by Spain in the late 16th century – precious wares such as spices, ivory, porcelain and silk from China and Asia to the Mexican port of Acapulco. These were then transported overland across Mexico to Vera Cruz for shipment to Havana, Cuba, where they would join the treasure fleet that sailed every year for Spain – and the lucrative European markets. In exchange for this, as much as one-third of the silver mined in New Spain and Peru went to the Far East in the tall returning galleons, which – despite their great size, sometimes up to 2000 tons – were vulnerable in poor conditions and could be exploited by smaller, fleeter vessels.

During their long but unfinished voyages, many sailors became sick from scurvy and other diseases; there were deaths that reduced fighting strength; and such otherwise-impressive galleons were often leaking and worn-out as they approached, or even left, their Mexican port of call.

But it wasn’t all plain sailing for the Duke and Dutchess either. For Selkirk, there was a long period of readjustment to get through. While being regarded after his welcome on board as something of a reserved and taciturn oddity – and therefore not much conversed to by the common sailors – he had to virtually teach himself again how to speak by listening. He also had to wear conventional clothes again and learn to walk once more in leather shoes, which proved painful as his rock-hardened soles had no give and his feet became swollen. He had to get used to the salty and colourless galley-cooked food that contrasted starkly with his own fresh and saltless island produce, preferring initially to live on biscuits and water. And he realised there was a certain irony in the fact that – as a man who had perhaps over-enjoyed his alcohol in the past – he did not take much to the spirits dished out on board the Duke. Indeed, he often quietly spat them over the side into the sea. But he gradually came out of his shell, and as he was given more and more responsibility on board, those crewmen who might have sniggered about him a little were soon going to have to eat their muttered words; for if he was anything at all, Alexander Selkirk was an outstanding mariner.

After a month’s sailing, the voyage was beginning to become less promising by the day. No sails had appeared on the horizon. It was like fishing in an empty lake. Rationed to three pints of water per day and bored by inaction, the men began to ‘repine that tho come so far we have met with no Prize in these Seas’, wrote Woodes Rogers – and scurvy was beginning to catch hold. But just as the captain realised that an immediate and resolute plan of action was called for, fate stepped in to energise his men.

It came – one day into their second month at sea – in the shape of a small Spanish trading vessel on its way to Cheripe in Peru to buy flour. As the two frigates approached, it surrendered without resistance on sight of the Duke’s open gun ports. Though there was not much on board in the way of precious cargo, there were provisions to be acquired and potentially valuable prisoners in the passengers and crew, including the Indian-Spanish captain, Antonio Heliagos, who turned out to have details of the Cinque Ports’ fate. He reported that, having seen the wreck of it four years earlier off Lima, nearby villagers told him it had broken apart and sunk after hitting an underwater shelf, with the loss of almost all its men – except the dreaded Captain Stradling and six crew who managed to get ashore by boat. There they had been clapped in irons by Spanish soldiers, taken overland to Lima, imprisoned for four years and possibly tortured before being moved – to where, Heliagos didn’t know; but nothing had been heard of them thereafter.

When he heard this, Selkirk must have been relieved. He might have been in two minds about being abandoned at the time, but he now knew it had been a real blessing in disguise. What if he had sailed on with the Cinque Ports? For one thing, he would probably now be dead; and for another (not that he knew it yet), the world would have been deprived of the literary phenomenon that was Robinson Crusoe.

The three-vessel convoy pulled into the barren island of Lobos de la Mar, where swathes of huge barnacles were scraped off the hull of the Dutchess and the Spanish boat, which was reckoned to be an ‘excellent sailer’, was refitted, rechristened Beginning, and put in the charge of Mr Stratten.

The prize was well-named, for it did indeed represent the start of a renewed optimism that would in turn power a remarkable odyssey of privateering success that was to go down in British maritime history. It was to collect at its height three prize vessels and finish up with a grand treasure ship; but in the meantime, there was a lot of hard fighting to be done, though it would be done with a welcome surge of fresh confidence.

Like that of fishermen who had suddenly hit a rich shoal of silver darlings, the expedition’s luck turned dramatically, as the Beginning was set quickly to its new work: on 26 March – together with the Dutchess – it helped capture another small merchantman, the 50-ton Santa Josepha, whose cargo of timber, tobacco, soap, leather, cocoa and coconuts proved to be welcome comforts for the fortune-hunters who distributed them among themselves. Three days later, this second prize was fitted up as a hospital ship to which two surgeons and all sick men would be transferred, and a tale is told that, when he was offered command of it by Woodes Rogers, Alexander Selkirk also suggested a new name for it – the Increase – which was quite well approved of, indicating as it did the encouraging growth of the squadron.

And as he later stood for the first time on the deck of his own ship issuing his commands, the Scotsman seemed to grow in stature as well. He thought he ought to feel nervous, but he didn’t – this felt like the most natural place in the world for him to be – and the ruffian-sailors who had sniggered at him behind their hands now found themselves responding to his decisive orders with respect and alacrity. For Selkirk, the promotion had two advantages above his simple enjoyment of it: his share of any plunder would grow with his extra responsibility and barking out orders with legitimate reason gave vent to his natural, but recently suppressed, streak of aggression.

Woodes Rogers was feeling confident too. Bolstered by his two prizes, the captain’s next big move was a decision to land and attack the wealthy inland port town of Guayaquil in Ecuador, where he reckoned there was Spanish treasure aplenty to be had. But before his growing squadron even got there, it managed to acquire yet another ship that was leaving the mouth of the Guayas river – though this proved a costly prize for the captain, whose 20-year-old brother John was shot dead (through the head) in the unexpectedly bitter battle for possession of the French-built but Spanish-operated Havre de Grace.

The ship’s comprehensive cargo – which included no real treasure but seven sheep, three pigs, some silver-handled swords, bottles, buckles, snuffboxes, gold chains, chocolate sweets, bunches of garlic and 50 Spaniards and more than 100 Negroes and Indians – proved little consolation to the grieving captain as his beloved brother was buried at sea amid Prayers for the Dead. And also, simply to be practical, he was not sure about the value of having the care of so many foreign human bodies, as they would be difficult to feed and accommodate, so he resolved to send them ashore as soon as possible in what boats he could spare.

Even and perhaps especially in grief, Woodes Rogers was a strong character who had already earned much respect from Selkirk, and despite his quiet tears, he embarked with little hesitation on the task of transforming his new acquisition into the fighting ship it had once been (many gun ports had been sealed and its guns stored away). It carried many of the appurtenances of Roman Catholicism – effigies of the Virgin Mary, papal medals, beads and crucifixes – and these were thrown overboard as worthless as he set about refitting the Havre de Grace not just with new masts, rigging and sails but with the kind of armoury that would make it a comparable companion privateer to the Duke and Dutchess – namely, 20 guns and their carriages plus a variety of small arms from grenades through shot and nails to cutlasses. He then renamed the ship the Marquess, transferred 90 men to it, and put the Duke’s second captain, Edward Cooke, in command of it.

What it all now added up to – three well-armed frigates and two smaller support vessels – was a formidable fighting fleet of no fewer than 76 guns with which to approach the wealthy town of Guayaquil; though their actual challenge would be more subtle than with big guns blazing. The Spanish settlers no doubt thought their geographic position – 33 miles upstream on the Guayas river gulf – kept them relatively safe from marauders, knowing such deep-hulled ships would find the approach to their town impossible to navigate. The local system was to have merchant ships anchor in the gulf before having their goods loaded on to flat-bottomed barges for taking upriver to the town.

Woodes Rogers saw it all the other way. Because of its ‘safe’ position so far inland and its consequent distance from any frontline action, the town would probably be poorly defended, enjoying a sense of security that would soon prove (he hoped) to be false. The key was getting up and into it by stealth, so that surprise would be the essence of success. So, on the very early morning of 19 April, hidden by darkness, the captain took a cautious, softly-softly approach to the gulf and, when he had brought the big ships as near as he dared to the coast, released 201 men (including some useful-looking prisoners) in boats, while about 100 stayed behind to guard most of the prisoners. To take charge of the mission, whose assault group was to be led by Selkirk, the captain himself went among the men, as did Dampier, Captain Courtney, and Dr Thomas Dover, the expedition’s chief surgeon and president of the ships’ council.

They regrouped on the mid-gulf island of Puna, guarding the mouth of the estuary, where they overcame minimal resistance then hid their pinnaces among the mangrove trees, purloined two barges and all the canoes they could find there, before they set off up the hostile tropical river (infested with alligators), besieged by mosquitoes which ‘pestere’d and stung grievously.’ It did not get off to a good start. One of the prisoners, an Indian, had made his escape from the island, swimming strongly across the river. Selkirk thought of shooting his musket after him, or even giving chase, but was discouraged by superiors, who reckoned silence was more important to the exercise and that they would rather not chance losing the Scotsman to drowning, hungry alligators or piranhas. There was an outside chance that such a fit escapee, no doubt also fleet of foot, could make his way through the steaming jungle to warn the town of their approach.

Rowing and paddling mainly by twilight and darkness, it took the barbarous little flotilla – its larger craft armed with swivel guns and mortars, the canoe men wielding muskets and cutlasses – more than another two mosquito-plagued, sweltering days to get to Guayaquil. As no more than shadows to anyone who might have imagined they saw them, the marauders silently drew up before the town just before one am on April 22, set to unleash a furious attack when given the word. But they were taken aback to hear the sound of church bells, growing slowly into a monotonous cacophony the closer they got to the shore. Then they stared forward in disbelief as, with the same kind of timing, light began to grow up and out of the town. It started with a bonfire flickering on a high hill behind the stacked silhouettes of the houses, and soon the whole town was ablaze with lights as seemingly disembodied torches were seen to float through all the streets. But most alarming of all to the would-be attackers were the sudden chatterings of small arms and crunching cracks of cannon fire.

Had the town been warned? Had the lone Indian got through? It certainly seemed like it, and the signal to pull back was given. Suddenly worried, the senior officers ordered Selkirk to keep the men quiet as they retreated to a secluded place where they could be heard whispering urgently about what strategy to adopt now. It was clear that Woodes Rogers, not believing the town had been warned and feeling that they were witnessing some kind of religious celebration, wanted to press on; but there was strong resistance from William Dampier and from Dr Dover, who insisted that they were in grave danger and should turn back to the ships.

In the end, a compromise was reached; the invaders should show themselves in a bellicose manner, threaten violence with the promise of much more downstream where that came from, and try to negotiate a ransom from senior figures of the town – in return for which they would surrender their Spanish prisoners or ‘hostages’, as they would now be called, and make off in peace. So the following day they moved upstream towards the town again and anchored within sight of it. There were no more bells or fires but there was much alarm, shouting and commotion, screaming people running about and the noise of a few guns firing. Selkirk was not sure what they were firing at, but he had a fair idea, as he and an English sailor with some understanding of the language brought forward in a pinnace two Spanish prisoners, one Joseph Arizabella and another whose name has not been recorded, to act as translators.

At length, a group of townsmen appeared at the riverside, with the corregidor, or commandant, at their head. He was smiling an empty smile, but Selkirk was not. Disembarked with musket and his own ‘linguist’ at the ready in case of any foul play, he stood grimly on the shore at one side of the hostages, while an elegant Dr Dover in full gentleman’s uniform took their other side. Boldly, he began to set out the privateers’ terms. A peace-buying figure of 50,000 pieces of eight (one of which was roughly equivalent to an American dollar) was put to the commandant, who stopped smiling and asked for time to retire and think about it. And after taking four hours longer than agreed, he returned with effusive greetings and gifts of wine, flour, sheep and pigs for the British officers – but no money. The town had been through hard times, he explained, and such a sum was beyond its means.

Dover sighed with exasperation and lowered his demand to 40,000 pieces of eight. Again the town chief asked for more time – in this case nine days – and, as he did so, Selkirk began to realise what was going on. So did Woodes Rogers, whose patience was wearing thin. It was clear that time was being bought so that the people could remove their treasures and smuggle them into the jungle (and indeed it was learned later from captured townsfolk that ‘eighty thousand pieces’ had been carried out of the town along with plate, linen and other valuable items). Any fool could see that, except Dr Dover, an English gentleman to the core.

Despite this, his final condition was much tougher. Their last offer would be accepted only if three ‘good’ hostages were surrendered to make it sound, otherwise the invaders would ‘take down our Flag of Truce, land, and give no Quarter, and fire the Town and ships.’ And as new hostages appeared not to be forthcoming – while more time was passing – that was exactly what Woodes Rogers stepped in to do. He lowered his flag of truce, displayed instead the British ensign and field colours, told Dover to reject the Spaniards’ final desperate offer – of 32,000 pieces of eight – and without further ado unleashed his men of war.

They exploded into action with such ferocity that even the ‘wild man’ Selkirk found that ‘no Command could be kept as soon as the first Piece was fired.’ Their incursion was decisive and emphatic, as they poured out of the boats on to the land and tore into the defending Spaniards, who fought on horseback but found their horses falling fast. Twenty of them died, and as many riders. As the survivors retreated into the surrounding trees, the invaders kept up their quick reloading and relentless fire, took over three churches, and gained complete possession of the town within half an hour.

The church raiders even tried to rip open coffins and pull up floorboards in their search for gold. Woodes Rogers managed to deter most of them from this with the news that the town had just been hit with a tropical fever epidemic that had killed scores of people and the putrefying bodies were still being piled up in the churches.

But the churches were ransacked nonetheless as the sailors ran amok. There was still some gold and silver to be had there, though the vanishing natives had relieved them of most of their treasure. Bits and pieces of silver were found among provisions in private homes and storerooms before they set them alight; they even managed to acquire the town commandant’s gold-headed cane, but frustration was biting into the plunderers’ hearts. Every Spanish town on this coast was full of gold; that was why they were here; and yet, with the exception of a coin here and a trinket there, Guayaquil was empty of both treasure and people. Both were hidden away and it was clear to the plunderers that they had been outwitted.

Selkirk himself might have been known as a brawler in the past, but even he was taken aback by the behaviour of his shipmates, so much so that when he saw two of them stumbling drunk and laden with stolen wine bottles out of a private house, he challenged them – ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ – and smashed the bottles to the ground.

It was not normally his role to take the moral high ground, but Selkirk was truly cast in this image with his next task. It was a delicate one and Captain Rogers had to find the right man or men to do it. He had not been too proud of his sailors on this occasion – though it wasn’t news to him that seamen were difficult to control on land – but he was an English gentleman, so if there was treasure to be hunted down outside the town, and if it were to be found where he had heard it might be, considerable self-restraint would be called for in taking charge of it.

Why? A released Indian prisoner of the Spanish had told him that much of the town’s riches had been taken to houses upriver in boats and barges – and these had included aristocratic womenfolk who were the proud possessors of much fine gold and jewellery. Sensing that they would be the key to this adventure being successful after all, the captain decided he would happily see the women relieved of their baubles but would countenance no ill-treatment of them. He did not want a British fleet to be accused of rape or anything resembling it.

The challenge also needed to be met by a decisive man of action, sexless examples of which were very few. Who could he call upon? Who could he trust? Who could he at least persuade to take the part on pain of losing his share of the plunder? It had to be Selkirk. The recalcitrant Scot had promptly obeyed every order until now, and they both knew it was mainly because he now wanted, above anything else, to be a rich man. He had not lain with a woman for maybe six years but he still had the mental strength, Rogers reckoned, not to let sexual temptation get in the way of his golden future. He also gave this credit to Lieutenant Connely of the Dutchess and, after explaining the task to both men – stressing that many of these women would be young and beautiful – he demanded that they accomplish the task with ‘no unpleasantness or disrespect, or else ... ’

Taking 21 men with them, including one interpreter, the pair proceeded seven leagues upriver (21 miles/34km). On arrival at a group of houses, built on either side of the river, they left five men as a guard in the boat with a swivel gun, and before they began their work managed to chase 35 Spanish horsemen off into the woods. Fear then opened most doors, but the men were polite as they stole. Throughout the day they visited house after house, seeing no more menfolk as they picked up as many jewels as they could from the terrified women; none of whom was as young and beautiful as promised, Selkirk noted, until they came upon a bigger house, set back a little into the jungle. After kicking open a few of its doors, a scream led their way to a huddled group of at least a dozen beautiful young aristocrats. They were elegantly, but lightly, attired and it was no hardship for the men to see that under their fine dresses they had hidden their gold chains and best jewellery; nor, presumably, was it a hardship for them to feel around the girls’ bodies to confirm their findings. And yet they had to be on their best behaviour as the women pushed aside their silks and fine linens to reveal tantalising glimpses of flesh while loosening their treasures.

