See what "Selkirk, Alexander" is in other dictionaries. The story of Alexander Selkirk, who became the prototype of Robinson Crusoe in Daniel Defoe's book Alexander Selkirk was the prototype

Thanks to the writer Daniel Defoe, everyone knows Robinson Crusoe, the conqueror of the wild nature of an uninhabited island, where he ended up due to a shipwreck. Much less famous is his real prototype - the Scotsman Alexander Selkirk, who spent almost five years on the same piece of land after he, not agreeing with the captain, was decommissioned from the ship "of his own free will" - right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Freebooters and adventurers

Now it is difficult to understand which of them is more real: Robinson, a native of the city of York, a family darling, or Alexander, the son of a shoemaker from the town of Largo on the North Sea coast. The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, Chile and Scotland are fighting for the right to be called the place where the real Robinson spent years in solitude.

But back to the origins.

The Scot, like his literary counterpart, according to Defoe, undoubtedly had a "passion for wandering" and "a desire to get rich sooner than circumstances allowed."

After listening to the local tavern "Red Lion" stories of experienced sailors, filibusters and other cheerful rabble about storms, distant lands, adventures and how easy it is to get gold, Alexander left home at the age of 18. Well, there were plenty of adventures: sailing on a ship to Africa, pirates, captivity, slavery ...
Here in the stories of Selkirk there is a gap, but he returned home, it seems, on a horse - with a gold earring in his ear and with money.

At home, in Largo, everything seemed insipid and boring to Alexander, and the opportunity to continue a life full of adrenaline soon turned up: William Dampier, a hydrograph scientist, corsair, author of travel books, went on two ships to the West Indies for gold.

England then encouraged the attack on Spanish merchant ships in the southern seas and allowed privateers (individuals using armed ships) to rob the enemy using the "right of war" - there was a permit from the authorities for this.

Thus, in 1704, Selkirk, from a sea robber operating at his own risk, turned into a completely legitimate representative of Great Britain - the boatswain of the 16-gun Sankpore galley, which accompanied the 26-gun frigate St. George, where Dampier himself was the captain.

Rebels - in the boat!

With varying success, they boarded ships, plundered coastal cities, attacked, fled, cursed and suspected each other of hiding booty. From the Atlantic went to the Pacific Ocean. They hit a big jackpot - the Spanish ship, full of brandy, flour, sugar, fabrics, surrendered without resistance.

But the luck of the corsairs did not rally - discontent and distrust grew more and more, and after a year and a half of joint navigation, the ships went in different directions: Dampier, still hoping to capture the Manila galleon with gold, remained in the Gulf of Panama, and the Selkirk galley headed for the deserted islands of the archipelago Juan Fernandez, where the crew was going to stock up on fresh water and firewood.

It was then that the scene played out, which later gave us the opportunity to read about the amazing adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Over the years, it is impossible to know whether the galley captain was such a tyrant, as some claim, or, as others insist, the boatswain turned out to be unbearably stubborn, but the result is obvious: an entry appeared in the ship's log that Alexander Selkirk was decommissioned from the ship "of his own free will" directly in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Among the corsairs, who were not distinguished by a special trepidation of feelings, it was in the order of things to resolve the misunderstandings that arose in this way and get rid of the objectionable. The necessary things were loaded into the boat: portable items, a flintlock gun, gunpowder, tobacco, an ax, a bowler hat, a Bible, and the Scot went on the most important journey in his life - to the rocky island of Mas a Tierra, located 670 km west of Chile and part of the Juan Fernandez archipelago.

The quick-tempered boatswain hoped that he would soon be picked up by some ship that had come in to replenish fresh water supplies. In the meantime, it was worth examining your temporary place of residence.

