Siraj ud-daula - II

Strangely, Siraj had a strong hold on his grandfather, Alivardi Khan. The old man had had no sons of his own, only three daughters, and after the death from smallpox of his only other grandson, Siraj’s elder brother, all his hopes rested on the survivor. Even when Siraj had revolted against Aliverdi in 1750 and seized Patna, the fond grandfather had forgiven him. For some time there was hope that Aliverdi Khan might see sense and appoint as successor his generous and popular son-in-law, Nawazish Khan, who was married to his eldest daughter. According to the consensus of the court, this would have been the perfect choice. 

But instead, in 1754, Siraj was formally named his heir. By 1755, this had become a matter of real concern, for it was clear to everyone that the eighty-year-old Nawab, stricken with dropsy, was nearing the end. At around this time, he received reports that the English had built fortifications around Calcutta against his express orders against this since they feared an attack by the French. They were defiant and insolent which did not please the Nawab. 

But before he decided on his course of action, Alivardi died and was succeeded by Siraj ud-daula. He had strained relations with the English and he decided on an aggressive course of action rather than the diplomatic means preferred by Alivardi. Accordingly, he marched off with his army, 70,000-strong, to conquer Calcutta, and bring its arrogant merchants to heel. The English thought that the new Nawab was merely bluffing and would never dare to attack Fort William. But in the battle that followed, they were hopelessly outnumbered and defeated. 

Six months later, troops led by Clive reached Calcutta from Madras and retook it. He then declared war on Siraj ud-Daula in the name of the Company; the first time that the EIC had ever formally declared war on an Indian prince. Two weeks later, Siraj ud-Daula again descended on Calcutta with a 60,000 strong army. In the battle that followed, the English managed to terrify Siraj into signing a treaty which restored almost all their privileges. 

The situation was now complicated by the outbreak of hostilities globally between the British and the French in what became known as the Seven Year War. As part of this war, the British captured the nearby French colony of Chandernagar. Siraj was in two minds about who to support - his relations with the French were better but he dare not offend the British. At one point he sent a relief force towards Chandernagar, hesitated, and then withdrew it. A day later, he sent a message to Clive telling of his 'inexpressible pleasure’ at his victory. With the message he sent a present. But it was now too late.

There the whole Bengal campaign would have ended, but for the hatred and disgust now felt for Siraj ud-Daula by his own court, and especially Bengal’s all-powerful dynasty of bankers, the Jagat Seths. He had alienated many of his grandfather’s old military commanders, particularly the veteran general Mir Jafar Ali Khan, an Arab soldier of fortune. Mir Jafar had helped in many of Aliverdi’s most crucial victories and had led the successful attack on Calcutta. But having taken the town and defeated the Company in battle, he had then been sidelined, and the governorship given instead to a Hindu rival, Raja Manikchand. He and many others were tired of living under such an administration. 

They now decided to use the EIC’s military forces to overthrow Siraj. The Company learned that Mir Jafar was prepared to offer the Company the vast sum of 2.5 crore rupees if they would help him remove the Nawab. Further investigation by the EIC revealed that the scheme had wide backing among the nobility but that Mir Jafar, an uneducated general with no talent in politics, was simply a front for the real force behind the coup – the Jagat Seth bankers. The offer was increased to Rs.2.8 crore, a further Rs110,000 a month to pay for Company troops, zamindari rights near Calcutta, a mint in the town and confirmation of duty-free trade. Dalrymple writes: 

This was something quite new in Indian history: a group of Indian financiers plotting with an international trading corporation to use its own private security force to overthrow a regime they saw threatening the income they earned from trade. 

Then came the Battle of Plassey after a lot of hesitation on the part of Mir Jaffer. Siraj's army was about twenty times larger than that of the Company and luck in the form of a storm was required for the latter to win. The Company troops made sure to keep their powder and fuses dry under tarpaulins; but the Mughals did not. Naturally, Siraj's guns were silenced while the Company's guns were not and it is not hard to guess who won. Thus it was that fortuitously, Mir Jaffer became Nawab of Bengal. 

Now a fugitive, Siraj ud-Daula fled the capital. A fakir he had oppressed in the past recognized him and gleefully informed his enemies. He was caught and brought back to Murshidabad and brutally put to death. He was only twenty-five years old.

