April 13, 2011 • 27 mins
In 1695, Alexander Selkirk ran away and joined a band of buccaneers. In 1704, after a fight with his captain, Selkirk was put ashore on an uninhabited island about 400 miles west of Valparaiso. Tune in to learn more about the real-life Robinson Crusoe.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm debling a chuck reboarding, and I'm fair downy. And
even if you haven't read Daniel Dafoe's novel Robinson Crusoe,
(00:20):
you've probably at least heard of its main character, also
called Robinson Crusoe, and he's said to be one of
the best known characters in world literature. The story, of course,
is about the adventures of an English seaman who gets
shipwrecked on an uninhabited or seemingly uninhabited island for twenty
eight years, and it's kind of about the experiences that
(00:41):
he has. They're making a home um fending off cannibals,
and I read it I think my sophomore year of college,
and I honestly do not remember much about it now
except that he spent the majority of his time worrying
about being murdered by cannibal. Yeah. I got a big
kick out of that spelling. Yeah. So it's about these
(01:02):
little adventures that he has and just surviving. How does
he survive on this island? So it really does seem
like this bizarre, fantastical tale, but what's really interesting, at
least to us, is that it's widely believed to be
based on a true story of the story of a
Scottish man named Alexander Selkirk who was ruined on an
uninhabited island for more than four years in the early
(01:23):
seventeen hundreds. Yeah, it's not a straight copy of salkirk story,
so definitely not. For one thing, Salkirk spent a lot
less time on the island than fictional Robinson Crusoe Dead.
The location of the island is different. Crusoe is in
the Atlantic, Salkirk was in the South Pacific. And how
the heroes, if if we're going to consider them that
(01:44):
the main character, the main characters, how they ended up
on the islands is very different. Seal Kirk wasn't shipwrecked.
He actually chose to be there. And I think that's
probably the most fascinating little bit of the story that
you would choose this isolation kind of unwittingly, he didn't
know exactly what he was going to get into, but
certainly more interesting than a shipwreck. Yeah, absolutely, I would totally.
(02:08):
I mean, y'all know I like shipwrecks too, So that's
saying a lot. That's saying a lot for Sarah here,
But we're going to take a look at that really
unusual decision, or to us at least an unusual decision,
and also a little bit of course about Selkirk's own
island experience, what he did to survive while he was there,
And that's I mean in that part, that's where you're
really going to see most of the similarities between his
(02:29):
story and Crusoe's I think, And um, of course we're
gonna look at how did this experience change him? Yeah,
you think, a few years on the island by yourself,
definitely you're gonna be a different man when you finally
come off of it. But first, of course we're gonna
look at how he made his way to the sea
in the first place. He was born Alexander Selkraig in
sixteen seventies six in Lower Largo, Scotland, which is a
(02:52):
fishing village in Fife County, and he was the seventh
son of a shoemaker named John cel Craig and a
woman and youth and Mackie. And like a lot of
the stories that we cover here on this podcast, we
see a situation where the son Alexander really wants to
do something different from what his dad wants him to do.
His dad, John really wants Alexander to follow in his
(03:13):
footsteps and join the shoemaking business that he has right. Sorry,
bad pun, unintended pun as well. But Alexander dreamed about
a life on the seat, about getting to the sea,
and his mother supported those dreams because she believed that
alex was blessed with luck, even though he was a
bit of a troublemaking punk um. As you'll see. According
(03:33):
to a Smithsonian article by Bruce L. Craig, who is
interestingly actually a descendant of alex and he's checked out
all these historical records from Largo's church elders and he
found that Alexander was actually punished several times for transgressions,
little crimes such as fornication, and that's how it was
listed in the records. Yeah, definitely um kind of scandalous.
(03:55):
And it was for one of those little crimes, one
of those transgressions, that he was to appear before the
church elders on this day in sixteen ninety five, and
that appears to be the day that he ran away
to see for the first time. Because yeah, he skipped town.
He did not make his little court appearance before the
church elders, and um it's assumed that he was possibly
with a Scottish colonizing expedition to Panama or what is
(04:18):
now Panama. Yeah, but he wasn't gone for good. After that,
he popped up around home again, at least long enough
to cause some more trouble. In late November seventeen o one,
he got into this huge fight with his family which
led to him assaulting his father and his brother John
and possibly even John's wife. And the whole thing might
(04:39):
have started when his brother Andrew sort of laughed or
made fun of him for accidentally drinking seawater saltwater. Very sensitive. Yeah,
definitely to to go after his whole family. So you know,
he's he's around, it seems, back from from Scotland time
to time. And then in seventeen oh three he makes
his first really big break. Yeah, he joins buccaneer William
(05:03):
Dampier's private privateering expedition to South America. And just to
give you a little background on that, the privateers, they're
basically legitimate pirates for the British Crown. So since Alexander
had done well in math and geography and navigation in
school and impressed his mentors. Those credentials kind of helped
him secure a position as a navigator on this particular journey.
And this is around the time as well that he
(05:24):
started becoming known as Selkirk. And folks aren't totally sure
about why he made that change. He might have been
trying to distance himself from this kind of sketchy past,
or maybe it was just a spelling or pronunciation misunderstanding. Yeah,
I guess some historians think that maybe spelling just wasn't
that important back then. It happens, so he has his
(05:44):
new name Selkirk, and he joins this expedition which has
two different ships involved. One is called the sink Ports
and one is called the St. George. And Selkirk himself
was aboard the sink Ports when they set sales September
seventeen three, and like we said earlier, he was a
good navigator and helped the ship out quite a bit.
(06:05):
He helped them travel as far as fifty miles on
a good day. They made it to Brazil in two
weeks or so, which I find that pretty remarkable. Early
sundred but it wasn't. The expedition itself was not going well.
His navigation seems like about one of the only things
that was really working. The privateers had problems from the
very start, and a lot of that trouble came from
(06:27):
dissension among the ranks. Yeah, damp Here was seen by
many to be cruel and incompetent Um. For example, he
was known to let captured ships go free without disturbed,
distributing all the loot to his men like he was. Yeah,
that's how they made their cash. So a lot of
the crew didn't like him for that reason, and trouble
started pretty much from the beginning surrounding that relationship with him.
