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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.
Daniel Defoe was an English writer, trader, journalist, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its number of translations. He has been seen as one of the earliest proponents of the English novel, and helped to popularise the form in Britain with others such as Aphra Behn and Samuel Richardson. Defoe wrote many political tracts, was often in trouble with the authorities, and spent a period in prison. Intellectuals and political leaders paid attention to his fresh ideas and sometimes consulted him.
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".
Friday is one of the main characters of Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe and its sequel The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe names the man Friday, with whom he cannot at first communicate, because they first meet on that day. The character is the source of the expression "Man Friday", used to describe a male personal assistant or servant, especially one who is particularly competent or loyal. Current usage also includes "Girl Friday".
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.
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.
A desert island, deserted island, or uninhabited island, is an island, islet or atoll that is not permanently populated by humans. 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 deserted 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.
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.
Edward Davis or Davies was an English buccaneer active in the Caribbean during the 1680s and would lead successful raids against Leon and Panama in 1685, the latter considered one of the last major buccaneer raids against a Spanish stronghold. Much of his career was later recorded by writer William Dampier in A New Voyage Round the World (1697).
Robinson Crusoe is a 1954 adventure film directed by Luis Buñuel, based on the 1719 novel of the same name by Daniel Defoe. It stars Dan O'Herlihy as Crusoe and Jaime Fernández as Friday. Both English and Spanish versions were produced, making it Buñuel's first English-language film.
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.
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.
A New Voyage Round The World is a 1697 autobiographical book by William Dampier, telling of his journeys around the world, the most celebrated in England being his explorations of Australia. His account is "...notable for the frankness of its account of anarchic, mismanaged and largely unsuccessful buccaneering and merchant enterprise." Following his return to England, Dampier is believed to have written the account in between further, shorter expeditions he made in the following years. It was published in 1697 to success, followed by subsequent editions. One later edition contained an addendum: "A Supplement to the Voyage round the World, together with the Voyages to Campeachy and the Discourse on the Trade Winds". The book helped bring into public consciousness the notion of a southerly continent. The book was also a "major influence on two canonical works of English literature, Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe". In addition, Charles Darwin quoted Dampier's observations in the book on the behaviour of turtle doves in the Galapagos Islands: "Dampier also, in the same year [1684], says that a man in a morning's walk might kill six or seven dozen of these doves."
References
- Edward E. Leslie (1988), Edward E. Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls 1988
- Dampier, William (1906) A Voyage to New Holland,1699-1701.
- Woodland, Jr., Ralph Lee (1969) Robinson Crusoe's Island: A History of the Juan Fernández Islands