He became hardy, dexterous and wild

The archipelago, consisting of three islands: Mas a Tierra ("closer to the earth" - Spanish), Mas a Fuera ("farther from the earth") and Santa Clara - was discovered by the Spanish navigator Juan Fernandez in 1574 and named after him. In memory of this event, Fernandez, who himself lived on Mas-a-Tierra for three years, left specially brought goats there - as a living supply of provisions for random guests. And the guests came. Once there lived an Indian forgotten by pirates, and as many as nine sailors, disembarked from the ship for their love of gambling, swam corsairs for fresh water ... In a word, not an island, but a passage yard. But by the time the Selkirk appeared, there was not a single living soul there. Including in the real story of Robinson there was no Friday - he was later invented by Defoe.

The main enemy of our hero was fear - the fear of loneliness, which will never end. At first, he daily climbed the highest peak and peered into the horizon, even settled in a cave on the shore so as not to miss a random ship. About a year and a half, as Alexander later recalled, it took him to get used to his position and somehow come to terms with it. The rest, as it turned out, was manageable.

He built himself a sleeping hut and a kitchen hut, learned how to make fire, how to make dishes from coconuts. Seals and lobsters were found in the coastal waters, turtles laid their eggs, Fernandez's feral goats galloped along the mountain paths - Alexander was clearly not in danger of starving to death. When the gunpowder ran out, he tried to catch goats with his hands, fell into a crevice and spent three days unconscious. Since then, he has clipped the tendons of the goats to make them easier prey. Clothes were worn out, and then I had to remember the skill acquired in my father's house - dressing skins, and after that the outfit itself was sewn with a rusty nail. For four and a half years of his island life, Selkirk became hardy, agile and wild, like those same goats. In order not to become completely savage and not to forget human speech, he read the Bible aloud to himself every day.

How fame came

Salvation came on February 1, 1709, in the form of the English ship Duke. His captain, Woods Rogers, later described this meeting as follows: “At seven in the morning we approached the island of Juan Fernandez. Together with a huge number of crayfish, our boat brought a man in goat skins to the ship.<…>It was a Scot named Alexander Selkirk. For lack of practice, he forgot his language so much that we could hardly understand him, he seemed to pronounce the words halfway. ” Only once on board, the boatswain somehow found the gift of speech and told about what had happened to him. The saviors had their own plans, and Selkirk, before returning to the mainland, had to make a long and dangerous raid on the seven seas with them, so he only got home in October 1711 - already as the captain of a sailing ship captured on the campaign.

After the release of Woods Rogers's book "A Journey Around the World", in which he described the story of Alexander, the Scot, as they say, woke up famous. An interview with him was printed in a London newspaper that caught the eye of Daniel Defoe. What he read was the impetus for the birth of the concept of the book, which would later be called the prototype of the newest European novel. So at one point, at the peak of fame, the fates of the English writer, the Scottish boatswain and the island lost in the ocean converged.

After that, everyone's life went on as usual. Defoe, on the wave of success, publishes The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and a year later, a collection of essays, Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, which, however, did not arouse much reader interest. Selkirk, unable to find a place for himself in a “peaceful” life, returns to the fleet as the captain of the Weymouth ship, which belongs to the British Navy. In 1720, on a voyage to West Africa, he died of a tropical fever. It is said that the last words of the Scot were: "My dear island, why did I leave you?"

Landing in frozen lava

The inhabitants of three islands on Earth consider themselves direct descendants of Robinson: Largo, where Alexander Selkirk was born, Tobago, where, according to all signs, Defoe placed his hero (“off the coast of America near the mouth of the Orinoco River”), and, finally, Mas-a-Tierra, where "robinsonil" Selkirk is a direct prototype of the famous hermit. For the right to be called the island of Robinson Crusoe, there was a stubborn struggle between Mas-a-Tierra and Tobago - it is clear that not only out of love for art, but also with the hope of attracting more tourists.

Tobago suited everyone except uninhabited: when Robinson "stepped onto this shore on September 30, 1659", there were already two colonies on the island - Courland and Dutch. So half a century ago, Mas-a-Tierra won and was officially renamed the island of Robinson Crusoe, and the neighboring, smaller one, began to bear the name of Alexander Selkirk.

