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 an English adventure novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. Written with a combination of epistolary, confessional, and didactic forms, the book follows the title character after he is cast away and spends 28 years on a remote tropical desert island near the coasts of Venezuela and Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. The story has been thought to be based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on a Pacific island called "Más a Tierra" which was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966. Pedro Serrano is another real-life castaway whose story might have inspired the novel.
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 Sir Francis Drake and Captain 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 at the time, such as flamingo and manatee.
Woodes Rogers was an English sea captain, privateer and colonial administrator who served as the governor of the Bahamas from 1718 to 1721 and again from 1728 to 1732. He is remembered as the captain of the vessel that rescued marooned Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, whose plight is generally believed to have inspired Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe. Rogers came from an experienced seafaring family, grew up in Poole and Bristol, and served a marine apprenticeship to a Bristol sea captain. His father, who held shares in many ships, died when Rogers was in his mid-twenties, leaving Rogers in control of the family shipping business.
The Llandoger Trow is a historic public house in Bristol, south-west England. Dating from 1664, it is on King Street, between Welsh Back and Queen Charlotte Street, near the old city centre docks. Named by a sailor who owned the pub after Llandogo in Wales which built trows, the building was damaged in World War II, but remained in sufficiently good condition to be designated Grade II* listed building status in 1959. The pub is said to have inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to write of the Admiral Benbow Inn in Treasure Island and Daniel Defoe supposedly met William Dampier and Alexander Selkirk there, his inspiration for Robinson Crusoe. The pub is also supposedly haunted, with up to 15 ghosts and one little green ghoul, the best known being a small child whose footsteps can be heard on the top floor.
Robinson Crusoe Island 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. The island was formerly known as Más a Tierra.
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.
Robinsonade is a literary genre of fiction wherein the protagonist is suddenly separated from civilization, usually by being shipwrecked or marooned on a secluded and uninhabited island, and must improvise the means of their survival from the limited resources at hand. The genre takes its name from the 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. The success of this novel spawned so many imitations that its name was used to define a genre, which is sometimes described simply as a "desert island story" or a "castaway narrative".
Cinque Ports was an English ship whose sailing master was Alexander Selkirk, generally accepted as a model for the fictional Robinson Crusoe. The ship was part of a 1703 expedition commanded by William Dampier, who captained the accompanying ship, the 26-gun St George with a complement of 120 men.
Pedro Luis Serrano, also referred to as Pedro de Serrano, was a 16th century Spanish sailor who was allegedly marooned for seven to eight years on a small desert island. Details of the story differ, but the most common version has him shipwrecked on a small island in the Caribbean off the coast of Nicaragua, sometime in the 1520s. Serrano survived by eating shrimp, cockles, and other animals he found washed up on the shore, and by collecting drinking water in sea turtle shells when it rained. When rainwater was unavailable, he also drank the blood of the turtles he had captured.
An uninhabited island, desert island, or deserted island, is an island, islet or atoll which lacks permanent human population. Uninhabited islands are often depicted in films or stories about shipwrecked people, and are also used as stereotypes for the idea of "paradise". Some uninhabited islands are protected as nature reserves, and some are privately owned. Devon Island in Canada's far north is the largest uninhabited island in the world.
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 desert island, either to evade captors or the world in general. A person may also be left ashore as punishment (marooned).
Philip Ashton (1702—1746) was a castaway on then-uninhabited Roatán island in the Gulf of Honduras for 16 months in 1723/1724. His memoirs about his solitary stay were published in book form in Boston in 1725. While some people believed it was a novel in the style of Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ashton's book was the account of a genuine experience. He was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts in 1702 and married twice.
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.
Godfrey Morgan: A Californian Mystery, also published as School for Crusoes, is an 1882 adventure novel by French writer Jules Verne. The novel tells of a wealthy young man, Godfrey Morgan, who, with his deportment instructor, Professor T. Artelett, embark from San Francisco, California, on a round-the-world ocean voyage. They are cast away on an uninhabited Pacific island, where they must endure a series of adversities. Later, they encounter an African slave, Carefinotu, brought to the island by cannibals. In the end, the trio manage to work together and survive on the island.
Selkirk is a Scottish surname. The name is a habitational name, derived from Selkirk, located on the Scottish Borders. The place name is derived from the Middle English elements sale, sele, meaning "hall", "manor"; and kirk, meaning "church". The Scottish Gaelic form of the surname is Sailcirc (masculine), and Shailcirc (feminine).
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.
Seven Seas Pirates is a 2012 animated adventure 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 circumnavigation of the Earth 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 his 1719 novel, Robinson Crusoe.
