Seeking Robinson Crusoe

by Tim Severin

  The runaways first had to sneak past the fort guarding the entrance to the harbour. It was less than a pistol shot away, so close that they dared not bale water from the leaky boat for fear that the splashes would alert the guard. They rowed softly past the sentries, then eased their way past an English man-of-war anchored in the roads. Only when they were out of earshot could they begin to scoop out the water from their half-sinking cockleshell. By then the skiff was so waterlogged that their matches and tinder were soaked and useless. They were unable to burn a light to see their compass. For the rest of the voyage, whenever it was dark, they steered by the stars, and when it was cloudy, by the wind.

  The wind pattern of the Caribbean dictated their course. They had no choice in such an overloaded and unhandy boat but to go south and west with the trade wind at their backs. So they set up a small mast, rigged a sail, and with Pitman as their navigator set their course ‘as near as I could judge, intending to make the Great Grenada’.

  They quickly discovered that the little skiff Nuthall had purchased for £12 was a bad buy. The vessel leaked alarmingly. ‘She was so thin,’ Pitman wrote, ‘so feeble, so heavily ladened and wrought [twisted and flexed] so exceedingly by reason of the great motion of the sea that we could not possibly keep her tight.’ As they moved further offshore, the crew tried every means to stop the leaks. They ripped up their shirts, wiped the rags in tallow, then stuffed the strips of cloth into the gaps between the planks. But it did little good. The water continued to pour in, and, wrote Pitman, they ‘were forced to keep one person almost continually, day and night, to throw out the water, during our whole voyage’.

  They had only a large wooden bowl and a tub to bale with, and quite soon they lost the bowl. One of the crew carelessly let the bowl slip from his wet fingers as he was flinging water overboard, a classic mistake. They were travelling with a strong breeze behind them and there was no way of turning round to pick up the baler. The bowl went bobbing away in their wake. Now, wrote Pitman, ‘we had nothing left to throw out the water with but our tub; which obliged them [the crew] to be more careful of it, for our lives were concerned therein’.

  By then several members of the crew no longer cared whether they lived or died. They were suffering from sea-sickness as the tiny boat lurched and swayed in the waves. Several wanted to turn back to Barbados, but Pitman pointed out that was now impossible. There was no way back against the head wind.

  The light of dawn showed Barbados as a distant shadow on the horizon behind them, and looking back the fugitives were relieved to see there was no sign of pursuit. There was no sail of a guard ship or man-of-war coming in chase. They were alone on the sea.

  Their sense of relief changed to anxiety at nightfall. A ‘brisk gale of wind’ arose, and the waves smashed the skiff ’s rudder. She could no longer steer on the increasingly turbulent sea and there was a very real risk of broaching and capsizing. The frightened crew had to take down the sail. Now Pitman’s forethought was reward. The spare lengths of plank and the nails were retrieved from the bilges, and the hammer. One of the fugitives was a joiner by trade, and he nailed together a splint round the broken rudder, a crude but effective repair. ‘That done,’ says Pitman, ‘we went cheerily on again.’

  The next day, 11 May, they had ‘indifferent good weather’. The crew were sufficiently recovered from their bout of sea-sickness to do some work to try to improve the little boat. To increase her seaworthiness, they raised the sides nine inches by adding weather-cloths, strips of tarpaulin nailed to the oars which they rigged around the gunwale. With the remainder of the tarpaulin they constructed a ‘tilt’, an awning, to keep off the sun from the stern of the boat and give some protection from sunburn.

  On 12 May, the third day of their escape, the Grenadilloes – the islands now called the Grenadines – came in sight, and Pitman realized that the skiff was off course. His intention had been to stand well clear of the islands, but he now realized that the current had carried the little boat too far to the north. If he did not veer away, the refugees risked being brought ashore on the main island of Grenada and falling into the hands of the English garrison there.

  He steered his little vessel more southerly, and the overloaded skiff slipped round the south side of Grenada, with its English garrison, and out into the broad passage which separates the arc of the Windward Islands from the mainland coast of South America. A hundred miles to their south lay Trinidad. Beyond Trinidad was Boca Grande, the mouth of the Orinoco and site of Defoe’s fantasy ‘Crusoe’s island’.

