Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. It is international talk like a pirate Day.
Speaker 1: So today we have an episode on a pirate, well
Speaker 1: a privateer, which is just a pirate you as a
Speaker 1: government's permission to be doing that. This is Alexander Selkirk,
Speaker 1: who is what are the likely inspirations for the novel
Speaker 1: Robinson Crusoe. So this classic is also actually connected to
Speaker 1: our recent episode on Joshua Slocum's Circumnavigation of the World.
Speaker 1: This episode originally came out April from previous hosts Sarah
Speaker 1: and Bablina. And if you're curious, yes, the term maroon
Speaker 1: does come from the term for communities of previously enslaved Africans,
Speaker 1: which we have discussed in our previous episode that Tracy
Speaker 1: and I did on Jamaica's Maroon Wars. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: you Missed in History Class a production of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast I'm to bling a Chuck
Speaker 1: reboarding and I'm fair downy. And even if you haven't
Speaker 1: read Daniel Dafoe's novel Robinson Crusoe, you've probably at least
Speaker 1: heard of its main character, also called Robinson Crusoe, and
Speaker 1: he said to be one of the best known characters
Speaker 1: in world literature. The story, of course, is about the
Speaker 1: adventures of an English seaman who gets shipwrecked on an
Speaker 1: uninhabited or seemingly uninhabited island for twenty eight years, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of about the experiences that he has. They're
Speaker 1: making a home um fending off cannibals, and I read it,
Speaker 1: I think my sophomore year of college, and I honestly
Speaker 1: do not remember much about it now except that he
Speaker 1: spent the majority of his time worrying about being murdered
Speaker 1: by cannibals, which I got a big kick out of
Speaker 1: that spelling. Yeah, So it's about these little adventures that
Speaker 1: he has and just surviving. How does he survive on
Speaker 1: this island. So it really does seem like this bizarre,
Speaker 1: fantastical tale. But what's really interesting, at least to us,
Speaker 1: is that it's widely believed to be based on a
Speaker 1: true story, the story of a Scottish man named Alexander
Speaker 1: Selkirk who was ruined on an uninhabited island for more
Speaker 1: than four years in the early seventeen hundreds. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not a straight copy of selkirk story, though definitely not.
Speaker 1: For one thing, seal Kirk spent a lot less time
Speaker 1: on the island than fictional Robinson Crusoe Dead. The location
Speaker 1: of the island is different. Crusoe is in the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: Selkirk was in the South Pacific. And how the heroes,
Speaker 1: if if we're going to consider them that the main character,
Speaker 1: the main characters, how they ended up on the islands
Speaker 1: is very different. Selkirk wasn't shipwrecked. He actually chose to
Speaker 1: be there, and I think that's probably the most fascinating
Speaker 1: little bit of the story that you would choose this isolation,
Speaker 1: kind of unwittingly, he didn't know exactly what he was
Speaker 1: going to get into, but certainly more interesting than a shipwreck. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I would totally. I mean, y'all know I like shipwrecks too,
Speaker 1: So that's saying a lot. That's saying a lot of
Speaker 1: Sarah here. But we're going to take a look at
Speaker 1: that really unusual decision, or to us at least an
Speaker 1: unusual decision, and also a little bit of course about
Speaker 1: Selkirk's own island experience, what he did to survive while
Speaker 1: he was there, and that's I mean, in that part,
Speaker 1: that's where you're really going to see most of the
Speaker 1: similarities between his story and Caruso's I think, and um,
Speaker 1: of course we're gonna look at how did this experience
Speaker 1: change him? Yeah, you think, a few years on the
Speaker 1: island by yourself, definitely you're gonna be a different man
Speaker 1: when you finally come off of it. But first, of
Speaker 1: course we're gonna look at how he made his way
Speaker 1: to the sea in the first place. He was born
Speaker 1: Alexander sel Craig in sixteen seventies six in Lower Largo, Scotland,
Speaker 1: which is a fishing village in Fife County, and he
Speaker 1: was the seventh son of a shoemaker named John cel
Speaker 1: Craig and a woman named euth and Mackie. And like
Speaker 1: a lot of the stories that we cover here on
Speaker 1: this podcast, we see a situation where the son Alexander
Speaker 1: really wants to do something different from what his dad
Speaker 1: wants him to do. His dad, John really wants Alexander
Speaker 1: to follow in his footsteps and join the shoemaking business.
