The Real Robinson Crusoe

He had been quarreling with the captain of his privateer vessel, the Cinque Ports, and he believed the ship was in such poor condition that it would sink. The captain obliged. Selkirk was left on Más a Tierra, a volcanic island about 400 miles off the coast of Chile, with a musket, gunpowder, a hatchet, a knife, a cooking pot, bedding, and his clothes.

He expected to be rescued within weeks. He waited four years and four months.

Selkirk's early months were miserable. He spent much of his time watching the horizon and struggling with loneliness and fear. Rats, which had arrived on earlier ships, gnawed at his feet while he slept. He eventually tamed feral cats—also left by earlier visitors—to sleep around him and keep the rats away. He built two huts from pimento wood, hunted feral goats for food and clothing, and fashioned tools from salvaged metal.

Over time, he adapted. He read his Bible aloud to maintain his ability to speak. He sang and danced with his cats. He became extraordinarily fit from chasing goats on foot across the island's mountainous terrain. When his gunpowder ran out, he ran down his prey by sheer endurance. By the time he was rescued, he could outrun any goat on the island.

On February 1, 1709, the privateers Duke and Duchess, commanded by Woodes Rogers, landed at Más a Tierra and found Selkirk dressed in goatskins, barely able to speak intelligible English. Rogers described him as a "man clothed in goat-skins, who looked wilder than the first owners of them." Selkirk rejoined the crew and eventually returned to London in 1711.

His story was widely published. Daniel Defoe almost certainly drew on Selkirk's account—and on published interviews with him—when writing *Robinson Crusoe* in 1719. In 1966, the Chilean government renamed Más a Tierra to Robinson Crusoe Island, though Selkirk was the real one.