Settlers landed on the island at the end of the 19th century and formed the settlement of San Juan Batista, which, the only one in the entire archipelago, still exists today. To travelers coming from big cities, the island may even now seem almost uninhabited: only 630 inhabitants (almost without exception bearing the names Robinson, Friday and Daniel) on 96 km² of land, two dirt roads and two dozen cars at most.

Otherwise, little has changed over the centuries: the same land, cut by mountain ranges, palm-sized ferns, giant tortoises, hummingbirds, seals and small brown goats of Juan Fernandez habitually jumping over the mountains - this is the official name of this subspecies. Residents catch lobsters every day. Visiting treasure hunters roam the island from time to time in search of pirate treasures.

Getting to Robinson Crusoe is not easy. From a private airfield in Santiago, a 10-seat aircraft does not fly regularly, only with a full load. After three hours of churning over the ocean, the aircraft lands on a runway carved into hardened lava between mountain peaks. This place is not connected with the rest of the island by any communications, except for the mountain goat trail. A waiting jeep will lower things and people along the serpentine to the water, where a crowd of fur seals will greet the guests. Now on the boat, and then another two hours along the coast, to the inhabited part of the island.

By the way, in 2008, archaeologists discovered the site of the original Robinson: the remains of two huts located near fresh water, navigational instruments and other artifacts. The story of the real Robinson lives on. This, no doubt, would have amused the exuberant pride of the son of a Scottish shoemaker.

Alexander Selkirk (1676 - 13 December 1721) - Scottish sailor who spent four years on a desert island. It is likely that his travels inspired Daniel Defoe to write the novel " Adventures of Robinson Crusoe».

Selkirk was born in 1676 to a shoemaker and leather worker in Lower Largo, Scotland. In his youth, he showed a grumpy and rebellious disposition. From his youth he was a pirate in the South Seas, and in 1703 he joined the expedition of the famous privateer and explorer William Dampier.

In 1704, the ship on which he sailed stopped near an uninhabited island, which is now known as Robinson Crusoe Island, to replenish fresh water. Concerned about the ship's seaworthiness (and indeed, the ship soon sank and most of the crew died), Selkirk invited some of the crew to stay with him on the island, counting on the upcoming visit of another ship.

No one else agreed to stay with him. The captain said that he gave his consent and allowed to stay on the island. Selkirk immediately regretted his decision. He pursued the ship by boat, but to no avail.

So Selkirk stayed and lived for four years and four months without any human company. All he brought with him on the boat was a musket, gunpowder, carpenter's tools, a knife, a Bible, some clothes and ropes.

Hearing strange sounds from the interior of the island, and afraid of dangerous beasts, Selkirk stayed on the coastline. During this time, he ate shellfish and watched the ocean, hoping for salvation. Crowds of sea lions that gathered on the beach for breeding, in the end, forced him to still go to the middle of the island. When he got there, his lifestyle improved. Wild goats, which were brought earlier by sailors, gave him meat and milk. He also grew wild turnips, cabbage, and black pepper. In addition, there were many berries around. Although the rats attacked him at night, he was able to tame wild cats so that he could sleep peacefully and safely.

(1676 ) Date of death:

Biography

Life on the island

Alexander Selkirk had some things necessary for survival: an ax, a gun, a supply of gunpowder, etc. Suffering from loneliness, Selkirk got used to the island and gradually acquired the necessary survival skills. At first, his diet was meager - he ate shellfish, but over time he got used to it and found feral domestic goats on the island. Once upon a time, people lived here who brought these animals with them, but after they left the island, the goats became wild. He hunted them, thereby adding much-needed meat to his diet. Soon Selkirk tamed them and received milk from them. From vegetable crops, he found wild turnips, cabbages and black peppers, as well as some berries.