(06:48):
There was also a lot of illness aboard Um. During
that time, ships were breeding ground for typhus dysenterian cholera,
and so by November several of the men were sick
with fever or scurvy, which is actually caused by a
vitamin C efficiency. Yeah, and one of the guys who
get sick is the captain Charles Pickering, and he died
in late November. So you had a replacement move in,
(07:09):
young Lieutenant Thomas Straddling, and he took over the command
of the sink ports. You'd think that maybe with all
the dissension in their ranks, change like this might make
things a little better. It makes things worth The crew
disliked him as much, maybe even more than damp Here.
So a lot of trouble now aboard both of these ships. Yeah,
(07:29):
and I mean to add to these already two kind
of big issues. There was also the fact that they
weren't very successful at what they were supposed to be doing,
which was the privateering part of it. They were trying
to capture Spanish merchant ships, but they weren't able to
do it. So the sailors almost mutinied many times because
they weren't happy with strad Lane and they thought Dampier
should attack more ships. Um. As we said before, I mean,
(07:50):
this is how they made their money. This is otherwise
they're just wasting their time, otherwise catching scurvy right, hanging out,
risking their lives. So they really wanted this to happen. Um.
But the major difficulty that ultimately turned out to be
the turning point for silk Kirk was the poor condition
of the ship that he was on. By September seventeen
oh four, Silkirk ship was so leaky that men had
(08:12):
to pump water out of it almost constantly, pretty much
day and night. I mean, I think it's interesting that
that's the point, the poor condition of the ship that
drives him over the edge. Not that you know, they're
not attacking Spanish or that everyone's getting sick, but he's
seriously afraid that the ship will sink. And I mean it,
it is getting really bad, like you mentioned there there
(08:34):
taking the water out constantly, and so finally they decided
to return to an island called Masatierra, where they had
spent some time earlier that year, and it was located
in the one Fernandez cluster, which is about four hundred
miles of six hundred forty kilometers west of Valparius, O, Chile.
So you know, they were just hoping stop there a
(08:55):
little bit, build up supplies again and rest and then
head out. That was the plan, at least of the captain. Yeah,
and they did part of that. They spent about a
month there stalking the ship with provisions, but they didn't
really get much fixed on the ship. It was still
pretty warm, ridden in bad shape. So but still then
Straddling decides that it was time to set sail sil
(09:18):
Kirk argued with him. He stressed that he believed the
ship wasn't sound, it wasn't fit to sail. The masks,
masks and the floors were so worm eaten that they
wouldn't be able to withstand open sea, much less these
battles that the sailors really wanted to get into. So,
showing his stubbornness as we've seen before, sail Kirk refused
to back down from this fight. So he was put
(09:40):
ashore with some of his provisions his betting A must get,
a pistol, gunpowder, a hatchet, a knife, his navigational tools,
a pot for boiling food, two pounds of tobacco, some
cheese and jam, a flask of rum, his Bible, the
Book of Common Prayer, and the seventeen Spanish dollars that
were his share of the boot. Do they learned so
(10:00):
far so you could see how little they had plundered.
Spend it all in one place, right, So, I mean,
you'll see different accounts say that he brought different things ashore,
but it wasn't much. I mean, it seems like a
lot more than if you just happened to show up
somewhere by accident, but it still wasn't a lot, definitely,
and more than you would leave a mutineer too. He
wasn't being treated quite on that level. Yeah, and this
(10:22):
was his choice at first. But as soon as the
ship starts to leave and he is wading through the
water going to the shore, he starts to immediately regret this. Yeah,
totally regret it. Yeah. He begs, in fact, to be
let back on board the ship, but Straddling wanted to
make an example of him, you know, in that sence
(10:43):
he was treating him a like a mutineer, didn't let
him back on board, refused the offer. So now we
have our castaway. Yeah, and at that point we have
Silkirk and he's standing there. The ship is sailing away
and he's thinking, oh, may in I might get stuck
here for like a few days or something. Little little
(11:05):
did he know. Yeah, he really thinks that another friendly
ship will probably come along in a few days time
and things will be okay. He thinks that he'll be
able to at least survive those few days. Because Masatierra
or Aquas Buena since it's also known, which is now officially,
by the way, named Robinson Crusoe island, It wasn't the
worst place that you could be stranded for a little while. No,
(11:25):
it had fresh water and plenty of food sources. It
seems he had access to goat meat, turtle eggs, lobsters,
and a hawthorn berry like fruit that grew on something
that was known as the cabbage palm tree. And why though,
why was this uninhabited island so bountiful, Yeah, bountiful larder
of foods. And according to an article by Louis Verner
(11:48):
in the America's it had been explored already in the
fift hundreds by the Spanish and in Sebastian Garcia. Corretto
was given a land grant there. And so he's the
one who imported the goats and pigs and uh he
even had indians at a time there at a farm.
The colonna didn't work out, it failed, but the goats stayed,
(12:09):
they remain, they turned feral and they thrived. So you know,
it ended up being a pretty well stocked place. And
there were some other castaways on this island with the
Selkirk as well. There were rats and there were feral cats,
and these were left behind by ships, just like the
ones he was on. They had stopped at the island
for a little while and the ratch to sort of
ended up there. They jumped ship right on their tails, right,
(12:32):
So some people had been left behind on the island
too in the past. Twenty four years before Alexanderston actually
and Mosquito Indian man named Will was mistakenly left behind,
eventually rescued three years later by another privateering ship. Incidentally,
the privateering ship that he had been on also was
one of damp years. I think Dampier doesn't have a
(12:55):
good record. He really doesn't. He gets around. But an
interesting point about Will is that the character Friday and
Defoe's novel and Robinson Crusoe may have been based on
the Sky's account. So, yeah, Silkirk, he does have this
good supply of food. He has some potential friends. The
cats on the island. You like those cats. I like cats.
It would be good to have cats if you're all
(13:16):
by yourself. Far cats, well, we're gonna we're gonna get
into that a little bit more. They're not necessarily feral um.
