The Man Who Was Robinson Crusoe: A Personal View of Alexander Selkirk,Used

The Man Who Was Robinson Crusoe: A Personal View of Alexander Selkirk,Used

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SKU: SONG1906476020
Brand: Neil Wilson Publishing
$40.47
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300 years ago the British privateer Duke, under the command of Captain Woodes Rogers, dropped anchor at a remote island over 400 miles off the coast of Chile. On the shore of rugged Juan Fernandez, the wideeyed crew were greeted with an astonishing sight what seemed to be a wild animal cavorting up and down the beach, gesticulating wildly and uttering guttural cries. They thought it was some devil's creation until it became apparent that the animal before them was in fact a man.That man was the Scottish mariner Alexander Selkirk who had been marooned there for four and a half years. Even more extraordinary was the fact that the Duke's pilot, William Dampier, recognised Selkirk as a former crewmate from the illfated Cinque Ports that had banished him to the island. Dampier convinced his captain that Selkirk would be a key member of his crew and he was soon promoted to become a vital part of Woodes Rogers' privateering mission.Selkirk's life was undeniably stranger than fiction. So much so, that on his return to Britain, his life as a castaway became the inspiration for Daniel Defoe's classic novel, Robinson Crusoe. But even the worldfamous tale of Defoe's imaginary creation could not match Selkirk's real life his dramatic desertion and island existence, his part in capturing a treasureladen Spanish galleon, his own role as one of the most recorded navigators on the high seas and his eventual return to Lower Largo in Fife as a very wealthy young man.Rick Wilson's affectionate and revealing insight into The Man Who Was Robinson Crusoe recalls his own involvement in the tracing of a musket reputed to be that of the famous Fife mariner. Or should that be infamous? Selkirk was an oftenmoody and pugnacious character who cannot be considered a conventional hero. But his story was a truly colourful one which should have ended with his succumbing to a virulent tropical disease aboard HMS Weymouth in 1721. But there was more to come. He left a fortune, a Scottish commonlaw wife in Fife and a legal one in London. The two locked horns in an unsavoury and ultimately onesided battle over his estate.And what of that eternal thorny question...did Defoe and Selkirk actually meet when they were both in Bristol? Wilson produces compelling evidence that they did and suggests that there was more to it than just literary inspiration.

⚠️ WARNING (California Proposition 65):

This product may contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.

For more information, please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.

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