Speaker 1: Has right sorry bad pun, unintended pun as well. But
Speaker 1: Alexander dreamed about a life on the sea, about getting
Speaker 1: to the sea, and his mother supported those dreams because
Speaker 1: she believed that alex was blessed with luck, even though
Speaker 1: he was a bit of a troublemaking punk. Um. As
Speaker 1: you'll see, according to a Smithsonian article by Bruce sel Craig,
Speaker 1: who is interestingly actually a descendant of alex and he's
Speaker 1: checked out all these historical records from Largo's church elders,
Speaker 1: and he found that Alexander was actually punished several times
Speaker 1: for transgressions, little crimes such as fornication. That's how it
Speaker 1: was listed in the records. Yeah, definitely, um, kind of scandalous.
Speaker 1: And it was for one of those little crimes, one
Speaker 1: of those transgressions, that he was supposed to appear before
Speaker 1: the church elders on this day in six and that
Speaker 1: appears to be the day that he ran away to
Speaker 1: see for the first time, because yeah, he skipped town.
Speaker 1: He did not make his little court appearance before the
Speaker 1: church elders, and um, it's assumed that he was possibly
Speaker 1: with a Scottish colonizing expedition to Panama or what is
Speaker 1: now Panama. Yeah, but he wasn't gone for good after that.
Speaker 1: He popped up around home again, at least long enough
Speaker 1: to cause some more trouble. In late November seventeen o one,
Speaker 1: he got into this huge fight with his family which
Speaker 1: led to him assaulting his father and his brother John
Speaker 1: and possibly even John's wife. And the whole thing might
Speaker 1: have started when his brother Andrew sort of laughed or
Speaker 1: made fun of him for accidentally drinking seawater saltwater. Very sensitive, Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely to to go after his whole family. So you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's around, it seems, back from from Scotland time
Speaker 1: to time. And then in seventeen oh three he makes
Speaker 1: his first really big break. Yeah, he joins buccaneer William
Speaker 1: Dampier's Privateering expedition to South America. And just to give
Speaker 1: you a little background on that, the Privateers, they're basically
Speaker 1: legitimate pirates for the British crown. So since Alexander had
Speaker 1: done well in math and geography and navigation in school
Speaker 1: and impressed his mentors, those credentials kind of helped him
Speaker 1: secure a position as a navigator on this particular journey.
Speaker 1: And this is around the time as well that he
Speaker 1: started becoming known as Selkirk, and folks aren't totally sure
Speaker 1: about why he made that change. He might have been
Speaker 1: trying to distance himself from this kind of sketchy past,
Speaker 1: or maybe it was just a spelling or pronunciation misunderstanding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess some historians think that maybe spelling just wasn't
Speaker 1: that important back then. It happens, so he has his
Speaker 1: new name, Selkirk, and he joins this expedition which has
Speaker 1: two different ships involved. One is called the sink Ports
Speaker 1: and one is called the St. George. And Selkirk himself
Speaker 1: was aboard the sink Ports when they set sales September
Speaker 1: sevent three, and like we said earlier, he was a
Speaker 1: good navigator and helped the ship out quite a bit.
