Alexander Selkirk was the prototype. The true story of robinson crusoe and alexander selkirk. A good start to Robinson's story
Spent 4 years and 4 months (in 1704-1709) on desert island Mas a Tierra (now Robinson Crusoe as part of the Juan Fernandez archipelago) in the Pacific Ocean, 640 kilometers from the coast of Chile.
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Biography
Island life
Alexander Selkirk had some things necessary for survival: an axe, a gun, a supply of gunpowder, etc. Suffering from loneliness, Selkirk got used to the island and gradually acquired the necessary survival skills. At first, his diet was meager - he ate shellfish, but over time he got used to it and discovered feral domestic goats on the island. Once upon a time, people lived here and brought these animals with them, but after they left the island, the goats went wild. He hunted them, thereby adding much-needed meat to his diet. Soon Selkirk tamed them and received milk from them. Among plant crops, he discovered wild turnips, cabbage and black pepper, as well as some berries.
Rats posed a danger to him, but fortunately for him, wild cats, previously brought by people, also lived on the island. In their company he could sleep peacefully, without fear of rodents. Selkirk built himself two huts from Pimento officinalis wood. His supply of gunpowder ran low and he was forced to hunt goats without a gun. While chasing them, he once became so carried away by his pursuit that he did not notice the cliff from which he fell and lay there for some time, miraculously surviving.
In order not to forget the English speech, he constantly read the Bible aloud. Not to say that he was a pious person - that’s how he heard a human voice. When his clothes began to wear out, he began to use goat skins for them. Being the son of a tanner, Selkirk knew well how to tan hides. After his boots wore out, he did not bother to make himself new ones, because his feet, hardened by calluses, allowed him to walk without shoes. He also found old hoops from barrels and was able to make something like a knife out of them.
One day, two ships arrived on the island, which turned out to be Spanish, and England and Spain were enemies at that time. Selkirk could have been arrested or even killed, since he was a privateer, and he made the difficult decision for himself to hide from the Spaniards.
Salvation came to him on February 1, 1709. This was the English ship "Duke" under the command of Captain Woods Rogers, who named Selkirk governor of the island. He writes that the boat sent to the island returned carrying with it "a man dressed in goatskin clothes, who looked more wild than their previous owners." Next to Rogers was Selkirk's former commander, William Dampier. The sailor did not like him, and agreed to come on board only after he learned that the expedition was headed not by him, but by Rogers. However, Dampier gave excellent recommendations to Selkirk, so Rogers immediately decided to accept him as an assistant on board the ship.
The life of Robinson Crusoe in Defoe's novel of the same name was more colorful and eventful. After many years of loneliness, the hermit managed to make a friend, which did not happen to Selkirk. Alexander did not meet the bloodthirsty cannibal Indians, as was described in the book, although he almost became a victim of the Spaniards, who, having landed on the island, staged a formal hunt for him. Many researchers note that, despite the similarity of individual episodes of Defoe's novel with the story of the Scottish sailor, they were too different people, and it is unlikely that Selkirk could become the prototype of Robinson.
Thanks to the writer Daniel Defoe, everyone knows Robinson Crusoe, the conqueror wildlife uninhabited island, where he ended up due to a shipwreck. Much less famous is its real-life prototype - the Scot Alexander Selkirk, who spent almost five years on the same piece of land after he, not getting along with the captain, was decommissioned from the ship “of his own free will” - right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Filibusters and adventurers
Now it is difficult to understand which of them is more real: Robinson, a native of the city of York, the darling of the family, or Alexander, the son of a shoemaker from the town of Largo on the North Sea. The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, Chile and Scotland are fighting for the right to be called the place where the original Robinson spent years alone. 
But let's go back to basics.
The Scot, like his literary counterpart, according to Defoe, undoubtedly had a “passion for wandering” and “a desire to get rich sooner than circumstances allowed.”
Having listened to stories of experienced sailors, filibusters and other cheerful rabble in the local tavern “Red Lion” about storms, distant countries, adventures and how easy it is to mine gold, Alexander left home at the age of 18. Well, there were plenty of adventures: sailing to Africa, pirates, captivity, slavery...
There is a gap here in Selkirk’s stories, but he returned home, it seems, on horseback - with a gold earring in his ear and with money.