Siraj ud-daula - I

The common story we read in school history textbooks is that Siraj ud-doula was betrayed by Mir Jaffer enabling the British to defeat the former at the battle of Plassey. This usually is taken to be start of British rule in India. But, as is usually the case with history, the truth seems a bit more complicated than is depicted in school books. 

The seeds of destruction of the Mughal dynasty were laid during Aurangzeb's reign and after his death, the empire disintegrated rapidly. Succession disputes and devastating Maratha raids led to several Mughal regional governors behaving as if they were independent rulers. They still used the name of the Mughal state, and the name of the Emperor to invoke authority, but in practice they began to feel more and more independent.

The one partial exception to this pattern was Bengal, where the Governor, Murshid Quli Khan, remained fiercely loyal to the Emperor, and continued annually to send bounty to Delhi. By the 1720s, Bengal was providing most of the revenues of the central government, and to maintain the flow of funds, Murshid Quli Khan used increasingly harsh methods to collect axes. As the country grew increasingly anarchic, Murshid Quli Khan found innovative ways to get the annual tribute to Delhi since the roads were now not safe enough to transport bullion. 

Instead, he used the credit networks of a family of Marwari Oswal Jain financiers called the Jagat Seths, the Bankers of the World. They exercised influence and power that were second only to the Governor himself, and they soon came to achieve a reputation akin to that of the Rothschilds. East India Company (EIC) officials realised that the Jagat Seths were their natural allies and that their interests in most matters coincided. They also took liberal advantage of the Jagat Seths’ credit facilities. This access of EIC to streams of Indian finance would have a big influence on subsequent events. 

In 1740, Aliverdi Khan came to the throne in Bengal in a military coup financed and masterminded by the Jagat Seth bankers, who now controlled the finances of Bengal. The Jagat Seths could make or break anyone in Bengal, including the ruler. Aliverdi proved to be a popular, cultured and capable ruler. His bravery, persistence and military genius kept the Maratha invasions at bay, something few other Mughal generals had ever succeeded in doing. 

Aliverdi Khan created a strong and stable political, economic and political centre in Murshidabad. Under his rule, Bengal was a rare island of calm and prosperity amid the anarchy of Mughal decline. Bengalis came to remember the last years of Aliverdi Khan as a golden age. There was only one cloud on the horizon: Aliverdi Khan’s grandson and heir apparent, Siraj ud-Daula. William Dalrymple writes in The Anarchy: 

Not one of the many sources for the period – Persian, Bengali, Mughal, French, Dutch or English – has a good word to say about Siraj: according to Jean Law, who was his political ally, ‘His reputation was the worst imaginable.’ The most damning portrait of him, however, was painted by his own cousin, Ghulam Hussain Khan, who had been part of his staff and was profoundly shocked by the man he depicts as a serial bisexual rapist and psychopath: ‘His character was a mix of ignorance and profligacy,’ he wrote.

Siraj was known for all kinds of debauchery and for his revolting cruelty. An example was that when women were bathing in the Ganges, he would send his henchmen in small boats to carry them off. Sometimes, he would intentionally ram the ferry boats to jolt them, or make them spring a leak, in order to experience the cruel pleasure of frightening a hundred or more people. He had no real talent for government, ruling only by inspiring fear. He was by nature rash, but lacking in courage, was stubborn and irresolute, quick to take offense, was treacherous at heart, without faith or trust in anyone. 

The nobles and commanders, who had served Alivardi loyally, had conceived a dislike to the prince because of his levity, his harsh language and the hardness of his heart. His most serious error was to alienate the great bankers of Bengal, the Jagat Seths. Anyone who wanted to operate in the region did well to cultivate their favour; but Siraj did the opposite. Jagat Seth was often used with slight and derision, and Siraj had mortally affronted him by sometimes threatening him with circumcision. The Jagat Seth was in his heart totally alienated and lost to Siraj’s regime.

Mary Anning - III

Once while searching for fossils after a storm, Mary came across a winged creature unlike anything she had ever encountered. This fossil had a long tail with dozens of vertebrae, hints of claws and wings and an enormous skull, rounded jaw and long beak. The entire fossil was less than four feet long. It looked to be a cross between a vampire bat and some kind of reptile. Mary’s discovery would eventually be called a Dimorphodon, the earliest type of Jurassic pterosaur. But, like before, Mary was not given credit for the discovery. 

