Alexander Selkirk - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Alexander Selkirk was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

sailor who spent four years as a castaway

Castaway

A castaway is a person who is cast adrift or ashore. While the situation usually happens after a shipwreck, some people voluntarily stay behind on a deserted island, either to evade their captors or the world in general. Alternatively, a person or item can be cast away, meaning rejected or discarded...

when he was marooned

Marooning

Marooning is the intentional leaving of someone in a remote area, such as an uninhabited island. The word appears in writing in approximately 1709, and is derived from the term maroon, a word for a fugitive slave, which could be a corruption of Spanish cimarrón, meaning a household animal who has...

on an uninhabited island

Island

An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot , or holm...

. It is probable that his travels provided the inspiration for Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...

's novel Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...

Early life

The son of a shoemaker and tanner

Tanning

Tanning is the making of leather from the skins of animals which does not easily decompose. Traditionally, tanning used tannin, an acidic chemical compound from which the tanning process draws its name . Coloring may occur during tanning...

in Lower Largo

Lower Largo

Lower Largo or Seatown of Largo is a village in Fife, Scotland situated on Largo Bay on the north side of the Firth of Forth. An ancient fishing village, Lower Largo has gained fame as the 1676 birthplace of Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.The arrival of the...

, Fife

Fife

Fife is a council area and former county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire...

, Scotland

Scotland

, Selkirk was born in 1676. In his youth he displayed a quarrelsome and unruly disposition. Summoned on 27 August 1695 before the Kirk Session for his "undecent carriage" (indecent behaviour) in church, he "did not comper [appear], having gone away to þe [the] seas: this business is continued till his return"[sic

Sic

Sic—generally inside square brackets, [sic], and occasionally parentheses, —when added just after a quote or reprinted text, indicates the passage appears exactly as in the original source...

].

At an early period he was engaged in buccaneer

Buccaneer

The buccaneers were privateers who attacked Spanish shipping in the Caribbean Sea during the late 17th century.The term buccaneer is now used generally as a synonym for pirate...

expeditions to the South Seas and in 1703 joined in with the expedition of famed privateer

Privateer

A privateer is a private person or ship authorized by a government by letters of marque to attack foreign shipping during wartime. Privateering was a way of mobilizing armed ships and sailors without having to spend public money or commit naval officers...

and explorer

Exploration

Exploration is the act of searching or traveling around a terrain for the purpose of discovery of resources or information. Exploration occurs in all non-sessile animal species, including humans...

William Dampier

William Dampier was an English buccaneer, sea captain, author and scientific observer...

. While Dampier was captain of the St. George, Selkirk served on the galley Cinque Ports, the St. Georges companion, as a sailing master serving under Thomas Stradling.

Castaway

In October 1704, after the ships had parted ways because of a dispute between Stradling and Dampier, the Cinque Ports

Cinque Ports (1703 ship)

Cinque Ports is the name of an English galley whose sailing master was Alexander Selkirk, generally accepted as the model for the fictional Robinson Crusoe...

was brought by Stradling to an island that is today known as Robinson Crusoe Island

Robinson Crusoe Island

Robinson Crusoe Island , formerly known as Más a Tierra , or Aguas Buenas, is the largest island of the Chilean Juan Fernández archipelago, situated 674 kilometres west of South America in the South Pacific Ocean...

in the uninhabited archipelago

Archipelago

An archipelago , sometimes called an island group, is a chain or cluster of islands. The word archipelago is derived from the Greek ἄρχι- – arkhi- and πέλαγος – pélagos through the Italian arcipelago...

of Juan Fernández

Juan Fernández Islands

The Juan Fernández Islands are a sparsely inhabited island group reliant on tourism and fishing in the South Pacific Ocean, situated about off the coast of Chile, and is composed of three main volcanic islands; Robinson Crusoe Island, Alejandro Selkirk Island and Santa Clara Island, the first...

off the coast of Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

for a mid-expedition restocking of supplies and fresh water. Selkirk had grave concerns by this time about the seaworthiness of this vessel. He tried to convince some of his crewmates to desert with him, remaining on the island; he was counting on an impending visit by another ship. No one else agreed to come along with him. Stradling declared that he would grant him his wish and leave him alone on Juan Fernández. Selkirk promptly regretted his decision. He chased and called after the boat, to no avail. Unknown to him at the time, however, he had made the right choice, as indeed, the Cinque Ports later foundered, losing most of its crew. Selkirk lived the next four years and four months without any human company. All he had brought with him was a musket, gunpowder, carpenter's tools, a knife, a Bible, some clothing and rope.

