Selkirk Rescued: The Real Robinson Crusoe Saved

Alexander Selkirk had been alone on a Pacific island for four years and four months when two English privateering ships appeared on the horizon in February 1709. The Scottish sailor, marooned on Mas a Tierra in the Juan Fernandez archipelago off the coast of Chile, had survived by hunting feral goats, eating wild turnips, and fighting off rats that gnawed at his feet while he slept. When the rescue party rowed ashore, they found a man dressed in goatskins who could barely form coherent English sentences. Selkirk had chosen his exile. In October 1704, serving as sailing master aboard the privateer Cinque Ports, he demanded to be put ashore rather than continue sailing in a ship he believed was rotting and unseaworthy. Captain Thomas Stradling obliged, leaving Selkirk with a musket, gunpowder, a knife, a Bible, and basic tools. The Cinque Ports subsequently sank off the coast of Colombia, vindicating Selkirk’s judgment but leaving him stranded 400 miles from the nearest inhabited coast. The first months were the worst. Selkirk later told rescuer Woodes Rogers that loneliness nearly drove him mad. He sang psalms to maintain his sanity. He built two huts from pimento trees, tamed feral cats to protect himself from rats, and chased goats across the island’s volcanic ridges until he could outrun them barefoot. He carved notches in a tree to track the days. His feet became so calloused he could walk across sharp rocks without pain. Rogers, commanding the privateer Duke, brought Selkirk aboard and made him the ship’s mate. Selkirk proved an excellent sailor for the rest of the voyage. His story was published by Rogers in 1712 and reached Daniel Defoe, who transformed it into Robinson Crusoe in 1719, one of the first English novels and a founding text of survival literature. Selkirk himself never adjusted to civilization and died at sea in 1721, having apparently preferred the ocean to any shore.