That, at least, is the official story, as recorded in his journal by Woodes Rogers for posterity, public consumption and his superiors, presumably on the say-so of those who were there. He wrote:

Some of their largest Gold Chains were conceal’d and wound about their Middles, Legs and Thighs, etc,. but the Gentlewomen in these hot Countries being very thin clad with silk and fine Linnen, and their Hair dressed with Ribbons very neatly, our Men by pressing felt the Chains etc with their Hands on the Out-side of the Lady’s Apparel, and by their Linguist modestly desired the Gentlewomen to take ’em off and surrender ’em. This I mention as Proof of our Sailors Modesty, and in respect to Mr Connely and Mr Selkirk, the late Governour of Juan Fernandez.

It is pretty hard to take in that such hardened sailors could be such gentlemen in such circumstances, and Diana Souhami for one is not buying it. The award-winning author of Selkirk’s Island writes that Rogers’ readers were expected to believe that:

… these men, who had been at sea for eight frustrating months and, in Selkirk’s case, marooned alone for four and a half years, who could not be controlled ‘as soon as the first piece was fired’, who had drunk a good deal of liquor, smashed their way into churches with iron crowbars and torched people’s houses, none the less when it came to sexual civility defied the customs of war and behaved with modesty and respect as they groped women’s bodies to steal their jewels.

There are a few embellished, almost fictional tales supporting Woodes Rogers’ version, telling how Selkirk played the gentleman-hero in holding back not just his sex-hungry men but himself too, when given the freedom to ‘modestly’ molest several wide-eyed, olive-skinned beauties in search of treasures hidden in the most intimate of places. There is even a further passage told of how the women were so grateful for the marauders’ restraint that when they returned from more plundering upriver and passed the house again, the females came out with smiles, to offer them refreshments from a flagon of wine and a tray of food.

Aye, right, as we say in Scotland. If true, the episode is certainly to Selkirk’s credit. But it is hard to imagine the beautiful senoritas weeping and waving fond farewells as their foreign molesters rowed away with their refreshments, valuables and modesty.

One way or another, after an absence of 24 hours, Selkirk and his men were fairly well satisfied and they returned to Guayaquil like highwaymen with about $2000 worth of plunder in gold plate, chains, earrings and jewellery. It was not a huge haul, but it felt like they were getting some real treasure into their coffers at last. In the meantime, while Woodes Rogers had billeted himself in a house there, the town was still being tacitly held to ransom against some Spanish hostages. They had proved interesting to hold as well. It was they who told the British that the lights and noise they had met on their original approach to the town were part of a religious celebration and not prompted by their appearance; but they also told them about being spotted later – while apprehension was delaying the landing party – which set the townsfolk into action, smuggling church treasures and 80,000 pieces of eight out into the jungle, never to be found.

There was still money to be got, however. On the 26th a Spanish messenger came forward with an offer of 30,000 pieces of eight to persuade the invaders to leave town. In return, the townsfolk wanted their two boats and hostages back. Tired of being soldiers, the sailors made their captain realise that now was the time to take the money and run; so it was quickly agreed that they had a deal. It had been an ugly and messy operation but Woodes Rogers was pleased enough, having taken tally of his winnings, and so were the sailors.

So too were the relieved townspeople, watching mainly from the safety of the surrounding woods. The rough, tough privateers left some of their less attractive plunderings and carelessly cast-aside weapons (‘Pistils, Cutlashes and Pole-axes’) and marched to their boats ‘with colours flying’, making their getaway frighteningly loud – with much ‘Shew and Noise’ generated by drums, trumpets and guns – in stark contrast to the sinister silence in which they had arrived.

They were exhausted, stained with old sweat and blood, but anyone would have thought them almost euphoric amid the departing noise, laughter and banter. Helped along with some fortifying local liquor, they were so high they barely noticed the voracious mosquitoes on the return downriver. Even Selkirk couldn’t disguise a satisfied smile as they pulled their potent little convoy of small craft to return to the big ships. Still grasping his musket, he kept a wary eye on the pinnace that held their plunder under a sail sheet and told himself that, while it hadn’t been the greatest or most honourable of victories, they had a fair bag of plunder, they had done their dirty work, and it was over with. Could he thank the Lord? Was the Lord still on his side? It seemed so, for the Scot sensed he was now on the edge of becoming rich; and he was astonished that their raiding party had suffered the death of only one man, John Martin, a victim of a splitting shell as he fired it from a mortar.

That was an easy escape, he must have thought. But he didn’t know then it was about to get a lot tougher. Within a few days, the expedition’s mood changed dramatically, for the raiders had brought more than treasure with them from the town – a rampant tropical fever, probably malaria caught from the river mosquitoes, although Woodes Rogers thought it was another kind of plague passed from the putrefying corpses in the churches of Guayaquil.

Bled and dosed with spices and alcohol, around 120 sailors, more than half of those who had been on the river raid, were treated for the tropical fever on the Increase, Selkirk’s hospital ship, and, astonishingly, only 13 of them died, thanks to the energetic efforts of Dr Dover and his surgeons, John Ballett and James Wasse. But there was more work to be done and the widespread sickness had delayed their mission to find, attack and capture a Manila galleon. The passing weeks had also meant exhausting supplies, with a critical shortage of fresh water, so 72 prisoners were put ashore at Tacames village by Selkirk. Though he was given some provisions in return, it was not long before a ‘melancholy Time’ was being experienced in the hungry and thirsty convoy that comprised the Duke, Dutchess, Marquess, Increase and Joseph, the 50-tonner captured off Peru, which was now under Selkirk’s command.

They plundered smaller ships as they could, but the cargoes often proved mundane and unexciting – things like old quilts, brass pans, bags of potatoes and soup ladles – because many Spanish ships had been warned to stop carrying valuables as ‘the English were in ye Seas.’ But both the Spanish and the English knew there was one ship in ‘ye Seas’ that could not be warned and it was certainly full to the gunwhales with untold riches. And a Manila galleon was due to appear in these waters off California any time now. It would be quite a challenge to fight and capture it with their men so weak from recent sickness and severe hunger that had them eating rats by then. Even Woodes Rogers admitted that ‘should we meet an Enemy in this condition, we could make but a mean Defence ... Everything looks dull and discouraging.’

But the bigger challenge was: how to find it? A line of vigilance would have to be created which the galleon would have to cross to reach its destination port of Acapulco in Mexico. At intervals of 15, 30 and 45 miles off the shore the Duke, Dutchess and Marquess formed a thin patrol line that was monitored by Selkirk, now in the Joseph. His task was to pass communications between the three bigger ships while also keeping an eye out – between the intervening seascape – for the galleon.

November passed fruitlessly, with the vast empty expanse of ocean steadily destroying the men’s dreams and making a mockery of their captain’s tantalising order to wait for the Manila ship ‘whose wealth on board her we hope will prompt every man to use his utmost Conduct and Bravery to conquer.’

By 20 December, with the picket line now reduced by one – the Marquess had had to sail off for repairs – it was clear to everyone that the galleon was not going to materialise, or that they had missed it. A council meeting decided that, despite their small gains here and there and some worthwhile plunder from Guayaquil, their voyage was a failure and the priority now was to survive long enough to get home. The following day they would set sail for London, going 19,000 miles the wrong way – west, via the Western Pacific island of Guam and the Indies – as the Spaniards had ‘closed the Horn’ against them. Then, of course, it happened.

Just as they were preparing to weigh anchor at about nine o’clock in the morning, the Duke’s lookout shouted ‘Sail!’ and there – to their ‘great and joyful Surprize’ – were the white sails of the treasure ship they had ‘so impatiently waited for and despair’d of seeing’ ... a Manila galleon heading for Acapulco on a northerly loop. The men cheered and their hearts were lifted, their spirits raised. Now, if they played their cards right, the mission could be dramatically turned from a miserable failure into a brilliant success.

Their quarry was not the biggest of these legendary galleons – although it might have had the longest name for one, Nuestra Senora de la Encarnacion Disengani – it was a still something of a floating fortress: a 400-ton frigate with 20 cannons, 20 small guns and a crew of 193 men. It was this last, human element that was to be its undoing. The men were exhausted by their eight-month voyage and weakened by hunger, scurvy and the freezing cold of the northern route that they had taken to avoid intense easterly winds. They were not exactly fighting fit.

Neither, of course, were the men of the Duke and Dutchess. But they were fired up by the prospect of gaining this rich and glittering prize that they had travelled 7,000 miles (11,200km) and suffered all manner of hardships to meet.

Staying just out of range of the Spanish ship’s guns, Selkirk moved the Joseph as close as he could to it so as not to lose it in the night and used signal lanterns to keep the British ships aware of its position. In the morning they were ready, having closed on their prey with the intention of boarding it as the sun came up. The main aggressor was the Duke – the Dutchess having been held back by lack of wind – and it all began with a cup of cocoa for each man, the ship having run out of fortifying spirits. The Spanish hung out barrels of explosives on each yard-arm ‘to deter us from boarding ’em [but] at about 8 a clock we began to engage her by ourselves’, wrote Woodes Rogers, who takes up the story here:

The enemy fired her Stern Chase upon us first, which we return’d with our Fore Chase several times, till we came nearer, and when close aboard each other, we gave her several Broadsides, plying our Small Arms very briskly, which they return’d as thick a while but did not ply their great Guns half so fast as we. After some time, we shot a little ahead of them, lay thwart her Hawse close aboard, and plyed them so warmly that she soon struck her Colours two-thirds down. By this time the Dutchess came up, and fired about 5 Guns with a Volley of Small Shot, but the Enemy having submitted, made no Return.

The battle had lasted a mere three hours and the privateers’ victory was helped in no small measure by the clever device of musket marksmen in the rigging shooting Spanish gunners dead on their deck. In this way, the galleon suffered nine men killed, three wounded, and many blown up and burned with exploding powder. On the Duke only two men were wounded – but one of them was Captain Woodes Rogers who was hit in the face by a musket ball that ‘struck away a great part of my upper jaw and several of my teeth, part of which dropt upon the deck, where I fell.’

Though in great pain, the captain broke up the Spanish crew and confined them below the decks of all three ships; then he invited Selkirk to join him and Dampier in assessing the value of their prize’s cargo. Dampier estimated it at one million pounds sterling. Selkirk, wide-eyed, had no clue but he had never seen riches like this. His mouth fell open as he tried to take it all in. There were chests spilling over with gold dust, gold coins and gold plate, silver plates and wine goblets, necklaces of rubies and diamonds, swords with gem-studded hilts, caskets of earrings and bracelets, statues of gold and jade, spices, textiles, belts of pearls, calicos, chintzes and silks, paintings and looking glasses, porcelain vases, tapestries, silk gowns and stockings, a china service for Queen Maria Luisa of Spain, and no fewer than 5,806 fans.

There was no doubt that such a treasure ship would be worth its weight in gold in London. It would have to be well looked after on the way there. The ship was renamed Batchelor, in honour of John Batchelor, a Bristol linen draper and prominent backer of the expedition, who, although he managed to congratulate the convoy on its arrival home, died in 1711 before receiving his share of the profits. Selkirk was appointed its Sailing Master after quarrels over who should be its captain. That honour eventually fell to Dr Dover – despite the opposition of Woodes Rogers who felt that, although Dover was a skilful physician, he knew little of naval affairs. Few doubted that the precious treasure ship’s fate was really in the hands of Alexander Selkirk.

It was yet another long struggle to get home, of course, and it wasn’t helped by the appearance of a deep-sea monster in the shape of insatiable human greed. Having tasted such success, the privateers wanted more; and when they learned from their Spanish prisoners that there was more – that they had been sailing in the company of a galleon twice her size – the chase was on for that one too. However, when they found her, they had cause to regret it. This was a ‘brave lofty new Ship’ and she gave them an unexpected surprise on Christmas Day. With 40 guns, the Nuestra Senora de Begona was armed like a castle and, after seven hours of battle, she had seriously disabled all three ships of the privateers – as well as Woodes Rogers, who ‘was struck in the foot by a splinter so that he could not stand, but lay upon the deck in great pain.’ In fact, he was lucky to have only lost part of a heel, as 27 of the British sailors had died before their action was called off. ‘We might as well have fought a Castle of 50 guns as this Ship,’ wrote Edward Cooke of the Marquess.

It did not make the arduous voyage across the ocean any easier. Despite managing to buy new provisions on the Spanish island of Guam, another 70 more of the men had died by the time the reduced convoy – minus Joseph and Increase, which were given to Spanish prisoners to sail to Acapulco – reached Batavia (now Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies where the badly leaking Marquess was sold as scrap for a few Dutch dollars. Thanks to the War of Spanish Succession (1701-14) in which Britain and the Netherlands were ranged against Spain and France, the London-bound privateers had good reason to appreciate the help of their Dutch allies as they prepared for the second leg of their marathon return voyage. They were welcome to stay for four months recovering from the Pacific crossing before the remaining three ships – Duke, Dutchess and Batchelor – set off across the Indian ocean for the Cape of Good Hope.

In Cape Town they were made welcome by the Dutch East India Company and were given a support convoy of no fewer than 25 Dutch merchant ships – as protection against Spanish war ships – when they left for northern Europe on April 6, 1711. When they arrived, it was Alexander Selkirk who sailed the captured Spanish galleon around the west coast of Scotland and into the North Sea to avoid attack from the French in the English Channel. He was even able to see his home village on the Fife shore of the Firth of Forth, so near yet so far from his parents and his brothers. ‘If they could only see me now,’ he mused, with his hands on the wheel of one of the richest Spanish treasure ships ever to be captured.

Their penultimate stop was the Dutch island of Texel where they waited for three months before four British warships arrived to escort them safely home.

Gratefully escort’d by the Netherlanders to the Roads east of their Island of Texel, there we were well parch’d and pleas’d to take on Board several Barrells of the Liquid Treasure that is Water, enough to see us Home. There it was also that, as we wait’d off the Coast, I experience’d a Gathering Unease regarding the Security of our Treasure, or more particularly my Portion thereof. I had heard many a Tale of Crewmen having receiv’d less than their True Rewards, aye oft Nothing, as the English Gentlemen took their Shares for Valuing and Selling and obliged the Common Sailors to wait perchance until they conveniently left This Mortal Life or went again to Sea. Nor did I wholly trust Our Hosts in this regard, though I own this was Unfair. I gladly record that, unmolest’d, we made Sail again in the protective company of four British vessels on 22nd September and anchor’d in Erith, Kent, on 14th October, 1711, my having been away eight Long Years and having liv’d through many Changes and Incredibal Aventures in that Time. In time I receiv’d my Share of our rich Cargoes ’though it seem’d to me a deal less than I warrant’d.

As the seven-strong convoy came triumphantly up the Thames creating a grand and dramatic sight before they docked at Erith, Woodes Rogers expressed some relief in his journal’s final entry:

Octob. 14. This day at 11 of the clock, we and our Consort and Prize got up to Erith where we came to an anchor, which ends our long and fatiguing voyage.

And for Alexander Selkirk, it was a magical moment – to be home at last after more than eight years away and having experienced some of the most adventurous exploits that could ever be undertaken by man. The accounting of the treasure duly took place and after all the grasping hands had made their claims on his treasure ship – there were far too many of these, including the government – he accepted his £800 share, which he suspected might have been less than he had earned. But it was still a substantial sum; in today’s money, it was worth something like $100,000.

Of course, it had been a Bristol expedition and much of the Manila ship’s treasure would have been taken overland to that city for dividing among the city merchants who had sponsored the voyage. To keep an eye on such proceedings was one good reason for Selkirk to decamp there after a short stay in London; another was his friendship with Captain Woodes Rogers and his new venture, the South Sea Company, which proposed that he return to Juan Fernandez on one of a 60-ship fleet and colonise it as a trading post.

In the event, the project never got off the ground and while waiting for it to progress Selkirk had begun to get bored while drinking too much flip* in the city’s inns. His almost-certain meetings there with Daniel Defoe would certainly have taken the edge of that boredom; but there was disappointment, too, with the stillbirth of the South Sea Company. It seems that Selkirk was in his cups too much.

Bristol court records show that in late September of 1713 he was summoned before the bench accused of the drunken assault of one Richard Nettle in St Stephen’s parish; but he wouldn’t have given much heed to that. Rich man or not, he was in trouble again and he would deal with it in his own time-honoured way. Before the force of the law came down on him, he would find another, less irksome place to be. He would return to London for short spell of enjoying his money there. Then what?