At home, in Largo, everything seemed bland and boring to Alexander, and the opportunity to continue life full of adrenaline soon turned up: William Dampier, a hydrograph scientist, corsair, and author of travel books, was setting off on two ships to the West Indies for gold.
England then encouraged attacks on Spanish merchant ships in southern seas and allowed privateers (private individuals using armed vessels) to rob the enemy, using the “right of war” - for this there was a permit from the authorities.
Thus, in 1704, Selkirk, from a sea robber operating at his own risk, turned into a completely legal representative of Great Britain - the boatswain of the 16-gun galley "Sank Port", which accompanied the 26-gun frigate "St. George", where Dampier himself was the captain.
Rebels - get into the boat!
With varying degrees of success, they boarded ships, plundered coastal cities, attacked, ran away, swore and suspected each other of hiding booty. They left the Atlantic Pacific Ocean. They hit a big jackpot - a Spanish ship, full of brandy, flour, sugar, fabrics, surrendered without resistance.
But luck did not unite the corsairs - discontent and distrust grew more and more, and after a year and a half of sailing together, the ships went their separate ways. different sides: Dampier, still hoping to capture the Manila galleon with gold, remained in the Gulf of Panama, and Selkirk's galley headed for the deserted islands of the Juan Fernandez archipelago, where the crew planned to stock up on fresh water and firewood.
It was then that a scene played out that later gave us the opportunity to read about the amazing adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Over the years, it is impossible to know whether the captain of the galley was such a tyrant, as some claim, or, as others insist, the boatswain turned out to be unbearably stubborn, but the result is obvious: an entry appeared in the ship’s log that Alexander Selkirk was written off the ship “at his own request” directly in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Among the corsairs, who were not particularly sensitive to feelings, resolving misunderstandings that arose in this way and getting rid of unwanted ones was in the order of things. The necessary things were loaded into the boat: luggage, a flintlock gun, gunpowder, tobacco, an axe, a bowler hat, a Bible, and the Scot set off on the most important journey of his life - to the rocky island of Mas a Tierra, located 670 km west of Chile and part of the Juan Fernandez archipelago.
The hot-tempered boatswain hoped that he would soon be picked up by someone who had come to replenish supplies fresh water vessel. In the meantime, it was worth examining your temporary place of residence.
He became hardy, agile and wild
The archipelago, consisting of three islands: Mas a Tierra (“closer to the land” - Spanish), Mas a Fuera (“further from the land”) and Santa Clara, was discovered by the Spanish navigator Juan Fernandez in 1574 and named after him. In memory of this event, Fernandez, who himself lived on Mas a Tierre for three years, left specially brought goats there as a living supply of food for random guests. And guests came to visit. Once upon a time, an Indian, forgotten by pirates, lived here, and as many as nine sailors, thrown off the ship for their love of gambling, were swam by corsairs for fresh water... In a word, not an island, but a passage yard. But by the time Selkirk appeared there was not a single living soul there. Including in real story There was no Robinson and Friday - he was later invented by Defoe.
Our hero's main enemy was fear - the fear of loneliness that will never end. At first, he climbed every day to the very top high peak and peered into the horizon, even settled in a cave on the shore, so as not to miss a random ship. It took about a year and a half, as Alexander later recalled, to get used to his position and somehow come to terms with it. The rest, as it turned out, was surmountable.
He made himself a sleeping hut and a kitchen hut, learned to make fire, and make dishes from coconuts. In the coastal waters there were seals and lobsters, turtles laid eggs, Fernandez's wild goats galloped along the mountain paths - Alexander was clearly not in danger of dying of hunger. When the gunpowder ran out, he tried to catch goats with his hands, fell into a crevice and spent three days unconscious. Since then, he has been cutting the tendons of the kids so that they become easier prey. The clothes were worn out, and then I had to remember the skill learned in my father’s house - dressing skins, and then the outfit itself was sewn with a rusty nail. During the four and a half years of his island life, Selkirk became hardy, agile and wild, like those very goats. In order not to go completely wild and forget human speech, he read the Bible aloud to himself every day.
How the glory came
Salvation came on February 1, 1709 in the form of the English ship Duke. Its captain Woods Rogers subsequently described this meeting as follows: “At seven in the morning we approached the island of Juan Fernandez. Together with a huge amount crayfish, our boat delivered a man in goat skins to the ship.<…>It was a Scotsman named Alexander Selkirk. Due to lack of practice, he forgot his language so much that we could hardly understand him; he seemed to pronounce words halfway.” Only once on board did the boatswain somehow find the gift of speech and talk about what happened to him. The saviors had their own plans, and Selkirk, before returning to the mainland, had to make a long and dangerous raid with them across the seven seas, so he came home only in October 1711 - already as the captain of a sailing ship captured during the campaign.