  Pitman was learning that his main position-finding instrument, the quadrant, was of little use in such a difficult environment. He had brought it along so he could measure the angle of the sun at noon and establish a daily latitude, but the small boat was proving too unstable a platform for him to take an accurate reading, and the sun was so high at the zenith that any reading was very vague. Reluctantly he decided that he could not rely on celestial navigation. Instead he would have to find his way by line of sight. He would set his course according to the islands marked on the chart, and sail from one island to the next as each came up over the horizon. It meant that he had to abandon the shorter, direct, course to Curaçao and take a longer route, island-hopping in a curve that followed the South American coast.

  The Testigos, or ‘Witnesses’, next came in view, on 14 May. This cluster of small islands bore south-south-west, confirming that the skiff had kept the right track since Grenada, their last sight of land. The same day, far ahead, was a glimpse of the larger island of Margarita. Exhausted after steering the boat almost continuously for four nights and days, Pitman decided to get some rest. He handed the helm over to a companion, told him to steer for the distant loom of Margarita, and lay down to snatch a few hours of sleep.

  He awoke with a start. The sail had been lowered. Looking over the gunwale Pitman saw that the skiff was very close to the shore of Margarita and that his companions were getting ready to land. They had decided, without consulting him, to find somewhere to refill their water cask because their drinking water ‘stank so extremely’. Pitman hastily quashed the scheme. He could see a fire burning on the beach not far from their landing place. The fire, so he believed, had been lit by natives who were waiting to capture the runaways and eat them. ‘I caused the sail again to be hoisted up, and hasted away with all expedition,’ he wrote, ‘and soon got out of fear or danger of those savage cannibals.’

  It was a bizarre misapprehension that there were cannibals on Margarita. The island had been a Spanish possession for two centuries. By the time Pitman sailed past in his little skiff, Margarita had been pacified, colonized and Christianized for so long that the cathedral in its capital La Asunción was already more than a hundred years old. With an area of just 355 square miles and an open terrain, there was no corner where a cannibal band could hide out. Nor had its native people, the Guaiqueri, eaten human flesh. Yet Pitman sheered away from Margarita convinced that was saving himself and his companions from becoming the victims of a cannibal feast on the beach. It was a whimsical concept and, notably, it mirrors Defoe’s fantasy that cannibal Indians cut up and cooked their human victims on the beach of ‘Crusoe’s island’.

  Pitman must have been convinced about the cannibals because next day, 15 May, he again refers to the man-eaters on Margarita. The skiff was halfway along the north coast, and for a second time the crew demanded to go ashore to find fresh water. On this occasion, seeing that the beach was clear of humans, Pitman agreed. He turned the little boat towards what seemed to be a good landing place, an attractive open bay with smooth water. It was a miscalculation. As the boat drew near the shore, ‘to our great surprise we found the ground near the shore extreamly foul’. The sea ‘heaved us in so fast that we could not possibly have avoided being split on the rocks, had I not leaped into the sea to fend her off.’

  With Pitman in the water and pushing with his feet against the rocks, and his companions heaving frantically at the two oars, the runaways
succeed in clawing off the shore. Pitman, wet and exhausted, scrambled aboard. It was, he said, a miraculous escape and ‘our hearts were filled with joy, and our mouths with praises to the LORD, who had so wonderfully preserved us from being cast away on this island’. His words and tone are echoed by the speech and thoughts of Robinson Crusoe when he too is preserved from harm, and – as in Defoe’s tale – the cannibals once again come back in focus. Had their boat been wrecked, Pitman writes, ‘we must either have been starved ourselves, or have become food for those inhuman man-eaters’.

  Avoiding the ‘cannibals’, the next stepping stone on their precarious island-hopping route lay fifty miles further west. It was a low, inconspicuous island the Spanish called Tortuga for the abundance of turtles which nested on the beaches. To the English, Dutch, and French it was more usually known as the Saltatudos, the ‘Salt Islands’, or Salt Tortuga from the pans of sea salt found there. At high tides the sea floods a low-lying area on the south-west corner of the island and leaves standing water about a foot deep. The sun constantly evaporates the water, creating a thin rime of salt. The Spanish laid claim to the island as it lay only forty-five miles off the mainland coast, but it was – and still is – uninhabited. So at the end of the evaporation season, in November or December, foreign vessels often called at Salt Tortuga to shovel up the salt and take it away for sale. Occasionally Spanish patrol ships pounced on the interlopers and seized the foreign ships as poachers. But for most of the year ‘Salt Tortuga’ was left abandoned, a small, squat, insignificant island sweltering in the heat.