Speaker 1: He helped them travel as far as fifty miles on
Speaker 1: a good day. They made it to Brazil in two
Speaker 1: weeks or so, which I find that pretty arkable early
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds. But it wasn't The expedition itself was not
Speaker 1: going well. His navigation seems like about one of the
Speaker 1: only things that was really working. The privateers had problems
Speaker 1: from the very start, and a lot of that trouble
Speaker 1: came from dissension among the ranks. Yeah. Damp Here was
Speaker 1: seen by many to be cruel and incompetent um. For example,
Speaker 1: he was known to let captured ships go free without disturbed,
Speaker 1: distributing all the loot to his men like he was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how they made their cash. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the crew didn't like him for that reason, and trouble
Speaker 1: started pretty much from the beginning surrounding that relationship with him.
Speaker 1: There was also a lot of illness aboard um during
Speaker 1: that time. Ships were breeding ground for typhus, dysentery, and cholera,
Speaker 1: and so by November, several of the men were sick
Speaker 1: with fever or scurvy, which is actually caused by a
Speaker 1: vitamin C deficiency. Yeah, and one of the guys who
Speaker 1: get sick is the Captain Charles Pickering, and he died
Speaker 1: in late November. So you had a replacement move in,
Speaker 1: young Lieutenant Thomas Straddling, and he took over the command
Speaker 1: of the sink parts. You think that maybe, with all
Speaker 1: the dissension in their ranks, change like this might make
Speaker 1: things a little better. It makes things worse. The crew
Speaker 1: disliked him as much, maybe even more than damp here.
Speaker 1: So a lot of trouble now aboard both of these ships. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean to add to these already two kind
Speaker 1: of big issues. There was also the fact that they
Speaker 1: weren't very successful at what they were supposed to be doing,
Speaker 1: which was the privateering part of it. They were trying
Speaker 1: to capture Spanish merchant ships, but they weren't able to
Speaker 1: do it. So the sailors almost mutinied many times because
Speaker 1: they weren't happy with strad Lane and they thought Dampier
Speaker 1: should attack more ships. Um as we said before, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is how they made their money. This is otherwise
Speaker 1: they're just wasting their time, otherwise catching scurvy right, hanging out,
Speaker 1: risking their lives. So they really wanted this to happen.
Speaker 1: But the major difficulty that ultimately turned out to be
Speaker 1: the turning point for silk Kirk was the poor condition
Speaker 1: of the ship that he was on. By September seventeen
Speaker 1: o four, selkirk ship was so leaky that men had
Speaker 1: to pump water out of it almost constantly, pretty much
Speaker 1: day and night. I mean, I think it's interesting that
Speaker 1: that's the point. The poor condition of the ship is
Speaker 1: what drives him over the edge. Not that you know,
Speaker 1: they're not attacking Spanish or that everyone's getting sick, but
Speaker 1: he's seriously afraid that the ship will sink, and I
Speaker 1: mean it it is getting really bad. Like you mentioned,
Speaker 1: they're there taking the water out constantly, and so finally
Speaker 1: they decided to return to an island called Massa Tira,
Speaker 1: where they had spent some time earlier that year, and
Speaker 1: it was located in the one Fernandez cluster, which is
Speaker 1: about four hundred miles sixty kilometers west of valparios O, Chile.
Speaker 1: So you know, they were just hoping stop there a
Speaker 1: little bit, build up supplies again and rest and then
Speaker 1: head out. That was the plan, at least of the captain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they did part of that. They spent about a
Speaker 1: month there stalking the ship with provisions, but they didn't
Speaker 1: really get much fixed on the ship. It was still
Speaker 1: pretty warm, ridden in bad shape. So but still then
Speaker 1: Straddling decides that it was time to set sail. Sil
Speaker 1: Kirk argued with him. He stressed that he believed the
Speaker 1: ship wasn't sound, it wasn't fit to sail. The mass
Speaker 1: mass and the floors were so worm eaten that they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to withstand open sea, much less these
Speaker 1: battles that the sailors really wanted to get into ships. So,
Speaker 1: showing his stubbornness as we've seen before, sail Kirk refused
Speaker 1: to back down from this fight, so he was put
Speaker 1: ashore with some of his provisions his betting A must
Speaker 1: get a pistol, gunpowder, a hatchet, a knife, his navigational tools,
Speaker 1: a pot for boiling food, two pounds of tobacco, some
Speaker 1: cheese and jam, a flask of rum, his Bible, the
Speaker 1: Book of Common Prayer, and the seventeen Spanish dollars that
Speaker 1: were his share of the booty they'd earned so far.