Where better to go than Scotland? Back to the joyful simple life; to see and impress his old relatives and friends; to spend some precious time with his ageing parents. They probably thought he was long dead. They at least would be pleased to see him. Wouldn’t they?

Chapter 6

The things he brought back

This is, of course, a story full of tantalising loose ends and frustrating cul-de-sacs. When he was cast away at his own request on Juan Fernandez Alexander Selkirk is popularly believed to have had with him his sea chest, a tinderbox, several pounds of tobacco, a hatchet, a kettle, a knife, some navigational notes and instruments, the clothes he stood up in, some bedding, a Bible given to him by his mother when he left Largo, a pound of gunpowder, a powder horn, a bag of bullets and a musket.

His rescuer Captain Woodes Rogers and his later interviewer Richard Steele seemed to agree that he had only ‘his Clothes and Bedding, a Firelock, some Powder, Bullets, and Tobacco, a Hatchet, a Knife, a Kettle, a Bible, some practical Pieces, and his Mathematical Instruments and Books.’

But were they being a little conservative? Did the initially reluctant monarch of the island have more gear to console him when he was suddenly thrust back to the Stone Age? Other notions vary annoyingly or (I would suggest) get mixed up with the fictional Crusoe story. The dramatic statue of Selkirk as a goat-skinned figure looking out over the Forth from the Victorian house that now stands on the spot of his Largo birthplace has him wielding not just a musket; there is also a pistol tucked comfortably into his belt.

And did he, among his ‘Practical Pieces’, also have a coconut drinking cup and a ‘flip can’ on the island? Other accounts say so. One biographer adds ‘a bundle containing some ship’s biscuits and hard goat meat’; another adds a flask of rum and three days’ worth of quince marmalade and cheese; another adds a set of carpenter’s tools; and yet another adds a few linen shirts, wool stockings, a brass spyglass, and a leather bag full of gold coins.

This could get a little out of hand. We can be sure anyway that he didn’t have six of his favourite records. And we also know that he didn’t have anything like the number of things his fictional counterpart was said to have salvaged from his wrecked ship after a dozen rafting trips to it. Crusoe’s lot included ‘all the men’s clothes that I could find’, plus biscuits, rum, bread, rice, sugar, flour, razors, scissors, knives, forks, Dutch cheeses, pieces of dried goats’ flesh, some corn, a knife, tobacco-pipe and ‘a little tobacco in a box’, and £36 sterling. There were also ropes, spare sail canvas, rigging, hammock, bedding, nails and spikes, a screw jack, tools from the carpenter’s chest, and an array of arms and ammunition that would help anyone with the challenge of survival on a desert island: two pistols, three fowling pieces, some powder horns, two old rusty swords, two barrels of gunpowder, two barrels of musket bullets, a large bag of small shot, and no fewer than seven muskets.

In the end, author Daniel Defoe had his hero saying, ‘I had now the largest store of all kinds that was ever laid up, I believe, for one man’ and describing how, after the efforts of bringing the collection together, Crusoe lay gratefully in his tent ‘with all my wealth about me.’ Selkirk, the real-life castaway, certainly had nothing like that veritable treasure trove to help him survive.

If we don’t automatically take Woodes Rogers’ and Steele’s word for the meagre inventory – by comparison – that he was beached with, it is almost impossible, after more than 300 years, to know exactly what the possessions were and what he brought home with him. Selkirk family descendant Allan Jardine, imagines the sailor being so delighted to be rescued and so fed up with the degraded stuff he’d lived with so long that he would be tempted just to leave most of it on the island – ‘wouldn’t you?’ – as he jumped excitedly into the rescue pinnace sent by Woodes Rogers from the Duke.

The fictional Crusoe, finally dressed up to the nines by his rescuing captain, did take a few of mementoes with him onboard his saviour-ship as he left his island after 28 years: ‘When I took leave of this island, I carried on board for relics the great goatskin cap I had made, my umbrella, and one of my parrots.’ Not to mention the £36 that he had been unable to make use of, obviously.

It is not known if Selkirk kept his goatskin outfit for posterity. But he is said to have cavorted in them in Bristol and author John Howell, in his 1829 biography of Selkirk, implies that he did hang on to several old items, including a musket, and presumably took them to Scotland, where he left them with his mother after returning to Largo as a rich man in an elegant suit of gold-laced clothes in the spring of 1714. Also, it seems that a musket belonging to Selkirk may have been left in Clapham, London, after he spend some post-expedition time there ... of which more later.

Certainly, it’s not easy to pin faith on the authenticity of some claims: to establish whether certain ‘Selkirk’ items were actually his; and even if so, to establish whether they were with him on the island. But a couple of still-extant items – namely the sea chest and a coconut drinking cup – have acquired a degree of official endorsement and a certain credibility by having found their way, through the family, into the safekeeping of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh’s Chambers Street.

There, they are under the sharp eye of the aforementioned intrepid Dr David Caldwell (see chapter 4), who enjoys the museum’s rather grand title of ‘Keeper of Scotland and Europe.’ It has to be said, however, that the cup and chest are in storage and seldom see the light of day. ‘I can’t give you a good reason why the cup and chest are not on display,’ Dr Caldwell told me. ‘It was just the way our ideas developed when we were working on the exhibitions for the Museum of Scotland – we certainly did not do everything we thought of, or could have done.’

One of their rare outings was at an exhibition entitled ‘Alexander Selkirk, the Real Robinson Crusoe’ in 1983, at the then Museum of Antiquities in Edinburgh’s Queen Street (now the National Portrait Gallery). Fans of the feisty Scottish broadcaster Muriel Gray might be interested to know that, as a young designer, she was involved in conceiving this show. Amid displayed notes on 17th-century privateering and navigation aids and techniques was a glass-encased model of the man on an (inaccurately) penguin-populated beach. He was surrounded by the plain old sea-chest bearing a heavy rusted lock and the barely-discernible letters ‘AS’ carved into its lid; that coconut drinking cup; a powder horn; a clasp knife now missing its blade; and – a little out of context – a time-worn, hooded cradle that claimed to be the baby Alexander’s after his birth ‘at Craggy Well, Well Brae, Largo, Fifeshire, in 1676.’

Howell recalled that the coconut shell cup was ‘at one time richly and tastefully mounted with silver, until it was unfortunately stolen by a travelling pedlar before being returned (from Perth) deprived of its silver.’ The silver rim – engraved with the words ‘The Cup of Alexander Selkirk whilst in Juan Fernandez 1704–07’ – was restored to the cup by no less a person than Sir Walter Scott.

Howell wrote of Selkirk’s ‘flip-can’ thus:

But by far the most interesting relic is his flip-can in possession of his great-grand-nephew, John Selcraig. It holds about a Scottish pint and is made of brown stoneware glazed: it resembles a common porter-jug as used at the present day. On it is the following inscription and posey, as, in former times, every thing belonging to a sailor that would admit of it had its rhyme:

Alexander Selkirk, this is my one.

_____________________________________

When you take me on board of ship,

Pray fill me full with punch or flip.

That the flip-can accompanied him in all his wanderings and stay on the island I have no hesitation to affirm. He had no opportunity to get it made after he left England upon his last cruise; and that it was manufactured at his own request the inscription evidently shows. That he would get it made upon his return is not probable, as he came to Largo so soon after, where he could have no use for it; besides, ever since he went away from thence, it has been generally locked up, and at one time by a niece during fifty years together. It was never seen by any of his other friends all that time, and the jug appears to have been very much used before it was left at Largo; so much so that it is broken at the mouth in two places, and the handle is also gone. It being cracked, there is a patch of pitch upon it to strengthen and prevent it from extending. This must have been put on while at sea by Alexander himself.

Where is that precious relic now? Dr Caldwell thinks it passed on to the distinguished 19th-century collector Adam Sim of Biggar, Lanarkshire, but, as with so many items, the trail runs dry in later times and today we are left with the chest, the coconut cup, and two other relics said to have belonged to Selkirk: a powder horn and a knife, which are kept in storage in the little Victorian castle that is St Andrews Museum, not far from the famous golf course.

These don’t get out much either, except for special exhibitions like the Famous Fifers theme that was celebrated a few years ago. The museum’s curator, Lesley-Anne Lettice, expresses regret that the items can’t be on permanent display (‘We have 20,000 objects and display room for only a fraction of them,’ she says) or in a smaller museum dedicated to the ancient mariner (‘The problems of temperature control, security and staffing all come down to money’).

The clasp knife is missing its steel blade, but the heavy ivory handle is still intact and worth examination with its decorative carved cross-hatching and the initials AS burned into it with small dots. The powder horn is made of wood and brass with decorative circles and figures similarly burned into the wood. But how do we know anyway that such items were truly Selkirk’s? ‘Well, we don’t,’ Ms Lettice tells me. ‘We just have to take some things on trust. The problem is, the more things are moved around the murkier their provenance becomes.’

These two relics represent a case in point. In 1998 they were transferred to St Andrews from Kirkcaldy Museum, to which they had been donated in 1970 by ‘an Edinburgh woman.’ But why did she believe them to be the real deal? ‘Along with them we found a label by an unknown author,’ says the curator, ‘which basically just said flatly that they had belonged to Alexander Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe, and were bought from one of his descendants named Thomson in East Fifeshire in 1849.’ Well … so what? I hear myself say. But what else is there that we can be sure about?

In the modern university library in St Andrews – languishing in a strong-room – are the Kirk Session minutes from Largo and Newburn Parish Church (1691–1707) which record various transgressions and family troubles involving the young Alexander Selkirk, or Selcraig as he was then known, referred to in chapter 3. Anything else? Well, maybe the musket, but I will come to that later. While all of these (except the musket) can be seen on request, the fact that none is on permanent display in Edinburgh, St Andrews or Lower Largo is a matter of real regret for those who believe in the tourism potential for Fife and Scotland of the Selkirk-Crusoe story.

One such person is Stewart Dykes, proprietor of Lower Largo’s old Crusoe hotel, who told me: ‘The Selkirk-Crusoe story is a much better one than the legend of the Loch Ness monster, for instance, simply because it’s true. If the big museum doesn’t want to show the relics, why can’t we just have a dedicated museum here, to promote the village and the county and even the country? I’d be happy to play my part in that by providing premises.’

Of course, being relatively new to the area, Stewart wasn’t around when a small Selkirk museum in Largo was last tried in 1986, and so did not witness the minimal interest that it generated – despite being lent several of the aforementioned historic Selkirk relics (another of their rare outings from the National Museum and St Andrews University) and despite a grand opening in the presence of several local dignitaries plus the Chilean ambassador to Britain. This little family museum, accommodated in the ground floor of the ‘statue’ house, was inspired and organised by Allan Jardine junior’s mother, Ivy, a couple of years after her farmer husband and his father, also Allan, died. Apart from the aforementioned artefacts, it displayed the illustrated full-colour storyboard which formed the basis of an interview feature on the BBC’s Blue Peter children’s television programme. But one of the items of which she was most proud, she told me, was a page from the log of HMS Weymouth, which recorded the death – along with many fellow crew members stricken with yellow fever – of Lieutenant Alexander Selkirk off the Gambian coast on December 13, 1721. He was 45 years old, a ripe age for a sailor in the days when surviving even one voyage was almost a miracle.

Yet in the oddly contrary way that these things happen (or don’t) in hard-to-impress Scotland, Mrs Jardine’s dynamism and total commitment to the Selkirk cause did not harness the popular interest that such an initiative would doubtless have received in America. As it was expressed by another Selkirk descendant, Bruce Selcraig: ‘Were this the United States, you wouldn’t be able to see the sea for all the billboards touting Crusoe Land Thrill Rides and Man Friday Burgers.’ As it was, the little museum was closed within the year … but not before something else happened.

THE FINDING OF ‘THE GUN’.

It is at this point that I have to declare a degree of personal interest – I was actively involved in the acquisition of one (albeit unauthenticated) Selkirk relic that played a part in the little museum’s short but poignant life. As editor of The Scotsman magazine at the time, I was jolted into action when I read an article in the paper in December 1985, about the museum’s forthcoming opening which contained this sentence: ‘It is the gun which the family would most dearly like to get hold of, not least because of its chequered history.’

It hit me like a musket ball between the eyes, and I immediately determined to flush out the ancient Fife mariner’s trusty, rusty flintlock; but I admit that there was something nagging me about it – could it have been my recollection of a frontispiece engraving of Robinson Crusoe holding two muskets in a facsimile first edition of Defoe’s book? Despite this misgiving, I decided to start my search.

In truth, the challenge to find the gun was something of an obligation I had spontaneously offered to make prior to seeing the article. Some ten years before, during the village’s 300th-birthday celebrations for Selkirk, Mrs Jardine expressed to me the family’s fervent wish to see ‘the gun’ brought home. ‘Done,’ said I, slipping quickly into my metaphorical Superman cape only to fall promptly flat on my face. My excuse was that I was working abroad at the time.

But now, having returned home, there were no more excuses and my promise would not let me rest, suggesting a degree of altruism that the sensational discovery of ‘Crusoe’s lost musket’ would surely signify for a jaundiced hack like me. If I had known then what this exercise would cost the newspaper after three months on the telephone, I would have apologised beforehand. I do apologise now, in the hope that at least a good story was judged to have come from it.

But how was I to start? First, I threw aside that Superman persona, as I was older and wiser; then cautiously approached what seemed the clearest lead provided by Mrs Jardine – a letter she received in 1983 from one Ernest Lanning, of South Godstone, Surrey, which read:

In the mid-1920s, when at my preparatory school, Colet Court, in London, a classmate (whose name escapes me at the moment) mentioned that his father had Selkirk’s gun in his possession. Eventually the boy (or his father) brought the gun to the school and it was shown, with great awe and reverence, to our class. I have never had any doubts that this was the genuine gun which had belonged to Selkirk.

This surely meant that if Mr Lanning, then 72, could remember his fellow-pupil’s name, that person could conceivably still be traced and persuaded to spill a bean or two about the gun’s subsequent progress? Not so easy. Mr Lanning wanted to remember but couldn’t. Would the names of all his fellow pupils help? ‘Perhaps.’ School archivist Penny Denton obligingly produced all the form lists in which Mr Lanning’s name appeared and I sent them on. Did they ring any bells? ‘No, so sorry’ he replied.

What about his teacher? Could she possibly be still alive? Yes! The archivist came to the rescue again, but Miss Hollom – then in her nineties, very deaf and living in Hampshire – could only vaguely understand what I was enquiring about.

I tried a different tack. Having heard that Mr Arthur Credland, curator of the Kingston-Upon-Hull Museum, made investigations about the gun before mounting a Selkirk exhibition a few years before, I contacted him and persuaded him to send me his research file. When I received it, I saw at once (as he had seen) that we were talking about more than one gun. The thickening of the plot was signalled by a press clipping from May 22, 1924, which referred to the sale at Sothebys ‘yesterday’ of ‘the Robinson Crusoe gun’ and was accompanied by photographs. These clearly showed that this was not the weapon sold in Edinburgh (a very long-barreled brute with a wedge chopped off its butt) but one with a rather more handsome butt, engraved with the words A. SELKIRK and SEAL CRAIG, the latter being the original spelling of Sekirk’s name, and supported by carvings of a seal and a crag as a kind of visual pun. As Mr Lanning had mentioned ‘his’ gun bearing such carvings, I decided to stay on this one’s trail until it either delivered the goods or went cold.

This was to become the search for ‘GUN No 1’. Surely I could trace it through Sothebys’ records? The buyer’s name, CJ Sawyer, might lead me to his 1924 address at the very least. From client services to cashier’s department, I was sent round in circles to be finally told that the records were long gone, buried and ‘unfindable in some North London warehouse.’

So, back to the Credland file: where did he get that clipping from? The answer was Eric Smith of the Clapham Antiquarian Society who told me he had done some research on the gun in 1936, talking to Sothebys etc. Did he have the buyer’s address? He did! He revealed that Mr Sawyer was an antiquarian book dealer in London’s Grafton Street and as I scanned the Sawyers I had photocopied from the relevant London directory I saw that the shop was still there!

Mr Sawyer, of course, was no longer alive but his son Charles was alive, well and had retired in Sevenoaks, Kent. Did he remember his father having the gun?

‘Oh, dear,’ he said, raking his memory almost audibly, ‘yes ... I think I do remember it very vaguely. Dad did have such a gun but it’s very hard to recall the details. I was only a child at prep school then.’

‘Which prep school would that be?’ I asked.

‘Colet Court.’