It was the first pterosaur — or “winged lizard” — ever discovered outside of Germany. First appearing about 200 million years ago — almost 70 million years before the first known bird — pterosaurs had existed alongside dinosaurs. A contemporary of Mary’s earlier finds, the ichthyosaur and the plesiosaur, the pterosaur was believed to be the biggest creature ever to fly. Over time, other pterosaur skeletons would be found. Although some were as small as today’s birds, others had wingspans of nearly 40 feet.

In March 1829, she uncovered the second complete skeleton of the long-necked plesiosaur. So magnificent was the skeleton that an international battle erupted between museums wishing to be the first to showcase it. Finally, the British Museum purchased it for £105 pounds. The Edinburgh Philosophical Journal made mention of her fossil finds that year in the first-ever published list of Britain’s greatest geological collections. 

In December 1829, Mary came across a fossil that wasn’t enormous in size but certainly was peculiar in appearance. A mere 18 inches long, it had a long snout and looked a bit like a fish, but not a regular one. In 1833, scientists agreed that the fossil was indeed a fish, a fish-eating chimaeroid with a body like an otter’s and a flat tail like a beaver’s. The name chimaeroid was derived from a fire breathing she-monster in Greek mythology that boasts a lion’s body and a serpent’s tail.

It was a fossil of a cartilaginous fish — a fish later lumped together with the likes of sharks, skates, rays, and other vertebrates with internal skeletons made entirely of cartilage. It was ancestor to both the shark and the ray. To the untrained eye, the importance of the find might have seemed somewhat contrived. But it was a significant find because it was a transitional creature between sharks and rays. Most important for Mary, it was her fourth major discovery, one that kept her in the spotlight for some time.

Mary ended 1830 on a high note unearthing that December yet another species of plesiosaur, a large-skulled creature with a neck at least three times as long as its head. What made it still more interesting was that resting on the bones of the pelvis was its Coprolite (fossilized feces) finely illustrated. Eventually this creature was deemed to be a new type of plesiosaur — one with more neck bones than other types. As usual it was never mentioned during the formal proceedings that it was Mary who originally found the plesiosaur.

One of the few scientists who had acknowledged her work was a Swiss-born American biologist and geologist Luis Agassiz. In 1841, he would pay Mary her official due by naming a species of fish after her: the Acrodus anningiae. In 1844 he named yet another species of fish after her: Belenostomus anningiae. Such acts of respect for women were unheard of among Mary’s British colleagues. Every one of her own finds had been named after men. In July 1846, Mary was paid some due locally when she was named the first honorary member of the new Dorset County Museum in Dorchester, established the same year. 

Lacking adequate treatment, Mary Anning finally succumbed to breast cancer, dying on Tuesday, March 9, 1847, after having endured serious pain for at least two years. Her body was buried in the yard outside St. Michael’s church that overlooks the sea, at the top of the eroding Church Cliffs she had combed so often. Members of the church and the Geological Society in London paid tribute to Mary with a stained-glass window at St. Michael’s that portrays six acts of mercy from the Bible. The window was dedicated “in commemoration of her usefulness in furthering the science of geology . . . her benevolence of heart, and integrity of life.” 

By the end of her life she had become one of the most recognized names in geological circles, working closely with many of Europe’s most famous learned gentlemen scientists. With them, she’d debated the meaning of fossils and resolved disagreements. Mary’s steady stream of discoveries, begun when she was 12, had laid the foundations for groundbreaking reports on a broad array of bizarre prehistoric creatures.

Even London’s literary giant, Charles Dickens knew of her life. He wrote about Mary in his weekly literary magazine. In it he praised her “good stubborn English perseverance,” her intuition, her courage, physical and mental, in the face of locals who initially mocked her eccentricity. In his article, Dickens highlighted the strange lack of appreciation and the overall disregard for Mary from those in her own town.

At scientific societies, such as the Royal Society and the Geological Society, men still held sway, as women were barred until 1919. Even in the 1830s, men still regarded women as mostly weak and frivolous, more of a hindrance than a help in the scientific arena. Mary complained how “these men of learning have sucked her brains, and made a great deal by publishing works of which she furnished the contents, while she derived none of the advantages." But what was even worse was the careless disregard of museums when handling her discoveries.

As for Mary’s actual discoveries, many aren’t there. Some are housed in various institutions across the country, but too many have been lost or misplaced. The skull of the first ichthyosaur found by Mary’s brother, Joseph, in 1811 is on display at the Natural History Museum in London. The rest of the 17-foot skeleton is nowhere to be found. Although the British Museum purchased the whole specimen in 1819, it either neglected to keep the body or else somehow lost track of it over the years. 