But you know, he has the knowledge that he'll be
able to have enough to eat, and the knowledge that
he could survive if if he thinks quick, but still
he's he's pretty depressed at the prospect of being alone. Yeah,
(13:37):
because he was not only alone, he was in a
pretty uncomfortable situation as well. Rats would not at his
clothes and his feet while he slept. Plus there was
just that little problem with keeping a sanity, no one
to talk to. He was alone with his thoughts, listening
to sea lions bellowing on the beach all day long.
He even contemplated suicide at one point. Eventually, though, a
(13:57):
change came over him. And it's kind of hard to understand,
I guess if you haven't been in that position. But
the way it's described in early accounts of his story
is that after about eighteen months, after reading scriptures and
turning his thoughts to the study of navigation and quote
force of reason, he became thoroughly reconciled to his condition.
And from that point on he kind of learned how
(14:18):
to live on the island and seemed to find his
own sort of piece there. If not really a happiness,
it seems like a happiness, but yeah, at least not depression,
it seems. And he got down to business too, you know,
he worked on taking care of some of these problems
that were bothering him, starting with pest control. So I mean,
I would say rats nibbling at your feet at night
(14:38):
would be a major issue, kind of top your list,
And he managed to take care of them by doing
perhaps the most obvious thing you can think of, getting
the cats involved in the whole process. So he domesticated
some of the cats by giving them pieces of goat meat.
They wanted to hang around his camp a little more then,
and then they realized there were also lots of feral
(14:59):
rats around that's are often fairal like um, and they
took care of the problem right quick for for Selkirk. Yeah,
but that wasn't the only thing he had to deal with, right,
I mean, he had to find food, shelter, and then
there's just what are you doing with yourself all day?
You know, what's occupying your mind? Taking care of that
little sanity issue we mentioned before. So we're going to
(15:20):
kind of go through how he got his food and
his shelter and um, you know what he did day
to day. So the real Robinson cruise this is part Yeah,
this is a real Robinson cruise, so part exactly. So
first of all, what did he eat? Well, there was
plenty of fish to be had, but they bothered Silkirk's
stomach a lot, I guess, so he had to settle
for the island's version of lobster, which was actually a giant,
(15:41):
clawless crawfish of sorts. Um. He also it goat mate,
as we mentioned before, and once he ran out of gunpowder,
he managed to get really agile, to the point that
he could chase down these goats that sort of outrun
them himself, and catch them and kill them that way,
which I think is pretty amazing. I think. Um, but
when he wasn't eating goats or giant crawfish, he did
(16:03):
have things like turnups and watercress and the cabbage palm
we mentioned earlier. Um, just things partly left by the Spanish,
just growing on the island. And unfortunately, though he was
disturbed by the lack of salt and the lack of bread.
I can't quite figure out the salt, because presumably he's
surrounded by seawater. I think he could use some solar
(16:24):
action and collect the salt, but I don't know. Maybe
he had other things on his mind. He was missing it.
Maybe he just needed you there, Sarah, to show him
the way. I think he mentioned he had other spices though, Yeah,
I think there were some other peppers and things growing
on the island that he used to season as food,
but it wasn't quite salt season the goat meat season
the goat meat, but it wasn't quite what he was
(16:45):
used to still. Um As far as how he lived
his home, I guess you could say he managed to
build two huts with wood from pimento trees and covered
those with long grass and line them with goat skin,
so sounds actually kind of cozy plush one the larger
one was for him to sleep in and kind of
hang out in, and the other one was a smaller
one in which he prepared his meals. He also learned
(17:08):
how to start a fire with wood and must get flints,
and he tried to keep that going all day. We
also have to discuss how he clothed himself, because obviously
a few years on an island, your clothes are not
going to last that long, especially after the rats had
been gnawing at them exactly, that would reduce the lifespan
pretty quickly. So when his clothes started to fall apart,
he had to make new ones out of goat skins,
(17:29):
but he didn't have a needle and thread with him,
so he had to use a nail, and again with
the goats, a little piece of goat skin or old
stocking sort of fashioned into twine or thread to to
lace all these pieces together. So he must have cut
quite a figure once he got his outfits all made. Yeah,
I guess he was pretty styling for that area of
(17:51):
the world at the time, but he didn't have anyone
to show it off to. Really, he didn't have a
man Friday like Robinson Crusoe did, but he did have
his an moles. As we mentioned before, he had the
cats and he also had goats. Um. I mean he
ate the goats, but he also sort of domesticated some
of the goats as well. It's it's been said that
he'd break the legs of the younger ones to kind
(18:11):
of keep them around, and so he had his own
little animal family, I guess around him. He also had
some reading material. He had been left with his Bible
in the Book of Common Prayer, and he would sing
the songs and he would pray, and later he said
that he was a better Christian while in the solitude
of the island than he ever had been before. He
(18:34):
also just really embraced nature too while he was there.
I mean, you'd have a lot of time to think
and think about the island you were on, and he
learned a lot about the island and himself in that way. Presumably, Yeah,
very thorough like um. And he was always always on
the lookout for approaching ships during this time. According to
Sael Craig's article, Alexander had a lookout spot which was
(18:56):
about eighteen hundred feet around there in elevation, so he
had plenty of time to react if he saw someone coming,
which turned out to be really vital in a couple
of situations, because there was at least one instance during
these four plus years when a Spanish ship came to
the island and they came ashore the Spaniards did. They
destroyed his hut, but Selkirk managed to evade them, and
(19:18):
he was right to do so. It seems Werner actually
suggests that he would have been put to hard labor
aboard a Spanish ship, or perhaps even jailed and lima.