Life on the island

Hearing strange sounds from the inland, which he feared were dangerous beasts, Selkirk remained at first along the shoreline. During this time he ate shellfish

Shellfish

Shellfish is a culinary and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater environments, some kinds are found only in freshwater...

, and scanned the ocean daily for rescue, suffering all the while from loneliness, misery and remorse. Hordes of raucous sea lion

Juan Fernandez Fur Seal

The Juan Fernández Fur Seal is a fur seal that breeds on the Juan Fernández Islands off the coast of Chile. It is the second smallest of the otariid seal . Discovered by navigator Juan Fernández in the sixteenth century, the seals became a target for sealers in the Maritime Fur Trade era...

s, gathering on the beach for the mating season, eventually drove him to the island's interior. Once there, his way of life took a turn for the better. More foods were now available: feral goats

Feral goat

The feral goat is the domestic goat when it has become established in the wild. Feral goats occur in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Great Britain, Hawaii, the Galapagos and in many other parts of the world...

– introduced by earlier sailors – provided him meat

Meat

Meat is animal flesh that is used as food. Most often, this means the skeletal muscle and associated fat and other tissues, but it may also describe other edible tissues such as organs and offal...

and milk

Milk

Milk is a white liquid produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals before they are able to digest other types of food. Early-lactation milk contains colostrum, which carries the mother's antibodies to the baby and can reduce the risk of many...

, wild turnips, cabbage

Cabbage

Cabbage is a popular cultivar of the species Brassica oleracea Linne of the Family Brassicaceae and is a leafy green vegetable...

, and black pepper

Black pepper

Black pepper is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. The fruit, known as a peppercorn when dried, is approximately in diameter, dark red when fully mature, and, like all drupes, contains a single seed...

berries offered him variety and spice. Although rat

Rat

Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents of the superfamily Muroidea. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus...

s would attack him at night, he was able, by domesticating and living near feral cats

Feral cat

A feral cat is a descendant of a domesticated cat that has returned to the wild. It is distinguished from a stray cat, which is a pet cat that has been lost or abandoned, while feral cats are born in the wild; the offspring of a stray cat can be considered feral if born in the wild.In many parts of...

, to sleep soundly and in safety.

Selkirk proved resourceful in using equipment from the ship as well as materials that were native to the island. He built two hut

Hut (dwelling)

A hut is a small and crude shelter, usually used for dwelling. Its design favors local techniques and materials to allow for swift and inexpensive construction.-Modern use:...

s out of pimento trees. He used his musket to hunt goats and his knife to clean their carcasses. As his gunpowder dwindled, he had to chase prey on foot. During one such chase he was badly injured when he tumbled from a cliff, lying unconscious for about a day. (His prey had cushioned his fall, sparing him a broken back.) He read from the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

frequently, finding it a comfort to him in his condition and a mainstay for his English.

When Selkirk's clothes wore out, he made new garments from goatskin, using a nail

Nail (engineering)

In woodworking and construction, a nail is a pin-shaped, sharp object of hard metal or alloy used as a fastener. Formerly wrought iron, today's nails are typically made of steel, often dipped or coated to prevent corrosion in harsh conditions or improve adhesion...

for sewing. The lessons he had learned as a child from his father, a tanner, helped him greatly during his stay on the island. As his shoe

Shoe

A shoe is an item of footwear intended to protect and comfort the human foot while doing various activities. Shoes are also used as an item of decoration. The design of shoes has varied enormously through time and from culture to culture, with appearance originally being tied to function...

s became unusable, he had no need to make new ones, since his toughened, callused feet made protection unnecessary. He forged a new knife out of barrel rings left on the beach.

