Seeking Robinson Crusoe

by Tim Severin

  In his vengeful mood Betagh was overstating his case. It is difficult to imagine how any captain could destroy his ship with such a Machiavellian scheme. The outlook for Shelvocke’s crew on the beach – wet, cold, hungry and exhausted – was so bleak that no sane commander would have attempted such a ploy, certainly no one as careful to watch out for his own interests as Shelvocke.

  For the first time in the English experience the new residents of Juan Fernández were genuine castaways, the involuntary victims of a wreck. They had not been left behind by accident or run away from their vessels or, like Selkirk, chosen to be left ashore. In this regard Shelvocke and his men were beginning their adventure on Juan Fernández in circumstances that precisely mirrored Robinson Crusoe’s crash-landing on his desert island. Even as readers in England were enjoying Defoe’s newly published novel, a group of survivors was facing the identical challenges that Crusoe had to deal with, and on the very same island known to Defoe from the story of Alexander Selkirk. There was, of course, one major difference: Robinson Crusoe was a solitary maroon, whereas Shelvocke, the leader of the castaways, found himself in command of nearly seventy men thrown ashore. But this, as we shall see, did not make his task any easier. The events now to unfold on Juan Fernández illustrate the turbulent realities of shipwreck and survival at the time when Defoe created his masterpiece. They also offer a more lifelike alternative to Defoe’s optimistic version of Crusoe’s final days when his hero organizes the smooth evacuation of a motley collection of sailors whom he has rescued from the cannibals and a visiting ship. Shelvocke’s nature was far removed from that of the upright and competent Robinson Crusoe, yet the sea captain’s escapade was to provide just as many colourful episodes as the fictional castaway’s and – unexpectedly – reach the same happy outcome.

  *

  LIKE ROBINSON CRUSOE, Shelvocke’s first priority was to recover as much material as possible from the hulk before Speedwell was broken up entirely by the waves. That evening ‘all the Officers came to bear me company and to consult how we should contrive to get some necessaries out of the wreck if she was not quite in pieces by the next morning.’ After some discussion he ‘came to the resolution of losing no time in endeavouring to recover what we could out of the wreck’. Then he and his officers lay down to sleep beside the campfire ‘wrapped . . . in what they could get . . . and notwithstanding the badness of the weather, slept very soundly.’

  But at first light next morning their decision to salvage the ship as a matter of urgency ran into a snag: Shelvocke found he could not persuade the ordinary sailors to swim out to the wreck and do the work. While the officers had been making themselves comfortable around a campfire, the rest of the men had wandered up and down the beach and into the woodland, searching for places to shelter from the rain where they could lie down and get some rest. Shelvocke went among them, giving orders to assemble on the beach for the salvage party. But they ignored him. Instead they devoted their energy to improving their temporary shelters. To Shelvocke’s intense annoyance in this way, ‘all opportunities were lost of regaining anything [from the wreck], but some of our small arms which were fished up . . . and in the meantime the wreck was entirely destroyed and everything that was in her lost, except one cask of beef and one of Farina de Pao [a type of flour] which were washed whole on the strand.’

  Shelvocke was being less than honest. Already he was developing his own agenda. In his description of the shipwreck on Juan Fernández and the extraordinary events to follow, he is intent on emerging from the tale as its conspicuous hero. To do this he begins by painting the situation in the gloomiest colours: ‘I need not say how disconsolate my reflections were on this sad accident which had . . . thrown us out from the rest of the world, without anything to support us but the uncertain product of a desolate uncultivated Island, situated (I may justly say) in the remotest part of the earth’. No help can be expected from the outside because the distant mainland is ‘90 leagues distant’ and ‘in the possession of the Creolian Spaniards who have always been remarkable for their ungenerous treatment of their enemies.’ And he knows that ‘it was inevitably certain that our stay here will be very long’ so ‘we must now be obliged to suffer all such hardships as would be consequent to our shipwreck.’

