Might have been based in this actual event. Oct 24, PM. Jul 7, PM. Carol Whites. Hey genius! Time to save your score! Sign up and get 50 welcome coins 7, players are online. Create an account to leave a comment. Your Choice Regarding Cookies on this Site. These cookies allow us to analyze site usage so we can measure and improve performance.
A sailor in the s, however, would have seen nothing but trouble— grim, sheer-faced coves rising 80 feet straight up, and not a sandy beach in sight. San Juan Bautista John the Baptist village pop. San Juan Bautista is part sleepy South Pacific fishing village, part eco-tourism hideaway. Along deeply rutted dirt roads, there are eight or nine summer cabins and basic bed-and-breakfast operations— several hundred tourists came to the village last year—with a few in-home convenience stores, three churches Evangelical, Mormon and Catholic , a leaky gymnasium, a lively school serving first through eighth grade, a city hall, a small Crusoe museum with translations of the novel in Polish and Greek, and an adjoining library with a satellite Internet connection, thanks to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The homes are wooden bungalows for the most part, weathered but neat, with small yards and big leafy palm or fruit trees. Nearly everyone has TV, which consists of two Santiago channels. My guide, Pedro Niada, a witty and well-read fellow who moved here with his wife from Santiago some years ago, estimates that 70 percent of the families still make their living from trapping lobster, but that number is declining.
After a month on the island, the Cinque Ports was stocked with turnips, goats and crayfish, yet no less wormeaten. Stradling ordered the men to set sail and leave CumberlandBay. Selkirk refused and told the men to do the same, believing the ship could never withstand the open sea or the battles the men so craved. Stradling mocked his navigator, and that set off Selkirk like he was back in Largo.
After a bitter argument, Stradling must have felt he could not back down. Selkirk was put ashore with his bedding, a musket, pistol, gunpowder, hatchet, knife, his navigation tools, a pot for boiling food, two pounds of tobacco, some cheese and jam, a flask of rum and his Bible. He had made the biggest decision of his life.
No longer just a complainer, he had taken action. But no sooner had he waded into CumberlandBay than he was overwhelmed with regret and fear. He had badly overplayed his hand. Not one of the men had joined him. Selkirk pleaded with Stradling to be allowed back, but the captain was quite enjoying the moment.
His unruly men were certainly watching this pathetic show, this hardheaded seaman begging for his life. Stradling wanted the message to sink in deeply with the crew: leave the ship and this will be you. Perhaps feeling more stupid and angry than victimized, Selkirk finally turned his back on the Cinque Ports and resigned himself to waiting for what he thought would be a few days until another friendly ship happened by.
There is no evidence that Selkirk ever kept a diary—he may have been illiterate, though historians disagree—so what we know of his time on the island comes primarily from two sources: his eventual rescuer, Capt.
Woodes Rogers, a distinguished English privateer or despised pirate, if you were Spanish who wrote A Cruising Voyage Round the World , about his expedition, and English essayist and playwright Richard Steele, who interviewed Selkirk in for the magazine The Englishman. According to them, Selkirk was so despondent for the first several months that he contemplated suicide—presumably with one of his few bullets—and almost welcomed the gnawing hunger each day because it at least occupied his mind.
In time, he was able to domesticate some feral cats, who served as companions and exterminators. Finding shelter and food on the verdant island was less of a problem than keeping his sanity. What he missed most was bread and salt. Eventually he grew so nimble running barefoot on the steep hills above the bay that he could chase down any goat he wanted.
Selkirk was able to start a fire with pimento wood and his musket flints, and tried to keep it going night and day, but he was careful to hide the flames from Spanish ships; the Spanish were known for torturing their prisoners or turning them into slaves in South American gold mines. He once narrowly escaped a Spanish search party by climbing a tree. To maintain his spirits, the Scottish navigator sang hymns and prayed. At some point, Selkirk apparently embraced life again, and like Thoreau, saw deep new truths about himself revealed through the cleansing simplicity of the demands of survival.
We munched on the same tart red berries that probably sustained Selkirk, waiting for the sky to clear. When the sun broke through, I understood why Selkirk had chosen this spot.
He could not only see for miles in every direction, thereby giving himself an hour or two headstart if he needed to evade the Spanish—who tortured and enslaved captives—but he could also sustain his spirits. George - Cinque Ports voyage. Dampier likely told Selkirk the bittersweet news that he had been all too right about the decrepit Cinque Ports. Soon after abandoning the Scotsman in the ship sank off the coast of Peru, killing all but Stradling and a dozen or so men, who wound up in Spanish prisons.
Rogers helped Selkirk shave and gave him clothes. His rock-hard feet swelled in the constraint of shoes. Selkirk eventually sailed away from England yet again in , but contracted Yellow Fever near the coast of Africa, and died on the ship in He was buried at sea. Selkirk's amazing story would go on to inspire author Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe , a novel that has remained popular for nearly years. Many aspects of Selkirk's ingenuity, such as the use of goat skin for clothing, were incorporated into the book.
Ironically, the fate of the Cinque Ports ship was exactly as Selkirk had predicted. The Spanish soldiers then took the men to be tortured and imprisoned in Lima, Peru. Only 18 of the original 63 men were said to survive the ordeal. The island of Malpelo, where the Cinque Ports crew was stranded before surrendering to the Spanish.
We're now offering a free digital copy of the OffGrid Outbreak issue when you subscribe to the OffGrid email newsletter. Sign up and get your free digital copy Click to Download! Click here to cancel reply. You must be logged in to post a comment.
Please confirm the information below before signing in. Already have an account? Sign In. Please check your email and click on the link to activate your account. We've sent an email with instructions to create a new password. Your existing password has not been changed. Subscribe Today and Save!
Get the Mag. Caribou Media Group earns a commission from qualifying purchases. Thank you! Written by Patrick McCarthy. Related Tags: Food Shelter Survival. No Comments Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Related Articles Survival. Survival When people think of winter, they think of holidays, family, snowmen,
0コメント