Two vessels had arrived and departed before his escape, but both of them were Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

: as a Scotsman

Scotland

and privateer

Privateer

, he risked a terrible fate if captured. He hid himself from these crews. At one point, his Spanish pursuers urinated at the bottom of a tree he was hiding in, but did not discover him.

Rescue

His long-anticipated rescue occurred on 1 February 1709 by way of the Duke, a privateering ship piloted by the above-mentioned William Dampier

William Dampier

William Dampier was an English buccaneer, sea captain, author and scientific observer...

. Selkirk was discovered by the Dukes captain

Captain (nautical)

A sea captain is a licensed mariner in ultimate command of the vessel. The captain is responsible for its safe and efficient operation, including cargo operations, navigation, crew management and ensuring that the vessel complies with local and international laws, as well as company and flag...

, Woodes Rogers

Woodes Rogers

Woodes Rogers was an English sea captain, privateer, and, later, the first Royal Governor of the Bahamas. He is known as the captain of the vessel that rescued the marooned Alexander Selkirk, whose plight is generally believed to have inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.Rogers came from an...

, who referred to him as Governor of the island. Now rescued, he was almost incoherent in his joy. The agile Selkirk, catching two or three goats a day, helped restore the health of Rogers' men, who were suffering from scurvy

Scurvy

Scurvy is a disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C, which is required for the synthesis of collagen in humans. The chemical name for vitamin C, ascorbic acid, is derived from the Latin name of scurvy, scorbutus, which also provides the adjective scorbutic...

. Rogers eventually made Selkirk his mate, giving him independent command of one of his ships. Rogers' A cruising voyage round the world: first to the South-Sea, thence to the East-Indies, and homewards by the Cape of Good Hope was published in 1712 and included an account of Selkirk's ordeal.

Life after

Journalist Richard Steele

Richard Steele

Sir Richard Steele was an Irish writer and politician, remembered as co-founder, with his friend Joseph Addison, of the magazine The Spectator....

interviewed Selkirk about his adventures and wrote a much-read article about him in The Englishman.

Early in 1717 Selkirk returned to Lower Largo but stayed only a few months. There he met Sophia Bruce, a sixteen-year-old dairymaid. They eloped to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

but apparently did not marry. In March 1717 he again went off to sea. While on a visit to Plymouth

Plymouth

Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...

, he married a widowed innkeeper. According to the ship's log

Logbook

A logbook was originally a book for recording readings from the chip log, and is used to determine the distance a ship traveled within a certain amount of time...

, Selkirk died at 8 p.m. on 13 December 1721 while serving as a lieutenant

Lieutenant

A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...

on board the Royal ship Weymouth. He probably succumbed to the yellow fever

Yellow fever

Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....

which had devastated the voyage. He was buried at sea off the west coast of Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

.

Several people who spoke to Selkirk after his rescue (such as Captain Rogers and the journalist Steele) were impressed by the tranquillity of mind and vigour of the body that Selkirk had attained while on the island. Rogers stated that "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". Steele noted that "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"

Commemoration

In 1863, the crew of HMS Topaze

HMS Topaze (1858)

HMS Topaze was a 24-gun Liffey class wooden screw frigate of the Royal Navy. She was launched on 12 May 1858, at Devonport Dockyard, Plymouth. Her crew assisted in the building of the Race Rocks Lighthouse in British Columbia, Canada, and laid a bronze tablet in 1863 at the Juan Fernández Islands...

placed a bronze tablet on a spot called Selkirk's Lookout on a hill of the island in memory of his stay. On 1 January 1966 Selkirk's island was officially renamed Robinson Crusoe Island

Robinson Crusoe Island

. At the same time, the most western island of the Juan Fernández Islands

Juan Fernández Islands

was renamed Alejandro Selkirk Island

Alejandro Selkirk Island

Alejandro Selkirk Island, previously known as Isla Más Afuera and renamed after Alexander Selkirk, is the second largest and most westernly island of the Juan Fernández Islands archipelago of the Valparaíso Region of Chile...

although Selkirk probably never saw that island (97 miles west).

On 11 December 1885, after a speech by Lord Aberdeen

Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair

Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, in the County of Aberdeen, in the County of Meath and in the County of Argyll, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 4 January 1916 for John Hamilton-Gordon, 7th Earl of Aberdeen. The Gordon family descends from John Gordon, who fought...