  As Shelvocke presents the situation the salvation of all rests on his leadership. Like Robinson Crusoe organizing Man Friday and the sailors he has rescued from the mutineers, he must work night and day to keep the men healthy. He must ‘think of some economy to be observed amongst the people in relation to the distribution of such provisions as should, from time to time, be got etc.’ Yet his account of the shipwreck and the days of survival is riddled with inconsistencies. On the one hand he claims that the wreck was an utter catastrophe and that he and his men barely survived with their lives and were thrown destitute on the beach. But it later turns out that he and his men have barrels of gunpowder, canvas to make sails, extra muskets, even four live hogs, and all manner of paraphernalia and useful materiel which must have come from the Speedwell at some stage. Some of it had been landed during the grounding of the ship. Shelvocke boasts that during the initial emergency he took care to bring with him his written commission, his ‘letter of marque’, as well as ‘1100 dollars belonging to the Gentlemen Owners which were kept in my chest in the great cabin.’ This was some of the loot due to the sponsors, though ‘the rest being in the bottom of the bread room for security, could not possibly be come at.’

  There was also a serious flaw in Shelvocke’s idea of leadership: it was entirely based on the social assumption of the day that a well-ordered community functioned smoothly if it was arranged by rank and class. ‘The people’, as Shelvocke called the ordinary sailors, formed the base of the structure. They were expected to obey the orders given to them by the officers, who were usually gentlefolk. The specialist tradesmen – the gunner, the cooper, the sailmaker, the armourer, and the carpenter – carried out their duties semi-independently but also under the overall direction of the gentleman officers. Barriers between the ranks were surprisingly porous, and changes of status could be sudden. The Speedwell’s first lieutenant, Edward Brooks, had been a deckhand on his previous voyage, and on the voyage out to Juan Fernández Shelvocke had abruptly promoted the cabin steward, Matthew Stewart, to the rank of mate. But if this ramshackle hierarchy was to work, it depended on everyone knowing his place according to his present status. A foremast hand might become a captain, but until he did so he was just one of ‘the people’ in Shelvocke’s opinion, and would be treated as such.

  So Shelvocke began by attending to his own comfort. ‘I took some pains in finding out a convenient place to set up my tent; . . . and at length found a commodious spot of ground not a half mile from the sea, and a fine run of water within a stone’s cast on either side of it, with firing [firewood] near at hand and trees proper for building our dwellings.’ In this pleasant glade he had his tent erected, and ‘thus secured ourselves as well as possible against the inclemency of the approaching winter.’ He notes condescendingly that ‘the people settled within call about me in as good a manner as they could’. But they had to make do with improvised shelters of the sort that Selkirk would have recognized – shacks of junk timber and branches thatched with grass and leaves while ‘others covered them with the skins of seals and sea lions’. A wretched few preferred to salvage empty water butts from the ship, roll them under the shelter of trees, and sleep in them. Their woes contrasted with the well-being of the officers who ‘used to pass our time in the evening in making a great fire before my tent, round which my officers in general, assembled employing themselves quietly in roasting crawfish in the embers; sometimes bewailing our unhappy state and sinking into despair; at other times feeding themselves up with hopes that something might yet be done to set us afloat again.’

  After these fireside discussions Shelvocke decided – echoing Crusoe’s thoughts as he resolved to build an escape craft – that ‘words alone were not sufficient,
and I began to think it full time to look about me to see if it was really practicable for us to build such a vessel as would carry us all off this Island.’

  If Shelvocke had been less self-absorbed, it would have come as no surprise that his crew now started to make trouble. He began by approaching the ship’s carpenter, Robert Davenport, whose skill was essential to the project of building a boat in which to escape from the island. He asked Davenport if he could build such a boat and was stunned when the carpenter rebuffed him rudely. ‘I was astonished at his cold indifference when he answer’d me that he could not make brick without straw, and walked away from me in a surly humour.’