Speaker 1: So you can see how little they had plundered. Spend
Speaker 1: it all in one right. So, I mean you'll see
Speaker 1: different accounts say that he brought different things ashore, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't much. I mean, it seems like a lot
Speaker 1: more than if you just happened to show up somewhere
Speaker 1: by accident, but it still wasn't a lot, definitely, and
Speaker 1: more than you would leave a mutineer too. He wasn't
Speaker 1: being treated quite on that level. Yeah, and this was
Speaker 1: his choice at first. But as soon as the ship
Speaker 1: starts to leave and he is wading through the water
Speaker 1: going to the shore, he starts to immediately regret this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally regret it. Yeah. He begs, in fact, to be
Speaker 1: let back on board the ship. But Straddling wanted to
Speaker 1: make an example of him, you know, in that sense,
Speaker 1: he was treating him like a mutineer, didn't let him
Speaker 1: back on board, refused the offer. So now we have
Speaker 1: our castaway. Yeah, and at that point we have Silkirk
Speaker 1: and he's standing there. The ship is sailing away, and
Speaker 1: he's thinking, oh, man, I might get stuck here for
Speaker 1: like a few days or something. Little did he know,
Speaker 1: Little did he know? Yeah, he really thinks that another
Speaker 1: friendly ship will probably come along in a few days
Speaker 1: time and things will be okay. He thinks that he'll
Speaker 1: be able to at least survive those few days. Because
Speaker 1: Massa Tierra or Aquas Buena sins. It's also known which
Speaker 1: is now officially, by the way, named Robinson Crusoe Island.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the worst place that you could be stranded
Speaker 1: for a little while. No, it had fresh water and
Speaker 1: plenty of food sources. It seems he had access to
Speaker 1: goat meat, turtle eggs, lobsters, and a hawthorn berry like
Speaker 1: fruit that grew on something that was known as the
Speaker 1: cabbage palm tree. And why, though, why was this uninhabited
Speaker 1: island so bountiful, Yeah, bountiful larder of foods and according
Speaker 1: to an article by Louis Verner in the America's it
Speaker 1: had been explored already in the fifteen hundreds by the
Speaker 1: Spanish and in Sebastian Garcia. Corretto was given a land
Speaker 1: grant there. And so he's the one who imported the
Speaker 1: goats and pigs and uh, he even had indians at
Speaker 1: a time there at a farm. The colonnad didn't work out,
Speaker 1: it failed, but the goats stayed, they remain, they turned
Speaker 1: feral and they thrived. So you know, it ended up
Speaker 1: being a pretty well stocked place. And there were some
Speaker 1: other castaways on this island with Selkirk as well. There
Speaker 1: were rats and there were feral cats, and these were
Speaker 1: left behind by ships just like the ones he was on.
Speaker 1: They that had stopped at the island for a little
Speaker 1: while in the ratch to sort of ended up there.
Speaker 1: They jumped ship right on their tails, right. So some
Speaker 1: people had been left behind on the island too in
Speaker 1: the past. Twenty four years before Alexanderston actually a Mosquito
Speaker 1: Indian man named Will was mistakenly left behind, eventually rescued
Speaker 1: three years later by another privateering ship. Incidentally, the privateering
Speaker 1: ship that he had been on also was one of
Speaker 1: damp years. I think Dampier doesn't have a good record.
Speaker 1: He really doesn't. He gets around. But an interesting point
Speaker 1: about Will is that the character Friday and Defoe's novel
Speaker 1: and Robinson Crusoe may have been based on the Sky's account.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Selkirk, he does have this good supply of food.
Speaker 1: He has some potential friends, the cats on the island,
Speaker 1: and you like those cats. I like cats. It would
Speaker 1: be good to have cats if you're all by yourself.
