Real Robinson Crusoe

Alexander Selkirk: The Man Behind the Myth

Alexander Selkirk was born in 1676 in the small Scottish fishing village of Lower Largo, Fife. The son of a shoemaker, Selkirk was known from a young age for his headstrong and adventurous nature. In 1703, he signed up for a privateering expedition to the South Pacific—a state-sanctioned form of piracy during times of war. He joined the Cinque Ports, a ship operating under the command of English buccaneer William Dampier.

Life aboard the ship was harsh, characterised by cramped quarters, subpar food, and tensions among the crew. The Cinque Ports was soon riddled with rot and woodworms, taking on water. Its young captain, Thomas Stradling, clashed frequently with Selkirk, whose concerns about the ship’s seaworthiness were growing.

In 1704, the Cinque Ports anchored at an uninhabited island in the Juan Fernández archipelago, off the coast of what is now Chile. The island offered fresh water, wood for repairs, and food in the form of fruit, vegetables, fish and wild animals. But Stradling showed little interest in restoring the vessel. When Selkirk insisted the ship was unfit to sail and declared he’d rather be left behind than risk his life at sea, the captain called his bluff and left him there.

Selkirk immediately regretted his rashness and waded into the sea after the departing rowing boat. But the captain refused to accept him on board. He accused Selkirk of mutiny and claimed he needed to set an example to others who might dare to defy him.

Ironically, Selkirk was right—the Cinque Ports later foundered off the Colombian coast. Only a handful survived, and those who did were captured by the Spanish and imprisoned in Lima, Peru, where they endured horrific conditions.

Life on the Island

Alone on the island, Selkirk’s few possessions were a musket and some ammunition, a hatchet, a knife, a cooking pot, some bedding and clothes, and his Bible. At first, he stayed near the shoreline, convinced his crewmates would return once the point had been made. But days turned into weeks, and no ship appeared on the horizon.

Gradually, Selkirk adapted to his surroundings. He hunted lobsters and fish, slaughtered seals, foraged for wild vegetables and shot feral goats for meat. When the ammunition for his musket began to run low, he turned to catching the goats rather than shooting them, and built a pen to house them. Now, he had a steady supply of milk and meat, and a safety net in case he were unable to hunt due to illness or accident. He even managed to tame wild cats to keep rats at bay.

He fashioned new knives and other tools from the metal hoops of barrels that washed up on the beach. Using wood from towering pimento trees, he built two huts: one for sleeping and prayer, the other for cooking. He thatched them with local grasses that grew taller than a man. When his clothes wore out, he used the skills he had learned from his father to tan goatskins into garments, sewing them with an iron nail. He made a cap, jacket, and breeches. Eventually, he abandoned shoes altogether—his feet toughened by the terrain.

Despite his resourcefulness, he was lonely. Selkirk later spoke of singing psalms aloud for comfort and spending entire days watching the sea.

Rescue

On January 31st, 1709, Selkirk spotted two ships on the horizon. When he saw the English flags flying from their masts, he lit a fire and prepared a feast of freshly slaughtered goats.

The ships belonged to a British privateering expedition led by Captain Woodes Rogers. One of the vessels, The Duke, had William Dampier—the man who had first taken Selkirk to sea—as its navigator. Both men were stunned to find Selkirk alive. He joined their crew and re-entered the world he had all but given up on.

When the ship finally set sail on the 12th of February, Selkirk stared back at the receding island with tears in his eyes. It had been his home for four years and four months.

When he returned to England in 1711, his story became the stuff of legend. Newspaper accounts, popular ballads, and pamphlets recounted his survival. Selkirk became a reluctant celebrity.

Selkirk Fictionalised

Selkirk’s tale was not unique, but it was among the best documented and most widely shared. It soon caught the attention of Londoner Daniel Defoe, a prolific writer who produced over 300 works in his lifetime. It is not known whether Defoe ever met Selkirk, but the influence of the castaway’s story is hard to dismiss.

In Defoe’s novel, Crusoe is shipwrecked—not off Chile, but 4,300 kilometres away in the Caribbean. He spends 28 years on his island, compared to Selkirk’s four and a half. Yet the illustration on the book’s cover of Crusoe dressed in a goatskin cap, jacket, and breeches is lifted almost directly from Selkirk’s own description.

Published on 25 April 1719, the novel’s original title was hardly snappy:

‘The life and strange surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, mariner: who lived eight and twenty years all alone in an uninhabited island on the coast of America, near the mouth of the great river of Oroonoque, having been cast on shore by shipwreck, wherein all the men perished but himself. With an account how he was at last as strangely delivered by pirates. Written by himself.’

The first-person narrative and those final three words—“written by himself”—convinced many readers the book was a true story. Defoe went on to write two sequels, cementing Crusoe’s place in literary history.

Legacy

Alexander Selkirk’s extraordinary life came to an unceremonious end. On December 13th, 1721, he died from yellow fever aboard HMS Weymouth, off the coast of West Africa. Receiving no special treatment, his body was dumped overboard into the sea, thousands of miles from his Scottish home. He was 45 years old.

Though the name Robinson Crusoe may be more famous, Selkirk has not been forgotten. The 18th-century poet William Cowper wrote a poem called The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk, and Charles Dickens referenced him in his work. A statue of Selkirk was erected in his hometown of Lower Largo.

But maybe Selkirk would be even happier to know that he has not been forgotten by the island that changed his life forever. In 1869, a bronze plaque dedicated to him was placed on Más a Tierra. And although the island was renamed by the Chilean president in 1966 to become Robinson Crusoe Island, the largest of its neighbours in that archipelago was also renamed. Inhabited by feral goats and countless birds, not to mention a small community of permanent settlers, the place he once called home is now known as Alejandro Selkirk Island.