The Man Who Was Robinson Crusoe

by Rick Wilson

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

  Tablet placed here by Allan Jardine

  Of Largo, Fife, Scotland,

  Direct descendant of Alexander Selkirk’s brother David

  Remembrance

  ‘Till a’ the seas gang dry

  And the rocks melt in the sun’

  January 1983

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Chapter 5

  How he got Rich

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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