  Pitman and his crew headed out towards Salt Tortuga on 15 May. It was now the sixth day of their voyage, and they had covered about two-thirds of their track to Curaçao. After a few hours the wind picked up in strength, and Pitman began to be nervous. His anxiety was increased at dusk by the appearance of a white ring around the moon, a traditional omen of heavy weather. ‘I thought [it] presaged ill weather,’ he wrote, ‘and to our great sorrow, [this] proved too true.’ At about nine o’clock that night ‘a dreadful storm’ arose. The sea, which had been smooth, ‘began to foam’. Their heavily loaded skiff ‘was tossed and tumbled from one side to the other and so violently driven and hurried away by the fury of the wind and sea, that I was afraid we should be driven by the island [Salt Tortuga] in the nighttime’.

  To slow down their hectic progress, the crew brought their little boat head to wind and tried to hold her up against the waves, maintaining station. But soon, for their own safety and before the skiff was overturned, they were obliged to put about and run downwind, still baling and now praying for salvation. It was at this time of greatest anxiety that Pitman and his crew believed they heard a voice calling to them. It was ‘an unexpected voice which (to our thinking) seemed to hallow [halloa] at a great distance’. Pitman uses the same devout tones as Crusoe when he too is completely downcast. The mysterious voice, the surgeon wrote, was ‘a sign that the Omnipotent (who is never unmindful of the cries of his people in distress) heard our prayers’. Within hours the brief gale had abated and the sea state eased, as ‘GOD, of his infinite mercy and unspeakable Goodness, commanded the violence of the winds to cease, and allayed the fury of the raging waves’.

  ‘Eternal praises to his Name for evermore!’ concludes Pitman piously.

  The first glimmer of dawn showed that the gale had blown the little skiff almost on top of Salt Tortuga. The low outline of the island lay just ahead, and Pitman steered for a landing. The crew were now in poor shape. The gale had knocked the last of their energy out of them. They had endured nearly a week crammed together in a small boat, living on short rations, drinking foul water, wet with spray or exposed to the tropical sun beating down on them and reflecting off the sea, and always baling. Below them the thin hull of their vessel was increasingly shaky. Battered and twisted by the storm waves, the makeshift packing – the tallow-soaked rags stuffed between the planks – had spewed out from the gaps. The boat was in urgent need of fresh caulking if she was to complete the final 230 miles to Curaçao. This time Pitman did not hesitate. The runaways had to get ashore to rest, find fresh water if possible, and repair their boat. He steered along the north side of Salt Tortuga, and the crew scanned the beach, looking for a suitable place to land.

  They identified a likely spot where a small coral islet gave a measure of protection to the beach, and made towards it. To their surprise they saw a canoe put out from shore and come towards them. Fearful images of cannibals and savage natives sprang to mind, and the runaways grabbed for their weapons. They had brought ‘muskets and blunderbusses’ with them but now discovered that in their hasty, midnight departure they had left the only bag of bullets on the quayside in Barbados. They loaded their guns with bits of broken glass from the bottles, poured gunpowder into the flashpans, and stood by, determined to fight off any attack.

  Their alarm increased when they noted that the crew of the approaching canoe were using paddles ‘like Indians’, not rowing with oars. Convinced that they had stumbled on a marauding group of natives, Pitman turned the skiff around, the crew hoisted sail and they tried to flee.

  Then someone looked more closely and noted that the crew of the ‘Indian canoe’ were shouting and waving hats. Indians did not wear hats.

  Pitman and his crew slowed their panicky flight and allowed the strange canoe to come closer. Now they could see that the occupants were white men. The refugees from Barbados called out – ‘What they were?’

  The reply came back that, ‘They were Englishmen in distress, etc. And waited for an opportunity to go off the island.’