Rats were a danger to him, but fortunately for him, wild cats, previously brought by people, also lived on the island. In their company, he could sleep peacefully without fear of rodents. Selkirk built himself two huts out of pimento officinalis wood. His gunpowder supplies ran low and he was forced to hunt goats without a gun. While pursuing them, he once became so carried away by his pursuit that he did not notice the cliff from which he fell and lay like that for some time, miraculously surviving.

In order not to forget the English speech, he constantly read the Bible aloud. Not to say that he was a pious person - that's how he heard a human voice. When his clothes began to wear out, he began to use goatskins for them. As the son of a tanner, Selkirk knew well how to dress skins. After his shoes wore out, he did not make himself new ones, because his feet, rough with calluses, allowed him to walk without shoes. He also found old barrel hoops and was able to make something like a knife out of them.

One day, two ships arrived on the island, which turned out to be Spanish, and England and Spain were enemies in those days. Selkirk could have been arrested or even killed, since he was a privateer, and he made the difficult decision for himself to hide from the Spaniards.

Salvation came to him on February 1, 1709. This was the English ship The Duke, with Captain Woodes Rogers, who named Selkirk as governor of the island.

The life of Robinson Crusoe in Defoe's novel of the same name was more colorful and eventful. After many years of loneliness, the hermit managed to make a friend, which did not happen with Selkirk. Alexander did not meet bloodthirsty cannibal Indians, as it was described in the book.

Directly in honor of the sailor, Alexander Selkirk Island, located near the island of Robinson Crusoe, was named. In 2008, scientists from the British Society for Post-Medieval Archeology discovered the site of Alexander Selkirk. Archaeological finds suggest that, while on the island, the sailor built two huts and an observation post by the stream, from which one could see passing ships. A couple of early 18th-century navigational instruments were also found there, which are believed to have belonged to Selkirk: the captain of the ship, who discovered the Scot, mentioned that some mathematical instruments were also brought on board with the man.

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Excerpt characterizing Selkirk, Alexander

So strange suddenly for Natasha this meek, gentle, sincere voice seemed.
- Let's not talk, my friend, I'll tell him everything; but I ask you one thing - consider me your friend, and if you need help, advice, you just need to pour out your soul to someone - not now, but when it will be clear in your soul - remember me. He took and kissed her hand. “I will be happy if I am able to ...” Pierre was embarrassed.
Don't talk to me like that, I'm not worth it! Natasha screamed and wanted to leave the room, but Pierre held her by the hand. He knew he needed something else to tell her. But when he said this, he was surprised at his own words.
“Stop, stop, your whole life is ahead of you,” he told her.
- For me? No! Everything is gone for me,” she said with shame and self-abasement.
- Everything is lost? he repeated. - If I were not me, but the most beautiful, smartest and best person in the world, and would be free, I would this minute on my knees ask for your hand and love.
Natasha, for the first time after many days, wept with tears of gratitude and tenderness, and looking at Pierre left the room.
Pierre, too, after her, almost ran out into the anteroom, holding back the tears of emotion and happiness that were crushing his throat, put on a fur coat without falling into the sleeves and got into the sleigh.
“Now where are you going?” asked the coachman.
"Where? Pierre asked himself. Where can you go now? Really in a club or guests? All people seemed so pathetic, so poor in comparison with the feeling of tenderness and love that he experienced; in comparison with that softened, grateful look with which she last looked at him through tears.
“Home,” said Pierre, despite ten degrees of frost, opening a bearskin coat on his wide, joyfully breathing chest.
It was cold and clear. Above the dirty, half-dark streets, above the black roofs stood a dark, starry sky. Pierre, only looking at the sky, did not feel the insulting baseness of everything earthly in comparison with the height at which his soul was. At the entrance to the Arbat Square, a huge expanse of starry dark sky opened up to Pierre's eyes. Almost in the middle of this sky above Prechistensky Boulevard, surrounded, sprinkled on all sides with stars, but differing from all in proximity to the earth, white light, and a long tail raised up, stood a huge bright comet of 1812, the same comet that foreshadowed as they said, all sorts of horrors and the end of the world. But in Pierre, this bright star with a long radiant tail did not arouse any terrible feeling. Opposite, Pierre joyfully, with eyes wet with tears, looked at this bright star, which, as if, having flown immeasurable spaces along a parabolic line with inexpressible speed, suddenly, like an arrow piercing the ground, slammed here into one place it had chosen, in the black sky, and stopped, vigorously lifting her tail up, shining and playing with her white light among countless other twinkling stars. It seemed to Pierre that this star fully corresponded to what was in his blossoming towards a new life, softened and encouraged soul.