Speaker 1: Feral cats though, Sarah ferrel cats. Well, we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna get into that a little bit more. They're not
Speaker 1: necessarily feral um. But you know, he has the knowledge
Speaker 1: that he'll be able to have enough to eat, and
Speaker 1: the knowledge that he could survive if if he thinks quick.
Speaker 1: But still he's he's pretty depressed at the prospect of
Speaker 1: being alone. Yeah, because he was not only alone, he
Speaker 1: was in a pretty uncomfortable situation as well. Rats would
Speaker 1: not at his clothes and his feet while he slept.
Speaker 1: Plus there was just that little problem with keeping a sanity,
Speaker 1: no one to talk to. He was alone with his thoughts,
Speaker 1: listening to sea lions bellowing on the beach all day long.
Speaker 1: He even contemplated suicide at one point. Eventually, though, a
Speaker 1: change came over him. And it's kind of hard to understand,
Speaker 1: I guess if you haven't been in that position, But
Speaker 1: the way it's described in early accounts of at worries
Speaker 1: that after about eighteen months, after reading scriptures and turning
Speaker 1: his thoughts to the study of navigation and quote force
Speaker 1: of reason, he became thoroughly reconciled to his condition. And
Speaker 1: from that point on he kind of learned how to
Speaker 1: live on the island and seemed to find his own
Speaker 1: sort of piece there. If not really a happiness, it
Speaker 1: seems like a happiness, but yeah, at least not depression,
Speaker 1: it seems. And he got down to business too, you know,
Speaker 1: he worked on taking care of some of these problems
Speaker 1: that were bothering him, starting with pest control. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I would say rats nibbling at your feet at night
Speaker 1: would be a major issue, kind of top your list,
Speaker 1: And he managed to take care of them by doing
Speaker 1: perhaps the most obvious thing you can think of, getting
Speaker 1: the cats involved in the whole process. So he domesticated
Speaker 1: some of the cats by giving them pieces of goat meat.
Speaker 1: They wanted to hang around his camp a little more then,
Speaker 1: and then they realized there were also lots of feral
Speaker 1: rats around. Rats are often feral like, yeah, and they
Speaker 1: took care of the problem right quick for for Selkirk.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't the only thing he had to deal with, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, he had to find food, shelter, and then
Speaker 1: there's just what are you doing with yourself all day?
Speaker 1: You know, what's occupying your mind? Taking care of that
Speaker 1: little sanity issue we mentioned before. So we're going to
Speaker 1: kind of go through how he got his food and
Speaker 1: his shelter and um, you know what he did day
Speaker 1: to day. So the real Robinson cruise, this is part Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the real Robinson Cruise, so apart exactly. So
Speaker 1: first of all, what did he eat? Well, there was
Speaker 1: plenty of fish to be had, but they bothered Silkirk's
Speaker 1: stomach a lot, I guess, so he had to settle
Speaker 1: for the island's version of lobster, which was actually a giant,
Speaker 1: clawless crawfish of sorts. Um. He also it goat meat,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned before, and once he ran out of gunpowder,
Speaker 1: he managed to get really agile, to the point that
Speaker 1: he could chase down these goats that sort of outrun
Speaker 1: them himself and catch them and kill them that way,
Speaker 1: which I think is pretty amazing, remarkable, I think. Um,
Speaker 1: but when he wasn't eating goats or giant crawfish, he
Speaker 1: did have things like turnups and watercress and the cabbage
Speaker 1: palm we mentioned earlier. Um, just things partly left by
Speaker 1: the Spanish, just growing on the island. And unfortunately, though
Speaker 1: he was disturbed by the lack of salt and the
Speaker 1: lack of bread. I can't quite figure out the salt
Speaker 1: because presumably he's surrounded by seawater. I think he could
Speaker 1: use some solar action and collect the salt, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe he had other things on his mind,
Speaker 1: he was missing it. Maybe he just needed you there, Sarah,
