Dennis’ Historia

Alexander Selkirk was born a seventh son, which may explain to some extent why he went on to become one of history’s more memorable characters. The world knows him better as Robinson Crusoe, the man whose life and times were immortalized by novelist Daniel Defoe in one of the greatest adventure stories ever written. What the world does not know is that Selkirk left the fishing village of Lower Largo on the coast of Fife in his quest for a lifetime of adventure under a cloud of contempt. That cloud arose from a drunken brawl with his brothers at the family home in Largo. During that brawl, Selkirk beat up his own little brother and punched out the wife of his older brother. She was a woman named Margaret Bell.

The Selkirk surname first enters the Largo parish church records as “Selchrige” in the early 1600’s, Selkrage” in the late 1600’s, “Selcraig” in the early 1700’s, and finally as Selkirk in the 1800’s, after the popularity of Daniel Defoe’s book had taken Scotland by storm. Alexander Selkrage was born in Lower Largo in 1676, the son of John Selkrage and his wife Euphan Mackie.  John Selkrage was a tanner  and leather worker by trade who used to make shoes and boots for the town’s fishermen and their wives. Alexander’s roster of siblings included an older brother, also named Johne, who was married to Margaret Bell, and a younger brother named Andrew.

Alexander attended the village school, showing considerable ability in mathematics and navigation. He had always dreamed of going to sea, but he trained as a cobbler under his father. He worked in his father’s trade until he was 19, when his life suddenly changed dramatically, along with the spelling of his surname. The Kirk Session records reveal that on Aug. 25, 1695, “Alex Selcraig was summoned for undecent beheavior in ye church.”  Two nights later, the kirk session met to consider the charge. But Alexander did not show up, and the details of that “undecent beheavior” were never spelled out. According to the records, he had “gone away to ye seas,” and “this business is continued until his return.” Alexander did return six years later and promptly got into trouble with the Church of Scotland again.

There was a serious family feud at the Selcraig home in Largo fuelled by liquor. It involved six Selkirks — John, his wife Euphan, his son John and the latter’s wife Margaret, Andrew Selcraig and Alexander, recently returned from a rough-and-tumble life at sea. On Nov. 25, 1701, the Selcraigs were hauled en masse in front of the Kirk session. The elder John Selcraig testified that his young son Andrew was responsible for what appears to have been a practical joke on an inebriated Alexander. Andrew was apparently dispatched to get his brother a drink, but he brought back a container filled with salt water instead of grog for Alexander, who drank it all, thinking it was liquor. Andrew started roaring with laughter. The horrible taste in his mouth and the laughter in his ears infuriated Alexander, who beat up his younger brother with a barrel stave. Andrew ran from the house in tears, calling on his older brother John for help. But Alexander was not about to be intimidated by the senior sibling. The kirk session records say that as John came through the door “he did see his brother Alex in the other end of the house casting off his coat and coming towards him. Whereupon his father did get betwixt them” and found himself in the middle of a brawl. Euphan finally succeeded in separating her husband from the battling brothers. But Margaret had less luck rescuing her husband from Alexander’s clutches, screaming at her brother-in-law: “You false loun — will you murder your father and my husband both?” Alexander chased her out the door, then decked her with a roundhouse punch. She remembered little else about the brawl,”but ever since she hath a sore pain in her head.” Alexander also testified, but according to the records “he said nothing of purpose in the foresaid business.” Two days later, he appeared before the session a changed man, “confessed to the tumult” and also admitted clobbering Andrew twice with a stave. He told his inquisitors that before the prank and the fight broke out, he had challenged his eldest brother John to “a combat” he called a “drynieeffals,” which appears to have been a drinking contest, with the last man standing the winner.  Drynk was the occasional Scottish word in that era for grog, and the entire word, expanded into contemporary English, appears to be “drink-and-he-falls.” On Nov. 30,  1701, Alexander was rebuked in front of the full Largo congregation — especially for striking his brother’s wife — and promised he would reform. No more drynieefalls contests, at least not in Largo.