It was fossils like the ones Mary discovered that scientists relied on the most in helping them to decipher the global geologic record. It was Mary’s spectacular marine reptiles that pushed them into finally contemplating a different explanation for the world’s origin. Mary’s many finds also laid the groundwork for Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, elucidated in his 1859 On the Origin of Species. Darwin drew on Mary’s fossilized creatures as irrefutable evidence that life in the past was nothing like life in the present. At the time, merely suggesting such an idea was considered outrageous and even downright blasphemous.

London’s Natural History Museum refers to Mary on its website as the “greatest fossil hunter ever known.” Stephen Jay Gould said, "Mary Anning [is] probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology."

Mary Anning - II

Between about 1815 and 1819, when Mary was not even 20, she unearthed several more complete specimens of ichthyosaurs. Some she uncovered were only the size of a trout; others, nearly as big as a baleen whale. For scientists, Mary’s skeletons provided a picture of the kind of creatures that inhabited the seas during the remote past. For geologists, the ichthyosaur specimens raised the possibility that a link once existed between fish and reptile.

In spite of her fossil finds, she was struggling to make ends meet but fortunately she somehow managed to draw the attention of a very important admirer. He had a fossil collection which he decided to sell. The sale brought in more than £400 — comparable to nearly $50,000 today — all of which he handed over to the Annings. For the first time in their lives, Mary and her family were financially secure. The event also delivered a much-needed publicity boost, and across Europe, an increasing number of fossil collectors began asking about this young woman from Lyme Regis named Mary Anning, the young recipient of the auction’s proceeds. 

A year after the auction, in early 1821, she discovered and excavated a beautifully preserved ichthyosaur only five feet long. That same month she spent days digging out another much larger ichthyosaur skeleton, this one a fearsome 20 feet long. Later that year she found another five-foot fossil that was eventually named Ichthyosaurus vulgaris. Early in 1822 she retrieved yet another large ichthyosaur, this one at least nine feet long. As before, these finds were credited not to her but to the monied gentlemen collectors who purchased them.

By 1823, when Mary was 24, the family’s financial situation was once again precarious. The fossil business was an unpredictable one and, as geology grew into a popular science, there were more people hunting for fossils, meaning more competition. Early in the year, Mary sold an exceptionally well- preserved ichthyosaur skeleton to a collection of geologists. But, as usual, during the presentation, the lecturer failed to mention the young woman who had found it.

This time, however, the oversight did not go unnoticed. Local geologist and fossil collector George Cumberland immediately fired off a letter to a Bristol newspaper praising the “persevering industry of a young female fossilist of the name of Hanning.” (He spelled her name the way local Dorset residents pronounced it.) He told readers how Mary had removed from the cliffs “relics of a former world . . . at the continual risk of being crushed by the suspended fragments they leave behind. . . . [T]o her exertions we owe nearly all the fine specimens of Ichthyosauri of the great collections."

Then she discovered a strange creature that resembled a turtle with a flat mouth and stubby short tail and, oddest of all, an abnormally long neck. It was named Plesiosaurus, meaning “near to reptile.” News of the find spread to the eminent Georges Cuvier who expressed suspicions that the new animal might be a sham. The length of the neck seemed unrealistic. To the scientific community, Cuvier was far too good at what he did to be wrong. If he was dubious, then everyone else would be too.

For Mary, Cuvier’s misgivings were a disaster. If he convinced others that the new fossil was a forgery, the Anning family’s reputation could be ruined forever. At a special meeting to arbitrate on the matter, many recognized that its features precisely matched all the earlier similar findings of parts of an animal. After a lengthy discussion, the society members were convinced that Mary’s skeleton wasn’t a fake. Perhaps for the first time, Cuvier was shown to be fallible. Later, after more careful study of Mary’s drawings and eventually the bones themselves, Cuvier admitted that he’d rushed to judgment and made a mistake. In The Fossil Hunter, Shelley Emling writes: 

It was Mary’s discovery of the plesiosaur that gave impetus to serious contemplations on evolution, which would years later feed into Darwin’s theories on evolution. Although the ichthyosaur was the first extinct animal known to science, it wasn’t completely unlike modern dolphins and tuna. But plesiosaurs were so different from any modern animal that they couldn’t be so easily dismissed as a variety of a known existing creature.