So it wouldn't have turned out for very well if
you'd tried to kind of get on board with these guys. So,
I mean, this is another thing that kind of surprised
me about this story, because you imagine somebody stranded on
an island, you're trying to hail any ship you see,
(19:39):
you'd rather be taken by anybody. But that he was
actually looking for ships to avoid them too, I think
is fascinating. Yeah, And I think part of this, we
were kind of talking about this a little bit before,
is just his own kind of coming to terms with
being on the island and his sort of love for
the island or comfort growing love for the island. Yeah,
(20:00):
and you know we've talked about before, and you'll see
in a lot of writings about his experience that, you know,
he looked towards the sea with hope that someone would come,
but also with a little bit of hesitation. Definitely, eventually, though,
that friendly ship did come. He spotted one on the
horizon and he was finally rescued February seventeen o nine
by a ship called the Duke, and it was commanded
(20:21):
by Woods Rogers. And by this point Silkirk was pretty
crazy looking. I mean, he looked like he had been
on an island for four years. He had a long beard,
he was wearing those goat skin clothes, which I mean,
that's that's gonna make you stand out, I think. And
he greeted Rogers men by making them goat soup and
(20:44):
telling them all about his survival. So he was happy
to to have these visitors at first. Yeah, and they
hardly knew what to make of them at all. Rogers
later wrote that Silkirk so much forgot his language for
want of use, that we could scarce understand him, for
he see to speak his words by have So just
imagine him trying to communicate. He hasn't spoken to another
(21:05):
human being in more than four years, and he's trying
to tell them what happened. Um, that he was marooned.
And luckily sil Kirk's old friend or perhaps his friend
of me, We're not really sure how good a terms
they were on when they parted ways, but William damp
Here was on board the ship, so again he makes
an appearance. Yep, he recognized the silk Kirk and vouches
(21:26):
for his navigational skills and also delivers him an interesting
bit of news about their old ship that they've been
on together. Yeah, and that's that the ship. He was
right the ship, thank after it left. Yeah, the poor
sink ports. I knew that was going to happen. Yeah,
you did, you called it. It sank soon after abandoning
(21:46):
Alexander in seventeen o four, and only about a dozen
men survive. Most of those ended up in Spanish prisons too,
so it was actually a good thing that he ended
up on the island. Four years on the island might
be a little better than four years in a Spanish
prison at least, Yeah, I mean, even without salt definitely.
From there, Rogers makes Silkirk navigator of his ship and
(22:07):
they sail around for two more years, So it's two
more years before Silkirk actually gets home. But then they
finally returned to London in October seventeen eleven, and it
was well worth the way that turns out, Silkirk comes
home with eight hundred English pounds in his pocket. That
was his share of the Duke's plundered well, So obviously
the Duke did a lot better than Silkirk's last ship did. Yeah,
(22:29):
and Selkirk was famous pretty soon too, because both Rogers
and Richard Steele wrote accounts of Selkirk's experience on the
island in seventeen twelve, and seventeen thirteen. And the way
Sail Craig from the Smithsonian article described that is that
he was an eccentric celebrity, which I like that somebody
who who could travel around from pub to pub for
(22:51):
a couple of years make sightings telling his adventures getting
free meals. I mean, you have to imagine people would
want to get a look at this guy and and
hear his story. Yeah, and he took full advantage of
the situation for a while. He actually ended up marrying
two women at the same time. They didn't know about
it. It It wasn't like a sister wife situation. He married
two women in two separate places that didn't find out
about it until later. So you think he wouldn't be
(23:14):
that good at deceit, like living by himself for four
years on the island. But yeah, who knows. Maybe he
didn't do it intentionally. Who knows. I don't know too
much about that aspect of the story. But I do
know that after a few months, he didn't seem so
high on life anymore. He wasn't so happy with the
situation he had, but he became a loner, and he
seemed a lot unhappier than he had when he first
(23:36):
made that goat stew cheerfully on the island for his rescuers. Um,
he seemed more at peace than and now it seems
like he had a hard time going back to his again. Yeah,
he had a hard time going back to his old
life in his old world. And some biographers even say
that he tried to replicate life on the island for
a while by returning to Largo and living in a
cave like shelter behind his father's house. Um. He made
(23:58):
the statement which is really poignant, and Steel writes about
it in his account. He said, I am now worth
eight hundred pounds, but she'll never be so happy as
when I was not worth a farthing. Yeah. And so eventually,
in November seventeen twenty, at the age of forty four,
Selkirk decided to return to life at see something to
do and some place to go again, and he signed
(24:21):
on as the first mate of a naval warship that
HMS Weymouth, And it was bound for the Gold Coast
of Africa, and it was searching for pirates. Um again,
you know, probably hoping to make a little money. And
there was a lot of illness on board again too
though yellow fever and typhoid, and eventually Selkirk himself died
aboard the ship December thirteenth, seventeen twenty one. Interestingly, Dafoe
(24:47):
had already published Robinson CRUs So by then it was
April seventeen nineteen, but it's unclear whether he in Selkirk
actually met. Historians debate about that. It suggested, though, that
Dafoe met either or both, possibly Rogers or Steel, and
he was definitely aware of Selkirk's story. Yeah, and from
(25:07):
there the story became so popular and well known. And
as we talked about in into the introduction to this podcast,
and I mean we were talking before a little bit
about the Swiss family Robinson and you tend to prefer that,
I think to Robinson Crusoe, Sarah, don't you. Yeah, I
mean it's they have their whole family there. It's a
little more fun and exciting. Yeah, there's not this like
(25:28):
murder Vacambal's constant threat. At least they don't dwell on
it so much. Yeah, but needless to say, as many
stories that it's influenced since then, there is now real
evidence also. Yeah, I mean, it was the story of
Robinson Crusoe became popular enough for people to actually go
out and look for evidence for this real Robinson Cruso. Yeah,
(25:50):
and they found it. In two thousand eight, some researchers
discovered Selkirk's navigational dividers or a pair of navigational dividers
from the time period that they assume are his. And
they also found some post holes on the island where
his two shelters would have been built. So you know,
I'm sweet home. Yeah, and if you want to check
out the real Robinson Crusoe's home, you can do that. Um.
(26:13):
As we mentioned, they changed the name of the island
to Robinson Crusoe Island and drive home the point they did.