It was all too much for an ashamed and publicly humiliated Alexander Selkirk. A short time later, he signed aboard a ship sailing for London, where he joined the celebrated privateer William Dampier on a voyage to plunder Spanish ships and ports along the Pacific coast of South America aboard the heavily armed vessels St. George and Cinque Ports. By 1703 he was Sailing Master of Cinque Ports and his surname had evolved from Selcraig to Selkirk on the English crew roster.  The voyage was a hazardous undertaking and the Cinque Ports skipper,  a Captain Straddling, was constantly quarrelling with his crew. An ill-will grew between the captain and his short-tempered Scottish galley master. The ship had taken a beating on its voyage around the tip of South America and had also absorbed considerable damage during its attacks on Spanish shipping. Selkirk had his doubts about the ship’s seaworthiness and its ability to complete the return voyage to England, especially under Straddling’s command.  Alexander later claimed he asked to be put ashore on one of the Juan Fernandez islands, an uninhabited archipelago  400 miles west of the central coast of Chile. The captain was only too happy to oblige, and some say he was ready to maroon Selkirk, had not the latter asked to be put ashore. Selkirk was left alone on the island in the fall of 1704 with a musket, shot, gunpowder, some carpenter’s tools, extra clothing, bedding, tobacco, a hatchet and a Bible stuffed into his sea chest.

He took to reading his Bible and praying to alleviate the loneliness. He busied himself making his island home more comfortable. He shared the island with a population of wild cats and dangerous rats whose ancestors had made it ashore from passing ships. The island also had goats, landed deliberately by early explorers seeking to stock such remote archipelago with readily accessible food in case of emergency. They became a source of food, clothing and companionship for the marooned and increasingly lonely Scotsman. It was years before another ship appeared and this encounter nearly proved fatal for Selkirk. Two ships anchored offshore, and they both flew the Spanish flag.  As usual, Spain was at war with England and Selkirk knew that he would suffer a fate worse than death if captured. A landing party spotted Selkirk and fired a few musket balls at him as he ran into the jungle and hid. The Spaniards soon gave up searching for Selkirk and the ships sailed after revictualing.

Alexander Selkirk spent four years and four months utterly alone on the island. “Man Friday” was strictly a figment of Daniel Defoe’s fertile literary imagination. On Feb. 1, 1709, he spotted two British ships in the Bay. He built a fire on the beach and was rescued by Captain Woodes Rogers, leader of another, much better organized privateering expedition against the Spanish.  Rogers described Selkirk as “an apparition clad in hairy goatskins and looking wilder than their first owners.” He told Selkirk of the fate of his old ship the Cinque Ports. Soon after Selkirk had been marooned, the ship was wrecked and all hands were lost except Capt. Straddling and seven men. They were captured by the Spanish and enslaved belowdecks on a Spanish galleon.

Rogers appointed Selkirk as Mate on one of his ships, the Duke. For the next two years they plundered Spanish galleons at will and attacked towns all over Spanish America. When they sailed back to London in 1711, Selkirk’s share of the loot amounted to £800 — a princely sum in those days. It was around this time that Selkirk became acquainted with Daniel Defoe, who years later would romanticize the Scottish sailor’s sea tales in Robinson Crusoe.

In the spring of 1712 Selkirk returned home to his family in Lower Largo. Alexander was not at ease at home. He sought the solitude he had once enjoyed on Juan Fernandez island,  and spent most of his days wandering alone in the countryside or fishing from a boat in Largo Bay. Behind his father’s house he created a bower or cave and he trained two cats to perform a series of meaningless tricks, just like the companions he had found on his island refuge. While on one of his solitary walks, Alexander met Sophia Bruce, became infatuated with her and they ran away to London together.

He eventually parted company with Sophia, and Alexander on the rebound  married a widow he barely knew,  Frances Candis.  He made out a will bequeathing all his property to her, and she did not have to wait long to collect. The sea still held a fascination for Alexander Selkirk and he enlisted in the Royal Navy as a commissioned lieutenant. Selkirk died of fever at just 47 years of age aboard HMS Weymouth off the west coast of Africa in 1721 and was buried at sea, thousands of miles from home. Frances quickly laid claim to all Alexander possessed except the house he’d bought for his father in Largo and a few relics he brought back from the island.

Alexander’s drinking cup and chest from his Juan Fernandez days can be seen in the Antiquarian Museum in Edinburgh. The Chilean government has renamed Selkirk’s island of solitude Isla Robinson Crusoe and another nearby island is to be called Alexander Selkirk Island. Halfway around the world in Lower Largo, there is a bronze statue of Selkirk in full Robinson Crusoe regalia built into the outside wall of the house that now stands on the site of the Selcraig family’s original home, which was torn down in 1880. The hotel that now dominates Largo harbor is named the Robinson Crusoe after Defoe’s idyllic and morally unsullied literary character  — a much more engaging figure, perhaps, than the real man who went to sea and found literary immortality as the result of belting a defenceless woman during a drunken family fistfight.