After the publication of Woods Rogers’ book “A Voyage Around the World,” in which he described the story of Alexander, the Scot, as they say, woke up famous. An interview with him was published in a London newspaper that caught the eye of Daniel Defoe. What I read became the impetus for the birth of the idea for a book, which would later be called the prototype of the newest European novel. So at one point, at the peak of fame, the destinies of an English writer, a Scottish boatswain and an island lost in the ocean converged.
Then everyone's life went on as usual. Defoe, on the wave of success, published “The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,” and a year later, a collection of essays, “Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe,” which, however, did not arouse much reader interest. Selkirk, unable to find a place for himself in a “peaceful” life, returns to the fleet as captain of the ship Weymouth, which belongs to the British Navy. In 1720, while sailing to West Africa, he dies of tropical fever. It is said that the Scotsman's last words were: “My dear island, why did I leave you?”
Landing on solidified lava
Residents of three islands on Earth consider themselves direct descendants of Robinson: Largo, where Alexander Selkirk was born, Tobago, where, by all accounts, Defoe placed his hero (“off the coast of America near the mouths of the Orinoco River”), and, finally, Mas a Tierra, where "Robinson" Selkirk is a direct prototype of the famous hermit. There was a stubborn struggle for the right to be called Robinson Crusoe Island between Mas a Tierra and Tobago - it is clear that not only out of love for art, but also with the hope of attracting more tourists. 
Tobago suited everything, except for its uninhabitation: when Robinson “set foot on this shore on September 30, 1659,” there were already two colonies on the island - Courland and Dutch. So half a century ago, Mas a Tierra won and was officially renamed Robinson Crusoe Island, and the smaller one next door began to bear the name of Alexander Selkirk.
Settlers landed on the island at late XIX centuries and formed the settlement of San Juan Bautista, which, the only one in the entire archipelago, exists to this day. To travelers coming from big cities, the island may even now seem almost uninhabited: only 630 inhabitants (almost all bearing the names Robinson, Friday and Daniel) on 96 km² of land, two dirt roads and at most two dozen cars.
Otherwise, little has changed over several centuries: still the same land, rugged mountain ranges, palm-tree-sized ferns, giant turtles, hummingbirds, seals and small brown goats of Juan Fernandez habitually jumping around the mountains - this is the official name of this subspecies. Residents catch lobsters every day. Visiting treasure hunters scour the island from time to time in search of pirate treasures.
Getting to Robinson Crusoe is not easy. The 10-seater plane does not fly regularly from a private airfield in Santiago, only when fully loaded. After three hours of hovering over the ocean, the aircraft lands on a strip laid in solidified lava between mountain peaks. This place is not connected to the rest of the island by any communications, except for the mountain goat trail. A waiting jeep will take things and people down the serpentine road to the water, where guests will be greeted by a crowd of fur seals. Now into the boat, and then another two hours along the coast, to the inhabited part of the island.
By the way, in 2008, archaeologists discovered the site of the original Robinson: the remains of two huts located near fresh water, navigation instruments and other artifacts. The story of the real Robinson lives on. This would undoubtedly have pleased the wild pride of the son of a Scottish shoemaker.
Who among us did not read in childhood, either voluntarily or “under pressure” (as required by the school curriculum), Daniel Defoe’s adventure novel about Robinson Crusoe? The novel is written in the relatively rare genre of “fictional autobiography” or “Robinzoad”, so it is not surprising that the name of the main character became a household name two hundred years ago. Defoe himself wrote not one novel, but four. Moreover, the latter tells about the adventures of the already elderly Robinson in Siberia... However, the last novels of the series were never fully translated into Russian.
The adventures of Robinson and his faithful companion Friday are written so realistically that no one doubts the reality of the “autobiography”. However, alas, real Robinson Crusoe never existed.
“Robinson” is a collective image from many stories about sailors surviving on uninhabited islands, of which there were many in that era.
Pirates in Her Majesty's Service
The fact is that, although Defoe avoids this topic in his novel, all (or almost all) real prototypes of his novel were pirates. As a last resort - privateers, i.e. the same pirates, only working under a contract for one of the warring countries (most often they were used by Great Britain to rob Spanish “golden caravans”).
