Real-life Robinson Crusoe’s visit to the Cape

CAPE Town has a slight connection with the man who was apparently the model for “Robinson Crusoe”. He was a Scot named Alexander Selkirk (1676-1721) who spent three months here exactly 300 years ago.

Selkirk, the son of a shoemaker, ran away to sea and in 1703 he joined a privateering expedition commanded by the explorer and buccaneer Captain William Dampier (1652-1715).

The Scot was 27 when he became sailing master (first mate) of the 90-ton ship Cinque Ports under Thomas Stradling, while Dampier sailed in the St George. In those days, English privateers were encouraged by their government to prey on the merchant ships of enemy countries – in this case, Spanish and Portuguese ships off the Pacific coast of South America. They were backed by wealthy speculators and didn’t consider themselves to be pirates.

Dampier tried to force a winter passage round Cape Horn three times without success. His exhausted crews were on the brink of mutiny when they entered the Pacific at the fourth attempt, but Stradling refused to stop in the Juan Fernandez Islands for long enough to thoroughly repair his ship.

Selkirk, who was by all accounts a quarrelsome fellow, thought the vessel was in danger of sinking. He had a heated row with Stradling and demanded to be put ashore – a wish his captain was only too happy to gratify.

He was left on Aguas Buenas, an uninhabited island west of Chile, with his bedding, a firelock rifle, some powder, bullets, tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a Bible, his mathematical instruments and a few books. His criticism was justified as the Cinque Ports subsequently foundered.

He expected to be rescued within a short time, but this was a serious miscalculation. He struggled with depression during the first eight months and then tried to make the best of his circumstances. He had rats, cats and goats for company, and he hunted and killed some 500 of the latter to survive.

When two ships finally entered the bay he was overjoyed, not realising they were Spanish. Their landing party fired on him, forcing him to flee for his life and hide until they departed.

He remained stranded in complete solitude from 1704 until 1709, when two English privateers arrived under the overall command of Captain Woodes Rogers (c.1679-1732), with the hard-nosed Dampier as pilot.

Rogers had left Ireland in September 1708, sailed south to the Canary and Cape Verde Islands then crossed the Atlantic to Brazil, rounded Cape Horn and stopped at the Juan Fernandez Islands, where he saw a fire burning on a beach. He sent boats to investigate and was astonished when one returned with a shaggy and incoherent man dressed in goatskins “who looked wilder than the first owners of them”.

Selkirk told Rogers he had built two huts of pimento trees, covered them with long grass and lined them with goatskins. One was for food preparation and the other for sleeping. He kept his courage by reading, singing Psalms and praying and said he was a better Christian while living in solitude than ever he was before. His diet included some fruit and vegetables but he craved bread and salt.

Woodes Rogers’ expedition captured a large Spanish galleon laden with goods from the East and sailed on to Batavia and the Cape of Good Hope. The ships reached Britain via the Netherlands in October 1711 and Selkirk’s story came to public attention when the captain’s account of his voyage round the world was published in 1712.

In 1719 the London-born author and pamphleteer Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) published the first volume of his best-selling work, The life and strange surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe, which is believed to be based loosely on Selkirk’s exile.

Defoe embellished the text with many imaginary events and presented it as a true story instead of a novel. His convincing account of the shipwrecked sailor’s struggle to make a reasonable life for himself were testimony to his late-blooming literary genius – he was almost 60 when he began his tale.

Readers were fascinated by Defoe’s detailed account of Crusoe’s astonishing ingenuity. Using a few stores and utensils saved from the wreck, he built a house and a boat and domesticated some wild goats.

A visit by savage cannibals put his existence at risk but he was able rescue a stranger (later named Friday) from certain death. The adventures continued until he was finally rescued by an English ship whose captain had problems subduing a mutinous crew.

The book was an immediate success and was translated into many languages.

In 2008 the BBC reported that archaeologists had found what appeared to be Selkirk’s shelters, his lookout and a pair of navigational dividers on Aguas Buenas (renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966).