, Lady Aberdeen unveiled a bronze statue and plaque of Alexander Selkirk outside a house on the site of Selkirk's original home on the Main Street of Lower Largo, Fife, Scotland. David Gillies of Cardy House, Lower Largo, a descendant of the Selkirks, donated the statue and T. Stuart Burnett ARAS designed it.

Archaeological finding of the camp of Selkirk

Around 2000, an expedition led by the Japanese Daisuke Takahashi, searching for Selkirk's camp on the island (Robinson Crusoe Island

Robinson Crusoe Island

), found part of an early eighteenth (or late seventeenth) century nautical instrument that almost certainly belonged to Selkirk.

Research by Dr. David Caldwell purports to have found his camp on the island.

Selkirk in other literary works

William Cowper
William Cowper
William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...

's The Solitude Of Alexander Selkirk is about the feelings of Alexander Selkirk as he lived all alone on the island. This poem gave rise to the common phrase monarch of all I survey via the verse:

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.

In Allan Cole
Allan Cole
Allan Cole is an American author and television writer, who has written or co-written nearly thirty books.The son of a CIA operative, Cole was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and raised in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East...

and Chris Bunch
Chris Bunch
Christopher R. "Chris" Bunch was an American science fiction, fantasy and television writer, who wrote and co-wrote about thirty novels....

's Sten science fiction series, Book Two, The Wolf Worlds, the Scottish character Alex bemoans their predicament after crash landing; 'A slackit way f'r a mon,' Alex mourned to himself. 'Ah dinnae ken Ah'd ever be Alex Selkirk.'
Selkirk is mentioned in Sailing Alone Around The World by Joshua Slocum
Joshua Slocum
Joshua Slocum was the first man to sail single-handedly around the world. He was a Canadian born, naturalised American seaman and adventurer, and a noted writer. In 1900 he told the story of this in Sailing Alone Around the World...

. During his stay on the Juan Fernández Islands, Slocum runs across a marker commemorating Selkirk's stay.
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

used Selkirk as a simile in Chapter Two of The Pickwick Papers
The Pickwick Papers
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is the first novel by Charles Dickens. After the publication, the widow of the illustrator Robert Seymour claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband's; however, in his preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens strenuously denied any...

: "Colonel Builder and Sir Thomas Clubber exchanged snuff–boxes, and looked very much like a pair of Alexander Selkirks — 'Monarchs of all they surveyed.'" This probably refers to William Cowper
William Cowper
William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...

's poem.
In his poem "Inniskeen Road: July Evening", the poet Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh was an Irish poet and novelist. Regarded as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century, his best known works include the novel Tarry Flynn and the poems Raglan Road and The Great Hunger...

likens his loneliness on the road to that of Selkirk:

Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight

Of being king and government and nation.

A road, a mile of kingdom, I am king

Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.

In Etiquette, one of W.S. Gilbert's Bab Ballads
Bab Ballads
The Bab Ballads are a collection of light verse by W. S. Gilbert, illustrated with his own comic drawings. Gilbert wrote the Ballads before he became famous for his comic opera librettos with Arthur Sullivan...

, Selkirk is used as a model for the English castaways:

These passengers, by reason of their clinging to a mast,

Upon a desert island were eventually cast.

They hunted for their meals, as Alexander Selkirk used,

But they couldn’t chat together – they had not been introduced.

Film

A stop motion animated film based on Alexander Selkirk life is due to 2012 by Tournier Animation.

External links

Account of a trip to Selkirk's Island
"Site of Selkirk's camp identified", from The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

(London), 17 September 2005.
"The life and adventures of Alexander Selkirk" by John Howell (1829) from Google Books
"The story of Alexander Selkirk" (1841) by Samuel Griswald on the Internet Archive
We saw a light ashore - The Diary Junction Blog
"Diaries of swashbuckling hero who rescued Robinson Crusoe unearthed", from Telegraph.co.uk, 5 January 2009.
Google Maps Link

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Early life

Castaway

Life on the island

Rescue

Life after

Commemoration

Archaeological finding of the camp of Selkirk

Selkirk in other literary works

Film

Further reading

External links