The Man Who Was Robinson Crusoe

by Rick Wilson

  November passed fruitlessly, with the vast empty expanse of ocean steadily destroying the men’s dreams and making a mockery of their captain’s tantalising order to wait for the Manila ship ‘whose wealth on board her we hope will prompt every man to use his utmost Conduct and Bravery to conquer.’

  By 20 December, with the picket line now reduced by one – the Marquess had had to sail off for repairs – it was clear to everyone that the galleon was not going to materialise, or that they had missed it. A council meeting decided that, despite their small gains here and there and some worthwhile plunder from Guayaquil, their voyage was a failure and the priority now was to survive long enough to get home. The following day they would set sail for London, going 19,000 miles the wrong way – west, via the Western Pacific island of Guam and the Indies – as the Spaniards had ‘closed the Horn’ against them. Then, of course, it happened.

  Just as they were preparing to weigh anchor at about nine o’clock in the morning, the Duke’s lookout shouted ‘Sail!’ and there – to their ‘great and joyful Surprize’ – were the white sails of the treasure ship they had ‘so impatiently waited for and despair’d of seeing’ ... a Manila galleon heading for Acapulco on a northerly loop. The men cheered and their hearts were lifted, their spirits raised. Now, if they played their cards right, the mission could be dramatically turned from a miserable failure into a brilliant success.

  Their quarry was not the biggest of these legendary galleons – although it might have had the longest name for one, Nuestra Senora de la Encarnacion Disengani – it was a still something of a floating fortress: a 400-ton frigate with 20 cannons, 20 small guns and a crew of 193 men. It was this last, human element that was to be its undoing. The men were exhausted by their eight-month voyage and weakened by hunger, scurvy and the freezing cold of the northern route that they had taken to avoid intense easterly winds. They were not exactly fighting fit.

  Neither, of course, were the men of the Duke and Dutchess. But they were fired up by the prospect of gaining this rich and glittering prize that they had travelled 7,000 miles (11,200km) and suffered all manner of hardships to meet.

  Staying just out of range of the Spanish ship’s guns, Selkirk moved the Joseph as close as he could to it so as not to lose it in the night and used signal lanterns to keep the British ships aware of its position. In the morning they were ready, having closed on their prey with the intention of boarding it as the sun came up. The main aggressor was the Duke – the Dutchess having been held back by lack of wind – and it all began with a cup of cocoa for each man, the ship having run out of fortifying spirits. The Spanish hung out barrels of explosives on each yard-arm ‘to deter us from boarding ’em [but] at about 8 a clock we began to engage her by ourselves’, wrote Woodes Rogers, who takes up the story here:

  The enemy fired her Stern Chase upon us first, which we return’d with our Fore Chase several times, till we came nearer, and when close aboard each other, we gave her several Broadsides, plying our Small Arms very briskly, which they return’d as thick a while but did not ply their great Guns half so fast as we. After some time, we shot a little ahead of them, lay thwart her Hawse close aboard, and plyed them so warmly that she soon struck her Colours two-thirds down. By this time the Dutchess came up, and fired about 5 Guns with a Volley of Small Shot, but the Enemy having submitted, made no Return.

  The battle had lasted a mere three hours and the privateers’ victory was helped in no small measure by the clever device of musket marksmen in the rigging shooting Spanish gunners dead on their deck. In this way, the galleon suffered nine men killed, three wounded, and many blown up and burned with exploding powder. On the Duke only two men were wounded – but one of them was Captain Woodes Rogers who was hit in the face by a musket ball that ‘struck away a great part of my upper jaw and several of my teeth, part of which dropt upon the deck, where I fell.’

  Though in great pain, the captain broke up the Spanish crew and confined them below the decks of all three ships; then he invited Selkirk to join him and Dampier in assessing the value of their prize’s cargo. Dampier estimated it at one million pounds sterling. Selkirk, wide-eyed, had no clue but he had never seen riches like this. His mouth fell open as he tried to take it all in. There were chests spilling over with gold dust, gold coins and gold plate, silver plates and wine goblets, necklaces of rubies and diamonds, swords with gem-studded hilts, caskets of earrings and bracelets, statues of gold and jade, spices, textiles, belts of pearls, calicos, chintzes and silks, paintings and looking glasses, porcelain vases, tapestries, silk gowns and stockings, a china service for Queen Maria Luisa of Spain, and no fewer than 5,806 fans.