Since pirate ships were not equipped with guardhouses, such sailors were either killed for their misdeeds or left on a desert island “to be judged by God.” In the latter case, the islands were used as "natural prisons". Indeed, you can’t escape from such an island, and it’s not easy to survive there. This was the “divine judgment”: if after a year or a couple of years the sailor remained alive, then he was again taken away by his own “colleagues” in the pirate “workshop”, but if not... No, as they say, there is no trial.
Alexander Selkirk
It is believed that Defoe's greatest influence was the story of the Scot's survival. Alexandra Selkirk. It was a sailor who served on a galley (small warship) " Sanc Por", where he was a boatswain. In 1704, as part of a small privateer flotilla under the leadership of the famous captain Dampierre, he was supposed to rob Spanish ships off the coast South America. However, like a true Scottish privateer, Selkirk had a very bad character and violent disposition, which is why he constantly quarreled with other sailors and superiors (and arguing with pirate captain- more expensive for yourself). Because of one of these quarrels, he was demoted in rank, after which he “in his hearts” declared that he now had no place on this ship. The captain took his words literally and ordered him to land on the nearest uninhabited island...
Despite the fact that the unlucky boatswain repented and asked to cancel the order, the captain equipped the sailor with everything necessary and landed him on the small island of Mas a Tierra, 600 km from the coast of Chile.
A good start to Robinson's story
It must be said that Selkirk received excellent equipment for those times. He was given spare clothes and underwear (a luxury for those times), tobacco, a cauldron for cooking, a knife and an axe. And most importantly, our hero was provided with a flintlock rifle, quite modern at that time, with a pound of gunpowder, bullets and flint. They also included the Bible, without which the “divine judgment” would not have been a trial. 300 years later, archaeologists at the site of his camp in the tropics also found navigational instruments, thanks to which Selkirk probably observed the stars, thus determining the day and month.
Let us note that the boatswain himself was an experienced man, although he was only 27 years old at the time of disembarkation. Alexander, the son of a shoemaker, ran away to a ship as a sailor at the age of 18. However, his ship was almost immediately captured by French pirates, who sold Selkirk into slavery. However, the brave young man escaped, joined the pirates himself and returned home as an experienced sailor with a large wallet full of ill-gotten gold coins...
Finding himself on a desert island, our sailor began a storm of activity. He built an observation post and two huts: an “office” and a “kitchen”. At first he ate local fruits and roots (he found, for example, a local variety of turnip), but then he discovered a small population of goats, which he hunted with his gun. Then, when gunpowder began to run out, he tamed goats and began to receive milk, meat and skins from them. The latter came in handy when, a couple of years later, his clothes became unusable. Using a nail he found, he sewed himself simple clothes from goat skins. The experience of working in my father's shoe shop came in handy. From half a coconut I made myself a “cup” on a leg, “furniture”, etc. That is, Selkirk has settled down quite thoroughly on the island.
Preserve humanity in solitude
Alexander Selkirk never met his “Friday”, so he suffered most from loneliness. The main tests, by his own admission, were loneliness and the fight against the rats that flooded this island. The rats ate food supplies and spoiled all his other property. Selkirk even made his own chest (which he decorated with carvings) to protect things from the weather and rats.
However, the boatswain found wild cats on the island, which he tamed, and thus protected himself from tailed pests. The presence of goats, rats and feral cats indicated that the island was once inhabited, but Selkirk never found traces of other people. In order not to forget human speech, he talked to himself and read the Bible aloud. Despite the fact that the boatswain was not the most righteous person, it was the Bible, as he himself later admitted, that helped him remain human in a wild environment.
One day, two Spanish ships arrived on the island, probably in search of fresh water, but Selkirk, who was a British privateer, was afraid to go out to them because... The Spaniards would probably have hanged him on the yards for piracy. The ships left, and the boatswain was again left alone with the goats and cats.
Robinson's rescue and the end of the story
But he was still saved. Four years after he arrived on the island, on February 1, 1709, his own flotilla under the leadership of Dampier returned for Selkirk. However, its composition was already different, and the ship "Saint Port" was not there. It is noteworthy that Woods Rogers, the captain of the Duke, which was directly involved in the evacuation of the Robinson, indicated in his logbook that he was rescuing the “governor of the island.”