Mary continued digging up fossils that fit no blueprint previously imagined. She discovered several new species of ammonites and continued to master anatomy by cutting up and studying both the soft tissue of modern fish and the dried up bones of ancient ones, without ever stepping foot inside any museum or university. At a time when a woman did not walk in public with a man to whom she was not related, Mary was visited frequently by many great scholars, all of them men, in search of information as much as fossils. 

For years, while out searching for fossils, Mary had stumbled across twisted, rounded dark-gray pebbles, some with black spots. Often they were no more than four inches long and only an inch or so in diameter. But sometimes they were much larger. On at least a few occasions, Mary had found these stones inside the skeletons of ichthyosaurs, leading her to believe they might be fossilized clumps of undigested food that remained in the intestines, if not ejected at death.

To her, the reason these masses had taken on their puzzling shapes and spiral markings might have been obvious: They simply had passed in a soft form through the intestines of ancient animals. In 1828, a scientist who studied these pebbles that Mary had discovered, named the fossilized feces “coprolites”. The study of fossilized feces would turn out to be one of the most important techniques available to paleontologists. Years later, it was coprology that led scientists to determine that the Tyrannosaurus rex was a carnivore.

Mary Anning - I

Mary Anning is a name that most people would not have heard of. It was only after her death that she gained a group of determined fans researching how such a marginalized person - her sex, regional dialect, lack of formal education, and adherence to the Dissenter faith, a religious strain that didn’t conform to the teachings of the established Church of England - managed to hold her own in a male-dominated field. Even if her name is not familiar, many people would have heard this tongue-twister inspired by her: "She sells sea-shells sitting on the sea-shore."

Mary Anning was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, in the southwest English county of Dorset. Mary's father, Richard, was a cabinetmaker and amateur fossil collector. By the time she was five or six, Mary was actively hunting for fossils with her father who taught her how to look for and clean the fossils they found on the beach. 

At this time, most people in the Christian world accepted the idea of an earth created in six days in 4004 BC. The land animals harmoniously shared the garden with Adam and Eve. During Noah’s time, the global flood decimated all life except for that which had been brought into his ark. Most people had absolute faith in the fact that species never changed or evolved, or became extinct. The world was pretty simple - there wasn’t any radioactivity or relativity, extinction or evolution, to complicate matters. 

Mary enjoyed one big advantage: the very good fortune of having been born in Lyme Regis alongside some of the most geologically unstable coastlines in the world. Its unstable cliffs held the remains of many ancient reptiles that used to roam the world hundreds of millions of years in the past. There were all sorts of fossils which used to baffle locals - what later were determined to be bivalves, ammonites, belemnites, and brachiopods. Scientists eventually discovered that the cliffs east and west of Lyme Regis portrayed an almost continuous sequence of rock formations spanning the entire Mesozoic Era, also known as the "Age of Reptiles," which spanned from approximately 252 to 66 million years ago. 

Mary's father died when she was eleven after which her schooling was neglected. In those days, most people thought that intellect in a woman was something to be avoided and that educating girls, especially lower class ones, was a waste of time. Only men with a certain amount of wealth or status could vote, attend university, or hold public office. But even at the age of 11, Mary was already very intelligent and articulate despite her rudimentary schooling and could easily converse with adults. 

Fossil hunting was dangerous work. She had often narrowly avoided disaster. Her father’s own spillon the rocks likely had contributed to his death. Whenever the weather became rough, which was quite often, the winds could kick up giant waves with the power to pin even stronger people against rocks and sheer cliff faces. But Mary would ignore the warnings and continue looking for fossils on cliffs that appeared ready to buckle at a moment’s notice. 

Shortly after Mary’s twelfth birthday, a few months after her father had died, her brother spotted an enormous fossil skull of a strange lizard-like creature. Mary searched patiently for nearly a year, working with her hammer, chipping away at the rock, before she found the rest of the skeleton. The creature looked like a mix of a  dolphin, a crocodile, a fish and a lizard. Mary realized that the skeleton was a much greater discovery than the skull had originally indicated. 

Eventually news spread far and wide that a young girl from Lyme Regis had made an incredible find: an entire connected skeleton of a creature never before seen. The creature was named ichthyosaur, or “fish lizard.” Even though the description turned out to be a misnomer, since the creature was neither a fish nor a lizard but rather a sea reptile that lived at the the time of dinosaurs, the name has stuck to this day.