I was onto it! Was it possible that his father could have shown the gun to the whole school?

‘Yes, now that you mention it, I do recall him taking the gun there and giving a little lecture about it.’

One mystery solved at last. Sawyer junior was two years younger than Lanning, in a different form at Colet Court. But what of the gun? Mr Sawyer asked the shop’s staff to check for a resale record but the stock book stretched back to only 1926, before which the old flintlock could well have moved on.

The only clue came again from Mr Smith of Clapham, who had been through a similar exercise in 1936 and received the following note from Mr Sawyer senior, the gun-buyer: ‘We are in receipt of your favour of the 10th inst., and in reply beg to state that the Robinson Crusoe musket was sold to America and we do not know its present whereabouts.’

Where to now? Neither HM Customs’ Library nor the Department of Trade’s export division could help further: no records. The warm trail of ‘Gun No 1’ seemed to have gone suddenly cold. Time to turn my attention to ‘Gun No 2’.

This was the long-barreled beast with a family background and had been in the charge of Robert Lumsdaine of Lathallan, before his death prompted its sale at Dowell’s auction house in Edinburgh in 1905. Here is a reminder of that from the weekly London iterary review, The Athenaeum:

In an Edinburgh auction room this week was sold a ‘relic’ whose authenticity in these degenerate days, with the scoffer so much abroad, is likely to be greatly questioned. The article is none other than Robinson Crusoe’s musket, ‘a fine old specimen with a long barrel, old flint lock, and beautifully balanced.’

This flintlock is referred to in Sir Robert Sibbald’s A History Ancient and Modern of the Sheriffdoms of Fife (1803), as being in the possession of a family in the neighbourhood of Largo. The auctioneer states apropos of this article:

James Gilles, aged 80, in 1895, informed General Briggs that his mother was a grandniece of Alexander Selkirk. She gave the gun to the late Major John Lumsdaine of Lathallan about the beginning of the century. It is among the property of the late Stamford Robert Lumsdaine of Lathallan, now being sold.

Family legend has it that, on hearing of the pending sale, Allan Jardine senior’s grandfather jumped on the Edinburgh train to thwart the proceedings; but the train was delayed and, by the time he arrived at the saleroom, the gun had been sold to Mrs Hulda Whyte of Philadelphia – who could not be persuaded to resell it.

Its alleged progress thereafter had been mapped by Mr Douglas Wright, the Dunblane-based director of the Keep Scotland Tidy campaign of the 1980s who, I discovered, had also undertaken to trace it for the Selkirk celebrations 10 years before. His enquiries suggested that Mrs Whyte sold the gun to Mr Louis Schmidt, manager of Ostendorff’s restaurant in Philadelphia, where it was hung on the bar wall until the US Sesquicentennial celebrations in 1926.

Apparently, unable to trace Selkirk’s descendants, Schmidt then gave it to the city’s mayor to present it as a goodwill gesture to the British Ambassador, Sir Esme Howard, in order to hand it over to ‘the Daniel Defoe Museum’ in Britain – which did not exist. Perhaps Sir Esme held on to it before finding a suitable alternative establishment? It appears not. None of his surviving offspring could recall seeing it in the family home – Greystoke Castle in Cumberland – and no museums around that area appeared to have it.

So perhaps there was some reference to its handover or ultimate fate in Sir Esme’s personal correspondence on public record in Carlisle Castle? I ventured forth and spent most of a day there prying into the private life of a stranger who I had come to know and admire. Such admiration could not, however, compensate for the disappointment of finding no clue to the gun’s fate. Glumly retracing my footsteps to the station, I began to think that what I needed was a clairvoyant. A moment later that is exactly what I saw on an advertising poster peering out at me from a shop window.

On an impulse I decided to call her.

‘If I gave you some clue could you tell me where this blessed thing is?

‘Still on the island, isn’t it?’ she asked.

‘Well, no,’ I replied. ‘Should I make an appointment to discuss this matter properly with you?’

‘I shouldn’t bother, dear. I have a strong feeling you’ll find it.’ That shop-window poster featured a cutting about her and all her works from the local Evening News and Star and, truth to tell, I felt I had marginally more faith in the press. Could a fellow hack perhaps help? ‘Sure,’ said busy local reporter Peter Hill, ‘I’ll do a little piece in the paper and see what happens.’

The press had also helped Mr Wright with his research, much of his information having come from Jeanne Lane of The Philadelphia Bulletin; but, after receiving a copy of her letter, I now saw that the gun’s American history was sketched in less-than-definite terms and maybe she could yet pin down some of the facts more tightly? The Bulletin had long since folded and she was hard to trace but I finally found her working as a ‘counsellor’ in another city. She could recall little about the gun enquiries but gladly undertook to pick up the trail again. In the meantime, however, both lines of enquiry seemed to have come to a halt. Or had they?

In response to the Evening News and Star item came a call from amateur gun enthusiast Barry Woodhall of Penrith. ‘I’m almost certain,’ he said, ‘that I read a story about this in one of my gun magazines.’ He couldn’t recall which one but he agreed to go through all his old issues of Guns Review and Shooting Times.

Two days later he was still looking. I had called both magazines, they had denied running the story, and now he was suggesting that the piece might have been in a friend’s Sporting Gun. Without waiting, I contacted the editor, who said yes, they ran such an item many moons ago, but the writer, David Baker, had not revealed the identity of the gun’s owner. Excitement mounting, I called Baker. Had he actually seen the gun? Yes, and from what he could remember, its butt was indeed engraved with Selkirk’s name, a picture of a seal, and the date 1705 – when Selkirk had been on the island of Juan Fernandez for a year. Could his have been the ‘amateur hand’ that had restocked the gun with ‘what looks like a strange tropical hardwood’?

In any case, this was surely ‘Gun No 1’ and after much affable humming and hawing, Mr Baker volunteered more information about its possible location and promised to send me a copy of his Sporting Gun article. This is it.

DESERT ISLAND FLINTLOCK?

Could this gun really have once belonged to Robinson Crusoe? David Baker endeavours to solve the puzzle.

I never cease to be amazed at the multitude of facets of ‘the antique gun’. There are twists and turns that prove over and over again that truth is stranger than fiction.

So it was a while ago that one evening the phone rang and a friend of a great many years standing simply said: ‘Would you like to see Robinson Crusoe’s gun?’

Daniel Defoe’s classic of Robinson Crusoe is, of course, fiction, but it is based on the true story of a certain Alexander Selkirk who hailed from Lower Largo, on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth, and who was marooned for four years on the island of Juan Fernandez in the south-eastern Pacific Ocean in the early 18th century. Incidentally, there is a statue of Selkirk in Lower Largo.

What my friend wanted to know was if the old gun that he had acquired along with this tale could possibly be genuine.

He had no great illusions from what he knew of its provenance, which was that his late uncle had bought it for 50 shillings at Swaffham market many years before.

The whole affair, therefore, hinged on the question as to whether the gun could have dated from the island adventure time or not ...

Such a challenge was not to be missed and so I took myself and my family one summer’s afternoon to see this curio.

What I had half-expected was some sort of percussion gun with a lock off a P. 53 Enfield rifle which would permit me to give a definite ‘No’ for an answer. In the event, it was a far more subtle question than that.

Firstly, it had been restocked by an amateur hand in some indeterminate piece of wood to a fanciful design. So all the clues and indications of age based on style of stock were lost.

The only half-clue that could be gleaned from the stock was the fact that it was carried right to the muzzle – the style of the 18th century and later. So we can argue that probably the original was of this form as well. As if to compound the mystery, the metal work was all rusted to a degree that would obliterate any proof marks or engraved inscriptions – another potential set of clues removed.

The plot thickened and in place of a simple answer, I was deep in ‘Don’t Know’ country.

The problem was that in the relevant time the true flintlock was known, so Master Selkirk could have had one with him.

The strange wood of the stock, even had it been possible to identify, would be no help – it could have started out as part of a ship or even driftwood if it did not grow on Juan Fernandez.

As is the way of such things, there are several other Robinson Crusoe guns – but what help is that? Most shooters acquire a battery, if only to have a spare in case of a breakdown. So in truth, I cannot give a definite yes or nay ...

Elated now, I contacted the owner, whose details David Baker had given me. Did the name still have the gun? Well, no, and how had I found him anyway? Pure detective work, I said, drawing up my mackintosh collar around my face. Who had it then? ‘My sister,’ was the reply. Might I have her name and number? To my delight and astonishment, he gave me the information.

And so I made a call to a Mrs Florence Osbourn, of East Dereham, Norfolk. She sounded very nice and very surprised. Yes, of course she had the gun; and her description of it also seemed to fit that of the ‘Sothebys’ model. Might I come and see it? She hesitated and said she would call me back in a few days.

In the meantime, Mr Baker’s article reached my well-bitten fingers. To my horror, the pictures showed it was NOT the gun I thought but a totally different one that, at first sight, looked less than convincing with rather clumsy knife-gouged lettering across its equally clumsy butt. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I felt it could be ... I mean, Selkirk wasn’t a professional wood-carver and why should a faker make such an amateur job of a phoney? In any case, we were now clearly talking about ‘Gun No 3’. Eventually Mrs Osbourn telephoned and agreed to let me see it.

Charming, white-haired and recently widowed, she lived in an elegant modern house on the outskirts of East Dereham and served lovely spongey biscuits for tea. After we had chatted for a while over a cuppa, she disappeared and returned with a long, brown-paper parcel which she unwrapped on the carpet.

There, in all its long-and-rusting glory, was ‘The Selkirk Gun’. Or was it? Mrs Osbourn was convinced that it was, as her husband – who discovered it gathering dust in a Newmarket antique shop 33 years before – felt pretty certain about it. A concrete manufacturer with an eye for antique wood, he paid only ‘a couple of pounds’ for it but valued it highly himself; and Mrs Osbourn had, since his death, wondered how best to end its story for him ‘before I go too’.

‘It seems very odd,’ she said, ‘that you should just turn up like that and tell me about the family and the museum wanting so much to have it. I have a feeling that this is what my husband would have wanted for it, but ... ’

A cautious lady, Mrs Osbourn did not want to release the gun immediately when I asked if I might (at least) have the age and type of wood used in the butt established. She was naturally worried about its future safety and wellbeing. And up in Lower Largo, the Jardines fully understood. They had no wish to wrest the gun away; it had to be gladly given or sold. Indeed, this is what Mrs Jardine wrote to me from Largo on February 6, 1985:

Dear Rick,

It is great news that you think you may have tracked down the Selkirk Gun at last!

If it turns out to be ‘the gun’, will you ask the owner of it if we, the Selkirk descendants, can have the chance to buy it from her? She would be very gracious to present the gun to the Alexander Selkirk Museum in Largo – I can’t think it would be of any interest to anyone but the family and the people of Largo. We would probably not be able to compete with an auction room sale.

If you go down to England again to visit the owner, please ring me (reverse charges) and let me know from England.

Meantime, my best wishes. Ivy

After my visit, a good telephone relationship was set up between Mrs Osbourn and Mrs Jardine and optimism abounded. On returning to Edinburgh, I showed pictures of the gun to Dr Caldwell of National Museums Scotland and Stephen Wood of the Scottish United Services Museum at Edinburgh Castle. Neither was quite convinced that here was a genuine Selkirk relic. They had reservations about the apparent age of the lock. ‘I am not convinced it has a lot going for it as a genuine Selkirk relic,’ Dr Caldwell wrote to me. But as it was thereafter off to play its role in the Largo museum, I didn’t have the opportunity to follow up his suggestion that its authenticity (or not) be checked out in the flesh.

With Mrs Osbourn and Mrs Jardine having come to an agreement that it would go north after all, for a price that represented, to its seller at least, quite a sacrifice, there wasn’t much interest in its provenance being written off. Confronted by the experts’ reserve, Mrs Jardine’s first thought was that, when the family museum did acquire the gun ‘visitors will just have to share the doubts about it.’ But she suddenly adjusted her attitude with characteristic determination: ‘No, on second thoughts,’ she said, ‘when it comes back here to Lower Largo it IS the Selkirk gun and that’s that.’

So far, so good. I closed my file and – this still being a time when detectives were obliged to smoke – stubbed out my Lucky Strike with a satisfied smirk. It had been a hard slog and, as write this today, I try not to think of how much easier it might have been in this age of the Internet ...

Anyway, as so rashly promised, a ‘Selkirk gun’ came to the little Largo museum as one of the few substantial items that would not have to be returned under the conditions of the larger museums’ short-term loans with all their attendant security concerns; which was partly why of course, the mini-museum concept was so short-lived.

The gun was presented there as Alexander’s Selkirk’s from his island sojourn – a contention supported to some degree by its butt of ‘strange tropical hardwood’ – but to be honest, in the absence of in-the-flesh examinations, few knowledgeable people have ever been totally persuaded about its authenticity.

So where is the gun now? The National Museum had it for a while but returned it to the family in Largo. Those who might know now seem shy of talking about it. In his excellent book In Search of Robinson Crusoe, the Japanese author Daisuke Takahashi (see chapter 4) – who kindly called my gun saga ‘fascinating’ – records visiting, in the late 1990s, the Firearms Division of Christie’s saleroom in London, where he was shown a familiar-sounding large antique gun with the name ‘SELKIRK’ carved in large letters on one side of the butt and the year ‘1705’ on the other. ‘This is the musket given to us by Selkirk’s descendants in Scotland,’ said the man in charge. ‘They wanted it put up for auction, but after examining it we concluded it couldn’t possibly be genuine.’

In his opinion, it was entirely of 19th-century English origin, was no longer suitable for auction, and would be returned in due course to Scotland. There is some talk that it now resides in Germany and the family shrugs with indifference about its whereabouts, ‘as it wasn’t authenticated anyway.’

Hmmm. Could I, despite the old musket being missing again, finally settle the matter for this book? I still had a photograph of it with which to follow the Edinburgh castle museum’s suggestion that I consult – in turn – experts at the Royal Armouries establishment in Leeds.

I duly did so and ... well, this is where I cannot hide my disappointment. The museum’s firearms curator Peter Smithurst sounded extremely authoritative when, after studying the picture, he declared: I’m afraid the lock mechanism and the flintlock cock are very typical of the late 18th century.’ Late, not early then? ‘No, I think we are talking a date of around 1790. And the general overall form of the gun is also from that period. It’s a model that was made in England for export to the Americas.’

So there was absolutely no possibility that this gun with Selkirk’s name emblazoned all over its butt could be a genuine relic? ‘Only if it belonged to someone else called Alexander Selkirk,’ said Mr Smithurst with a chuckle. I have to say I didn’t find his comment quite so funny.

If anyone reading this knows where the gun is now, I would be moderately interested to hear of it if only to put a full point at the end of this part of the story. As I wrote earlier, the Selkirk story today is all about tantalising loose ends ... and many cul de sacs.

WHEN GUN NO I WAS BOUGHT:

New York Times, March 23, 1911

CRUSOE MAY HAVE OWNED THIS GUN

English Tourist Here Tells of Buying an Old Flint-Lock for Twenty Shillings

The man who thinks he owns what is probably the most read-about weapon in the world is in town. Thousands of boys who have read of Robinson Crusoe’s gun will doubtless be interested in him. As everybody knows, the real Robinson Crusoe was Alexander Selkirk, and the gun he is supposed to have carried has that name carved on one side of its stock as if done with a large knife. On the other side of the stock is similarly carved ‘Anne – R. 1701.’

The ‘R’ stands for Queen, but Queen Anne did not come to the throne until 1702, so it has been thought since the discovery of the gun in a section of the London slums that it may not be genuine. The British Museum made an investigation and finally decided that the gun was probably that of the famous Scotch buccaneer. The owner of the gun is positive it is the one ‘Crusoe’ had with him on the island.

He is Randolph Berens, of 14 Prince’s Gardens, South Kensington, London, who is here on his way to Florida for the winter.

In his youth, Berens, like other boys in England, longed for Crusoe’s treasure chest, drinking cup, gun and desert island. He went to the British Museum and there saw the drinking cup made of a coconut and the seaman’s chest with which Selkirk was put ashore from Captain Stradling’s treasure-hunting vessel; but the gun, he was told by the museum authorities, had been lost.

Many years later the gun came into Berens’ hands, and yesterday he read in the Sunday Times about the uncrowned monarchs of little island kingdoms who have furnished inspiration to novelists ever since Defoe created Robinson Crusoe, Mr Berens sent this telegram from the Plaza to The Times:

Have just seen your interesting article on page 1a of this mornings Times on Robinson Crusoe’s Island of Juan Fernandez. I have for several years had his gun in my London house, having acquired it by a lucky fluke. If you think it sufficiently interesting to care to send a press man this afternoon, I would like to tell him all about it.