  There was no doubt that such a treasure ship would be worth its weight in gold in London. It would have to be well looked after on the way there. The ship was renamed Batchelor, in honour of John Batchelor, a Bristol linen draper and prominent backer of the expedition, who, although he managed to congratulate the convoy on its arrival home, died in 1711 before receiving his share of the profits. Selkirk was appointed its Sailing Master after quarrels over who should be its captain. That honour eventually fell to Dr Dover – despite the opposition of Woodes Rogers who felt that, although Dover was a skilful physician, he knew little of naval affairs. Few doubted that the precious treasure ship’s fate was really in the hands of Alexander Selkirk.

  It was yet another long struggle to get home, of course, and it wasn’t helped by the appearance of a deep-sea monster in the shape of insatiable human greed. Having tasted such success, the privateers wanted more; and when they learned from their Spanish prisoners that there was more – that they had been sailing in the company of a galleon twice her size – the chase was on for that one too. However, when they found her, they had cause to regret it. This was a ‘brave lofty new Ship’ and she gave them an unexpected surprise on Christmas Day. With 40 guns, the Nuestra Senora de Begona was armed like a castle and, after seven hours of battle, she had seriously disabled all three ships of the privateers – as well as Woodes Rogers, who ‘was struck in the foot by a splinter so that he could not stand, but lay upon the deck in great pain.’ In fact, he was lucky to have only lost part of a heel, as 27 of the British sailors had died before their action was called off. ‘We might as well have fought a Castle of 50 guns as this Ship,’ wrote Edward Cooke of the Marquess.

  It did not make the arduous voyage across the ocean any easier. Despite managing to buy new provisions on the Spanish island of Guam, another 70 more of the men had died by the time the reduced convoy – minus Joseph and Increase, which were given to Spanish prisoners to sail to Acapulco – reached Batavia (now Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies where the badly leaking Marquess was sold as scrap for a few Dutch dollars. Thanks to the War of Spanish Succession (1701-14) in which Britain and the Netherlands were ranged against Spain and France, the London-bound privateers had good reason to appreciate the help of their Dutch allies as they prepared for the second leg of their marathon return voyage. They were welcome to stay for four months recovering from the Pacific crossing before the remaining three ships – Duke, Dutchess and Batchelor – set off across the Indian ocean for the Cape of Good Hope.

  In Cape Town they were made welcome by the Dutch East India Company and were given a support convoy of no fewer than 25 Dutch merchant ships – as protection against Spanish war ships – when they left for northern Europe on April 6, 1711. When they arrived, it was Alexander Selkirk who sailed the captured Spanish galleon around the west coast of Scotland and into the North Sea to avoid attack from the French in the English Channel. He was even able to see his home village on the Fife shore of the Firth of Forth, so near yet so far from his parents and his brothers. ‘If they could only see me now,’ he mused, with his hands on the wheel of one of the richest Spanish treasure ships ever to be captured.

  Their penultimate stop was the Dutch island of Texel where they waited for three months before four British warships arrived to escort them safely home.

  Gratefully
escort’d by the Netherlanders to the Roads east of their Island of Texel, there we were well parch’d and pleas’d to take on Board several Barrells of the Liquid Treasure that is Water, enough to see us Home. There it was also that, as we wait’d off the Coast, I experience’d a Gathering Unease regarding the Security of our Treasure, or more particularly my Portion thereof. I had heard many a Tale of Crewmen having receiv’d less than their True Rewards, aye oft Nothing, as the English Gentlemen took their Shares for Valuing and Selling and obliged the Common Sailors to wait perchance until they conveniently left This Mortal Life or went again to Sea. Nor did I wholly trust Our Hosts in this regard, though I own this was Unfair. I gladly record that, unmolest’d, we made Sail again in the protective company of four British vessels on 22nd September and anchor’d in Erith, Kent, on 14th October, 1711, my having been away eight Long Years and having liv’d through many Changes and Incredibal Aventures in that Time. In time I receiv’d my Share of our rich Cargoes ’though it seem’d to me a deal less than I warrant’d.

