DEFOE'S NOVELThe Legend
Almost every English speaking person has heard or read Daniel Defoe's famous novel "Robinson Crusoe"It has been translated into scores of other languages. "Robinson Crusoe" is an inspired novel of adventure: The story of one man's faith, courage and ability to survive almost alone on an uninhabited island facing all of the forces of nature and to emerge triumphant over hardships and adversity. Defoe's novel relates the tale of an English sailor marooned for twenty-seven years on a deserted Caribbean island surviving by his wits; hunting down wild boars on foot for food; rescuing his man, "Friday", from a cannibals' feast and, finally, emerging as a symbol of man's ability to survive the ultimate tests of nature.
ALEXANDER SELKIRK
What few people knew, however, is that Robinson Crusoe actually existed in flesh and blood. His name was Alexander Selkirk and Daniel Defoe borrowed Selkirk's real-life adventure to create his legendary Robinson Crusoe. So real has the legend become that there are some people today on the Island of Tobago in the Caribbean Sea that proudly proclaim that they are the hereditary descendents of Crusoe. Alexander Selkirk's adventure did not take place on a deserted island in the Caribbean Sea. His lonely abode was the uninhabited Island of Juan Fernandez in the Chilean Sea far off in the Pacific Ocean.
Alexander Selkirk was born in the year 1676 in Largo, Scotland, the son of a fairly prosperous tanner and leather worker. Selkirk was an adventurer at heart, unsuited to shoemaking and village life, and in 1695 ran away to sea and by 1703 was the Master of the Galley. Later he joined the famed William Dampier on a privateering expedition in the Pacific whose sole purpose was preying on Spanish merchant ships. In September of 1704, after a quarrel with his own Captain, the hotheaded Selkirk requested that he be put ashore on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez, four hundred miles west of Valparaiso, Chile. It was fortunate for Selkirk because his ship later sank with the loss of most hands.
BRISTOL SEA DOG CAPTAIN WOODES ROGERS
Selkirk remained there until February of 1709 when he was discovered by the Bristol sea dog Captain Woodes Rogers in the sailing ship "Duke" whose pilot happened to be Dampier. Despite his long castaway, Selkirk was appointed Mate by Rogers and later given command of a captured prize ship. Selkirk did not return to England until 1711 where he met the essayist, Richard Steele, who wrote up his story in a publication, "The Englishman" (1713). Daniel Defoe made use of this story in his novel "Robinson Crusoe". Selkirk finally returned home to Scotland where he lived the life of a recluse but later went to sea again. He died at sea in 1721 at the age of forty-five.
BLUE PLAQUE QUEEN SQUARE BRISTOL
The early
18th century Bristol sea dog Captain Woodes Rogers lived in Bristol and his home in 33-35 Queen Square ( a plaque marks the site ).
THE plaque in Queen Square, Bristol, reads simply: Woodes Rogers 1679-1732 - great seaman, navigator, colonial governor.
It doesn't mention he was also an explorer, a pirate and the man who rescued the real Robinson Crusoe.
In one epic voyage lasting three years, Woodes Rogers captured a Spanish treasure galleon, looted a Peruvian town, won a huge fortune in treasure and ransoms, and rescued castaway Alexander Selkirk, who inspired the story of Robinson Crusoe.
In the early 18th century, Bristol's merchants were looking to the South Seas as a new source of wealth.
They appointed Woodes Rogers as leader of a band of privateers - sailors who were little more than licensed pirates.
Sixteen Merchant Venturers backed the expedition, including the prominent Quaker grocer Thomas Goldney, whose surviving grotto in Clifton is lined with minerals and shells brought back by sailors.
They gave Rogers the 350-ton Duke, which had 36 guns, and the 260-ton Duchess, with 36 guns. There were 333 men in all - "tinkers, taylors, hay-makers, pedlers, fidlers etc, one negro and about ten boys" according to Rogers' own account of his trip.
The expedition set sail from Avonmouth on August 1, 1708, and put in at Cork where, Rogers recorded, crewmen were "continually marrying".
The ships sailed across the Atlantic via Tenerife and the Cape Verde Islands, but a violent storm blew them off course round Cape Horn. They made for the island of Juan Fernandez to rest and recover.
It was there they found Alexander Selkirk, marooned for four years after refusing to sail on an unseaworthy ship (which indeed soon sank). It was his experiences that inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.
TREASURE
Rogers'privateers attacked ships from Chile, Peru and Ecuador and captured and looted the rich Peruvian city of Guayaquil.
Then he went for the big Spanish treasure ships and captured one, before unwisely tackling the 900-ton Bigonia with its 40 guns. Rogers lost 33 crew killed or wounded and was forced to retreat with badly damaged ships.
Three years after the Duke and Duchess left Bristol, they returned home. They had captured 20 ships and brought back plate, money, jewels, gold dust, pearls and precious stones.
Equally valuable were captured Spanish maps which gave English privateers a guide to the coasts and seas off America - for 200 years a Spanish secret.
But the battles weren't yet over.
The powerful East India Company tried to seize the treasure on the spurious grounds that Woodes Rogers had breached their trade monopoly in the area. Rogers' crew had to fight off the East Indiamen, while trying to avoid press gangs eager to grab them for the navy.
The legal rows went on and the Bristol merchants only received Ј50,000 from the Ј148,000 the treasure raised. They still doubled their stakes.
It was three years before the crew got their share, and only then after they petitioned the House of Lords, alleging "vile and clandestine practices" and fraud.
Woodes Rogers sailed to the Bahamas in 1718 as Royal Governor, and he died in 1732.
One of the merchants behind the voyage, John Romsey, spent some of his share of a pair of silver candlesticks which he gave to Bristol Cathedral.
DEFOE'S NOVEL