From the end of 1811, increased armament and concentration of forces in Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces - millions of people (including those who transported and fed the army) moved from West to East, to the borders of Russia, to which in exactly the same way since 1811 th year, the forces of Russia were drawn together. On June 12, the forces of Western Europe crossed the borders of Russia, and the war began, that is, an event contrary to human reason and all human nature took place. Millions of people have committed against each other such countless atrocities, deceptions, treason, theft, forgery and issuance of false banknotes, robberies, arson and murders, which for centuries will not be collected by the chronicle of all the courts of the world and which, in this period of time, people those who committed them were not looked upon as crimes.
What produced this extraordinary event? What were the reasons for it? Historians say with naive certainty that the causes of this event were the insult inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, non-compliance with the continental system, Napoleon's lust for power, Alexander's firmness, diplomats' mistakes, etc.
Therefore, it was only necessary for Metternich, Rumyantsev or Talleyrand, between the exit and the reception, to try hard and write a more ingenious piece of paper or write to Alexander to Napoleon: Monsieur mon frere, je consens a rendre le duche au duc d "Oldenbourg, [My lord brother, I agree return the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg.] - and there would be no war.
It is clear that such was the case for contemporaries. It is clear that it seemed to Napoleon that the intrigues of England were the cause of the war (as he said this on the island of St. Helena); it is understandable that it seemed to the members of the English Chamber that Napoleon's lust for power was the cause of the war; that it seemed to the Prince of Oldenburg that the cause of the war was the violence committed against him; that it seemed to the merchants that the cause of the war was the continental system, which was ruining Europe, that it seemed to the old soldiers and generals that the main reason was the need to put them to work; to the legitimists of the time that it was necessary to restore les bons principes [good principles], and to the diplomats of the time that everything happened because the alliance of Russia with Austria in 1809 was not cleverly hidden from Napoleon and that a memorandum was awkwardly written for No. 178. It is clear that these and countless, infinite number of reasons, the number of which depends on the countless difference of points of view, seemed to contemporaries; but for us, the descendants, who contemplate in all its volume the enormity of the event that has taken place and delve into its simple and terrible meaning, these reasons seem insufficient. It is incomprehensible to us that millions of Christians killed and tortured each other, because Napoleon was power-hungry, Alexander was firm, the policy of England was cunning and the Duke of Oldenburg was offended. It is impossible to understand what connection these circumstances have with the very fact of murder and violence; why, due to the fact that the duke was offended, thousands of people from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow provinces and were killed by them.

Which of us in childhood did not read the novels of Robert Stevenson, Jules Verne or Daniel Defoe? We plunged into the fascinating world of overseas countries and extraordinary adventures on the pages of Treasure Island, Mysterious Island and, of course, Robinson Crusoe, without really thinking about what such famously twisted plots are based on. Only as we grew older did we learn that the true events that formed the basis for writing these novels were no less interesting and dramatic.

