Selkirk was a veteran seaman. At fifteen years of age, he had run away from home, the seaside village of Largo, Scotland. He sailed on merchant ships between the West Indies and England and learned navigation, which enabled him to become a ship's officer. He joined an English ship called the Cinque Ports. As sailing master in 1703, he had piloted the Cinque Ports from England south through the Atlantic Ocean, around stormy Cape Horn.
The Cinque Ports reached the remote Spanish island of Juan Fernández off the West coast of South America. The island lies 360 miles due west of Valparaiso, Chile. Because England and Spain were at war, the island was not a safe place for an English ship. He knew from charts that the island was about twelve miles long and four miles wide. He was twenty-seven years old and strongly built. He also possessed a quick temper.
The island was the only anchorage and watering place that could be chanced along the Spanish-held South American coast. While water casks were being refilled from freshwater streams on shore and trees cut for the woodbin, Selkirk inspected the ship. After its long passage from England to Juan Fernández, many repairs were needed.
The captain, though, would hear none of it. Repairs could take days. Spanish warships could appear any time. He was determined that as soon as water and wood came aboard, they would leave. Selkirk argued that the captain was being overly cautious but the latter refused to yield. Selkirk stubbornly refused to accept the decision. Now his well-known temper began to rise. The captain decided to call Selkirk's bluff. He left Selkirk alone on the island and left.
As the night came on, it's unlikely that he was deeply distressed. He believed that the whole episode had been an unfortunate fit of temper on both their parts. His marooning on the island would be temporary — maybe a day, a week, and the Cinque Ports would come back. He was navigator, the one man able to sail the poorly charted ocean and find the way back to England. He would just have to make the best of it until the ship returned.
He considered building a fire but decided against it. Savages might see the flames. He had heard of flesh eaters on South Pacific islands. His sea chest held a few linen shirts and wool stockings, flint and steel for making fire, cooking pot, brass spyglass, hatchet, knife, and his books on navigation and geometry. As the days went by, his hopes of the ship returning diminished. He found crabs, mussels, and clams for food. He managed to build a fire and used water from a stream.
After weeks on the beach, Selkirk shifted to a cave whose hollow entrance offered an advantage: a high lookout over the bay, a place to watch for a ship. He slept whole days away. Sleep was his only escape. Awake, he whistled Scottish folk tunes, a human sound in the island's stillness. Sometime in May or June of 1705, after eight or nine months on the beach and in the cave, Selkirk admitted a hard truth - the Cinque Ports would not be returning to the island. It was possible that he would stay here for years, perhaps for the rest of his days.
He discovered waterfalls and streams and marveled at the island birds—hawks, owls, petrels, puffins, blackbirds, and hummingbirds. In one valley he came upon a field of turnips and stands of fig trees. He found patches of oats, pumpkins, radishes, parsnips, and parsley growing wild. Selkirk gathered the crops gratefully, but how they came to grow there he didn't know. (In 1591 Spanish settlers from the South American mainland had planted crops and grazed goats during a brief but unsuccessful attempt to farm and build homes on the island.)
He stacked dry grass and branches, ready to set on fire. The smoke would signal a passing ship. But a signal fire also meant taking a fearful risk. The waters between Juan Fernández and the coast of South America were patrolled by Spanish and French warships. A smoke signal might bring one or the other. "[The Spanish] would murder him," he feared, "or make a slave of him in the [silver] mines." Despite his daily watch, no ship arrived to rescue him. He was alone, both master of the island and its prisoner.
Selkirk's days followed a regular routine. After a reading in the Bible, he prepared a light breakfast — fruit, a cabbage leaf, a drink of fresh water. Next a bath in the nearby stream, scrubbing himself with pumice, a soft volcanic stone. He mashed charcoal from the fire pit into powder, placed a line on a finger, scrubbed his teeth, then rinsed his mouth in the stream. A walk on the beach might reward him with the capture of a sea turtle. Sometimes he fished for snapper, bonito, sea bass, and yellowtails.
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