Once on civilized land, Alexander Selkirk became a regular at taverns, where he told stories of his adventures on a desert island over a glass of beer. Probably one of the witnesses to his drunken performances was Daniel Defoe. The Scot himself did not stay on land for long. After some time, he returned to privateering again, but ten years later, off the coast West Africa, died of yellow fever and was “buried at sea” (i.e. thrown overboard with full honors). Thus ended the story of the real Robinson.
By the way, the island where Alexander Selkirk lived was named “ Robinson Crusoe", and the neighboring one - " Alexander Selkirk" But this happened after the inglorious death of the brave Scottish boatswain with a bad character, who died without knowing that he had become a legend.
Alexander Selkirk, who is considered the prototype of Robinson Crusoe - the literary hero of the novel by Daniel Defoe, was born in 1676 in the small fishing village of Lower Largo, in the Fife region, Scotland, in the family of a poor shoemaker John Selkreg. As a nineteen-year-old boy, due to constant quarrels with his father and brother, he defiantly changed his last name to Selkirk, left home, after which he served as a sailor on various ships of the English navy.
In 1702, Selkirk was hired as a boatswain on the ship Sanc Port, which was heading on a privateering voyage. The ship's owners received a letter of marque from the Lord Admiral, which not only allowed merchant ships to arm themselves for self-defense against foreign ships, but also authorized attacks on them, especially those sailing under the flags of Britain's enemies.
The fate of the Sanc Port was inextricably linked with another privateering enterprise led by the captain of the St. George, William Dampier. In April 1703, Dampier left London at the head of an expedition consisting of two ships, the second of which was called Fame and was under the command of Captain Pulling. However, even before the ships left the Downs, the captains quarreled, and Fame sailed, leaving St. George alone. Dampier sailed to Kinsale, Ireland, and there rendezvoused with the Sank Pore, commanded by Pickering. The two ships decided to join forces and a new agreement was made between the two captains.
Dampier was hired by Thomas Escort to lead an expedition to the South Sea (Pacific Ocean) to search for and plunder Spanish ships carrying treasure. The two captains agreed to sail along the coast of South America and capture a Spanish ship in Buenos Aires. If the booty amounted to 60,000 pounds sterling or more, the expedition had to immediately return to England. If unsuccessful, the companions planned to sail around Cape Horn to attack Spanish ships transporting gold from the mines in Lima. If this failed, it was agreed to sail north and try to capture the Acapulco, a Manila ship that almost always carried treasure.
In September 1703, the ships set off. The captains and crew quarreled a lot, and then Pickering fell ill and died. He was replaced by Thomas Stradling. The controversy, however, did not stop. The dissatisfaction was caused by the crew's suspicions that Captain Dampier was not decisive enough in making decisions about robbing passing ships and, as a result, a lot of loot was lost. He was also suspected that, after the mission was completed, he would not want to share the spoils with the crew.
In February 1704, during a stop on the island of Juan Fernandez, the crew of the Sanc Port mutinied and refused to return aboard the ship. The crew returned to the ship after the intervention of Captain Dampier. The sails and gear remained on the island after the crew made a hasty retreat after spotting the French ship. As the voyage continued, the means of cleaning and repairing ships needed to prevent worms from damaging the ship were lost, and the ships soon began to leak. By that time, relations between the two crews had reached a point where they agreed to divide the spoils and go their separate ways upon reaching the Gulf of Panama.
2 Life on the Island
In September 1704, the St. George sailed and the Saint Port returned to Juan Fernandez in an attempt to recover her sails and rigging, but it turned out that the French ship had taken them. It was here that boatswain Alexander Selkirk rebelled, refusing to sail further. He realized that the condition of the ship was so bad, and his relationship with Captain Stradling so tense, that he chose to try his luck and land on Mas a Tierra, one of the uninhabited islands of the Juan Fernandez group. He was left with a pistol, a knife, an axe, oats and tobacco, as well as a Bible and several navigational instruments.
As it turned out in the end, Alexander Selkirk saved his life. After sailing from Juan Fernandez, the Sanc Pora leak became so strong that the crew was forced to abandon ship and transfer to rafts. Only 18 sailors survived and managed to reach the coast of South America, where they were captured. Spaniards and local population they were mistreated and the crew were then imprisoned.