On a small street in the Scottish town of Largo, which is located near the North Sea, and today you can see an old house, in a niche above the door of which there is a figure of a man dressed in skins and with a gun in his hands. Tourists often drop in here to see the place where Alexander Selkirk, a sailor who became the prototype of the well-known Robinson Crusoe, was born in 1676. If you enter the house, you can see Selkirk's chest and pistols, as well as a goblet made by him from a coconut.

boatswain's error

From the end of the 17th century, Alexander served on the Sink Pore ship from the flotilla of the English privateer and explorer William Dampier. Being a good boatswain, Selkirk did not differ in complaisance of character, which led to frequent conflicts with the captain, sometimes very fierce. It ended with the fact that after another skirmish, Alexander himself demanded that he be landed on the nearest island. And so it was done - having received a gun and a minimum of supplies, Selkirk found himself all alone.

The piece of land that sheltered him was small, with an area of about 97 square meters. km, the island of Mas a Tierra, lying in the Pacific Ocean 350 miles from the coast. About 80 miles away was the islet of Mas-a-Fuera. Both islands were discovered about a century earlier by the Spanish conquistador Juan Fernandez. Subsequently, this traveler, having retired, himself settled on the island of Mas a Tierra in the company of several Indian families. The land of the island turned out to be fertile, fresh water was also in abundance, and the sea was full of fish. The Indians brought goats and guinea fowls. However, Fernandez did not stay long on the island - he got bored and moved to the mainland. The island economy fell into decay. Following the owner, the Indians also left the island, leaving their cattle and poultry behind. So it was certainly possible to survive on these paradise islands. But complete detachment from the big world put a lot of pressure on the psyche. The company of Indians did not help Fernandez at all.

What did Selkirk count on, demanding his expulsion from the ship and intending to live on an island all alone? Having sailed in these places earlier, he knew that Mas-a-Tierra was regularly called by ships to replenish fresh water supplies, and he believed that on the first of them he would leave his temporary refuge. But he was wrong: the situation had changed, and now the sailors preferred Mas-a-Fuera, where the springs were even more powerful. This mistake doomed Selkirk to years of loneliness. Those who left him on the island have long forgotten about him. And he continued to fight for his own survival. He was certainly lucky: the abundance of feral goats, guinea fowl, fish and wild fruits provided him with quite a decent diet.

Precious Memoirs

When the clothes were completely worn out, he got the hang of making them from goatskins. It was also possible to keep the fire going. So the days went by. Four years had passed when, at last, a couple of ships appeared a short distance from the island. However, the hope that was swaying in the heart of Selkirk soon faded away - the ships sailed under the Spanish flag. The Spaniards were sworn enemies of Britain, and therefore the Scots could not count on their mercy. In addition, his privateer past could come up ... So instead of rushing towards people, he hid in the depths of the island and did not show up until the ships moved away from the coast. God alone knows what this act cost him.

Some time later, a fire was noticed on the coast of Mas-a-Tierra from the board of the passing English ship "Duke" under the command of Captain Woods Rogers and sent a boat to the island. The sailors who went ashore were enthusiastically greeted by Selkirk, who had almost lost hope of returning from his voluntary exile. Despite such a long loneliness and the hardships of hermitage, he did not become embittered, he did not blame anyone for anything. Ironically, William Dampier was on the Duke that received him. They had a friendly conversation with Alexander, recalled the past. Dampier told about how once he, having gone to an island unknown to him in search of water, met a lonely Indian there. It turned out that three years earlier he had been forgotten here by pirates, on whose ship he was a servant. Perhaps it was this unfortunate man, whom Dampier told about (as well as about Selkirk) in his published notes, which served for Defoe as the prototype of Friday.

In general, the notes of this privateer-intellectual turned out to be very entertaining. Their echoes can be seen in the works of Walter Scott, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe. The latter, having learned the story of Selkirk from Dampier, met the prototype of his future hero in a pub, where Alexander became a regular. People came here to hear about his extraordinary adventures first hand. And Selkirk did not skimp on words for a good meal. Probably, it was these meetings in the pub that gave Defoe the idea of a great romance. And he got to work. Taking the story of Selkirk as a basis, Defoe significantly modified it. He “settled” his hero on the island of Tobago in the Atlantic not for four, but for as much as 28 years. Friday at Defoe's is not an Indian forgotten on the island, but a black native, almost eaten by his fellow tribesmen. He borrowed the last name for the hero from his school friend, Timothy Crusoe.