They did drive home the point, but they also driving
home the point that they don't mind having tourists come
by and check it out. So I'm not sure if
you can actually see where these post holes are, but
perhaps you can. Um. If anyone has visited or know
some more about this, we definitely love to hear your
own personal Robinson Crusoe stories or Alexander Selkirk stories. So
(26:38):
um you can write us at History podcast at how
stuff works dot com, or look us up on Facebook
or on Twitter at Miston History. We also have a
ton of articles on how to survive in various dangerous
situation um you know, everything from too cold, too too hot,
to what should you bring? But the one we're gonna
recommend for this episode it since he did to have
(27:00):
all his jam, and his cheese, and his books, all
sorts of useful items on hand. Five everyday items you
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Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm debling a chuck reboarding, and I'm fair downy. And
even if you haven't read Daniel Dafoe's novel Robinson Crusoe,
(00:20):
you've probably at least heard of its main character, also
called Robinson Crusoe, and he's said to be one of
the best known characters in world literature. The story, of course,
is about the adventures of an English seaman who gets
shipwrecked on an uninhabited or seemingly uninhabited island for twenty
eight years, and it's kind of about the experiences that
(00:41):
he has. They're making a home um fending off cannibals,
and I read it I think my sophomore year of college,
and I honestly do not remember much about it now
except that he spent the majority of his time worrying
about being murdered by cannibal. Yeah. I got a big
kick out of that spelling. Yeah. So it's about these
(01:02):
little adventures that he has and just surviving. How does
he survive on this island? So it really does seem
like this bizarre, fantastical tale, but what's really interesting, at
least to us, is that it's widely believed to be
based on a true story of the story of a
Scottish man named Alexander Selkirk who was ruined on an
uninhabited island for more than four years in the early
(01:23):
seventeen hundreds. Yeah, it's not a straight copy of salkirk story,
so definitely not. For one thing, Salkirk spent a lot
less time on the island than fictional Robinson Crusoe Dead.
The location of the island is different. Crusoe is in
the Atlantic, Salkirk was in the South Pacific. And how
the heroes, if if we're going to consider them that
(01:44):
the main character, the main characters, how they ended up
on the islands is very different. Seal Kirk wasn't shipwrecked.
He actually chose to be there. And I think that's
probably the most fascinating little bit of the story that
you would choose this isolation kind of unwittingly, he didn't
know exactly what he was going to get into, but
certainly more interesting than a shipwreck. Yeah, absolutely, I would totally.
(02:08):
I mean, y'all know I like shipwrecks too, So that's
saying a lot. That's saying a lot for Sarah here,
But we're going to take a look at that really
unusual decision, or to us at least an unusual decision,
and also a little bit of course about Selkirk's own
island experience, what he did to survive while he was there,
And that's I mean in that part, that's where you're
really going to see most of the similarities between his
(02:29):
story and Crusoe's I think, And um, of course we're
gonna look at how did this experience change him? Yeah,
you think, a few years on the island by yourself,
definitely you're gonna be a different man when you finally
come off of it. But first, of course we're gonna
look at how he made his way to the sea
in the first place. He was born Alexander Selkraig in
sixteen seventies six in Lower Largo, Scotland, which is a
(02:52):
fishing village in Fife County, and he was the seventh
son of a shoemaker named John cel Craig and a
woman and youth and Mackie. And like a lot of
the stories that we cover here on this podcast, we
see a situation where the son Alexander really wants to
do something different from what his dad wants him to do.
His dad, John really wants Alexander to follow in his
(03:13):
footsteps and join the shoemaking business that he has right. Sorry,
bad pun, unintended pun as well. But Alexander dreamed about
a life on the seat, about getting to the sea,
and his mother supported those dreams because she believed that
alex was blessed with luck, even though he was a
bit of a troublemaking punk um. As you'll see. According
(03:33):
to a Smithsonian article by Bruce L. Craig, who is
interestingly actually a descendant of alex and he's checked out
all these historical records from Largo's church elders and he
found that Alexander was actually punished several times for transgressions,
little crimes such as fornication, and that's how it was
listed in the records. Yeah, definitely um kind of scandalous.
(03:55):
And it was for one of those little crimes, one
of those transgressions, that he was to appear before the
church elders on this day in sixteen ninety five, and
that appears to be the day that he ran away
to see for the first time. Because yeah, he skipped town.
He did not make his little court appearance before the
church elders, and um it's assumed that he was possibly
with a Scottish colonizing expedition to Panama or what is
(04:18):
now Panama. Yeah, but he wasn't gone for good. After that,
he popped up around home again, at least long enough
to cause some more trouble. In late November seventeen o one,
he got into this huge fight with his family which
led to him assaulting his father and his brother John
and possibly even John's wife. And the whole thing might
(04:39):
have started when his brother Andrew sort of laughed or
made fun of him for accidentally drinking seawater saltwater. Very sensitive. Yeah,
definitely to to go after his whole family. So you know,
he's he's around, it seems, back from from Scotland time
to time. And then in seventeen oh three he makes
his first really big break. Yeah, he joins buccaneer William
(05:03):
Dampier's private privateering expedition to South America. And just to
give you a little background on that, the privateers, they're
basically legitimate pirates for the British Crown. So since Alexander
had done well in math and geography and navigation in
school and impressed his mentors. Those credentials kind of helped
him secure a position as a navigator on this particular journey.
And this is around the time as well that he
(05:24):
started becoming known as Selkirk. And folks aren't totally sure
about why he made that change. He might have been
trying to distance himself from this kind of sketchy past,
or maybe it was just a spelling or pronunciation misunderstanding. Yeah,
I guess some historians think that maybe spelling just wasn't
that important back then. It happens, so he has his
(05:44):
new name Selkirk, and he joins this expedition which has
two different ships involved. One is called the sink Ports
and one is called the St. George. And Selkirk himself
was aboard the sink Ports when they set sales September
seventeen three, and like we said earlier, he was a
good navigator and helped the ship out quite a bit.
(06:05):
He helped them travel as far as fifty miles on
a good day. They made it to Brazil in two
weeks or so, which I find that pretty remarkable. Early
sundred but it wasn't. The expedition itself was not going well.
His navigation seems like about one of the only things
that was really working. The privateers had problems from the
very start, and a lot of that trouble came from
(06:27):
dissension among the ranks. Yeah, damp Here was seen by
many to be cruel and incompetent Um. For example, he
was known to let captured ships go free without disturbed,
distributing all the loot to his men like he was. Yeah,
that's how they made their cash. So a lot of
the crew didn't like him for that reason, and trouble
started pretty much from the beginning surrounding that relationship with him.
