Selkirk simply went to pieces.įor many days, he sat on his sea chest on the beach, scanning the horizon and hoping his ship would return. But for a sailor used to performing his duties in the midst of bustle and fellowship, the solitude of the remote island offered up the greatest terrors. Ahead was an uncertain future on an unknown island. There he was, an Englishman in the midst of the "Spanish lake," where there were no other British ships and none likely to venture in again for many years. The futility of his situation became apparent to him the moment he had stepped ashore from the longboat. The despair lasted for eighteen long months, as Selkirk kept to his beach, paralyzed by his predicament. He watched in despair, as the Cinque Ports unfurled her sails, slipped out of the harbor, and slowly disappeared over the horizon. Selkirk returned to the beach and sat down next to his small pile of belongings. But Stradling mocked him and left him standing there in the surge. Selkirk begged to be taken back on board. The oarsmen briefly stopped in their stroke. In a paroxysm of terror, he ran down the beach and splashed into the sea. "His heart yearned within him, and melted at the parting with his comrades and all human society at once," it was later written. Suddenly, as the boat started back through the surf, he had a change of mind. The longboat deposited Selkirk on the beach in October 1704. He landed on the beach a man richer in this world's goods than William, the Miskito Indian who had been stranded there years before.
Selkirk took ashore all his earthly belongings: the clothes on his back, a sea chest, a musket, a pound of gun powder, a bag of bullets, a flint and steel, several pounds of tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a Bible, and several books of devotional writing and navigational treatises. The captain agreed, happy to be rid of an officer he saw as mutinous. Selkirk then made up his mind to risk a lifetime of solitude on Mas a Tierra Island rather than certain death on the Cinque Ports. Stradling disagreed and ordered the ship to sail. Selkirk made a careful inspection of the ship, saw leaking seams badly in need of caulking and planks honeycombed with marine-worm borings, and decided she must be careened and thoroughly repaired or she would sink long before she returned to England.
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The Cinque Ports remained a full month in Cumberland Bay undergoing repairs. Soon after his arrival at the island he learned from two crewmembers who had successfully eluded capture that the other six sailors and all the supplies had been captured by the French. He hoped to recover the men and the stores left there several months before. The lack of provisions and proper supplies at last forced Stradling to return to Mas a Tierra Island. He resolved to leave the vessel at the first opportunity. As the seventh son gifted in foreknowledge, he never questioned the truth of his dream.
One night Selkirk had a dream in which he watched his ship, the Cinque Ports, break up and sink with all hands during a violent storm. His travels have taken him to almost every island mentioned in the book. He holds a doctorate in British Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, and now lives in San Diego, California.
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He has contributed articles to such publications as American Heritage, Audubon, Reader's Digest, Travel and Leisure, and TV Guide. His last book, Americans: The View from Abroad, won first prize as the Best Travel Book of 1990 in the Lowell Thomas competition of travel journalism. Simmons is the author of seven books, including The Big Book of Adventure Travel: 500 Great Escapes and Passionate Pilgrims: English Travlers to the World of the Desert Arabs.
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