  As the seven-strong convoy came triumphantly up the Thames creating a grand and dramatic sight before they docked at Erith, Woodes Rogers expressed some relief in his journal’s final entry:

  Octob. 14. This day at 11 of the clock, we and our Consort and Prize got up to Erith where we came to an anchor, which ends our long and fatiguing voyage.

  And for Alexander Selkirk, it was a magical moment – to be home at last after more than eight years away and having experienced some of the most adventurous exploits that could ever be undertaken by man. The accounting of the treasure duly took place and after all the grasping hands had made their claims on his treasure ship – there were far too many of these, including the government – he accepted his £800 share, which he suspected might have been less than he had earned. But it was still a substantial sum; in today’s money, it was worth something like $100,000.

  Of course, it had been a Bristol expedition and much of the Manila ship’s treasure would have been taken overland to that city for dividing among the city merchants who had sponsored the voyage. To keep an eye on such proceedings was one good reason for Selkirk to decamp there after a short stay in London; another was his friendship with Captain Woodes Rogers and his new venture, the South Sea Company, which proposed that he return to Juan Fernandez on one of a 60-ship fleet and colonise it as a trading post.

  In the event, the project never got off the ground and while waiting for it to progress Selkirk had begun to get bored while drinking too much flip* in the city’s inns. His almost-certain meetings there with Daniel Defoe would certainly have taken the edge of that boredom; but there was disappointment, too, with the stillbirth of the South Sea Company. It seems that Selkirk was in his cups too much.

  Bristol court records show that in late September of 1713 he was summoned before the bench accused of the drunken assault of one Richard Nettle in St Stephen’s parish; but he wouldn’t have given much heed to that. Rich man or not, he was in trouble again and he would deal with it in his own time-honoured way. Before the force of the law came down on him, he would find another, less irksome place to be. He would return to London for short spell of enjoying his money there. Then what?

  Where better to go than Scotland? Back to the joyful simple life; to see and impress his old relatives and friends; to spend some precious time with his ageing parents. They probably thought he was long dead. They at least would be pleased to see him. Wouldn’t they?

  Chapter 6

  The things he brought back

  This is, of course, a story full of tantalising loose ends and frustrating cul-de-sacs. When he was cast away at his own request on Juan Fernandez Alexander Selkirk is popularly believed to have had with him his sea chest, a tinderbox, several pounds of tobacco, a hatchet, a kettle, a knife, some navigational notes and instruments, the clothes he stood up in, some bedding, a Bible given to him by his mother when he left Largo, a pound of gunpowder, a powder horn, a bag of bullets and a musket.

  His rescuer Captain Woodes Rogers and his later interviewer Richard Steele seemed to agree that he had only ‘his Clothes and Bedding, a Firelock, some Powder, Bullets, and Tobacco, a Hatchet, a Knife, a Kettle, a Bible, some practical Pieces, and his Mathematical Instruments and Books.’

  But were they being a little conservative? Did the initially reluctant monarch of the island have more gear to console him when he was suddenly thrust back to the Stone Age? Other notions vary annoyingly or (I would suggest) get mixed up with the fictional Crusoe story. The dramatic statue of Selkirk as a goat-skinned figure looking out over the Forth from the Victorian house that now stands on the spot of his Largo birthplace has him wielding not just a musket; there is also a pistol tucked comfortably into his belt.

  And did he, among his ‘Practical Pieces’, also have a coconut drinking cup and a ‘flip can’ on the island? Other accounts say so. One biographer adds ‘a bundle containing some ship’s biscuits and hard goat meat’; another adds a flask of rum and three days’ worth of quince marmalade and cheese; another adds a set of carpenter’s tools; and yet another adds a few linen shirts, wool stockings, a brass spyglass, and a leather bag full of gold coins.