(06:48):
There was also a lot of illness aboard Um. During
that time, ships were breeding ground for typhus dysenterian cholera,
and so by November several of the men were sick
with fever or scurvy, which is actually caused by a
vitamin C efficiency. Yeah, and one of the guys who
get sick is the captain Charles Pickering, and he died
in late November. So you had a replacement move in,
(07:09):
young Lieutenant Thomas Straddling, and he took over the command
of the sink ports. You'd think that maybe with all
the dissension in their ranks, change like this might make
things a little better. It makes things worth The crew
disliked him as much, maybe even more than damp Here.
So a lot of trouble now aboard both of these ships. Yeah,
(07:29):
and I mean to add to these already two kind
of big issues. There was also the fact that they
weren't very successful at what they were supposed to be doing,
which was the privateering part of it. They were trying
to capture Spanish merchant ships, but they weren't able to
do it. So the sailors almost mutinied many times because
they weren't happy with strad Lane and they thought Dampier
should attack more ships. Um. As we said before, I mean,
(07:50):
this is how they made their money. This is otherwise
they're just wasting their time, otherwise catching scurvy right, hanging out,
risking their lives. So they really wanted this to happen. Um.
But the major difficulty that ultimately turned out to be
the turning point for silk Kirk was the poor condition
of the ship that he was on. By September seventeen
oh four, Silkirk ship was so leaky that men had
(08:12):
to pump water out of it almost constantly, pretty much
day and night. I mean, I think it's interesting that
that's the point, the poor condition of the ship that
drives him over the edge. Not that you know, they're
not attacking Spanish or that everyone's getting sick, but he's
seriously afraid that the ship will sink. And I mean it,
it is getting really bad, like you mentioned there there
(08:34):
taking the water out constantly, and so finally they decided
to return to an island called Masatierra, where they had
spent some time earlier that year, and it was located
in the one Fernandez cluster, which is about four hundred
miles of six hundred forty kilometers west of Valparius, O, Chile.
So you know, they were just hoping stop there a
(08:55):
little bit, build up supplies again and rest and then
head out. That was the plan, at least of the captain. Yeah,
and they did part of that. They spent about a
month there stalking the ship with provisions, but they didn't
really get much fixed on the ship. It was still
pretty warm, ridden in bad shape. So but still then
Straddling decides that it was time to set sail sil
(09:18):
Kirk argued with him. He stressed that he believed the
ship wasn't sound, it wasn't fit to sail. The masks,
masks and the floors were so worm eaten that they
wouldn't be able to withstand open sea, much less these
battles that the sailors really wanted to get into. So,
showing his stubbornness as we've seen before, sail Kirk refused
to back down from this fight. So he was put
(09:40):
ashore with some of his provisions his betting A must get,
a pistol, gunpowder, a hatchet, a knife, his navigational tools,
a pot for boiling food, two pounds of tobacco, some
cheese and jam, a flask of rum, his Bible, the
Book of Common Prayer, and the seventeen Spanish dollars that
were his share of the boot. Do they learned so
(10:00):
far so you could see how little they had plundered.
Spend it all in one place, right, So, I mean,
you'll see different accounts say that he brought different things ashore,
but it wasn't much. I mean, it seems like a
lot more than if you just happened to show up
somewhere by accident, but it still wasn't a lot, definitely,
and more than you would leave a mutineer too. He
wasn't being treated quite on that level. Yeah, and this
(10:22):
was his choice at first. But as soon as the
ship starts to leave and he is wading through the
water going to the shore, he starts to immediately regret this. Yeah,
totally regret it. Yeah. He begs, in fact, to be
let back on board the ship, but Straddling wanted to
make an example of him, you know, in that sence
(10:43):
he was treating him a like a mutineer, didn't let
him back on board, refused the offer. So now we
have our castaway. Yeah, and at that point we have
Silkirk and he's standing there. The ship is sailing away
and he's thinking, oh, may in I might get stuck
here for like a few days or something. Little little
(11:05):
did he know. Yeah, he really thinks that another friendly
ship will probably come along in a few days time
and things will be okay. He thinks that he'll be
able to at least survive those few days. Because Masatierra
or Aquas Buena since it's also known, which is now officially,
by the way, named Robinson Crusoe island, It wasn't the
worst place that you could be stranded for a little while. No,
(11:25):
it had fresh water and plenty of food sources. It
seems he had access to goat meat, turtle eggs, lobsters,
and a hawthorn berry like fruit that grew on something
that was known as the cabbage palm tree. And why though,
why was this uninhabited island so bountiful, Yeah, bountiful larder
of foods. And according to an article by Louis Verner
(11:48):
in the America's it had been explored already in the
fift hundreds by the Spanish and in Sebastian Garcia. Corretto
was given a land grant there. And so he's the
one who imported the goats and pigs and uh he
even had indians at a time there at a farm.
The colonna didn't work out, it failed, but the goats stayed,
(12:09):
they remain, they turned feral and they thrived. So you know,
it ended up being a pretty well stocked place. And
there were some other castaways on this island with the
Selkirk as well. There were rats and there were feral cats,
and these were left behind by ships, just like the
ones he was on. They had stopped at the island
for a little while and the ratch to sort of
ended up there. They jumped ship right on their tails, right,
(12:32):
So some people had been left behind on the island
too in the past. Twenty four years before Alexanderston actually
and Mosquito Indian man named Will was mistakenly left behind,
eventually rescued three years later by another privateering ship. Incidentally,
the privateering ship that he had been on also was
one of damp years. I think Dampier doesn't have a
(12:55):
good record. He really doesn't. He gets around. But an
interesting point about Will is that the character Friday and
Defoe's novel and Robinson Crusoe may have been based on
the Sky's account. So, yeah, Silkirk, he does have this
good supply of food. He has some potential friends. The
cats on the island. You like those cats. I like cats.
It would be good to have cats if you're all
(13:16):
by yourself. Far cats, well, we're gonna we're gonna get
into that a little bit more. They're not necessarily feral um.
But you know, he has the knowledge that he'll be
able to have enough to eat, and the knowledge that
he could survive if if he thinks quick, but still
he's he's pretty depressed at the prospect of being alone. Yeah,
(13:37):
because he was not only alone, he was in a
pretty uncomfortable situation as well. Rats would not at his
clothes and his feet while he slept. Plus there was
just that little problem with keeping a sanity, no one
to talk to. He was alone with his thoughts, listening
to sea lions bellowing on the beach all day long.