Speaker 1: to show him the way. I think he mentioned he
Speaker 1: had other spices though. Yeah. I think there were some
Speaker 1: other peppers and things growing on the island that he
Speaker 1: used to season his food. But it wasn't quite salt
Speaker 1: season the goat meat season the goat meat, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't quite what he was used to still. Um, as
Speaker 1: far as how he lived his home, I guess you
Speaker 1: could say he had managed to build two huts with
Speaker 1: wood from pimento trees and covered those with long grass
Speaker 1: and lined them with goat skins, so sounds actually kind
Speaker 1: of cozy plush one the larger one was for him
Speaker 1: to sleep in and kind of hang out in, and
Speaker 1: the other one was a smaller one in which he
Speaker 1: prepared his meals. He also learned how to start a
Speaker 1: fire with wood and must get flints, and he tried
Speaker 1: to keep that going all day. And we also have
Speaker 1: to discuss how he clothed himself, because obviously a few
Speaker 1: years on an island, your clothes are not going to
Speaker 1: last that long, especially after the rats had been gnawing
Speaker 1: at them exactly that would reduce the lifespan pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: So when his clothes started to fall apart, he had
Speaker 1: to make new ones out of goat skins. But he
Speaker 1: didn't have a needle and thread with him, so he
Speaker 1: had to use a nail and again with the goats,
Speaker 1: a little piece of goat skin or old stocking sort
Speaker 1: of fashioned into twine or thread to to lace all
Speaker 1: these pieces together. So he must have cut quite a
Speaker 1: figure once he got his outfits all made. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess he was pretty styling for that area of the
Speaker 1: world at the time, but he didn't have anyone to
Speaker 1: show it off to. Really, he didn't have a on
Speaker 1: Friday like Robinson Crusoe did. But he did have his animals.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned before, he had the cats, and he
Speaker 1: also had goats. Um. I mean, he ate the goats,
Speaker 1: but he also sort of domesticated some of the goats
Speaker 1: as well. It's it's been said that he'd break the
Speaker 1: legs of the younger ones to kind of keep them around,
Speaker 1: and so he had his own little animal family, I
Speaker 1: guess around him. He also had some reading material. He
Speaker 1: had been left with his Bible in the Book of
Speaker 1: Common Prayer, and he would sing the psalms and he
Speaker 1: would pray, and later he said that he was a
Speaker 1: better Christian while in the solitude of the island than
Speaker 1: he ever had been before. He also just really embraced
Speaker 1: nature too while he was there. I mean, you'd have
Speaker 1: a lot of time to think and think about the
Speaker 1: island you were on, and he learned a lot about
Speaker 1: the island and himself in that way. Presumably. Yeah, very
Speaker 1: thorough like um. And he was always always on the
Speaker 1: lookout for approaching ships during this time. According to Sell,
Speaker 1: Craig's article. Alexander had a lookouts bought which was about
Speaker 1: eight feet around there in elevation, so he had plenty
Speaker 1: of time to react if he saw someone coming, which
Speaker 1: turned out to be really vital in a couple of situations,
Speaker 1: because there was at least one instance during these four
Speaker 1: plus years when a Spanish ship came to the island
Speaker 1: and they came ashore the Spaniards did. They destroyed his hut,
Speaker 1: but Selkirk managed to evade them, and he was right
Speaker 1: to do so. It seems Werner actually suggests that he
Speaker 1: would have been put to hard labor aboard a Spanish ship,
Speaker 1: or perhaps even jailed and lima. So it wouldn't have
Speaker 1: turned out for very well if you'd tried to kind
Speaker 1: of get on board with these guys. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is another thing that kind of surprised me about
Speaker 1: this story, because you imagine somebody stranded on an island,
Speaker 1: you're trying to hail any ship you see. You'd rather
Speaker 1: be taken by anybody. But that he was actually looking
Speaker 1: for ships to avoid them too, I think is fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think part of this we were kind of