Mr Berens was found wrapped in a dressing gown in his room.

‘Ah, that fluke: yes it was indeed lucky for me,’ he began. ‘If the master of the famous Ashmolean Museum at Oxford knew about it I suppose he’d be astonished. But the fluke occurred and I got the gun, and his poor little porter gave it to me for twenty shillings and a bit of a tip for himself.

‘It all happened this way: I was at Oxford one day and, having an odd half-hour, I took in the museum. The master was away digging in Rome for vases and the little porter showed a friend and myself about the rooms.

‘As we looked them over, I complained that the curio stores in the town had nothing in them of interest. I asked him if there wasn’t something in the town I could take away as I was a bit of a collector on my own account.

‘ “Nothing,” the boy answered. “Nothing, that is, unless you might be interested in an old gun a man brought in here yesterday. It isn’t old enough for us.”

‘We went on looking about the rooms and at last got to the top floor. “Look here, my man,” I said to the porter, “how about that old gun you were speaking of?”

‘ “Here it is,” he said, getting a dusty old flintlock out of a corner, and also some knives and things that were with it. I looked the gun over, and on brushing the dust off the stock, found some letters. They were ASEL in script capital. Then I brushed some more and the letters turned out to read “A. SELKIRK”.

‘I asked the boy if he had examined the gun stock for writing, and he said yes and that he had made out the word “Asel”. He said the man who brought it in wanted twelve shillings and he would take that plus as much more as I would pay. I made it twenty and I took it.

‘I cleaned up the gun after a bit and found this verse on the back of the flintlock:

With three drams powther

Three ounces haille

Ram me well and pryme me:

To kill I will not faille

‘Then under the name “A. Selkirk” I found in smaller script, “Largo N.B.” I knew at once that “N.B.” meant “North Britain”, which was a usual term for Scotland in the eighteenth century, and that Largo was the place where Selkirk was born.

‘On cleaning up the other side of the stock the “Anne – R. 1701” became very clear. I doubted that 1701, but on looking it up, I found that Queen Anne ascended to the throne in March, 1702, and that in the old-style calendar March was included in the previous year, so that according to old style, the date was right.

‘Forward of the Queen Anne inscription was a seal carved into the wood, sitting on top of a rock. Under it were the words “Seal Kraig”, Kraig being a Scotch word for cliff, and I suppose Selkirk meant by the emblem to indicate the origin of his family name. Seals often came then into the water at Largo.

‘I took my find, now fairly well convinced that it was genuine, to the British Museum for expert examination. The officials looked it over minutely, and I saw one of them looking with a magnifying glass at the triggers and the wood right around them. It was finally decided that the gun was probably genuine because the wear on the triggers could not have been produced fraudulently.

‘Remembering the boys who went trooping in to the British Museum to see Crusoe’s cocoanut drinking cup and his sea chest, I loaned the gun to the museum so they could see that also. But I was restless about it and wondered if there might be anybody in Selkirk’s home town who could tell about it. I took it up there, went to the church where Selkirk’s mother recognised him when he came home again after his long absence, and met many descendants of the family’s neighbours. None of them knew about it, or ever remembered having heard of it.

‘I then went back to the Ashmolean Museum and got from the porter the address of the man who took the gun to him. I found him by the directions given in a poor section of the city and asked him how he came by the weapon. He told me that at one time he had engaged in the antiques trade, buying up antiques advertised in the newspaper. One day he saw a gun advertised by someone in the Clapham district [of London] and he bought it for ten shillings, although one pound was asked in the advertisement.

‘In two years he made nothing in his antique store so he took the remnants of it, including the gun, down to the museum where I was fortunate enough to arrive before the master came back from his digging in Rome, and after his porter had decided to reject it.

‘The British Museum authorities helped me hunt up the records of Selkirk’s life and career, hoping we could find a clue to his disposition of the gun. We found that “haille” as used in the rhyme beside the flint meant “shot” and was quite a common name for it in Scotland, although not used in England. On his return from the lonely island Selkirk bought a little schooner, with which he traded out of Bristol down to Clapham. That brought him into the district whence his gun finally reappeared.’

WHEN GUN NO I WAS SOLD.

The Times, May 22, 1924

CRUSOE’S GUN

His association with Clapham

Robinson Crusoe’s gun was sold at Sothebys saleroom yesterday for £215, the buyer being a Mr C. J. Sawyer.

The gun, an old flintlock musket, believed to be the authentic weapon carried by Alexander Selkirk during his four years’ exile on Juan Fernandez Island, was sold by order of the executors of the late Mrs Randolph Berens, of Prince’s Gate, South-West London.

The gun was bought some years ago by her late husband who took great pains to verify its authenticity. There seems to be little reason to doubt that this relic was the property of Alexander Selkirk, of Largo, N.B., upon whose adventures Daniel Defoe founded his story of Robinson Crusoe.

The gun is an old flintlock musket, crudely carved with the name and date Alexander Selkirk, 1701’ and below is a curious little carving of a seal crawling over a crag of rock – a significant fact, as Selkirk’s real name was Seal Craig.

The relic has been traced to Clapham, where Selkirk lived for a time after his rescue, but as he died at sea his possessions were sold.

The Rev R. Berens had been able to trace the gun back to 1875 only, when it was sold by somebody at Clapham for ten shillings to a man who, failing to see anything of interest in it, offered it after two years to the custodian of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford for twenty shillings. They saw little of interest in the gun. But two days later Mr Berens, being in Oxford on a visit, strolled by chance into the museum and immediately recognised an important find.

It was on loan at the British Museum for two years, and was now purchased by Mr C. J. Sawyer for £215.

Chapter 7

Homecoming and Sophia

There is little doubt that Alexander Selkirk had missed his family and his old home village throughout his travels, but we can assume that he resolved to go back there in the spring of 1714 – apparently without a long-term life plan at the age of 38 – not only to see his family but also to settle a few scores. That meant the locals, the kirk and his brothers and father John. His mother Euphan, who had always believed in him, was another matter …

In a world with virtually no means of reliable or fast communication, she must have ached with the pain of not knowing what had become of the son who had promised so much. She had probably resigned herself to his death. She was in for a surprise.

How did her seventh son and his sea chest – presumably containing much of his new found fortune – get back to Largo? Money, of course, was now no object, for he could enlist the help of coachmen and ferrymen whenever he wished. They would have responded with alacrity, for here they would see a conspicuously wealthy man. The animalistic monarch of Juan Fernandez had long since changed his dirty, ragged goatskins for the refined gentleman’s suiting of the time – a long and flared coat, waistcoat, cravat, shirt with lace ruffles at the wrists and neck, knee breeches, silk stockings and high-heeled silver-buckled shoes. While he wanted to make sure his appearance back home backed up his assertion that ‘I am now worth eight hundred pounds’, it is hard to believe that such a tough guy might have gone the whole fashion hog of the period and worn make-up or powdered shoulder-length hair tied at the neck. Or even a wig or tricorn hat. But one thing is certain: the simple inhabitants of Lower Largo would not have been accustomed to seeing anyone quite like this on their streets before.

To get back among them he probably took a boat from somewhere on the Thames estuary to Edinburgh’s port of Leith. He may have hired a particularly energetic ferryman prepared to row him north-east across the vast expanse of the River Forth estuary to Largo’s neighbouring village of St Monans, as suggested in the fictionalised story of his life by Martin Ballard. But this would be a prodigious task of rowing unlikely to be achieved over these lively waters before a Sunday morning church service. This writer prefers to believe that, laden as he was with at least his sea chest and musket, he took a coach or buggy to South Queensferry and made use of the ferry there in the same way as its founder, Queen Margaret, did regularly in the 11th century*

But however Selkirk got over to Largo, his entrance was to be a particularly dramatic one. Let’s say it was a Saturday evening when he alighted from the boat at North Queensferry before staying at an inn overnight and managing, over a few drinks, to hire a local horse and cart with driver. Very early on Sunday morning, keen to get going, they would have loaded up his gear and made their way along the coast road to Largo and the half-mile of Main Street to his parents’ house. When he stopped before the cottage and took down his heavy sea chest, he was not even sure he should bother knocking on the door. It was the Sabbath and that meant his family would be in the kirk up the hill, where prayers of gratitude for the local harvests and pleadings for eternal life and forgiveness were being offered up.

Despite the fact that ‘the influence of religion had poured the balm of peace and consolation into his weary soul’ on his island, he remained wary of that establishment, bearing in mind his early life experiences played out there. But he was longing to see and embrace his family – his beloved mother, difficult father and even his hard-to-tolerate brothers, most of whom were fishermen, though David now ran their father’s tannery. So he paid off his carter, left his precious goods behind the cottage, then set off on foot up the hill, rising round the familiar Serpentine Walk that followed the Largo Burn up to Upper Largo. He might have been a hardened, cynical old buccaneer in many respects, but here, at this moment, his heart was bursting with childish excitement, anticipation and pride, for he was keen to make a grand entrance as a prodigal son long since assumed dead. Indeed, he hoped to create such a stir with his entrance as would be remembered for generations in the annals of the village.

Elegantly dressed, he climbed the ten broad steps up to the entrance, slightly nervous about finally creating a good memory in this place where only bad memories had existed before. He turned the iron latch handle, the heavy outer door creaked ajar, then he opened the interior doors and moved into the body of the kirk where his presence was immediately noted – as any stranger would be in such a country church – by the hesitating minister, the Reverend William Moncrieff, as 300 or so faces turned to see what was holding their minister’s gaze.

But he was not immediately recognized and joined the congregation on the pews. He then managed to sit through a little of the service, before his mother, who had been unable to concentrate on the minister’s sermon, suddenly recognised him after turning to study his face several times. ‘Uttering a cry of joy’, she rushed over the pews and her fellow-worshippers, oblivious to the impropriety of her conduct in the house of God, the interruption of the service, the outrage (yet again) of Reverend Moncrieff, and the general disruption caused, to bury herself in the arms of her son, who might have written of the moment thus:

So finely attyr’d was I upon my Arrival in Largo that, upon entering the Kirk in search of my Family, neither one of them nor any of my Erstwhile Acquaintances did recognise their Prodigal Son in the First Instance, though he creat’d a Fair Disruption of the Proceedings in the Good Lord’s House (may He forgive me). Till, all at once, my Mother arose and gave out an Almighty Scream, whereupon she clamber’d and ran toward me, to embrace me with Great Emotion and Further Disregard for all others, so come-over was she with Recognition, Joy and Pride that her Seventh (and thus fortunate) Son had evidently so fulfill’d her Faith; had travell’d the World aseeking his Fortune and had, to all appearances, Succeed’d.

His father was wide-eyed with disbelief at the scene, but neither of his parents could hide their delight and pride at being finally reunited with their son and even his brothers seemed glad, if somewhat apprehensive, to see him. So it was a happy band of Selcraigs that went back down the hill from the church to the cottage on the main street for a day of revelry and rejoicing. Alexander was, of course, brought immediately under his parents’ wing, but they were much older now and seemed less able to cope; so after a few days and less-than-comfortable nights he was given a berth in the nearby house of his brother John and sister-in-law Margaret, with whom he had had that bitter and violent altercation in 1701 just before he went off to make his fortune.

Was his apparent fortune now an instrument of peacemaking? No doubt any lingering grievances they might have harboured were assuaged by some increased rent, for Alexander was not shy about paying his way. Indeed, like him or not – and there was an enduring resentment towards him among many of his contemporaries – most of the villagers could not help but be impressed by the apparition who moved amongst them with all the precious and exciting goods, mementoes and gifts he brought with him. These included silver and gold, ‘several summes of money’, those fine clothes, ‘a considerable parcell of linnen cloth’, his musket, his brown stoneware flip-can, his sea books and instruments, and (surely the most impressive of all) the written accounts of his castaway experience by Captain Woodes Rogers and Richard Steele which, having just been published, had made him already quite famous in the south of England (the publication of Robinson Crusoe was still five years away). He had been much celebrated and ‘courted by the curious and the learned’ in London.

By contrast, of course, Lower Largo was a quiet backwater. At first, it seemed to be something he was looking for, and in the first flush of reunion he bought considerable property there – lands, tenements, outhouses gardens, yards, orchards, and ‘a large house by the Craigie Well’ – while the lonely and beautiful spots in and around the village seemed to remind him of his Pacific island. Indeed he had confided to Steele that his return to English society ‘could not restore to him the tranquillity of his solitude.’

Perhaps it was to regain that solitude that he had made his way back to Scotland; not just to show off as a wealthy city gent. Despite having been flattered by his star status in Bristol and London, which he must have enjoyed and despite being welcomed back into the Largo fold, he still preferred his own company and seemed to hanker after it more than ever.

His sentiments at this time were certainly manyfold, but as long as the novelty of homecoming in Largo went on, he would be, if not happy, certainly in close pursuit of happiness. His great comfort was the surrounding presence of the glistening Firth of Forth with its extensive vista out to the North Sea, and every day after breakfast he would take provisions for the day and go exploring beyond the village. He retraced his boyhood footsteps, breathing the sharp salty air as he walked along the rock-edged beaches of Largo Bay, often barefoot. He climbed up into the bay’s wooded hinterland to wander and meditate alone through the little sheltered valley of Keil’s Den, where, under the overhanging trees, he loved to listen to the babbling of the little brook that cleaved through it down to the shore.

Water, water, everywhere. It seemed he couldn’t exist out of its sight and sound and as a lifelong mariner it was always a comfort to him, though he knew it could be unpredictable and viciously malevolent. Everywhere in the vicinity he seemed to want to seek out, or recreate, places that reminded him of his beloved island. Two places in particular were undeniable revisitings of his life on Juan Fernandez.

One was a self-made cave in his parents’ garden, behind the family cottage (see chapter 3). Of that, John Howell wrote in his 1829 biography:

Attached to his father’s house was a piece of ground, occupied as a garden, which rose in a considerable acclivity backwards. Here on the top of the eminence, soon after his arrival at Largo, Alexander constructed a sort of cave, commanding an extensive and delightful view of the Forth and its shores. In fits of musing meditation he was wont to sit here in bad weather, and even at other times, and bewail his ever having left his island. This recluse and unnatural propensity, as it appeared to them, was cause of great grief to his parents, who remonstrated with him and endeavoured to raise his spirits. But their efforts were made in vain; nay, he sometimes broke out before them in a passion of grief, and exclaimed, ‘Oh, my beloved island! I wish I had never left thee! I never was before the man I was on thee! I have not been such since I left thee! and, I fear, never can be again!

Dr Lamond, who resided in Largo, and died there a very old man, used often to point out to John Selcraig, the teacher, the spot where the cave was formed, as he remembered, when a child, to have seen the solitary Alexander sitting under its roof*

The other conspicuous reference to Alexander’s island existence came with his frequent fishing trips. There was little in or around Lower Largo to spend his money on, but he did see a rowing boat he wished to buy, for it reminded him of one he had played in as a boy, and may indeed have been the same one. Money being no object, an irresistible offer was made and he then spent many hours on excursions going north along the coast – mainly on the three-mile coastal voyage to Ruddons Point and Kingscraig Point where two arms of romantic grass-topped cliffs rise up from seaweed-clad rocks as they create a pincer around the beach of Shell Bay near the unspoiled village of Earlsferry. It was, and is, a very pretty spot, which today accommodates part of the Fife coastal walking path (‘planned to extend from the Forth bridges in the south to the Tay bridges in the north’) and – facing out into the bay – a popular caravan site, next to which is an information board that states ‘here columns of basalt formed in fire from the earth’s mantle to make spectacular cliffs.’

In truth they are not wildly spectacular, but they are relatively high, rugged and beautiful and from the top you can see how they could evoke memories of the more dramatic, jagged topography of Juan Fernandez. You can sit there amid the grass looking out to sea and easily imagine the daily tension of looking for a rescuing white sail on the horizon. Although Selkirk often moored his boat at the point where the meandering salmon-rich Cockermill Burn comes down into Shell Bay, it was lobster he was after – as they reminded him of those distant Pacific crayfish that helped sustain him on his island – and having set his pots along Kingcraig Point, he would row out to inspect them regularly. It was behaviour that at once amused and irritated the local fishermen. They could see that Selkirk could handle a boat all right, indeed with some expertise, but why was such a well-off man bothering to compete with them when they all knew he would be going home to a good meal in the evening, come what may?