  He had better luck with the ship’s armourer. Not as crucial to the boatbuilding project as the carpenter, the armourer was nevertheless a pivotal member of a shipwright’s support team. It was his task to do the blacksmith’s work, to produce the fastenings, the bolts and nails and rivets that held the planks to the frames, and the dozens of special metal fittings required – rudder pins, shackles, drifts, and so forth. Above all, the armourer was the tool maker. He could fabricate the metal chisels, awls, gimlets, and other tools for the boatbuilders. If both the carpenter and the armourer refused to help, then the boatbuilding project would never get started. Shelvocke was not like Crusoe, who was an expert on self-help who successfully turned his hand to making furniture, basketwork, and other utensils. His role was to organize the craftsmen who already possessed the essential skills.

  Shelvocke found that the armourer, John Popplestone, was ahead of him. When Shelvocke went to look for him, he came across the armourer on the beach picking over the wreck site. He had already salvaged a set of bellows to make a forge, and brought out four or five spadoes, heavy cutlasses, to melt down for steel. He told Shelvocke that it should be possible to scavenge plenty more scrap metal along the shoreline, and suggested that men should be set to work cutting trees as soon as possible and preparing charcoal to feed his smithy.

  Encouraged, Shelvocke called together the men and explained the situation. The work would be long and arduous, he told them, but it offered them a chance of salvation. If they could build a rescue boat, they could get away from the island. ‘To which’, he adds smugly, ‘they with one voice consented, and promised to be extremely diligent in this important work and begg’d of me to give them instructions how to proceed.’

  Acting on the armourer’s advice, Shelvocke sent those members of the crew who were ashore and cutting wood when the Speedwell was wrecked, to fetch their axes and then go to cut trees and make charcoal. The remainder ‘went down to the wreck to get the bowsprit ashore of which I intended to make the keel’, and Shelvocke persuaded the surly carpenter ‘to go with me to fix on the properest place to build upon.’

  At once the crew made a happy discovery. Salvaging the bowsprit from the wreck, they found the top maul from the Speedwell. This was the heavy club hammer normally kept lashed to the top section of the mainmast where it was used for driving wedges and pounding on jammed fittings. When the mainmast toppled overboard, the upper section had floated up on the beach with the top maul still attached. The hammer was invaluable during the boatbuilding, and ‘though of no small weight, would not at this time have been exchanged for its weight in gold’. Any part of the mast itself must also have been useful salvage, but, characteristically, Shelvocke makes no mention of this bonus.

  On 8 June, eighteen days after the wreck, the keel blocks were set up. These were the blocks of wood on the beach on which the keel piece would rest while the boat was under construction. It was the first visible step in the construction, and Robert Davenport the carpenter went to work squaring and shaping the former bowsprit ‘with seeming good temper’ while Shelvocke looked on. Suddenly the carpenter had a tantrum. He rounded on Shelvocke, swore at him, and shouted that he ‘would not strike another stroke’ on the keel. He announced that ‘truly he would be no body’s slave, and thought himself now on a footing with myself.’ Davenport’s effrontery produced an immediate reaction from his captain – ‘This unreasonable exclamation’, said Shelvocke, ‘provoked me to use him somewhat roughly with my cane.’

  It took only a few moments for Shelvocke to realize that hitting his recalcitrant carpenter with a stick was not the best way of encouraging him back to work. It also dawned on him that the carpenter was not acting on his own. There were ‘sad ones’ who were prompting him. So he quickly changed tactics, and offered the carpenter a ‘reward’ or bribe. After some negotiation Shelvocke agreed to give the carpenter ‘a four pistole piece as soon as the stem and stern post were up, and 100 pieces of eight when the bark was finished.’ Knowing that his own reputation for honesty was already suspect, Shelvocke offered to place the cash with a stake holder, promising ‘the money to be committed to the keeping of anyone he should name, till that time.’

  ‘This done,’ Shelvocke concludes with an air of satisfaction, ‘he went to work on the keel, which was to be 30 foot in length.’