The find was nothing short of a small miracle. No one in the world could recall seeing such a creature before. People started wondering: How could someone have found the remains of a creature that no longer existed when every single being in the world was designed at the same time and with a specific purpose by a loving and all-powerful God? During Mary’s time, it was inconceivable that a completely different world might have existed before humans became a part of it.

But Mary didn’t receive much recognition for her discovery. The Geological Society was becoming a highly influential body but it didn’t admit women, not even as a member’s guest. Britain’s leading anatomist made an address to scientists to describe the skeleton but never mentioned her when thanking those who brought the fossil to the world’s attention. He also incorrectly praised a museum for Mary’s careful cleaning of the fossil. 

By the time she was a teenager, Mary was a voracious reader. Within a few years, she became a self-taught expert in of anatomy, animal morphology, and science illustration. She had an unerring eye for a fossil’s best hiding places, developed through hours of on-the-spot training. Day after day, no matter what the weather, Mary toiled away amid the shaky cliffs prone to landslides. When she wasn’t strolling the beach, she was likely to be found studying not only long-gone animals but also modern ones, dissecting dead squid, cuttlefish, and other soft-bodied cephalopods to find out what they ate, how they lived, and in what ways they moved their bones and muscles.

Alexander Selkirk - III

Daniel Defoe was a failed businessman. At the time accounts of Selkirk's adventures came out in 1712 and 1713, he was in his early fifties. Short of money, he was trying to pay off debts, support a wife and children, and maintain a big house by writing books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles. Defoe had a sharp tongue and his political stories annoyed powerful men in the church and government. One of his pamphlets charged some members of Parliament with disrespect for the rights of Englishmen. They did not appreciate his views. A £50 reward was offered for his capture.

He was betrayed by an informer and was charged with sedition. Defoe was fined £135 and spent the next six months in prison. Even though he wrote a lot, by his sixtieth year Defoe was broke, partly because he made unwise investments in business ventures that didn't turn profits. He desperately needed a money-spinner. He remembered the accounts of Selkirk's marooning that he had read. The story of a man surviving alone on an uninhabited island was one that he could use.

In the early eighteenth century almost all books published were nonfiction. Histories, biographies, and travel books were popular subjects. Novels rarely appeared. Defoe spoke with his printer who  agreed that a book about a marooned seaman on a tropical island might sell, but only if it read like nonfiction. In order to achieve this, Defoe decided to write in such a way that it would seem that the hero was writing the book himself, make the story appear as though it had really happened.

In April 1719 the new book appeared in the shops of London booksellers. Defoe's name did not appear as author. The title page read: "The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner. Written by Himself. It became the most famous adventure story ever told, the tale of the shipwrecked mariner who survived twenty-eight years on an island off Brazil. The book is still available today in bookstores and libraries almost three hundred years after it was first published.

Readers believed Crusoe's story was true. In the Preface, Defoe noted that the book was "a just history of fact; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it." The book was so popular that it was reprinted a month after its first print run of 1500 copies and thrice more by the end of the year. The story was serialized in The Original London Post for sixty-five weeks, an astonishing run. Defoe never named Selkirk as the model for his hero. 

But in a new edition of his novel he wrote: "There is a man alive, and well known too, the actions of whose life are [my] subject, and to whom all or most part of the story alludes: this may be depended upon for the truth, and to this I set my name. Defoe's notes for his story, still preserved in the Guildhall Library in London, read in part: "Goats plenty. Fish: abundance, split and salt.... The fat of young seals good as olive oil."

There is also mention of a visit with a Captain Thomas Bowry of the East India Company, a shipping firm who showed Defoe maps of Juan Fernández. Ten years after it was published, Defoe's story appeared in French, and by 1760 in German, Dutch, and Russian. Translations appear today in nearly all the world's languages. After the success of the first Crusoe story, Defoe wrote two more: "Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe in 1719 and "Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe" the next year. 

In his lifetime, Defoe turned out an awesome amount of writing but only Crusoe and Moll Flanders (1722) remains in print today. Although he wrote a lot, Defoe never seemed to earn enough money to support his wife and seven children. In April 1731, he was hiding from people he owed money to in a shabby house in London where he died, some twelve years after his famous novel first appeared in which he created one of the most enduring characters in all fiction.