Near the shore, Selkirk found a cave where he could live, but in the first months he was so afraid that he rarely left the shore, eating only shellfish. He sat on the beach for days, peering at the horizon with the hope of seeing a ship that would save him. Selkirk came to his senses only when his beach was captured by hundreds of sea lions. There were so many of them, and they were so huge and terrible that he did not dare to approach the shore, where his only source of food was located.
Fortunately, the nearby valley was rich in lush vegetation, particularly cabbage palms, which became one of his main food sources. In addition, Selkirk discovered that the island was inhabited by many wild goats. At first he hunted for them with a gun, and then, when the gunpowder ran out, he learned to catch them with his hands. Once, while hunting, trying to catch a goat, he fell into an abyss and lay there unconscious for three days. Eventually, Alex domesticated several and fed on their meat and milk. He cut the tendons of young goats, after which, without losing their health, they forever lost the ability to run fast.
There were many cats and rats on the island. Selkirk fed the cats so generously with goat meat that over time they got used to him and began to protect his home from harmful rodents. Selkirk made fire by friction, and sewed clothes from goat skins, using nails instead of needles. He made himself a calendar and many useful household items.
Alexander Selkirk dreamed of salvation and looked out for sails every day and lit fires, but several years passed before the ships visited Cumberland Bay. However, the first visit was not quite what he expected. Selkirk rushed to the shore to signal two ships anchored off the coast. But they turned out to be Spanish. Since England and Spain were at war, Selkirk realized that a fate worse than death awaited him in captivity, the fate of a slave in a salt mine. The search party landed on the shore and, noticing "Robinson", began shooting at him while he ran and hid. In the end, the Spaniards stopped searching and soon left the island.
Selkirk remained alone on the island for four years and four months. He was rescued by a privateer ship led by Captain Woods Rogers. In his ship's log, Rogers described the moment of Selkirk's rescue in February 1709. “We arrived in Juan Fernandez Island on January 31st. Replenishing supplies, we remained there until February 13th. On the island we found one Alexander Selkirk, a Scotchman, who had been left there by Captain Stradling, who had accompanied Captain Dampier on his last voyage, and who survived for four years and four months, without having a single living soul with whom he could communicate, and not a single companion except wild goats.”
Selkirk was appointed mate on Rogers' ship Duke. The following year, after the capture of a Spanish ship carrying gold, sailor Alexander Selkirk was promoted to boatswain of the expedition's new vessel, renamed Batchelor.
3 Return
Woodes Rogers' voyage ended in 1711 with his arrival in the Thames. When Londoners learned about Selkirk's adventures, he became a popular personality. But a man of few words, unable to talk colorfully and vividly about his experiences, he quickly became boring to the public. Then he left for his native Largo. A few years later, Selkirk returned to the navy. During his next voyage to the shores of West Africa in 1720, Selkirk died of tropical fever.
4 years and 4 months of complete loneliness - this is exactly the price the boatswain paid for his quarrelsome and eccentric character Alexander Selkirk. Having quarreled with the captain of the ship, he agreed to be dropped off on a desert island. There he wanted to wait for a new ship and join another team. However, even in his worst dream, the man could not imagine how this act “out of principle” would turn out. They say that it was the story of how Alexander Selkirk struggled with his loneliness, fear and hunger that formed the basis of the novel Daniel Defoe"Robinson Crusoe". AiF.ru recalls events that occurred more than 300 years ago.
Alexander Selkirk on a desert island. Engraving from the Mary Evans Picture Library. Photo: www.globallookpress.com
Scottish teenager Alexander has been drawn to adventure since childhood. He did not want to continue his father's leather business. Having reached adulthood, the young man told his family that he had gotten a job as a sailor on a ship that was sailing to Africa. After the first trip, the young man returned to native land with a gold earring in his ear and a substantial amount of money. Then this meant that, most likely, Selkirk became a pirate. Of course, having once experienced the taste of easy money (no matter how illegal it may be), the guy dreamed of returning to the sea, and such an opportunity presented itself to him in 1704. At the age of 27, he became a boatswain on the ship Cinque Ports, which was part of the flotilla under the command of the then famous pirate William Dampier. He was preparing to sail to the West Indies for gold, and Alexander was very attracted to this prospect.
