Pirate and Slaver
Alexander Selkirk was born in 1676 to a tanner’s family in the Scottish village of Lower Largo. He developed a difficult reputation early on, and around age thirty he chose a seafaring life and joined the pirates. This term referred to privateers sanctioned by the British Navy to target enemy ships, primarily Spanish vessels. It was less robbery and more the pursuit of wartime trophies.
Selkirk sailed on the 26-gun St. Louis under the famed pirate William Dampier. He later served as coxswain on the 16-gun Cinque Ports alongside George. In the spring and summer of 1704, the Five Harbors expedition broke away from Dampier’s fleet and anchored near Mas a Tierra in the Juan Fernandez archipelago, off the western coast of Chile. There Selkirk argued that the ship’s tech was so poor that staying on a desert island would beat sailing on a leaky vessel. The helmsman spoke in humor, but Captain Stradling heard him clearly.
He left the sailor on shore with a rifle, axe, knife, cooking pot, Bible, clothing, and a bed. Selkirk’s assessment proved prescient: the Five Harbors soon sank and the crew fell into Spanish hands.
The life path of the literary Robinson Crusoe diverges sharply. Crusoe is a romantic who has dreamed of the sea since youth. He finds a place for himself but eventually becomes a slave trader and even sells a Berber boy who assists him in escaping captivity. During a slave raid, Crusoe ends up on a deserted island after his ship is wrecked in a storm, with only the salvage he carries. He becomes the sole survivor, carving out a primitive life from the wreck’s remnants.
Hunting and gathering versus agriculture
Initially, Selkirk lived along the coast, living off lobsters and watching the sea for ships that might take him home. In October, when southern elephant seals breed, they surge onto beaches. The males are massive and fierce, yet the island is large enough to support a growing population of goats and other life. Selkirk moves inland, finding that life farther from the surf is more tolerable.
Goats dot the landscape; these animals could not have arrived by chance. Spanish colonists had left Mas a Tierra long before Selkirk’s arrival, and the island had since fallen empty. Selkirk skins the goats and milks them, fashioning garments from skins given his upbringing in a tanning family. Alongside goat meat, he eats wild turnips, edible leaves from the cabbage tree, and pink pepper fruit.
He improvises a new blade from barrel rings stranded on the shore when his old tool wears out. He constructs two huts from pepper tree branches, one serving as a kitchen and the other as a bedroom. His only civilized leisure is the Bible, which he reads regularly and from which he sings hymns, while stubbornly maintaining his grasp of English.
In contrast, Robinson Crusoe in the novel mirrors a similar lifestyle—reading the Bible, building shelter, and fashioning tools from scrap. The primary difference is Crusoe’s engagement with agriculture, attempting to plant seeds recovered from the wreck. He encounters cannibals in the fiction, while the real Selkirk mostly faces Spanish ships, and the life of a letter of marque holder carried its own kind of peril. In the end, the real islander’s captivity was less harsh than the fates of the fictional castaways.
Return to the indigenous element versus moral transformation
Selkirk spends four years and four months on the island until a ship called the Duke, with Dampier aboard as navigator, finally reaches him. After years of isolation, he cannot help but feel overwhelming joy at the sight of people and familiar faces. The Duke’s captain, Woods Rogers, playfully called Selkirk the island governor, yet the respect shown to him was sincere and warm.
First, Selkirk shares provisions with the crew, buying 2–3 goats a day and helping the sailors recover from scurvy. Rogers and his team are impressed by his physical strength and calm demeanor. The captain notes that loneliness and isolation do not always erode a person’s spirit; sometimes they reveal inner resilience—an observation that is echoed in later journeys and reports. Rogers appoints Selkirk as first mate and then entrusts him with command of a captured Spanish ship. After rescue, the former prisoner resumes piracy with renewed vigor, taking part in numerous raids and even circling the globe in a single voyage. He eventually returns to Britain, where he marries twice. The island life, he later wrote, had been peaceful and fulfilling. He eventually joins the Royal Navy and participates in anti-piracy patrols off Africa, where he dies from fever and is reportedly buried at sea.
Robinson Crusoe’s fate diverges. A British ship lands on his island not to aid but to reposition a captain. Crusoe and Friday, among others rescued from cannibals, aid the captain in reclaiming command and are eventually sent home to London. Crusoe’s confinement lasts decades, and he is believed dead by many. The novel frames a moral evolution: a man who engaged in slave trading in youth finds direction and conscience through years of isolation and faith, shaping a moral transformation and guiding him toward a quieter life when he returns to civilization.