He even contemplated suicide at one point. Eventually, though, a
(13:57):
change came over him. And it's kind of hard to understand,
I guess if you haven't been in that position. But
the way it's described in early accounts of his story
is that after about eighteen months, after reading scriptures and
turning his thoughts to the study of navigation and quote
force of reason, he became thoroughly reconciled to his condition.
And from that point on he kind of learned how
(14:18):
to live on the island and seemed to find his
own sort of piece there. If not really a happiness,
it seems like a happiness, but yeah, at least not depression,
it seems. And he got down to business too, you know,
he worked on taking care of some of these problems
that were bothering him, starting with pest control. So I mean,
I would say rats nibbling at your feet at night
(14:38):
would be a major issue, kind of top your list,
And he managed to take care of them by doing
perhaps the most obvious thing you can think of, getting
the cats involved in the whole process. So he domesticated
some of the cats by giving them pieces of goat meat.
They wanted to hang around his camp a little more then,
and then they realized there were also lots of feral
(14:59):
rats around that's are often fairal like um, and they
took care of the problem right quick for for Selkirk. Yeah,
but that wasn't the only thing he had to deal with, right,
I mean, he had to find food, shelter, and then
there's just what are you doing with yourself all day?
You know, what's occupying your mind? Taking care of that
little sanity issue we mentioned before. So we're going to
(15:20):
kind of go through how he got his food and
his shelter and um, you know what he did day
to day. So the real Robinson cruise this is part Yeah,
this is a real Robinson cruise, so part exactly. So
first of all, what did he eat? Well, there was
plenty of fish to be had, but they bothered Silkirk's
stomach a lot, I guess, so he had to settle
for the island's version of lobster, which was actually a giant,
(15:41):
clawless crawfish of sorts. Um. He also it goat mate,
as we mentioned before, and once he ran out of gunpowder,
he managed to get really agile, to the point that
he could chase down these goats that sort of outrun
them himself, and catch them and kill them that way,
which I think is pretty amazing. I think. Um, but
when he wasn't eating goats or giant crawfish, he did
(16:03):
have things like turnups and watercress and the cabbage palm
we mentioned earlier. Um, just things partly left by the Spanish,
just growing on the island. And unfortunately, though he was
disturbed by the lack of salt and the lack of bread.
I can't quite figure out the salt, because presumably he's
surrounded by seawater. I think he could use some solar
(16:24):
action and collect the salt, but I don't know. Maybe
he had other things on his mind. He was missing it.
Maybe he just needed you there, Sarah, to show him
the way. I think he mentioned he had other spices though, Yeah,
I think there were some other peppers and things growing
on the island that he used to season as food,
but it wasn't quite salt season the goat meat season
the goat meat, but it wasn't quite what he was
(16:45):
used to still. Um As far as how he lived
his home, I guess you could say he managed to
build two huts with wood from pimento trees and covered
those with long grass and line them with goat skin,
so sounds actually kind of cozy plush one the larger
one was for him to sleep in and kind of
hang out in, and the other one was a smaller
one in which he prepared his meals. He also learned
(17:08):
how to start a fire with wood and must get flints,
and he tried to keep that going all day. We
also have to discuss how he clothed himself, because obviously
a few years on an island, your clothes are not
going to last that long, especially after the rats had
been gnawing at them exactly, that would reduce the lifespan
pretty quickly. So when his clothes started to fall apart,
he had to make new ones out of goat skins,
(17:29):
but he didn't have a needle and thread with him,
so he had to use a nail, and again with
the goats, a little piece of goat skin or old
stocking sort of fashioned into twine or thread to to
lace all these pieces together. So he must have cut
quite a figure once he got his outfits all made. Yeah,
I guess he was pretty styling for that area of
(17:51):
the world at the time, but he didn't have anyone
to show it off to. Really, he didn't have a
man Friday like Robinson Crusoe did, but he did have
his an moles. As we mentioned before, he had the
cats and he also had goats. Um. I mean he
ate the goats, but he also sort of domesticated some
of the goats as well. It's it's been said that
he'd break the legs of the younger ones to kind
(18:11):
of keep them around, and so he had his own
little animal family, I guess around him. He also had
some reading material. He had been left with his Bible
in the Book of Common Prayer, and he would sing
the songs and he would pray, and later he said
that he was a better Christian while in the solitude
of the island than he ever had been before. He
(18:34):
also just really embraced nature too while he was there.
I mean, you'd have a lot of time to think
and think about the island you were on, and he
learned a lot about the island and himself in that way. Presumably, Yeah,
very thorough like um. And he was always always on
the lookout for approaching ships during this time. According to
Sael Craig's article, Alexander had a lookout spot which was
(18:56):
about eighteen hundred feet around there in elevation, so he
had plenty of time to react if he saw someone coming,
which turned out to be really vital in a couple
of situations, because there was at least one instance during
these four plus years when a Spanish ship came to
the island and they came ashore the Spaniards did. They
destroyed his hut, but Selkirk managed to evade them, and
(19:18):
he was right to do so. It seems Werner actually
suggests that he would have been put to hard labor
aboard a Spanish ship, or perhaps even jailed and lima.
So it wouldn't have turned out for very well if
you'd tried to kind of get on board with these guys. So,
I mean, this is another thing that kind of surprised
me about this story, because you imagine somebody stranded on
an island, you're trying to hail any ship you see,
(19:39):
you'd rather be taken by anybody. But that he was
actually looking for ships to avoid them too, I think
is fascinating. Yeah, And I think part of this, we
were kind of talking about this a little bit before,
is just his own kind of coming to terms with
being on the island and his sort of love for
the island or comfort growing love for the island. Yeah,
(20:00):
and you know we've talked about before, and you'll see
in a lot of writings about his experience that, you know,
he looked towards the sea with hope that someone would come,
but also with a little bit of hesitation. Definitely, eventually, though,
that friendly ship did come. He spotted one on the
horizon and he was finally rescued February seventeen o nine
by a ship called the Duke, and it was commanded
(20:21):
by Woods Rogers. And by this point Silkirk was pretty
crazy looking. I mean, he looked like he had been
on an island for four years. He had a long beard,
he was wearing those goat skin clothes, which I mean,
that's that's gonna make you stand out, I think. And
he greeted Rogers men by making them goat soup and
(20:44):
telling them all about his survival. So he was happy
to to have these visitors at first. Yeah, and they
hardly knew what to make of them at all. Rogers
later wrote that Silkirk so much forgot his language for
want of use, that we could scarce understand him, for
he see to speak his words by have So just
imagine him trying to communicate. He hasn't spoken to another
(21:05):
human being in more than four years, and he's trying
to tell them what happened. Um, that he was marooned.
