Pirate and Slaver
Alexander Selkirk was born in 1676 into the family of a tanner in the Scottish village of Lower Largo. He was known to have a bad character since childhood, and when he was about 30 years old, he decided to become a sailor and joined the pirates. This was the name given to pirates who received privileges from the British Navy to plunder enemy (Spanish) ships. This was not considered robbery so much as hunting for war trophies.
Selkirk, the 26-gun St. Louis under the command of the famous pirate William Dampier. He served as coxswain on the 16-gun Cinque Ports sailing with George. In the spring and summer of 1704, the “Five Harbors” departed from Dampier’s expedition and began repairs and replenishment of supplies near the island of Mas a Tierra in the Juan Fernandez archipelago, located off the west coast of Chile. There Selkirk thought that the technical condition of the ship was terrible and said that it was better to stay on a desert island than to sail on a leaky ship. The helmsman did not say it very seriously, but Captain Stradling heard him.
He left the sailor on shore with a rifle, axe, knife, cooking pot, Bible, bed and clothes. Selkirk turned out to be right, the Five Harbors soon sank and the crew was captured by the Spanish.
The life path of the literary Robinson was completely different. Crusoe is a romantic and has dreamed of the sea since his youth. Here he managed to find a place for himself, but soon became a slave trader and even sold into slavery a Berber boy who helped him escape from captivity. During a slave raid, Robinson found himself on a deserted island after his ship ran aground due to a storm, and the sailor was the only survivor. He only had what he could salvage from the ship.
Hunting and gathering versus agriculture
At first, Selkirk lived on the coast and ate the meat of caught lobsters (lobsters without claws). While hunting them, he looked out to sea every day, hoping that a ship would pass and take him away. In October (spring in the southern hemisphere), southern elephant seals begin their breeding season and begin invading beaches. The males of this species are very large and aggressive, but it turned out that the island on which the sailor was stranded was quite large and had an area of u200bu200babout 47 square meters. km. Selkirk retreated inland, away from the sea, and living conditions there proved to be better.
The sailor discovered wild goats on the island; It was impossible for these animals to have gotten there naturally. They were brought by Spanish colonists, but they had already abandoned Mas a Tierra by the time Selkirk was imprisoned, and it became desolate again. The old helmsman hunted goats and milked them, but no less important, he skinned them. Selkirk, who spent his childhood in a tanner family, was helped and therefore was able to sew clothes for himself instead of worn-out clothes. In addition to goat meat, he also ate wild turnips, edible leaves of the cabbage tree, and pink pepper fruits.
For example, Selkirk improvised forging a new blade from the rings of barrels left on the beach when the old one became unusable. The old helmsman also built two huts from pepper tree branches: one as a kitchen and the other as a bedroom. The sailor’s only civilized leisure was the Bible, which he regularly read and sang hymns from, while also trying not to forget the English language.
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson had a very similar lifestyle. He regularly read the Bible and turned to religion, building a hut and making tools from scraps. The only important difference was that in the book the hero mastered agriculture and planted the seeds on the island with the seeds he took from the ship, while Selkirk only collected the fruits of wild plants. Finally, in the book, Robinson encountered cannibal natives, with whom a long adventure story and the appearance of the servant Friday are connected. The real Robinson only encountered the Spanish ships where he hid: the holder of the letter of marque should not have been executed on the spot without trial like a pirate, but the conditions of captivity for pirates were above average.
Return to the indigenous element versus moral transformation
Selkirk spent four years and four months on the island, until on February 2, 1709 the raider “Duke”, in which his old acquaintance Dampier served as the pilot, landed on him. After so many years of complete loneliness, the sailor could barely speak due to the sheer joy of finally seeing people and even old comrades. The Duke’s captain, Woods Rogers, jokingly called Selkirk the governor of the island, but the attitude towards the monk was not at all cynical.
First, he shared provisions with the sailors, buying 2-3 goats a day, and also helped the crew recover from scurvy. Second, Rogers and his team were impressed by “The Governor’s” physical strength and mental composure. “You may have noticed that loneliness and isolation from the world are not as unbearable as most people think. Such views are especially valid in situations where people are thrown into and faced with the inevitable, as was the case with this man,” the captain said.Rogers, Woodes (1712). A Wandering Journey Around the World: First to the South Sea, Once to the East Indies, and Homeward by the Cape of Good Hope
Rogers appointed Selkirk as first mate and then gave him command of a Spanish-captured ship. After his rescue, the former prisoner took up piracy with renewed vigor, participating in many raids and even completing a trip around the world in 1711. He later returned to Britain, where he married first one woman and then a second woman. The sailor noted that life on the island was not that bad, he was happy and calm there. After some time ashore, Selkirk decided to join the Royal Navy and took part in anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Africa until his death from yellow fever on 13 December 1721. According to tradition, they buried him at sea.
Robinson Crusoe’s fate was completely different. A British ship also landed on the island, but only so that the rebels could land the captain on the island. Robinson, along with Friday and other people rescued from the cannibals, helped the captain regain command and then sent him back to London. Crusoe’s imprisonment lasted 28 years and no one believed he was alive. The original novel ends with the ex-convict cashing in the profits from the plantation he has owned all this time and deciding to move on to a quiet life with his friend Friday. Defoe included in his book a moral lesson characteristic of his age: how a man devoid of virtue engaged in a sinful activity (slave trade) in his youth, but then, far from civilization, with the help of faith, what experience did he experience? moral transformation and then began to live according to his conscience.