footprints on the ground

The fate of the island, abandoned by its only inhabitant - Selkirk, was not easy. During the war with Spain, the English admiral George Anson turned Mas-a-Tierra into a well-fortified base for raids on the Spanish colonies located on the western coast of South America. After the end of the war in 1750, the Spaniards returned to the island and built their coastal fortifications there. But they stood for only a year, and then were destroyed by a powerful tsunami. The island was later turned into a prison for criminals from Chile and Ecuador.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the prison ceased to exist. Only a few fishermen remained on the island, whose descendants still live here. But the island itself has changed its name. After Defoe's novel and its hero gained worldwide fame, Mas a Tierra was renamed the island of Robinson Crusoe. At the same time, the name of Alexander Selkirk was given to the island of Mas-a-Fuera, which, however, Selkirk had never been to. Under these names, the islands can today be found on the world map. Both islands belong to the Juan Fernandes archipelago and belong to Chile, whose government decided to turn them into a tourist site and even planned to build a small airport on one of the islands. On the eve of the new year, 2004, the training ship of the Far Eastern Maritime University "Nadezhda" approached the island. All that the cadets saw was a tiny village near the pier and a radio mast with TV dishes.

Alexander Selkirk died of yellow fever on board the Weymouth, where he enlisted as a lieutenant, tired of sitting on the shore. This happened on December 13, 1721, so that he lived only 45 years. For his centenary, a monument was erected in Largo - the same figure in the niche of the house mentioned at the beginning of this article. Daniel Defoe, who made him famous, survived the prototype of his hero by 10 years. After a short period of deafening fame associated with the publication of "Robinson", the writer remained in oblivion, despite the fact that he wrote several more books. Including, by the way, the continuation of the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, where the action takes place in the Russian Empire.

He died in poverty, hiding from numerous creditors. Only almost 140 years after Defoe's death, the London newspaper Christian World organized a fundraiser for a monument to the writer. Now a granite monument can be seen at London's Bunhill Fields cemetery. And on the coast of the island of Mas-a-Tierra, where Alexander Selkirk first set foot on it, English sailors in 1868 erected an obelisk, on which they managed to set out almost all of his epic.

Thanks to the classic novel of English literature, the story of Robinson Crusoe is known to every adult educated person who will be interested to know that the writer Daniel Defoe did not invent the plot, but took it from real life. The sea hermit had a real prototype - the Scottish boatswain Alexander Selkirk.

Statue of Alexander Selkirk at the site of his home on Main Street, Lower Largo, Fife, Scotland.

Biography of Alexander Selkirk

Alex's father was a humble shoemaker and tanner in Lower Largo, on the east coast of Scotland. From childhood, the boy, born in 1676, was restless, impudent, strong and did not recognize church authorities. The mayor and the priest were the main representatives of the authorities in Largo. Selkirk Jr. despised both and ran away from home at the first opportunity along the route followed by every intrepid adventurer of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. In August 1693, Alex was summoned to the church rector for a stern conversation about an act of hooliganism on the church grounds. The 16-year-old youth did not appear at the court, but fled to the nearest seaport and signed up as a cabin boy on the first ship that came across. The guy spent almost ten years away from home, sailing on trading and buccaneer ships. The brawler returned home to Largo already in 1701 as an experienced sailor. On the shore, the sailor immediately began to get into trouble, which could well have ended in prison or the gallows, but in the same 1701, a large-scale war for the Spanish heritage began. This confrontation promised the British sailors solid profits in the event of victorious battles with the eternal naval enemy. Therefore, the sailor Selkirk did not stay on the shore for a long time, he joined the team of the private explorer William Dampier, who equipped the expedition to South America. On September 11, 1703, a private flotilla left the Irish port of Kinsale. Alexander Selkirk, 27, was on board the Sank Port. 10 years of experience allowed the sailor to take the post of helmsman, that is, the helmsman under the command of Captain Stradling. Soon Stradling appointed the helmsman as his chief officer, which did not prevent the beginning of a long period of confrontation between them. The key moment of the confrontation occurred in the middle of 1704, when, after a bloody battle, the ship needed urgent repairs, but the captain insisted on continuing the voyage despite the insistent demands of the first mate. On one of the islands of the Juan Fernandez archipelago, the team replenished their drinking water supplies and left a rebel who refused to continue sailing on an emergency ship.

