introduction
I believe that many readers must have read the world famous book "Robinson Crusoe" more than once in their student careers, and people often deeply regret the suffering of the protagonist Robinson in the book, and at the same time admire his strong and brave character and pioneering spirit.
Speaking of which, the protagonist of Robinson Crusoe has a historical archetype, his name is Alexander Selkirk (hereinafter referred to as Alexander), the father of the English novel, Defoe wrote this famous book after hearing his story, now let's take a look at Alexander's story.
Alexander Selcock (1676–1721) was born into an ordinary family in Scotland and became a sailor at an early age, but later became a navigator because of his experience. In 1703, with a heart of adventure and a lucrative appetite, Alexander joined the privateer fleet led by the famous navigator William Dampier and followed the fleet to the Pacific coast to make a fortune, planning to rob the local Spanish towns and the Spanish treasure fleet full of gold and silver jewelry.
As a result, when Alexander followed the privateer fleet on his way to the Pacific, they were unwittingly subjected to a terrible attack, and an animal called a ship maggot continued to breed under their ship.
Ship maggots, also known as "chiseled ship shells", are a kind of crustaceans that love wood, can be "chiseled" deep in wood, and have a great impact on wooden sea vessels in the era of great navigation, which will cause the ship to leak and sink. Alexander's privateer fleet was not replenished and rested in the Pacific Ocean for dozens of days due to reasons such as time rush and lack of opportunity, and the maggots were not effectively treated, which eventually led to serious leakage of the three privateers of the privateer fleet, two of which were even on the verge of decomposing, and the unfortunate Alexander was on one of them.
Wood after being mothballed by ship maggots
Unlike the young sailors on the ship who were obsessed with getting rich but had no experience, the experienced Alexander soon discovered that the ship was in a bad condition, was very worried about the ship's sinking at sea, and often told his companions about the matter and advised everyone to make plans. But Alexander did not expect that his advice aroused the boredom of the captain, saying that his rumors confused the public and that his intentions were wrong, and the two sides had a big quarrel and made a very unhappy quarrel. But Alexander insisted on his opinion, and later bluntly stated in a conflict that he would rather find a desert island at sea to live on than stay on a ship destined to decompose and sink. As a result, his captain was also a wonderful man, and bluntly said that as soon as any desert island was found on the next voyage, he would leave him alone.
Then things got interesting, they actually found a desert island in the Pacific, and then one day in September 1704, the unfortunate Alexander was actually thrown off the ship by the captain, and it was useless to ask the captain for forgiveness, and the captain was determined to let Alexander who dared to disobey him be exiled here.
And only allowed Alexander to take from the ship a few personal clothes, an axe, a Bible, a musket, a knife, and a small amount of gunpowder, and other scattered things, and all other supplies were not given, and then the captain set sail without hesitation in the midst of Alexander's bitter wailing, quickly replenished the fresh water.
Tip: The captain who exiled Alexander, and the ship he steered, really sank due to a leak shortly thereafter, and the captain and crew worked hard to get ashore, and then they were caught by the Spaniards on the shore and thrown into prison for a few cockroaches.
After that, Alexander lived a single life on the desert island, but at first, he did not dare to go deep into the desert island, because he felt that the captain might just be joking with himself, and after punishing himself for a few days, he would definitely come to pick himself up or happen to meet other ships sailing here, so he did not dare to go deep inland, for fear of missing out on the opportunity, so he moved on the coastline every day, suffering from loneliness and self-blame, while catching the big lobster on the seashore.
Alexander found that because of the inaccessibility of this place, the coastline has rich seafood resources, lobster is big and delicious, he does not need to dry anything every day, just use his hands, you can catch a lot of delicious lobster to fill the stomach, although the lack of spices, but the raw lobster meat itself is delicious enough.
After waiting for a long time at the seashore, Alexander completely gave up his luck and thought that he should continue to live here next, so he began to investigate, trying to find out how big the desert island was, what kind of property, and whether there were indigenous people. After a period of exploration after him, Alexander completely died of luck, because he found that his island was not large, there was no other land around, and there was no one else on the island.