Speaker 1: talking about this a little bit before is just his
Speaker 1: own kind of coming to terms with being on the
Speaker 1: island and his sort of love for the island or
Speaker 1: comfort growing love for the island. Yeah, And you know
Speaker 1: we've talked about before, and you'll see in a lot
Speaker 1: of writings about his experience that, you know, he looked
Speaker 1: towards the sea with hope that someone would come, but
Speaker 1: also with a little bit of hesitation. Definitely, eventually, though,
Speaker 1: that friendly ship did come. He spotted one on the
Speaker 1: horizon and he was finally rescued February seventeen o nine
Speaker 1: by a ship called the Duke, and it was commanded
Speaker 1: by Woods Rogers. And by this point Silkirk was pretty
Speaker 1: crazy looking. I mean, he looked like he had been
Speaker 1: on an island for four years. He had a long beard,
Speaker 1: he was wearing those goat skin clothes, which I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's gonna make you stand out, I think. And
Speaker 1: he greeted Rogers men by making them goat soup and
Speaker 1: telling them all about his survival. So he was happy
Speaker 1: to have these visitors at first. Yeah, and they hardly
Speaker 1: knew what to make of them at all. Rogers later
Speaker 1: wrote that Silkirk so much forgot his land language for
Speaker 1: want of use that we could scarce understand him for
Speaker 1: he seemed to speak his words by have so just
Speaker 1: imagine him trying to communicate. He hasn't spoken to another
Speaker 1: human being in more than four years, and he's trying
Speaker 1: to tell them what happened. Um, that he was marooned
Speaker 1: and luckily silk Kirk's old friend or perhaps his friend
Speaker 1: of me. We're not really sure how good a terms
Speaker 1: they were on when they parted ways, but William damp
Speaker 1: Here was on board the ship, so again he makes
Speaker 1: an appearance. Yep, he recognized the Silkirk and vouches for
Speaker 1: his navigational skills and also delivers him an interesting bit
Speaker 1: of news about their old ship that they've been on together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that the ship he was right, the ship
Speaker 1: thank after it left. Yeah, the poor sink ports. I
Speaker 1: knew that was going to happen. Yeah, you did, you
Speaker 1: called it. It sank soon after abandoning Alexander in seventeen
Speaker 1: o four, and only about a dozen men survive. Most
Speaker 1: of those ended up in Spanish prisons too, so it
Speaker 1: was actually a good thing that he ended up on
Speaker 1: the island. For a year on the island might be
Speaker 1: a little better than four years in a Spanish prison
Speaker 1: at least, yeah, I mean even without salt definitely. From there,
Speaker 1: Rogers makes Silkirk navigator of his ship and they sail
Speaker 1: around for two more years. So it's two more years
Speaker 1: before Selkirk actually gets home. But then they finally returned
Speaker 1: to London in October seventeen eleven, and it was well
Speaker 1: worth the way that turns out, Sail Kirk comes home
Speaker 1: with eight hundred English pounds in his pocket. That was
Speaker 1: his share of the Duke's plundered wealth. So obviously the
Speaker 1: Duke did a lot better than Silkirk's last ship did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Selkirk was famous pretty soon too, because both Rogers
Speaker 1: and Richard Steele wrote accounts of Selkirk's experience on the
Speaker 1: island in seventeen twelve and seventeen thirteen. And the way
Speaker 1: Sail Craig from the Smithsonian article describes it is that
Speaker 1: he was an eccentric celebrity, which I like that somebody
Speaker 1: who who could travel around from pub to pub for
Speaker 1: a couple of years make sightings telling his adventures getting
Speaker 1: free meals. I mean, you have to imagine people would
Speaker 1: want to get a look at this guy. And hear
Speaker 1: his story. Yeah, and he took full advantage of the
Speaker 1: situation for a while. He actually ended up marrying two
Speaker 1: women at the same time. They didn't know about it. It
Speaker 1: It wasn't like a sister wife situation. He married two
Speaker 1: women in two separate places that didn't find out about
Speaker 1: it until later. So you think he wouldn't be that