For his part, Alexander found their small-minded attitude intensely parochial. In more tolerant moods he could maybe see their point, for he knew about struggling for survival and, hard as it was, how it could nevertheless make life meaningful, more so than his was at this moment, perhaps. He knew that now he was just going through certain empty motions and that something would soon have to change.

The fact was that for both himself and his village community the novelty of their emotional reunion was rapidly wearing off and his disillusionment was growing by the day. This was certainly not a new experience for Selkirk, as he had always found it hard to settle anywhere and was ever on the lookout for new experiences. He might have written of his growing plight in words such as these:

My Emotions regarding my Homecoming to Scotland were mix’d with Great Confusion, for ‘twas with both an Agreeable Lightness of Spirit at the Prospect of seeing my People again and an Overwhelming Despair at the Loss of my Belov’d Island that I had journey’d North. Aye and yet to be at Sea once more, if only upon the Chill Waters of Seatoun of Largo in a Dingey in Which I had once play’d as a Lad, was Good to my Senses and did, as the Walks taken Overlooking the Far Horizons of the North Sea, set me happily in Mind of yon Distant Paradise.

Yet such Joy in my Homecoming was not to Endure the Differences that had grown atwixt my Self and mine Own Guid Fowk, and little Time had elaps’d afore Parental and Sibling and General Disapproval began once more to tire my Heart. More and more was I giv’n to my Fishing, biding in my Cave or far from the House of my Loved Ones, walking and Pondering upon my Past (yon enchant’d Isle!) and my Uncertain Future.

The villagers would whisper about Alexander’s strange habits, especially his skulking in the home-made cave in his parents’ garden where, when not gazing wistfully out of it across the bay, he would sometimes be seen weeping with hunched and shaking shoulders. It naturally disturbed his parents most of all, for although they liked having him so near, it was undoubtedly strange and worrisome behaviour. But when his father spoke out against it, his mother – as always – would defend her boy, reminding her husband of the solitary experience he had been through and of how – because of it – he had forgotten all his social skills. His father, on the other hand, would remind her that the boy had always been withdrawn and had never been strong on such skills.

Indeed, Alexander’s enjoyments were all solitary and he was uncomfortable in the presence of other people. His interaction with his relatives and friends shrank from near-normal to minimal, as all the ancient cracks in his village relationships began to reappear; when he came home of an evening it was to a welcome more from his brother John’s two cats than from the brother himself.

Just as he had with the cats on his island, the former castaway had formed a remarkable affinity with the animals of the house who seemed to keenly await his return every night. Up in his room in the evenings, he taught them the kind of rolling-over and leaping-up tricks he had taught his island cats. Missing his pets one night, John found them in his brother’s company and was shown one or two of the animals’ responses to Alexander’s clicked fingers. John was not only surprised and impressed – ‘I didna think you could teach such things tae a cat’ – but worried too. It was clear that Alexander was becoming stranger and more reclusive by the day.

It simultaneously dawned on both of them that the world-ranging mariner was never going to fit in back in Largo and, although he had initially appreciated its relative simplicity, it was almost inevitable that a man who had travelled to America, Asia and Africa – and even had a piece of South America entirely to himself for four and a half years – would begin to get restless in the unchanged atmosphere of his native village. Not that he hankered after fame – and he already had a fortune. Nor was he pining for the big city. His feeling was more complex than that and he couldn’t quite put a finger on it; but he knew it was something to do with ‘belonging’ and geography, his island and the sea. And he knew the feeling was becoming mutual, not just among his relatives and friends but among the wider village.

There is a Scottish trait of which the country cannot be too proud; after a brief welcome, even the most deserving of returning sons are often shunned as a reaction not unrelated to envy. Though most of his ill-fitting oddness was more talked-about than witnessed, the Largo community, in that peculiar Scottish way, had quickly begun to take its famous son – at least – for granted. Then there was some resentment. And after a few months there was even a touch of contempt, born of growing familiarity. That put the seal on it. He had assumed that, if he harboured any hopes of settling down in Largo, the realisation of that dream would depend on how he got along with its people and vice versa. But it eventually became abundantly clear to both parties that they were never going to get along; that this was a dream which simply could not – after all that water under the bridge – come to pass. Which was how the happy ending inevitably went wrong.

And then there was Sophia Bruce. She could have brought about a happy ending. She certainly represented a happy new beginning for Alexander Selkirk, just as things were beginning to come to a head in the village; just as he was making quiet plans for another departure.

It was on one of his early walks up into Keil’s Den to the high-ferned ruins of the 16th-century Pitcruvie Castle, a mile or so above the village, that he became intrigued by something more than the babbling of the burn. As he weaved through the trees, grass and bluebells, meditating as he walked amid the morning birdsong, something else caught his ear. What was that sound? He slowed to a stop so that his boots would no longer crack on twigs in the undergrowth, and as he focused more closely, he realised it was the sound of a young woman’s sweet voice, singing ...

Will ye gang tae the Heilands Leezie Lindsay

Will ye gang tae the Heilands wi’ me

Will ye gang tae the Heilands Leezie Lindsay

My bride and my darling tae be

He inched towards the sound and saw that the singer was a young milkmaid tending to a single cow in a small area of meadow. He did not approach her but listened with pleasure at a respectful distance – not just that day but for several days in secret thereafter, the sight and sound being so sweet to his eye and his ear that he began to look forward to hearing them as often as possible. And so it went on, day after day – until a large twig did indeed crack under his foot. When that happened, the girl stopped singing and turned, with a gasp of alarm, to look into the woods for the source of the noise. Knowing she would then seek him out, Alexander stepped forward through the rustling leaves with his hands outstretched in a reassuring gesture, as if to say: ‘Don’t panic.’ As he came closer, he saw that she was prettier than even she looked from afar, red-haired with green eyes, and aged about 18. Those eyes were wide with surprise, but he hoped it wasn’t shock, as he said, ‘Please keep singing’.

But she didn’t. Not there and then. Claiming to be too shy to sing in front of a stranger, she chose instead to find out something about her secret admirer, and she modestly began to talk and enquire about him; and Alexander reckoned that, if after a while she did not consider him a stranger, she might sing for him again.

In the event, she did much more than that. Once they established an interest in each other – she was impressed by his experience of the world and by his relative wealth – Alexander visited her in the Den almost daily. He learned that she was the orphaned daughter of a crofter and his wife and that she looked after the cow for her three uncles, all of whom were ministers of the Kirk. Strangely, her innocent artlessness won his rare trust and he found her not only so sweetly appealing but also, clearly available. More to the point, he could see that she had not only enjoyed his company but had begun to trust him too. He had rough edges, but he could also be a man of honour, if Woodes Rogers’ account of his treatment of the Guayaquil women is to be believed. So he got to thinking that maybe his forthcoming departure would not have to be as a lone male ...

It is not known whether Alexander and Sophia ‘consummated’ their growing mutual attraction in the woods, but they certainly got along well and became thoroughly committed to each other as lovers, to the point where Alexander proposed not just running away together to London but marriage itself. To his delight, she accepted, and so his life once again took on some kind of shape.

For both, however, it was an arrangement kept secret from the villagers, for this odd couple were well aware that such a relationship – an innocent teenage girl and a hard-bitten sailor of almost twice her age – would be ridiculed not just by her uncles but by all Selkirk’s friends and relatives. So early one morning he quietly abandoned his revisited past – his cave, his boat, his property, his chest, his musket and all his clothes and appurtenances; but he did carry a large amount of money when he joined Sophia as she, travelling much lighter, slipped away from her uncles without telling them of their impulsive plan to live together in London.

Chapter 8

London and the End

Many an Evil Ship had I seen in my Time, but yon HMS Weymouth was a Vessell that had come upon a Measure of Distress nary imaginable by Myself nor any of the Puir Souls aboard Her. Making her Course along the West African Shore, in search of Pirates, which was to me a great Irony having near enough border’d that State in mine own Past, she fell into Terrible Misfortunes. These were not of the Sea, nor of Man, whom we had been well prepar’d to fight, but of the Auld Deill’s Nature. The Great, silent Curse came down without Mercy in the Middle of this year 1721, and it is nigh Impossible to describe how truly murtherous was this Savage Scourge visited upon us; a Monster of unmixed Malignancy.

The first man so taken was the Purser, Mr White; three days thereafter the Wretched disease claim’d Mr Peine, the Schoolmaster, and I though not yet Sick myself I was already become fatigu’d an exhaust’d helping those others who began to Succumb and in facing the Prospect of what was yet to come. Yet it proved worse than all my Imaginings, furiously ravaging the Common Sailors who huddl’d together in Miserable Conditions in the Forecastle, and neither showing Mercy among the Officers of ruddier Health. The stench of death was all around, amid the Groans of Fatal Agonies, coming to their worst by September when 31 men perished in its 30 Days. I endeavour’d to dispense some Chilled Soup and Hope where I could among the wretchedly doom’d, yet all the While feeling deep in my Bones that mine own Time was soon a-coming ...

It would have been pleasant to record that, despite all our misgivings about the character of the ‘excellent sailing master’ who could be trusted at sea but was an outrageous rogue on land, there was some kind of happy ending to this tale. It looked like there might have been at one point, when, after the inevitable disillusionment of life back in the small world of Lower Largo, he and his young bride-to-be Sophia Bruce took their leave of the village together for what they expected would be ‘the good life’ in London. They were presumably in love, after all, and brimming with the anticipation of a new beginning.

But too soon, her singing would be over. She may have arrived in a coach of fine livery, but the wide-eyed country girl was almost paralysed by culture shock. She certainly saw the many surprises of the capital alive with colourful markets, street performers, strange foreign animals, circuses, and public houses overflowing with strong alcohol. It was this last commodity that was to spoil her young love’s dream. While he had stayed relatively sober back in Scotland, Selkirk was soon finding a new refuge – behind large measures of gin – from which to sentimentally remember his beloved island. Indeed, it seemed that for him no love could ever compare with it.

Within months the novelty of young love had worn off for Alexander as it always seemed to do. In London, he was still a much talked-about man with a degree of celebrity and (despite not enjoying it) some coarse confidence in London circles, while she was a shy country lass with a strong Fife accent who, pretty as she was, could not possibly hold her own in company without his wholehearted support. She did not get it. Digs were found in a central London alleyway called Pelmel, near what is now Trafalgar Square; but they spent precious little time there together. Despite the apparent reassurance she felt as a ‘common-law’wife,* Sophia had expected her mariner to formally marry her in church, as he had promised. But as he kept neglecting her and delaying the moment, it had not happened (although Sophia later said it had) by the time he once again answered the call of the sea and enlisted as an officer in the navy.

Bewildered by her man’s wish to return to the dangers of the sea that he had so luckily escaped with his life so many times, Sophia had pleaded with him not to be a sailor again. But he knew there was no escape from the urge to stop his gin-soaked dreaming, so he turned his back on her.

One of his early assignments was on board HMS Enterprise, a supply ship whose mission would ironically take him back to Scotland where it was one of five navy vessels engaged in the taking of Eilan Donan castle at the mouth of Loch Alsh on May 10, 1719. The castle had been garrisoned with Spanish soldiers as part of a Jacobite uprising which was to end in failure for the rebels at the Battle of Glen Shiel one month later. Selkirk had joined up nearly two years before on March 4, 1717 – a day which Sophia was later to name as her marriage date and which came nearly two months after he had undertaken one apparently decent thing in her respect. For on the previous January 13, in Wapping, he had made out the following will to her benefit:

SELKIRK’S WILL IN FAVOUR OF SOPHIA BRUCE (1717)

In the name of God, Amen, I, Alexander Silkirk of Largo, in the shire of Fife, in north Brittaine, mariner, being now bound out on a voyage to sea, but calling to mind the perrills and dangers of the seas, and other uncertaintys of this transitory life, doe, for avoiding controversies and disputes which may happen to arise after my decease, make, publish and declare this my last will and testament, in manner and form following, (that is to say), first and principly I recommend my soul into the hands of Almighty God that gave it, hoping for the salvation thereof through the alone merritts, death and sufferings of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; and my body I commit to the earth or sea, as it shall please God in his infinite wisdome to order and direct; and as for and concerning that portion of this world, which the Lord hath been pleased to lend unto me, I give and dispose thereof as follows (viz.)

Item, I give and bequeath unto my loveing friend, Katherine Mason, the wife of John Mason of the parish of Covent-Garden, merchant-taylor, the summe of tenne pounds of good and lawful money of Great Brittaine, to be paid her within twelve months after my decease.

Item, I give and bequeath unto my loveing and well-beloved friend, Sophia Bruce of the Pelmel, London, spinster, all and singular my lands, tenements, out-houses, gardens, yards, orchards, situate, lyeing and being in Largo aforesaid, or in any other place or places whatsoever, during her natural life, and noe longer; and at and after her decease I hereby give, devise and bequeath the same unto my loving nephew, Alexander Silkirk, sone of David Silkirk of Largo aforesaid, tanner, &c, and to his heirs or assignes.

Item, my will and minde is, and I hereby declare it so to be, that my honoured father, John Silkirk, should have and enjoy the eastermust house on the Craggy Wall in Largo aforesaid for and during his natural life, and have and receive the rents, issues and profits thereof, to his owne proper use; and that after his decease it should fall into the hands of my said loveing friend, Sophia Bruce, and so into the hands of my said loveing nephew, Alexander Silkirk, in case he outlive my said loveing friend, Sophia Bruce; and as for and concerning all and singular the rest, residue, and remainder of my sallery, wages, goods, weres, profits, merchandizes, sume and sumes of money, gold, silver, wearing apparel, as well as linnen and woollen, and all other my effects whatsoever, as well as debt outstanding either by bond, bill, book, accompt, or otherwise, as any other thing whatsoever, which shall be due, owing, payable, and belonging or in anywise of right appertaining unto me at the time of my decease, and not herein otherwise disposed of; I hereby give, devise and bequeath the same unto my said loveing friend, Sophia Bruce, and to her heires and assignes for ever; and I do hereby nominate, make, elect and appoint, my said trusty and loveing friend, Sophia Bruce, full and sole executrix of this my last will and testament; hereby revoaking and makeing voyd and of none effect all former and other wills, testaments, and deeds of gifts whatsoever by me, at any time or times heretofore made, and I doe ordain and ratifie these presents, and no other, to stand and be for, and as my only last will and testament; in witness whereof, to this my said will, I, the said testator, Alexander Silkirk, have hereunto set my hand and seale the thirteenth day of January, anno. Domini 1717, and in the 4th year of King George, &c.

ALEXANDER SELKIRK

Signed, sealed, published and declared, by the testator, for his last will and testament in the presence of

ALEXANDER BUSHAN

SARAH HOLMAN

It was a very full will comprehensively in her favour. So it was understandable that, despite feeling neglected in London by her often-carousing man – and now being resigned to the lot of the rarely-visited sailor’s wife – Sophia could at least consider herself to be financially and materially safe and secure in the event of his dying at sea or (heaven forbid) his falling victim to that age-old problem of the man-at-sea: a girl in every port, or at least two.

In the event, it was she who was to fall victim to both of these matters. Neglect was one thing, but Selkirk effectively abandoned his young Fife lass when, less than a year later, he stepped on the boards of the Gulf of Guinea-bound naval warship HMS Weymouth to take up the position of Lieutenant (or First Mate) on a voyage that did not get off to a great start and was to end not just in grief but in an unimaginably messy legal wrangle.

Indeed, the start of the ship’s mission was oddly tardy, with the preparatory trip between London and the Cornwall Peninsula taking around two years. Apparently awaiting Admiralty orders, it anchored around Portsmouth and Plymouth for inordinately long periods and its frustrated crewmen inevitably found themselves spending more and more time ashore.

It was as if the ship sensed her fate and was reluctant to go out and meet it and there was even a whole month’s wait after it was loaded in November 1720 with supplies of beef, pork, peas, oatmeal, butter, cheeses, rum, ‘biskett’ and water. No doubt powered by lust and flip the ship’s bored sailors were almost bound to get up to no good. In Selkirk’s case, that meant – because his ‘loveing friend’ Sophia was so far away and unavailable for sex – he would have to focus on someone else nearer to hand. That someone was indeed quite near: she was one Frances Candis or Candia, the buxom landlady of his favourite public house at Oarston, who had grown hardened and cynical under the constant flirtatious attentions of her clientele.