However, there was also good news for this expedition, such as that he found a lot of food on the island, enough for him to consume for a long time, and it turned out that the island had been visited by some Spanish navigators long before Alexander and others visited, and they brought pepper, cabbage, and goats, rats and cats to this place. Originally, there were no such properties here, but this situation arose because of the intentional or unintentional actions of the Spaniards (the Spaniards may not have deliberately spread these plants and animals on the island, and those animals probably came here with the Spanish expedition ships, and then took the opportunity to escape the Spaniards on their own to survive and breed on the island).
Anyway, Alexander is now eating and drinking, the goats on the island have long been rewilded, and divided into many communities to breed, and there are no natural enemies on the island, resulting in a large number of them, Alexander can continue to catch and eat them, and also catch some goats for domestication, which provides Alexander with a large amount of mutton and goat milk.
In order to live a better life on the island, Alexander also built several houses for himself on the island, which he bitterly called "villas". The days passed day by day, by hard work, Alexander's little life was really good, he not only had plenty of food, ate very well, as long as he wanted, he could eat lamb skewers every day, there were several vegetables for him to stew soup or raw food, and when he was tired of eating lamb, he would go to the beach to go around, although the turtle was not easy to encounter, but he could easily catch the lobster to improve the food, and put it and other ingredients together to make a pot of seafood smorgasbord or stew is also very delicious.
The only thing that made Alexander feel bad about life on the island, besides loneliness, was that there were too many rats on the island, always stealing his stored food, and even nibbling on his toes while he was sleeping, so that he did not tire of it, but later Alexander began to feed a few when he found out that there were many wild cats on the island, and soon had his own cat herd, and later because there were too many cats, Alexander also had to abandon or drown a lot to control its number.
If you don't say that cats and cats are angels, their arrival not only solves Alexander's problem of the flood of rats, but also helps him to relieve homesickness, and every time he is homesick, he grabs a cat to come and stroke the cat, and the cuteness of the cat can soon help him forget his sorrows.
After all, Alexander did not have an old dead desert island, and on February 1, 1709, four years and four months after he landed on the island, Alexander's desperate escape opportunity finally came, and another British privateer fleet with the idea of robbing the Spanish wealth came here to replenish fresh water, and then found Alexander dressed in goat skins, constantly waving his arms, shouting, and looking like a savage, and a sailor wrote:
"Alexander looked more savage than the original owner of the goatskin (the goat), because he had not used language for too long, he forgot a lot of his mother tongue, we could hardly understand what he was saying, we gave him a little wine, but he did not want to touch, he only drank water after getting on the boat, it took him a little time to adapt to our diet, but this man began to accept the diet and life we are accustomed to, although still sober, but lost most of his energy and flexibility."
Alexander, upon discovering that he was a native of his own country, was anxious to get on the ship and return to China, but when he found out that his former commander, William Dampier, was also on board, he was really shocked and said that he did not want to get on the ship, saying that he would rather continue to live alone on the island than return to Dampier's men! Fortunately, the commander of this privateer expedition had someone else, and Dampier was just a navigator, but Alexander was still a little reluctant. Finally, the commander of the fleet spoke that if Alexander lived unhappily in the fleet, or felt that life at sea was too dangerous, then he only needed to propose to him and he would send someone to send him back to the island, and with this assurance from the commander of the fleet, Alexander got on the ship.
In order to repay the favor, Alexander took the initiative to pick vegetables on the island, catch lobsters and goats to entertain the visitors, and took over the burden of caring for the sick fleet, and under his careful care, only 2 of the 50 patients on board eventually died, and then the remaining survivors left the desert island together to start the robbery and return journey.
Finally, on October 14, 1711, Alexander arrived at the mouth of the Thames in England on a privateer, and finally set foot on the land of the motherland again, and his legendary experience began to spread, Alexander also published a short essay about his true experience in 1713, and six years later, Daniel Defoe used this as a model to create the immortal famous "Robinson Crusoe".