Speaker 1: good at deceit, like living by himself for four years
Speaker 1: on the island. But yeah, who knows. Maybe he didn't
Speaker 1: do it intentionally. Who knows. I don't know too much
Speaker 1: about that aspect of the story, but I do know
Speaker 1: that after a few months, he didn't seem so high
Speaker 1: on life anymore. He wasn't so happy with the situation
Speaker 1: he had, but he became a loner, and he seemed
Speaker 1: a lot unhappier than he had when he first made
Speaker 1: that goat stew cheerfully on the island for his rescuers. Um,
Speaker 1: he seemed more at peace than and now it seems
Speaker 1: like he had a hard time going back to his
Speaker 1: lost again. Yeah, he had a hard time going back
Speaker 1: to his old life in his old world, and some
Speaker 1: biographers even say that he tried to replicate life on
Speaker 1: the island for a while by returning to Largo and
Speaker 1: living in a cave like shelter behind to his father's house. Um,
Speaker 1: he made the statement which I think is really poignant,
Speaker 1: and Steel writes about it in his account. He said,
Speaker 1: I am now worth eight hundred pounds, but she'll never
Speaker 1: be so happy as when I was not worth a farthing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so eventually, in November seventeen twenty, at the age
Speaker 1: of forty four, Selkirk decided to return to life, see
Speaker 1: something to do and some place to go again, and
Speaker 1: he signed on as the first mate of a naval warship,
Speaker 1: the HMS Weymouth, And it was bound for the Gold
Speaker 1: Coast of Africa, and it was searching for pirates again,
Speaker 1: you know, probably hoping to make a little money. And
Speaker 1: there was a lot of illness on board again too though,
Speaker 1: yellow fever and typhoid, and eventually Selkirk himself died aboard
Speaker 1: the ship December thirteenth, seventeen twenty one. Interestingly, Dafoe had
Speaker 1: already published Robinson Crew, so by then it was April
Speaker 1: seventeen nineteen, but it's unclear whether he and Selkirk actually met.
Speaker 1: Historians debate about that. It's suggested though, that Dafoe met
Speaker 1: either or both, possibly Rogers or Steel, and he was
Speaker 1: definitely aware of selkirk story. Yeah, and from there the
Speaker 1: story became so popular and well known, and as we
Speaker 1: talked about in the introduction to this podcast, and I
Speaker 1: mean we were talking before a little bit about the
Speaker 1: Swiss family, Robinson and you tend to prefer that, I think,
Speaker 1: to Robinson Crusoe, Sarah, don't you. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: they have their whole family there. It's a little more
Speaker 1: fun and exciting. Yeah, there's not this like murdered Vacannibal's
Speaker 1: constant threat. At least they don't dwell on it so much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but needless to say, as many stories that it's influenced.
Speaker 1: Since then, there is now real evidence also, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was the story of Robinson Crusoe became popular
Speaker 1: enough for people to actually go out and look for
Speaker 1: evidence for this real Robinson Cruso. Yeah, and they found it.
Speaker 1: In two thousand eight, some researchers discovered Selkirk's navigational dividers,
Speaker 1: or a pair of navigational dividers from the time period
Speaker 1: that they assume are his, And they also found some
Speaker 1: post holes on the island where his two shelters would
Speaker 1: have been built, so you know, home sweet home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you want to check out the real Robinson
Speaker 1: Crusoe's home, you can do that. Um. As we mentioned,
Speaker 1: they changed the name of the island to Robinson Crusoe
Speaker 1: Island and drive home the point they did they did
Speaker 1: drive home, the point that they also are driving home,
Speaker 1: the point that they don't mind having tourists come by
Speaker 1: and check it out. Thanks so much for joining us
Speaker 1: on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive,
Speaker 1: if you heard an email address or a Facebook U
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Speaker 1: that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is
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