‘Crusoe’ leaves his island paradise (1709)

The island of Juan Fernández lost its only citizen on this day when Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk waved goodbye to it from the deck of the British privateering vessel Duke. Selkirk’s account of his four years on the island, 400 miles off the coast of Chile, would provide the inspiration a decade later for Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe.”

(An excerpt from a future “Writers Gone Wild” sequel)

Selkirk found himself on the island after an argument with the captain of Cinque Ports, a privateering ship. As its sailing master, Selkirk had become concerned that the Cinque Ports’ timbers were so rotten that it would founder. When the ship stopped at Juan Fernández to take on water and provisions, Selkirk rashly asked to be left behind. The captain agreed. It was a measure of the violence of the argument that when Selkirk changed his mind, the captain sailed without the sailing master.

Selkirk was right. The ship foundered, drowning most of its crew.

The next eight months were harrowing for Selkirk as he transitioned from a sailor to a castaway, in a fashion recognizable to fans of “Gilligan’s Island.” Meat was provided by feral goats, introduced by Spanish ships. The coast provided shellfish, and Selkirk supplemented his diet with shellfish, wild turnips, cabbage and other foods. He had a rifle, and some powder and shot, and he built a couple of huts, using long grasses. When his clothes wore out, he replaced them with new ones made from goat skins. He must have looked quite a sight by the time Capt. Woodes Rogers of the Duke saw him four years later.

Capt. Rogers wrote an account of Selkirk’s adventures in his memoirs, and journalist Richard Steele published an article on Selkirk after interviewing him. Selkirk left his island home a changed man. He returned to his village in Scotland, but he missed the solitude, to the point of building a cave for himself in his parents’ garden. Eventually, he returned to the sea, and died of yellow fever in 1721, probably never realizing that Defoe had immortalized his life.