Alexander Selkirk was a Scottish privateer and Royal Navy officer who spent four years and four months as a castaway (1704–1709) after being marooned by his captain, initially at his request, on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean. He survived that ordeal but died from tropical illness years later while serving as a Lieutenant aboard HMS Weymouth off West Africa.
The Juan Fernández Islands are a sparsely inhabited series of islands in the South Pacific Ocean reliant on tourism and fishing. Situated 670 km off the coast of Chile, they are composed of three main volcanic islands: Robinson Crusoe, Alejandro Selkirk and Santa Clara. The group is part of Insular Chile.
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents.
William Dampier was an English explorer, pirate, privateer, navigator, and naturalist who became the first Englishman to explore parts of what is today Australia, and the first person to circumnavigate the world three times. He has also been described as Australia's first natural historian, as well as one of the most important British explorers of the period between Francis Drake and James Cook ; he "bridged those two eras" with a mix of piratical derring-do of the former and scientific inquiry of the latter. His expeditions were among the first to identify and name a number of plants, animals, foods, and cooking techniques for a European audience, being among the first English writers to use words such as avocado, barbecue, and chopsticks. In describing the preparation of avocados, he was the first European to describe the making of guacamole, named the breadfruit plant, and made frequent documentation of the taste of numerous foods foreign to the European palate such as flamingo and manatee.
Marooning is the intentional act of abandoning someone in an uninhabited area, such as a desert island, or more generally to be marooned is to be in a place from which one cannot escape. The word is attested in 1699, and is derived from the term maroon, a word for a fugitive slave, which could be a corruption of Spanish cimarrón, meaning a household animal who has "run wild". Cimarrón in turn may be derived from the Taino word símaran (“wild”), from símara (“arrow”).
George Shelvocke was an English Royal Navy officer and later privateer who in 1726 wrote A Voyage Round the World by Way of the Great South Sea based on his exploits. It includes an account of how his second captain, Simon Hatley, shot an albatross off Cape Horn, an incident which provided the dramatic motive in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Woodes Rogers was an English sea captain, privateer, slave trader and, from 1718, the first Royal Governor of the Bahamas. He is known as the captain of the vessel that rescued marooned Alexander Selkirk, whose plight is generally believed to have inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.
Robinson Crusoe Island, formerly known as Más a Tierra, is the second largest of the Juan Fernández Islands, situated 670 km west of San Antonio, Chile, in the South Pacific Ocean. It is the more populous of the inhabited islands in the archipelago, with most of that in the town of San Juan Bautista at Cumberland Bay on the island's north coast.
Alejandro Selkirk Island, previously known as Más Afuera and renamed after the marooned sailor Alexander Selkirk, is the largest and most westerly island in the Juan Fernández Archipelago of the Valparaíso Region of Chile. It is situated 180 km west of Robinson Crusoe Island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean.
John Clipperton was an English privateer who fought against the Spanish in the 18th century. He was involved in two buccaneering expeditions to the South Pacific—the first led by William Dampier in 1703, and the second under his own command in 1719. He used Clipperton Island in the eastern Pacific Ocean as a base for his raids.
A castaway is a person who is cast adrift or ashore. While the situation usually happens after a shipwreck, some people voluntarily stay behind on a deserted island, either to evade captors or the world in general. A person may also be left ashore as punishment (marooned).
Bartholomew Sharp was an English buccaneer and privateer. His career of piracy lasted seven years (1675–1682). In the Caribbean he took several ships, and raided the Gulf of Honduras and Portobelo. He took command of an expedition into the Pacific and spent months raiding settlements on the Pacific Coast of South America including La Serena which he torched in 1680. His flagship, taken at Panama, was the Trinity.
Will was a Miskito pirate from the Misquito Coast, then part of the Spanish Main. He was left behind on the uninhabited Robinson Crusoe Island, surviving there alone for more than three years. It is possible that Will became the inspiration for Man Friday, the cannibal character in Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe.
Events from the year 1703 in Ireland.
HMS Roebuck was a fifth-rate warship in the Royal Navy which, under the command of William Dampier, carried the first British scientific expedition to Australia in 1699. The wreck of the ship has since been located by a team from the Western Australian Maritime Museum at a site on the coast of Ascension Island where it foundered more than 300 years ago.
Simon Hatley was an English sailor involved in two hazardous privateering voyages to the South Pacific Ocean. On the second voyage, with his ship beset by storms south of Cape Horn, Hatley shot an albatross, an incident immortalised by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his 1798 poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Thomas Dover (1660–1742), sometimes referred to as "Doctor Quicksilver", was an English physician. He is remembered for his common cold and fever medicine Dover's powder, his work with the poor in Bristol, and his privateering voyage alongside William Dampier and Woodes Rogers that rescued castaway Alexander Selkirk, the real-life inspiration for Robinson Crusoe.
Joel Root (1770–1847) was an American sailor. He authored a journal of his around the world voyage while working as supercargo on the sealing ship Huron.
Seven Seas Pirates is a Uruguayan animated film made in cooperation with Argentina and Chile. It was directed by Uruguayan Walter Tournier, based on a script he wrote in collaboration with Mario Jacob and Enrique Cortés and premiered on Feb. 2, 2012. It was filmed mainly with stop motion, with digital details added in post-production.
A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World is a 1712 book by Edward Cooke, about a real-life trip around the world in two ships, under the command of Woodes Rogers. It is notable for including a firsthand account of castaway Alexander Selkirk, whose tale appears to have helped inspire Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe a few years later.
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