Selkirk wanted her badly, especially when he had had a few. But she was a clever gold-digger and remained apparently unimpressed by his boasts of adventure and the great personal wealth they had yielded (he was worth the then-great sum of £1000, he said). She sensed her sexual power and a money-making opportunity and made it clear that if he were ever to enjoy the great privilege of sleeping with her, the price would be high. It would not just be marriage but also a will bequeathing all of his goods to her ...

To Alexander Selkirk, this was just a matter of a piece of paper – or two. No doubt he calculated that, if his affairs ever came to a posthumous dispute, Sophia’s claim (and her common-law rights under Scots law) might just scupper this arrangement with Frances so that he would have got his wicked way no matter what. On December 12, 1720, just a few days before HMS Weymouth finally set sail for Africa, he and Frances Candis were married in a Church of England ceremony in St Andrew’s Parish Church in Plymouth. On the same day he was obliged to visit a notary in the town, who wrote another will in the name of Alexander Selkirk (or Silkirk, as it appeared on the brief document). Despite her initial resistance to Selkirk’s entreaties – she said later in court that she hadn’t even wanted to marry him – there was no doubt a smile on the face of the scheming new Mrs Selkirk, for she was to gain considerable advantage in life by holding this tawdry piece of paper very close to her ample bosom.

SELKIRK’S WILL IN FAVOUR OF FRANCES CANDIS (1720)

In the Name of God, Amen, I Alexander Silkirk of Oarston within the P’ish of Plymstock in the County of Devon, Mate of his Maj’ties Shipp Weymouth, being in bodily Health and of sound and disposeing Mind and Memory, and considering the Perils and Dangers of the Seas, and other uncertainties of this Transitory Life, do for avoiding Controversies after my Decease, Make, Publish and declare this my last Will and Testament in manner following. (That is to say) First I recommend my Soul to God that gave it, and my Body I commit to the Earth or Sea as it shall please god to Order; and as or and concerning all my Worldly Estate, I give, and Bequeath, and Dispose thereof as followeth. (That is to say) All such Wages, Sum and Sums of Money, Lands, Tenements, goods, Chattels and Estate whatsoever, as shall be in any ways due, owing or belonging to me at the Time of my Decease, I do give, Devise and Bequeath the same unto my welbeloved wife Frances Silkirk of Oarston aforesd & her Assignes forever.

And I do hereby Nominate and Appoint my sd wife Frances the whole and sole Executrix of this my last Will and Testament hereby Revoking all former and other Wills, Testaments and Deeds of gift by me at any Time heretofore made: And I do Ordain and Ratify these presents to Stand and be for my only last will and Testament. In Witness whereof to this my said Will, I have set my Hand and Seal the Twelfth Day of December Annoq. Dom 1720 and in the Seventh year of the Reign of his Majesty King George over Great Britain, & c.

Alexander Selkirk

Signed Sealed and Published, in the presence of us, Step Turtleff

Will Warren

Sam Bury Notie: Publiq

Having presumably satisfied his lust in the few days he had left before setting sail on his last fateful voyage, would Selkirk have given any thought at all to the abandoned Sophia? Would he have felt the slightest hint of shame? Would he even have suspected he had just been outwitted by a brazen mistress of deception? It would be nice to think that he did and that he might have written ...

Having taken from the Cradle of us Both, Seatoun of Largo, the young Lass who had provid’d me Great Comfort in the Days of my Return from, and grieving for, my lost Island Paradise, I had ensconc’d her in the high world of London, believing her capable of rising to such Circumstances. However, in the unfolding of Time, it grew Manifest that my bonnie Sophia Bruce was accurs’d with an Abundance of Pure Scotch Modesty yet lack’d the Scotch Adaptability with which I had been in some degree endow’d. Her great Unhappiness in such Situation was match’d by that of Others with her, even by the Fermenting Disappointment that insinuat’d into my Thoughts a certain Laxity with regard to Nuptial Undertakings. Oft did I console her with Assurances as given in the Recognition of Common Law Marriage within Scotch Law through a Simple Promise to One Another, yet she remain’d Untrusting and Afraid; and had indeed Good Reason to be so.

With the speeding of Events at Plymouth Station, I never paus’d to trouble Myself overmuch to consider the Plight of Sophia until a goodly time had elaps’d with the fading of my Ardour in the face of ‘the Perils and Dangers of the Sea’ aboard the Weymouth, when the Enormity of my Deed at once dawn’d upon me. Although I had not in English Law married my Fifeshire Lass, I had Myself extoll’d to her the virtues of the unwritten Scotch System yet had in the Event taken right Advantage of it to the Furtherance of my own Aspiration to have not one but two Spouses. Were I to be Truthfull to my Proclaim’d Belief in the Scotch Tradition, I was nothing other than a dastardly Bigamist. Aye, and more; I had in my haste to please my new Love, gone so far as to Dispossess poor Sophia of her due Inheritance as written in my first will in her Favour. My Remorse was overwhelming in the Realisation that, should this Voyage see my Demise and so remove the possibility of my Making Amends, her discovery of my Misdemeanours would doubtless be the Death of my Bonnie Scotch Lass.

Was he capable of such refined feelings? Perhaps. He had certainly seen the piquant irony in the mission of HMS Weymouth, which was to seek out and destroy pirates preying on British ships. As he had been a privateer in his earlier voyages – sanctioned by the government to attack, raid and arrest enemy ships – these were hard, unsentimental men not unlike himself, prepared to take the nearest shilling whoever it belonged to. Thus the King’s shilling was as good as any, and – without delaying any further to celebrate the festive season of 1720 – the Weymouth finally weighed anchor and reluctantly pushed off south into a wild, wintry Atlantic which, despite gradually improving temperatures, was still unforgiving by the time they sought refuge from its strong winds and high seas at the mouth of the River Gambia in March 1721.

There was to be no rest and recreation there. As if to warn the men of a lot worse to come on this doomed voyage, one man who was trying to adjust the sails was ‘struck overboard’ and drowned; then the ship came aground in sand, at which point, according to its log, ‘by directions of Mr Selkirk the Boates was sent to lay on the sands ... we laid all a-back but the ship stuck fast.’ Indeed, the ship stuck fast for all of four days before the increasingly desperate efforts of the crew finally managed to float it free.

They could not wait to move on south, hopefully away from their troubles, around the Dark Continent’s western bulge and into the Gulf of Guinea. At the end of May they arrived at the Gold Coast (now Ghana) where the natives did not prove particularly friendly. But despite the villagers’ suspicions of white men who came ashore seeking supplies, slave labour and sexually accommodating women, the Weymouth managed to recruit some black helpers and they were soon desperately needed, for the mosquitoes were everywhere. Barely a month after their arrival, a vicious tropical disease began to spread through the ship striking down those sailors who had been ashore first.

The sounds of distress emanating from the hammocks below grew louder as the fever and jaundice took its toll. The doomed men vomited, shivered and bled from the eyes and mouth. They dropped like flies and a muster roll of fit men on October 23 amounted to 72. The following day it was down to 57.

The deaths – for which the most likely cause was yellow fever – were recorded in a matter-of-fact way in the ship’s log, alongside notes on wind direction and position. Alexander Selkirk’s was no different. His ‘last breath’ entry simply reads, ‘at 8pm Mr Alexander Selkirk died.’ It was December 13, 1721, while the ship lay off Ghana’s Cape Coast.

The great survivor of the solitary life on Juan Fernandez had survived a year of hell aboard a ship of death but his still-impressive physical condition could not prevail against the insidious, invisible enemy. Along with a few fellow victims, he was buried at sea, slipped into the water under a Union Jack, with a few muttered words of blessing from the other men hardly strong enough to speak out their own names. He had seen 45 summers, a ripe old age for a seaman of those hard times, and he had filled them, if not always well, then certainly to the brim of adventure and experience.

In a way, of course, he was destined for eternal life. For two and a half years earlier, on April 25, 1719, while the Weymouth had languished off Plymouth, Daniel Defoe had produced the first 1000 copies of Robinson Crusoe. It was an instant success and within a year had been reprinted in English three times, translated into three other languages and – touching a unique chord with people as it did – was just beginning a remarkable growth in international popularity to the point where, even today, three centuries later, it is still a bestseller and a household name all over the world.

Few people have ever disputed that Selkirk’s experiences were the inspiration for that classic tale. But if he knew anything of the immediate success of Defoe’s novel and realised that he was its spark, he had not been fated to enjoy it.

His was only one of the 180 names of Weymouth crewmen who had fallen to the great scourge; only 100 of the original complement returned home alive after those two hellish years. When their broken ship limped back into port in England, the bad news spread almost as quickly as its fever had. Little time was to elapse before the late Alexander Selkirk’s two women were fighting tooth and nail over his inheritance.

When she heard of his death, the grieving Sophia came forward to His Majesty’s Navy Office to claim the £35 wages owing to her ‘husband.’ But so, to her astonishment, did another woman. Sophia was stunned with disbelief when Frances Candis (or Selkirk) also claimed to be the Scottish sailor’s widow and also claimed his wages. That was only the start of the Plymouth woman’s list of claims which became increasingly audacious even while she was planning to marry a candle seller named Francis Hall. Together the pair plotted to acquire everything Selkirk had left.

Shocked as she was, Sophia was naively sure of her position, holding as she did a very comprehensive will, but as the women’s cases and accusations bounced back and forth between their lawyers and on to Canterbury court – each claiming that Selkirk must have been ‘much intoxicated with Liquor’ when he had promised himself to the other – the technical weaknesses of Sophia’s position became ever more plain.

Each woman produced the will made out by Selkirk in her favour and Sophia proclaimed that her ‘husband’ had not been free to marry anyone else as he had married her on March 4, 1717; but she could not name the place where it had happened nor produce any papers to support her statement. The exlandlady countered with the claim that Selkirk had ‘solemnly declared ... that he was then a Single and unmarryed person, and was very importunate in his courtship.’ She could also name the date and of her marriage and the particular Church of England which hosted it, and produce papers in support of that.

Despite the more thorough character of Sophia’s will, Selkirk himself had referred to her in it as his ‘loveing friend’ and as a ‘spinster’, while the briefer document in Frances’s favour called the latter his ‘welbeloved wife.’ Also the second will revoked ‘all former and other Wills, Testaments and Deeds of gift by me at any Time heretofore made’; and with scant English legal regard accorded to the old Scottish concept of common-law ‘marriage by cohabitation with habit and repute’, the court said it had little option but to rule Sophia’s will null and void and come out in Frances’s favour.

There were to be more skirmishes before the women’s war was over, however, such as when Frances applied for probate of ‘her’ will and was challenged by Sophia. The latter was destined to lose out at almost every turn as her enemy’s familiarity with the details of the first will (and its promises to Sophia of ‘all and singular my lands, tenements, out-houses, gardens, yards, orchards, situate, lyeing and being in Largo aforesaid, or in any other place or places’) fired another bout of extraordinary greed.

Certain now that their ‘worthless rogue’ Alexander Selkirk had actually been worth a great deal, Frances and her new husband went at Sophia like frenzied terriers, determined to take from her every Selkirk item of any value, and even had her arrested for refusing to part with some of his ‘pieces of Gold, four gold rings and other particulars of a Considerable Value ... although she hath been severall times requested in a friendly manner.’

Unable to raise the £500 bail requested, she ended up in prison, but still they didn’t stop, though the second will had by now been probated. On Sophia’s release, they demanded from her the last few things she still possessed: a silver tobacco box, a gold-headed walking stick, a pair of gold candlesticks, a silver-hilted sword, and various naval books and instruments.

It is not recorded whether they succeeded, but they probably wrested these from Sophia too. The Largo lass lost everything, yet still Frances wasn’t satisfied. In his 1829 biography of the sailor, John Howell reports that: ‘In the end of the year 1724, or beginning of 1725, twelve years after his elopement with Sophia Bruce, a gay widow by name Frances Candis or Candia came to Largo to claim the property left to him [Selkirk] by his father – the house at the Craigie Well. She produced documents to prove her right ... [and] having proved her marriage and the will, which was dated 12th December, 1720, and also the death of her husband ... her claim was adjusted, and she left Largo in a few days. Neither of his two wives, it should be added, had any children by him, as far as can be learned.’

She did not stop there. Despite having thus acquired riches beyond all her reasonable expectations, she had yet another money-making ruse up her sleeve. She had obviously heard a story – perhaps a fictional one from the fantasising Selkirk himself? – that the Duke of Hamilton in Scotland was in possession of a journal the sailor had kept while marooned on Juan Fernandez. She doubtless realised how sensational that would be – the original diary of the original Robinson Crusoe – and how valuable it would be as a consequence. So, feigning poverty, she wrote to the duke at the [now demolished] Hamilton Palace in the hope of getting her hands on it; but as far as is known, she got no response and to this day the successive dukes and their researchers have failed to find such a literary treasure in their grand library at Lennoxlove House near Edinburgh. This is what Frances wrote in her petition:

To his Grace the Duke of Hamilton re:

The most humble Petition of Frances Selkirk

That Yr Grace’s Petitionr is the widdow of Alexander Selkirk who was left on the desolate island called Ferdinando where he continued alone four years and four months all which time he kept a journal of his observations as also of the Voyages he made with Capt. Dempiore as also in the Duke which took the Aquaperlea Ship in the South Sea which ship Yr. Petitionr’s husband had in his charge as Commander to bring to England and upon his arrival his late Grace Yr most noble Father then desireing to see the abovesaid journal of Petitionr’s said Husband did leave it with him after which, proceeding again to leave on another Voyage, died in the same and Yr. Grace’s Petitionr being now reduced to very low circumstances is advised that said journal would be of some considerable advantage to her in her personal circumstances and most humbly hopeing that it may have bin reserved safe in the Library of Yr Most Noble Predecessor.

Therefore Yr. Petitionr most humbly begs that Your Grace in Yr Great goodness would be pleased to condescend to give such directions as thereby your Petitionr may have the said Journall Deliver’d to her.

Assd Yr Pettionr: as in duty bound for Yr Grace shall every Pray.

Reduced to very low circumstances? Surely not? And surely nothing compared to the genuine poverty and hardship that was then visited upon her luckless rival in love. Sophia Bruce did not have to feign reduced circumstances when, in the mercilessly cold winter of 1724, she sent also a desperate, begging petition to the Reverend Say in the Parish of Westminster.

Reverend Sir,

I being a person much reduced to want, by reason of this hard season, makes me presume to trouble you, which I hope your goodness will not resist to relieve, I being the widow of Mr. Selchrig who was left four years and four months on the island of John Ferinanda; and besides I had three uncles inn Scotland, all ministger, to wit, Mr. Harry Rymer, Mr. James Rymer, and another; therefore depending humbly upon your prudent and wise consideration of my present circumstances, Revd Sir, Your petitioner shall ever pray, Sophia Selchrig

Whether or not she got a reply is not known. Indeed, nothing more was ever heard of Sophia. She was an orphan and had few relatives apart from the three uncles mentioned in the letter. There is no record of her ever returning to Scotland, and the silence that came after the letter has the pall of death about it. Hers was indeed a sad tale ... and Alexander Selkirk was very much to blame for it.

If it is a disappointment to the reader to learn that the inspiration for that fine English middle-class hero Robinson Crusoe was such a devil-may-care Scottish ruffian, perhaps a bit of a reality check is required. These were very hard times. To hold your own on the bloody decks of such ships you had to be extremely hardy and not allow too many, if any, finer feelings.

It is perhaps not surprising that Robinson Crusoe was a fictional creation; the real thing might have been a touch too hard to swallow and any such story based solely on Selkirk’s life certainly wouldn’t have supplied a heart-warming or happy ending.

Bibliography

These are the books that have been helpful in researching and writing The Man Who Was Robinson Crusoe. Publishers have not been listed, as some books have had more than one.