  The length of the salvaged bowsprit determined the size of the keel, and this in turn governed the general proportions of the boat. ‘Her breadth by the beam was 16 foot, and seven foot depth of hold’, Shelvocke noted. For a vessel intended to carry almost seventy men to safety, this was very small indeed. Even if the vessel was ever built, she would be dangerously overloaded.

  The boatbuilding proceeded very slowly. First there was the ‘chalking out’, the drawing of her dimensions using charcoal or chalk and making patterns of the curves. Then the search for suitable timber took a huge effort. Earlier visitors to the island had commented that the eastern half of Juan Fernández was covered with woodland but few trees were suitable for boatbuilding or masts. The best of the timber had already been felled. Now the Speedwell’s crew were obliged to scour the high ground for the tallest and heaviest trees, searching for those whose bends and curves naturally matched those required for the frames of their makeshift vessel. When they found a suitable tree, it was very awkward to drag the timber down to the beach. To his credit Shelvocke sympathized with those who ‘were obliged sometimes to go a great way from the waterside, and after having cut it down it must be dragged up steep hills and other fatigues which tired the people to a great degree.’

  His chief ally was Popplestone the armourer. He proved to be a workhorse. He ‘did not lose a minute’s time from the work of his hands and contrivance of his head.’ Over the next few weeks Popplestone made the boatbuilding team a ‘little double headed maul, hammers, chisel, files and a sort of gimblets which performed very well’. He also produced a mould for making musket bullets and a large auger for boring cartouche boxes. The wood for these cartridge cases came from the Speedwell’s gun carriages which had washed ashore. To make them watertight they were covered in sealskin. The blacksmith then turned carpenter, and while the larger vessel was under construction, began to build a small boat to serve as a tender. If any one member of Shelvocke’s crew could be rated as a true Robinson Crusoe, it was Popplestone, with his energy, self-discipline and practical competence with every material, whether metal, timber, cloth, or skin.

  Not everyone could be employed on the boat at the same time. There was not enough space around the keel and frames to work freely, nor enough tools to go round. Besides, only some of the men were handy with the improvised tools. So Shelvocke organized his labour force into two shifts. They worked on the vessel on alternate days, and those who were not working went off to find food.

  The weather was too bad during the first few days to go fishing, so the food-gatherers killed seals. At first it was an easy assignment because the seals and sea lions lay about on the rocks in their usual great herds, and the hunters had only to walk up and despatch them. But their butchery was wasteful. Many of the castaways were reluctant to eat seal meat although, for some reason, they were willing to eat the entrails. So the hunters killed the animals, cut out the edible organs, and left the carcasses. Soon the beach at Cumberland Bay was littered with the rotting corpses of seals, and t
here was a strong putrid stench in the air. The constant hunting reduced the numbers of animals drastically, and within weeks the surviving seals and sea lions had taken fright and left. They moved to other hauling out sites where they would not be disturbed by the human predators. It became rare to see seals on the beach at Cumberland Bay, and the hunters came back empty-handed or with only one or two dead seal for the pot. No longer were the sailors so fastidious about their food. They never acquired a taste for the rank-flavoured blubber, but steaks of lean meat were quite palatable if roasted ‘till they were as dry as a chip’.

  Surprisingly the sailors managed to catch only a few goats. The hunters were hampered by a shortage of powder and shot for their muskets, and they were not as agile as Selkirk so that they could not catch them by hand. The Speedwell’s men had come ashore barefoot or wearing shoes that soon wore out. They laced pieces of goatskin and sealskin to their feet with thongs, but these were inadequate for the rough terrain and they hobbled in the chase. The main reason for the lack of success in goat-hunting, however, was that the Spanish policy of releasing dogs on the island at last seemed to be having an effect. The wild dogs had reduced the goat numbers, and the surviving goats had withdrawn to the high ground where they were even more difficult to catch.