Map of Juan Fernandez Island where Alexander Selkirk lived.

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Life proved the rightness of an experienced navigator, because after some time the Sank Por really sank, and the sailors were captured by the Spaniards or died.

A map of Crusoe's Island, "Isle of Despair", showing incidents from the book.

But the outcast survived, visited his homeland and again went to sea as part of the royal fleet, which awarded the heroic hermit the rank of lieutenant. On the military brig "Weymouth", the officer went to the west coast of Africa to fight the pirates, who developed in large numbers in the local waters. The war with Spain ended, but not all British prey hunters agreed to lay down their arms. Selkirk participated in a military campaign against pirates and died during the voyage, dying not from battle wounds, but from yellow fever, which had tormented him since the ill-fated four years of exile on a desert island. The prototype of Robinson Crusoe died on December 13, 1721, and was buried at sea west of Cape Agulhas.

Alexander Selkirk on a desert island

The main difference between the real story of Alexander Selkirk and the fictional plot of Robinson Crusoe is that the literary character was shipwrecked, and the Scottish boatswain was put ashore for incitement and rebellion. More like the fate of another character in classic adventure literature - Tom Ayrton from Jules Verne's novel "Children of Captain Grant" - a knife, an ax, a musket, a supply of gunpowder, a saucepan, a couple of sheets and years of waiting for a sail to appear on the horizon. Sails, by the way, were shown regularly and even sometimes moored to the shore, but they were Spanish and French, so the outcast preferred to hide and wait for the appearance of British compatriots. I had to wait four years and four months - from October 1704 to February 1709.

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The Life and Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe, 1835 edition.

Returning home, Alex, a big drinker and talker, walked around all the drinking establishments, talking about his misadventures on the island of Mas-a-Tierre, which is 640 km from Chile. Now it is called Robinson Crusoe, you know why.
In his own words, the first weeks were the most difficult, when he had to eat shellfish, but gradually the outcast got used to it, built a comfortable dwelling, stumbled upon wild goats in the forest, which added meat and milk to the renegade's diet. Also on Mas-a-Tierra there were berries and vegetables familiar to Europeans - cabbage, turnip. In addition to weapons and supplies, Alex was left with a Bible, thanks to which he never forgot how to speak, reading passages aloud daily. In addition to the Bible, the ability to sew clothes and shoes was a great help for the preservation of the human species, because the navigator was the son of a shoemaker. Survival was delayed by 52 months. On February 2, 1709, two ships approached the shore - the Duke and the Duchess. A boat went to land for water, which brought back a man who was overgrown so that it was difficult to see his face. Ironically, on deck was the same Dampier that Selkirk had joined six years earlier. The researcher perfectly remembered the first mate, had heard about his quick temper, but he gave excellent recommendations to the hermit sailor, thanks to which the sailor, rescued from a desert island, immediately became the leader of the crew. Further, during the journey, he showed himself from the best side several times, led important missions and set foot on his native shores as a wealthy respected person. It happened on October 1, 1711. The prodigal son Largo was gone for eight years. Soon the sea will again call the adventurer and he will go on a journey. But before that, he will have time to tell enough people about his adventures so that the story of Alexander Selkirk catches the eye of Daniel Defoe, who will turn it into a popular novel loved by children and adults. The book was published in 1719, but the prototype of the protagonist at that time plowed the ocean, never knowing that he had become world famous, albeit under a false name.