Did Selkirk ever read the story? Possibly. In April 1719, when the novel appeared, he was on leave from H.M.S. Enterprise and in London. On daily walks about the city he sometimes visited bookstores. At the end of his famous story, Defoe arranged for Crusoe to return to the island on which he had lived for twenty-eight years. But we know that was only fiction. Alexander Selkirk, the real-life Robinson Crusoe, never visited his island home again.

Alexander Selkirk - II

As he grew to know his island, he felt more comfortable. But there were days when the island's quiet grew heavy. He had no living soul to talk to. Moody and dispirited, he wondered what God had in mind, imprisoning him on this remote island. These melancholy periods, however, came about less and less as the weeks passed and his contentment continued to grow. He found his temper moderating. His angry outbursts at trees and sky for the injustice of his lot ceased. By the end of his second year on Juan Fernández, Selkirk was living comfortably. 

His life on Juan Fernández had become a daily joy, his days aboard ship and his home in Largo increasingly remote. The hut was warm, food plentiful. He was never bored. Knowledge of the island had replaced fear and ignorance. He had a sense of complete freedom, of fulfillment, of safe harbor. There was the solitude to endure, of course, and the lack of a mate or two to enjoy a drink and a chat. But in this he had no choice. He came to a decision. If fate decreed, he would be content to spend the rest of his days on his island kingdom, master of his own life and destiny.

(My reactions after becoming locked-in also followed a similar trajectory. When Time has done enough work, you find ways to deal with the new reality and eventually you get used to it. As soon as an imagined experience becomes an actual experience that cannot be changed, the brain looks for ways to analyse and explain it in a way that allows us to appreciate it. This happens even for regular, everyday events rather than just for terrible events like becoming a quadriplegic. Most people don’t realize how quickly the human mind gets adapted to new situations.)

One day he saw two ships heading for Juan Fernández. He saw their flags through his spyglass: English! Eight seamen came ashore and were bewildered by the sight of disheveled man who could only grunt and mutter words that sounded like "marooned ... marooned." One of the officers recognized Selkirk — "the best man on the Cinque Ports," he stated. Learning that Selkirk had been sailing master of the Cinque Ports and a veteran seaman "of great skill and conduct" he was appointed second mate of the ship.

On the way back home he had unexpected news about the crew of the Cinque Ports - it had run onto an underwater shelf, broke apart, and sank. Almost all the crew drowned, but the captain and six seamen made shore in a boat and were captured by waiting Spanish soldiers. Selkirk was stunned. What if he had not gone ashore on Juan Fernández? He might have drowned or still be wasting away in a Spanish prison. By choosing the island, he had escaped a dreadful fate.

Selkirk finally reached London on October 14,1711 eight years after he left. There had been days on a faraway island when he had expected never to see England again. Life must have seemed very good. Sometime in 1712, the captain of the ship published a book. Sections told about the rescue of Selkirk. The book became the most popular travel book of the year and was reprinted in French, Dutch, and German. Selkirk, the man who had survived four years alone on an island, became a celebrity. He was introduced to rich friends and invited to dinner parties. 

But he could never get used to this luxurious lifestyle. An article said, "[He] frequently bewailed his return to the world which could not ... with all its enjoyments, restore him to the tranquility of his solitude" on his island. He is quoted as saying, "I am now worth 800 pounds but shall never be so happy as when I was not worth a farthing." In late 1716 or early 1717 he enlisted in the Royal Navy. 

Sometime in November or December 1721, when in Africa, Selkirk became ill. Medicine at the time knew little about treating tropical diseases. He died a few days later. At a spot called Selkirk's Lookout on Juan Fernández today stands a bronze tablet placed in 1863. It reads:

In memory of Alexander Selkirk, mariner, a native of Largo, in the county of Fife, Scotland, who lived on this island in complete solitude for four years and four months. He was landed from the Cinque Ports galley, 96 tons, A.D. 1704, was taken off in the Duke, privateer, 12th Feb., 1709. He died Lieutenant of H.M.S. Weymouth A.D. 1728, aged 47 years.

The last date was incorrect. The Weymouth's logbook in the Public Records Office in London gives 1721 as the year of his passing. He was 41. Still, the tablet, erected nearly a century and a half after Selkirk's death, recognized the Scottish mariner's magnificent adventure — a salute to a fellow seaman who had survived four years alone on a remote island.

And by the time he died, he had become the role model for one of the most famous characters in fiction - Robinson Crusoe.