  This could get a little out of hand. We can be sure anyway that he didn’t have six of his favourite records. And we also know that he didn’t have anything like the number of things his fictional counterpart was said to have salvaged from his wrecked ship after a dozen rafting trips to it. Crusoe’s lot included ‘all the men’s clothes that I could find’, plus biscuits, rum, bread, rice, sugar, flour, razors, scissors, knives, forks, Dutch cheeses, pieces of dried goats’ flesh, some corn, a knife, tobacco-pipe and ‘a little tobacco in a box’, and £36 sterling. There were also ropes, spare sail canvas, rigging, hammock, bedding, nails and spikes, a screw jack, tools from the carpenter’s chest, and an array of arms and ammunition that would help anyone with the challenge of survival on a desert island: two pistols, three fowling pieces, some powder horns, two old rusty swords, two barrels of gunpowder, two barrels of musket bullets, a large bag of small shot, and no fewer than seven muskets.

  In the end, author Daniel Defoe had his hero saying, ‘I had now the largest store of all kinds that was ever laid up, I believe, for one man’ and describing how, after the efforts of bringing the collection together, Crusoe lay gratefully in his tent ‘with all my wealth about me.’ Selkirk, the real-life castaway, certainly had nothing like that veritable treasure trove to help him survive.

  If we don’t automatically take Woodes Rogers’ and Steele’s word for the meagre inventory – by comparison – that he was beached with, it is almost impossible, after more than 300 years, to know exactly what the possessions were and what he brought home with him. Selkirk family descendant Allan Jardine, imagines the sailor being so delighted to be rescued and so fed up with the degraded stuff he’d lived with so long that he would be tempted just to leave most of it on the island – ‘wouldn’t you?’ – as he jumped excitedly into the rescue pinnace sent by Woodes Rogers from the Duke.

  The fictional Crusoe, finally dressed up to the nines by his rescuing captain, did take a few of mementoes with him onboard his saviour-ship as he left his island after 28 years: ‘When I took leave of this island, I carried on board for relics the great goatskin cap I had made, my umbrella, and one of my parrots.’ Not to mention the £36 that he had been unable to make use of, obviously.

  It is not known if Selkirk kept his goatskin outfit for posterity. But he is said to have cavorted in them in Bristol and author John Howell, in his 1829 biography of Selkirk, implies that he did hang on to several old items, including a musket, and presumably took them to Scotland, where he left them with his mother after returning to Largo as a rich man in an elegant suit of gold-laced clothes in the spring of 1714. Also, it seems that a musket belonging to Selkirk may have been left in Clapham, London, after he spend some post-expedition time there ... of which more later.

  Certainly, it’s not easy to pin faith on the aut
henticity of some claims: to establish whether certain ‘Selkirk’ items were actually his; and even if so, to establish whether they were with him on the island. But a couple of still-extant items – namely the sea chest and a coconut drinking cup – have acquired a degree of official endorsement and a certain credibility by having found their way, through the family, into the safekeeping of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh’s Chambers Street.

  There, they are under the sharp eye of the aforementioned intrepid Dr David Caldwell (see chapter 4), who enjoys the museum’s rather grand title of ‘Keeper of Scotland and Europe.’ It has to be said, however, that the cup and chest are in storage and seldom see the light of day. ‘I can’t give you a good reason why the cup and chest are not on display,’ Dr Caldwell told me. ‘It was just the way our ideas developed when we were working on the exhibitions for the Museum of Scotland – we certainly did not do everything we thought of, or could have done.’

  One of their rare outings was at an exhibition entitled ‘Alexander Selkirk, the Real Robinson Crusoe’ in 1983, at the then Museum of Antiquities in Edinburgh’s Queen Street (now the National Portrait Gallery). Fans of the feisty Scottish broadcaster Muriel Gray might be interested to know that, as a young designer, she was involved in conceiving this show. Amid displayed notes on 17th-century privateering and navigation aids and techniques was a glass-encased model of the man on an (inaccurately) penguin-populated beach. He was surrounded by the plain old sea-chest bearing a heavy rusted lock and the barely-discernible letters ‘AS’ carved into its lid; that coconut drinking cup; a powder horn; a clasp knife now missing its blade; and – a little out of context – a time-worn, hooded cradle that claimed to be the baby Alexander’s after his birth ‘at Craggy Well, Well Brae, Largo, Fifeshire, in 1676.’