Four Years On An Island: A Survival Story
Four Years On An Island: A Survival Story of Alexander Selkirk
Selkirk was a shoemaker's son who fled to sea in 1695. He joined a group of buccaneers in the Pacific and became the sailing master of a galley on a privateering voyage by 1703. He was placed ashore at his own request on the desolate Más a Tierra Island in the Juan Fernández cluster, 400 miles (640 km) west of Valparaíso, Chile, in September 1704 following a dispute with his captain. He stayed there by himself until February 1709, when he was found and brought on board an English ship under Woodes Rogers' command. Rogers' Cruising Voyage Round the World, which describes Selkirk's existence on the island, was published the year after they arrived in England in October 1711. At the time of his death, Selkirk was a British ship's master's mate. Richard Steele, a writer, also recounted Selkirk's tale in The Englishman on December 3, 1713. Both Defoe and the poet William Cowper, who began "I am monarch of all I survey" in his "Lines on Solitude," clearly took influence from these tales for Robinson Crusoe.
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