Cinque Ports ship model. Photo: www.globallookpress.com
The voyage was calm until the captain's place, at Dampier's insistence, was taken by Thomas Stradling. He immediately disliked the wayward boatswain Selkirk - he constantly argued with him about the course of the ship. The captain believed that everything was under control, while Alexander was confident that the journey under the leadership of Stradling would end with the death of the entire crew from starvation and scurvy.
For a year and a half the ships wandered around Atlantic Ocean, raiding Spanish ships. Having reached the Chilean coast, Cinque Ports headed for the islands of the Juan Fernandez archipelago. It was here that another conflict occurred between the boatswain and the captain, after which Selkirk, at his own request, was put ashore with small luggage. The young man was given a gun, a supply of gunpowder and bullets, tobacco, an axe, a knife, a pot and a Bible. When the emotions subsided, Alexander tried to return to the ship (it was still in the roadstead near the island). He begged Stradling to forgive his temper, but the captain did not back down. The ship has left.
Archipelago Juan Fernandez. Photo: www.globallookpress.com
Selkirk remained on the uninhabited island of Mas a Tierra. Of course, at first he consoled himself with the hope that his loneliness would not last too long, because ships often came here for fresh water. But he soon realized that his stay on the island could be prolonged, which means he needed to worry about how to live further.
Alexander later said that it took him a year and a half to get used to his loneliness and improve his life. Of course, at first, the supplies we brought with us helped us not die of hunger. There were many wild goats on the island; trying to find food and clothing, Selkirk organized a real hunt for them. While exploring his new “home”, he discovered that the island is approximately 20 km long and 5 km wide, and in addition to goats, you can hunt birds and turtles, and fish.
Alexander Selkirk on the island. Engraving from the Mary Evans Picture Library. Photo: www.globallookpress.com
The first problems of the lonely islander began when Alexander began to run out of gunpowder and matches. This meant that he could soon be left without food. After some thought, Selkirk found a cruel but effective way of hunting. The sailor began to catch the kids and cut the tendons on their legs with a knife so that they could never run fast again. In this way he ensured an easy hunt for himself in future years. Alexander, like primitive people, learned to produce fire by friction. He built himself two huts - he cooked food in one and slept in the other. He made clothes from goat skins, which he sewed together with a rusty nail. Gradually, almost all everyday problems on the island were resolved. However, the fear that Mas a Tierra would forever remain his home became stronger and stronger. Every day Selkirk climbed the most high mountain islands and spent hours looking at the horizon, waiting for a ship that would put an end to his hermit’s life. By the way, while Alexander was tormented by loneliness, the Cinque Ports crashed, his entire crew died, so Selkirk’s willful landing on the shore, oddly enough, saved his life.
An English ship takes Selkirk from the island. Photo: www.globallookpress.com
Rats became another disaster for the sailor. They fearlessly climbed his huts and feasted on provisions. To get rid of uninvited guests, the man tamed feral cats, which, like rats, were brought to the island by ships that visited here. So another small victory was won on the island - over rodents.
To be fair, it should be noted that sometimes Alexander saw ships from the mountain. But they all flew under Spanish flags. It was pointless for an English sailor, especially one associated with pirates, to ask for help from the Spaniards. Only in 1709 did luck finally smile on the hermit - from his observation post he saw an English ship. The ship landed on the island, and an overgrown and feral man in goat skins came out to meet the stunned sailors. The surprise of the British was also profound because Selkirk could not clearly say a word to them. He lived for four years on an island, where he had no one to talk to; he lost the basic skill of human communication. Only after a while, having become accustomed to the company of people again, Alexander was able, albeit with difficulty at first, to tell his story.
Alexander Selkirk tells Daniel Defoe his story. Photo: www.globallookpress.com
The ship stayed on the island for almost two weeks and weighed anchor on February 14. However, Selkirk set foot on his native Scottish soil only thirty-three months later. Of course, Alexander's appearance in hometown attracted everyone's attention to him, everyone wanted to know first-hand the difficult story of the sailor. They say that among those interested was Daniel Defoe, who was so impressed by Selkirk’s story that he wrote his famous “Robinson Crusoe.”
Gradually interest in unusual story The sailor's energy began to fade away, and he himself wanted new sensations. A few years after his exile on the island, he even returned to the navy. During his next voyage to the shores of West Africa in 1720, Selkirk died of tropical fever. But his life was transferred to the pages of Defoe's novel. The island where the sailor lived for several years is now called Robinson Island. And the one next to it bears the name of Alexander Selkirk himself.