Ballard, Martin, The Monarch of Juan Fernandez, (1967)

Band, John & Eunson, Eric, Largo, An Illustrated History, (2000)

Chalmers. Robert, The Picture of Scotland, (1827)

Collet, Stephen, Relics of Literature, (1823)

Defoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe, (1719)

Howell, Robert, The Life and Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, (1829)

Kraske, Robert, Marooned, (2005)

Megroz, RL, The Real Robinson Crusoe, (1939)

Mitchison, Amanda, Alexander Selkirk: The Real Robinson Crusoe, (2001)

Severin, Tim, Seeking Robinson Crusoe, (2002)

Simmons, James C, Castaway in Paradise, (1993)

Suhami, Diana, Selkirk’s Island, (2001)

Takahashi, Daisuke, In Search of Robinson Crusoe, (1999)

Wright, Thomas, Life of Daniel Defoe, (1894)

Index

Aberdeen, Earl of 48

Act of Union (1707) 4, 36, 41, 77

Anderson, Martin ix, 46–7

Anne, Queen 77, 86, 87, 126, 129

Arizabella, Joseph 94

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 127–8, 129, 131

Athenaeum 118

Auchenleck, Reverend John 55

Baker, David 120–2

Ballard, Martin 7, 133

Ballett, John 100

Batavia, Dutch East Indies 104

Batchelor, John 103

Batchelor(formerly Spanish treasure ship) 101–7

Beat, James and William 61

Beginning(formerly Spanish ship) 89–90

Bell, Margaret 58, 59, 60–1, 135

Berens, Randolph 127, 130, 131

Briggs, General 118

Bristol 32–5, 38, 106, 110, 130

British Museum 126, 127, 129–30, 131

Brooke, Gerry 32, 35

Brown, F. 37

Bruce, Sophia 141–3, 145–9, 151–2, 154–6, 158

Bull, Stephen 53n

Burnett, T. Stuart 48

Caldwell, Dr David 78–80, 81, 83, 110–12, 124

Candis, Frances (later Selkirk) 40–1, 149–51, 154–8

Carlisle Castle 119

Chambers, Robert 49, 51, 58

Christie’s auction house, London 125

Cinque Ports(privateer frigate) x, 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 21, 64, 65–7, 77, 89

Cock and Bottle Inn, Bristol 35, 39

Collett, Stephen 42

Columbus, Christopher 87

Connelly, Lieutenant 96, 97

Cooke, Captain Edward 10, 41–2, 91, 104

Courtney, Captain Stephen 87, 92

Cowper, William 70–1, 74

Credland, Arthur 116, 117

Cruso, Timothy 42

Cyrkowicz, Barbara 50

Dampier, William 1, 2, 9–10, 11, 14, 16, 21, 35, 40, 64, 66–7, 85–6, 92, 93, 103

Daniel (Damaris), Mrs 36, 37, 39

Darien expedition (1698) 57

Defoe, Daniel vii, xii, 1

Bristol 33–5

debts 30, 38, 39, 41

Edinburgh 36

government spy 36, 41

meeting with Selkirk 30, 32–42, 106

opinion of Rogers and Dampier 35, 40

prolific literary output 30–1, see also Robinson Crusoe

Dempiore, Captain 41

Denton, Penny 116

Dover, Dr Thomas 82, 93, 94, 100, 103

Dowell’s auction house, Edinburgh 118

Duchess(privateer ship) 4–6, 9, 10, 21–2, 36, 37, 77, 87–9, 101, 102, 104

Duke(privateer ship) 1, 4–6, 9, 10, 21–2, 36, 37, 41, 77, 85–9, 91, 100–4, 109

Dutch East India Company 104

Dykes, Stewart 113

Eilan Donan castle 146

Enterprise, HMS 146

Evans, S. H. 37

Evening News and Star 119–20

Fernandez, Juan (the man) 15, 67

Frye, Robert 7–9

Gilles, James 118

Gillies, David 50

Gillies, David Selkirk 47, 48

Gillies, Katherine 49

Gillies, Teresa 50

Glen Shiel, battle of (1719) 146

Gray, Muriel 111

Greystoke Castle, Cumberland 119

Guayaquil, Ecuador 90, 91–9, 142

Hamilton, Duke of 40–1, 156–8

Harford, Henry Charles 36–7, 39

Harford, Joseph 36, 39

Heliagos, Antonio 89

Hill, Peter 119

Howard, Sir Esme 119

Howell, John viii, 6, 56, 66, 75, 110, 111, 137, 156

Hutton, S. 40

Increase(formerly Santa Josepha) 90, 100, 104

James, Isaac 39

Jardine, Allan 47–8, 82, 109, 114, 118

Jardine, Ivy 47–8, 82, 114, 115, 123–4

Jardine, Mark 41

Jervies, William 61

Joseph(50-tonner) 100, 101, 102, 104

Juan Fernandez islands

see Robinson Crusoe island

Kinsale 5

Kirkcaldy Museum 113

Lamond, Dr 137

Lane, Jeanne 119–20

Lanning, Ernest 115–16, 117

Lettice, Lesley-Anne 112

Llandoger Trow pub, Bristol 33–5

Lobos de la Mar, island of 89

Long John Silver Trust, Bristol 35

Lower Largo, Fife, Scotland ix, xi, 12, 28

churches 46, 53–4, 113

‘Crusoe’ heritage 44–50, 52, 113–14

modern 43–5

seen by Selkirk on voyage home 104–5

Selkirk’s birthplace cottage 48–52

Selkirk’s return to 132–43

Lumsdaine, Major John 118

Lumsdaine, Robert 118

Lumsdaine, Stamford Robert 118

Lundine, John 61

Mackie, Euphan 53

Makgill, Reverend James 57

Marquess(formerly Havre de Grace) 90–1, 100, 101, 104

Martin, John 99

Mas a Tierra island

see Robinson Crusoe island

Mason, Katherine 147

Mitchison, Amanda 55

Moncrieff, Reverend Alex 54, 55

Moncrieff, Reverend William 134

Mortone, Thomas 61

Murdoch, Reverend John 53

museums and exhibitions 79, 110, 112–13, 116, 119

‘Alexander Selkirk, the Real Robinson Crusoe’ (1983) 110–11

Ashmolean 127–8, 129, 131

British Museum 126, 127, 129–30, 131

Lower Largo 47, 113–14, 123–5

National Museum of Scotland 110, 125

Ness, Thomas 61

Netherlands 104

Nettle, John 106

New York Times,‘Crusoe May Have Owned This Gun’ 126–30

Novak, M. 40

Nuestra Senora de Begona(treasure ship) 104

Osbourn, Florence 122–4

Parry, Richard Lloyd 80

The Philadelphia Bulletin 119–20

Philippines 87

Pickering, Captain Charles 2, 64

Powell, Commodore 82

Reid, Norman 59

Robb, Louise 52

Robinson Crusoe(Defoe) 84

comparisons with Selkirk 24–30, 109

immediate success of 31, 39, 154

rescue in 109–10

setting for 25, 28

stores retrieved from shipwreck in 109 see also Defoe, Daniel

Robinson Crusoe island (formerly Mas a Tierra)

climate and vegetation 15, 74, 79–80

earlier visitors 15, 65–6, 68, 74

Selkirk’s refuge found on 80–4 see also Selkirk, Alexander

Rogers, Captain Woodes 1, 5, 6, 9, 10, 21, 22, 42, 100, 104, 108

Bristol home 32, 35

A Cruising Voyage around the World 11–17, 32, 37, 40, 42, 136

Defoe’s opinion of 35, 40

docking in Erith 105

Guayaquil raid 90, 91–9, 142

privateering 86–7, 89, 90–2, 100

treasure ships 101–4

wounds suffered by 103, 104

Rogers, John 90, 91

Royal Navy xi

Rymer, Harry and James 158

St Andrew’s University Library 113

St George(privateer frigate) 2, 64, 66, 85

Sawyer, C. J. 116, 117, 130, 131

Sawyer, Charles 117

Say, Reverend 158

Schmidt, Louis 119

Selcraig, Alexander (nephew) 147

Selcraig, Andrew (brother) 53, 58, 60–1, 63

Selcraig, Bruce (American descendent) 50, 77–9, 114

Selcraig, David (brother) 47

Selcraig, Eupah (mother) viii, 56–7, 129, 132, 134

Selcraig, John (brother) 50, 53, 55, 58, 60, 61, 135, 140

Selcraig, John (father) viii–ix, 55, 56, 58–9, 61, 135, 140, 147

Selcraig (Selkirk) family 49–50, 53, 57–63, 134–5

Selkirk, Alexander

general

affinity with animals 140

appearance xi, 110, 129, 132–3, 134

birthplace cottage 48–9, 51, 52

Bristol 32–3, 38, 110, 130

bronze statue of 48–9, 50, 52, 108, 121

capture of treasure ship 101–3

character viii–x, 4, 47, 50, 54, 56

childhood viii–ix

command of the Increase 90

command of the Joseph 100

command of treasure ship 103–6

death from yellow fever 114, 153–4

dispute over will 154–8

drunken brawl 105–6

Enterprise, HMS 146

fishing expeditions 137–8

furious family row 57–63

Guayaquil raid 90, 91–9

homesickness for the island 51–2, 137

marriage to Frances 25, 40, 149–51

meeting with Defoe in Bristol 30, 32–42

navigational skills 56, 84, 86, 88

papers 38–42, 156–8

privateering xi, 10, 22–3, 85–104

return home to Lower Largo 132–43

return to England 105–6

running away to sea 56–7

self-made cave in garden 51, 137, 139–40

seventh son 56–7

Sophia Bruce 141–3, 145–9, 151–2

transgressions against local kirk 53–7, 59–63, 113

treatment of Guayaquil women 96–8, 142

wealth ix, xi, 32, 132

Weymouth, HMS xi, 114, 144, 149, 152–4

will in favour of Frances Candis 150–1

will in favour of Sophia Bruce 146–8

island of Mas a Tierra

ambivalence about leaving 7–8, 10, 21, 22, 29–30, 76–7

animals 8, 14, 18, 19–20, 23, 25, 28, 68, 72–3, 75

appearance on vii, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 14–15, 73

artefacts believed to come from 110–31

Cowper’s poem about 70–1, 74

day-to-day life 74–5

diet 13–14, 18, 22, 67, 68–9, 73

early optimism of rescue 68, 69

falling down precipice 13, 20, 74, 75

fictional island compared with 24–30

first months on 67–72

initial visit to 65

marooning 2–3, 12, 18, 25, 65, 67

melancholy and homesickness 12, 18, 29, 69

memorial plaques 82

musket, present-day search for 114–31

provisions allowed by captain 12, 18, 25, 67, 108–9

readjustment to people 22

religion 12, 18, 29, 69, 74–5, 133

rescue vii, 4–9, 22–3, 77

running speed 4, 13, 20, 22, 73, 76

shelters 7–8, 12, 19, 72, 80–4

Spaniards landing 11–12, 76

speech 6–7, 9, 15, 20, see also under Robinson Crusoe island

Selkirk, Frances (wife) 40–1, 149–51, 154–8

Selkirk, John 49

Sharpe, Captain 16

Shepherd, Dorothy 50–1

Sibbald, Sir Robert 118

Sim, Adam 112

Smith, Eric 117

Smith, James 61

Smithurst, Peter 125–6

Sotheby’s auction house, London 116–17, 130

Souhami, Diana 97

South Sea Company 106

Spain 87–8, 104

Sporting Gun, ‘Desert Island Flintlock?’ 120–2

Star Inn, Bristol 35, 38, 39, 40

Steeds, Mark 33, 36, 38

Steele, Sir Richard ix, 11, 17–31, 32, 108, 136

Stevenson, Robert Louis 35

Stradling, Captain Thomas 2, 3, 9, 11, 25, 65, 66, 67, 69–70, 127

Sunday Times 127

Takahashi, Daisuke 80–3, 125

Taylor, William 31

Texel, island of 105

The Times

‘Crusoe’s Gun’ 130–1

‘Selkirk’s Refuge Found’ 80–1

Tobago, island of 25–6

Topaze, HMS 82

Wasse, James 100

Watkins, Mark 39

Watlin, Captain 16

Weymouth, HMS xi, 114, 144, 149, 152–4

Whyte, Hulda 118–19

Wilson, Walter 37, 38

Wilsone, Magnus 61

Wishart, Drew 51

Wood, Sir Andrew 53n

Wood, Stephen 123

Woodhall, Barry 120

Wright, Douglas 118–19

Chapter 2 A Tale of Two Tales

* The Harfords were a prominent Bristol banking family.

Chapter 3 The Village he left Behind

* Grandson of the brother with whom Alexander had a serious quarrel.

† Left with the family by Selkirk, along with his musket.

* Another local acknowledged at the Upper Largo kirk is the area’s other well-remembered sailor, Sir Andrew Wood. A handsome model of a 15th-century fighting ship, the Yellow Carvel, sits inside the church a prominent chancel position, a reminder of the Largo-born sea captain who rose to become Lord High Admiral of Scotland. After changing his career from that of merchant trader in Leith, he began his naval career as a privateer under James III and flourished under James IV. By 1489 he owned the Mayflower and the Yellow Carvel, which fought and captured five English ships offshore near Dunbar. In response, the English launched a larger expedition the following year under Stephen Bull, which attacked Wood’s ships in the Firth of Forth. The battle lasted two days and Wood eventually triumphed, despite being heavily outgunned and outnumbered. His victory was so appreciated that he was granted many lands and properties around Largo and knighted by James IV.

* Appear.

Chapter 4 Survival on the Island

* A temporary summer residence for shepherds. Chambers Scots Dialect Dictionary.

Chapter 5 How he got Rich

* Flip was made by pouring a gill of rum into a mug of beer that had been sweetened with pumpkin, cream, eggs, molasses (and/or sugar) and then stirred with a red-hot poker.

Chapter 7 Homecoming and Sophia

* After she set up a church in Scotland’s ancient capital of Dunfermline, on Fife’s north side of the Forth, the wife of King Malcolm III saw it rapidly become a place of pilgrimage and so set up a ferry for herself and the pilgrims to travel between the river’s south and north banks. Initially operated by monks, the service went on and developed for 800 years thereafter, finally taking on cars – until the road bridge took its place in 1965.

* As previously mentioned, the 19th-century building of the railway track on the high embankment above the garden would have wiped away any trace of this refuge.

Chapter 8 London and the End

* Marriage by cohabitation with habit and repute. Under Scots law, if a couple cohabited for sufficient time they were generally held and reputed to be husband and wife.

Alexander Selkirk’s statue and plaque at Lower Largo cottage, which replaced the original home of his birth.

The church at Upper Largo where the Kirk Session’s chastisements forced Selkirk to flee the village. He returned a very wealthy man.

Extract from the original church papers recording Selkirk’s misdemeanours (St Andrews University).

The original Robinson Crusoe as portrayed in the first edition of Daniel Defoe’s book

Allan Jardine, direct descendant of childless Alexander Selkirk’s brother, David.

Selkirk’s signature from a legal document.

Selkirk’s powderhorn (St Andrews Museum), his sea chest (National Museums Scotland) and what was once thought to be his musket as traced by the author (above).

Cumberland Bay, the key feature of the island off the coast of Chile where Selkirk was marooned for four and a half years. It is the largest of the Juan Fernandez archipelago and as such is often called by that name alone. Its other names are Mas a Tierra or nowadays, Robinson Crusoe Island.

Kincraig Point on the coast of Fife where Selkirk went to remind himself of Juan Fernandez.

Keil’s Den where Selkirk met Sophia Bruce.

Selkirk’s Bristol haunts. The still-extant Llandoger Trow (left) and the long-gone Cock and Bottle (right) pub have had competing claims, along with the Star, to be the meeting place of Selkirk and Defoe. Local historians favour the Star.

The plaque on the site of Captain Woodes Rogers’ house in Bristol’s Queen Square where Selkirk stayed.

Where Selkirk survived and when he died. Map of Juan Fernandez and the death entry for Selkirk recorded in HMS Weymouth’s log.

The site of Selkirk’s camp on Juan Fernandez, recorded by Daisuke Takahashi in 2005.

Rick Wilson was born in Montrose and has been a professional journalist all his life. He started his career on the Montrose Standard before joining The Courier in Dundee. He spent time editing magazines in Holland before returning to Scotland where he worked for The Scotsman. He is the former editor of Scotland on Sunday magazine and former assistant editor of The Herald. His fascination with Alexander Selkirk led him to search for and discover Selkirk’s musket which he returned to his family in Fife. Following that, he decided to fully research the mariner’s life which led to the publication of this book.

Rick is now semi-retired, but still does some work for The Scotsman and the Mirror Group. He lives in Edinburgh.

First published by

Neil Wilson Publishing Ltd

www.nwp.co.uk

© Rick Wilson, 2011

First published in February 2009

Reprinted in 2010

The author asserts his moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is

available from the British Library

Prine edition ISBN: 978-1-906476-02-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-906476-35-9

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1 Rescue From Juan Fernandez

Chapter 2 A Tale of Two Tales

Chapter 3 The Village He Left Behind

Chapter 4 Survival on the Island

Chapter 5 How He Got Rich

Chapter 6 The Things He Brought Back

Chapter 7 Homecoming and Sophia

Chapter 8 London and the End

Bibliography

Index

Footnotes

Illustrations

About the author

Copyright Page