  Pitman suspected nothing. He did not question why a canoe loaded with distressed mariners was seeking help from a skiff full to the brim with refugees. He had no way of knowing the consequences as he turned the little boat and meekly followed the canoe to land. The little skiff lacked an anchor so she had to be beached. The runaways’ new-found friends helped them pull their little boat up on the sand and welcomed them to Salt Tortuga.

  The introductions were guarded on both sides. Pitman and the other ‘convict rebels’ were reluctant to reveal their status as runaway prisoners. The self-styled ‘Englishmen in distress’ on Salt Tortuga were hiding the fact that they were really pirates.

  Real identities began to surface when Nuthall and Walker, the two debtors, betrayed their companions. Seeking to ingratiate themselves with the mysterious strangers, they explained that they were runaway debtors, but all the others from the skiff were former supporters of the Duke of Monmouth and therefore, by implication, dyed-in-the-wool malefactors. The response was the opposite of what they anticipated. Their hosts on Tortuga applauded the ‘rebel convicts’ and said that had they been given the chance, they too would have fought on Monmouth’s side.

  They were, they said, a roving detachment from a 48-gun ship – ostensibly a privateer – under the command of ‘Captain Yanche’. He had sent them to raid the mainland coast for supplies. Captain Yanche was planning a major assault on the Spanish town of St Augustine in Florida and needed stocks of food as well as several piraguas or large native canoes to use as landing craft in an amphibious assault. Unfortunately the detachment, some thirty men, had run into trouble. While ‘turning turtle’ on the beach, they had been attacked by Indians, lost two men killed, and been driven off. Later, they succeeded in capturing several canoes and also an Indian prisoner. He had taken them to his plantations on condition that they would set him free once they had gathered their food. The raiders must have been sadly inexperienced because two of them, including their quartermaster, had eaten poison cassava without squeezing out the toxic juice first. The two men had died. The survivors of the raiding party then withdrew, taking the captive Indian with them, and headed for their agreed rendezvous with Captain Yanche. There was no sign of the 48-gun pirate ship at the meeting place nor did they know where Yanche might have gone. So they had paddled their piraguas to Salt Tortuga and were waiting, hoping to be picked up by one of the salt-collecting sh
ips or to intercept and seize a passing merchant ship.

  Captain Yanche’s name should have alerted Pitman and his colleagues to danger. Captain Yanche, or ‘Yanky Duch’ as he was sometimes known, was infamous. He claimed to be a privateer but acted like a pirate. His base of operations was the small island of Petit Guaves off Hispaniola. There the French governor was willing to sell ‘commissions’ and letters of marque left blank and undated so the captain could fill in his own details. Yanche rarely had difficulty in finding crew because he had a lucky streak. He had taken part in the lucrative raid on Vera Cruz in May 1683 when even the lowliest member of his crew received 800 pesos from the division of the plunder; the following year he and another Dutch captain captured three rich Spanish vessels off Cartagena; and just eight months before Pitman met up with his detachment of ruffians, he had boarded and seized a Spanish ship worth 50,000 dollars.

  At the outset Yanche’s men were generous to the eight escapees from Barbados. They showed them a well for fresh water they had dug near their own huts and gave them food. Pitman and his companions rigged up a sail as an awning, lay down on the sand in the shade, and fell asleep, utterly worn out.

  When they had rested, the runaways turned their attention to repairing the sea-worn skiff. They wanted to be on their way to Curaçao as soon as they had plugged the worst of the leaks in the hull. They also resolved to build a light deck over the forward part of the skiff. This deck would give some protection from the waves slopping in over the gunwale and from the rain. If they were unlucky enough to be caught by another storm, a deck might save the little boat from swamping. Lengths of tree bark were the only materials they could find to make the decking, and they had started work when Yanche’s men began to meddle.

  The ‘privateers’, as Pitman politely called them, repeatedly asked the newcomers to change their plan. They pointed out ‘the insufficiency of our boat and the dangers we were so lately exposed to’. Yanche’s men suggested that the runaways should abandon their journey to Curaçao and, instead, throw in their lot with their new friends. It was better to ‘go with them a-privateering . . . [rather] than to hazard our lives by a second attempt’.