And luckily sil Kirk's old friend or perhaps his friend
of me, We're not really sure how good a terms
they were on when they parted ways, but William damp
Here was on board the ship, so again he makes
an appearance. Yep, he recognized the silk Kirk and vouches
(21:26):
for his navigational skills and also delivers him an interesting
bit of news about their old ship that they've been
on together. Yeah, and that's that the ship. He was
right the ship, thank after it left. Yeah, the poor
sink ports. I knew that was going to happen. Yeah,
you did, you called it. It sank soon after abandoning
(21:46):
Alexander in seventeen o four, and only about a dozen
men survive. Most of those ended up in Spanish prisons too,
so it was actually a good thing that he ended
up on the island. Four years on the island might
be a little better than four years in a Spanish
prison at least, Yeah, I mean, even without salt definitely.
From there, Rogers makes Silkirk navigator of his ship and
(22:07):
they sail around for two more years, So it's two
more years before Silkirk actually gets home. But then they
finally returned to London in October seventeen eleven, and it
was well worth the way that turns out, Silkirk comes
home with eight hundred English pounds in his pocket. That
was his share of the Duke's plundered well, So obviously
the Duke did a lot better than Silkirk's last ship did. Yeah,
(22:29):
and Selkirk was famous pretty soon too, because both Rogers
and Richard Steele wrote accounts of Selkirk's experience on the
island in seventeen twelve, and seventeen thirteen. And the way
Sail Craig from the Smithsonian article described that is that
he was an eccentric celebrity, which I like that somebody
who who could travel around from pub to pub for
(22:51):
a couple of years make sightings telling his adventures getting
free meals. I mean, you have to imagine people would
want to get a look at this guy and and
hear his story. Yeah, and he took full advantage of
the situation for a while. He actually ended up marrying
two women at the same time. They didn't know about
it. It It wasn't like a sister wife situation. He married
two women in two separate places that didn't find out
about it until later. So you think he wouldn't be
(23:14):
that good at deceit, like living by himself for four
years on the island. But yeah, who knows. Maybe he
didn't do it intentionally. Who knows. I don't know too
much about that aspect of the story. But I do
know that after a few months, he didn't seem so
high on life anymore. He wasn't so happy with the
situation he had, but he became a loner, and he
seemed a lot unhappier than he had when he first
(23:36):
made that goat stew cheerfully on the island for his rescuers. Um,
he seemed more at peace than and now it seems
like he had a hard time going back to his again. Yeah,
he had a hard time going back to his old
life in his old world. And some biographers even say
that he tried to replicate life on the island for
a while by returning to Largo and living in a
cave like shelter behind his father's house. Um. He made
(23:58):
the statement which is really poignant, and Steel writes about
it in his account. He said, I am now worth
eight hundred pounds, but she'll never be so happy as
when I was not worth a farthing. Yeah. And so eventually,
in November seventeen twenty, at the age of forty four,
Selkirk decided to return to life at see something to
do and some place to go again, and he signed
(24:21):
on as the first mate of a naval warship that
HMS Weymouth, And it was bound for the Gold Coast
of Africa, and it was searching for pirates. Um again,
you know, probably hoping to make a little money. And
there was a lot of illness on board again too
though yellow fever and typhoid, and eventually Selkirk himself died
aboard the ship December thirteenth, seventeen twenty one. Interestingly, Dafoe
(24:47):
had already published Robinson CRUs So by then it was
April seventeen nineteen, but it's unclear whether he in Selkirk
actually met. Historians debate about that. It suggested, though, that
Dafoe met either or both, possibly Rogers or Steel, and
he was definitely aware of Selkirk's story. Yeah, and from
(25:07):
there the story became so popular and well known. And
as we talked about in into the introduction to this podcast,
and I mean we were talking before a little bit
about the Swiss family Robinson and you tend to prefer that,
I think to Robinson Crusoe, Sarah, don't you. Yeah, I
mean it's they have their whole family there. It's a
little more fun and exciting. Yeah, there's not this like
(25:28):
murder Vacambal's constant threat. At least they don't dwell on
it so much. Yeah, but needless to say, as many
stories that it's influenced since then, there is now real
evidence also. Yeah, I mean, it was the story of
Robinson Crusoe became popular enough for people to actually go
out and look for evidence for this real Robinson Cruso. Yeah,
(25:50):
and they found it. In two thousand eight, some researchers
discovered Selkirk's navigational dividers or a pair of navigational dividers
from the time period that they assume are his. And
they also found some post holes on the island where
his two shelters would have been built. So you know,
I'm sweet home. Yeah, and if you want to check
out the real Robinson Crusoe's home, you can do that. Um.
(26:13):
As we mentioned, they changed the name of the island
to Robinson Crusoe Island and drive home the point they did.
They did drive home the point, but they also driving
home the point that they don't mind having tourists come
by and check it out. So I'm not sure if
you can actually see where these post holes are, but
perhaps you can. Um. If anyone has visited or know
some more about this, we definitely love to hear your
own personal Robinson Crusoe stories or Alexander Selkirk stories. So
(26:38):
um you can write us at History podcast at how
stuff works dot com, or look us up on Facebook
or on Twitter at Miston History. We also have a
ton of articles on how to survive in various dangerous
situation um you know, everything from too cold, too too hot,
to what should you bring? But the one we're gonna
recommend for this episode it since he did to have
(27:00):
all his jam, and his cheese, and his books, all
sorts of useful items on hand. Five everyday items you
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(27:26):
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