On This Day: 'Women and children first'

February 26th, 1852: 450 perish as the troopship HMS Birkenhead is wreaked off Danger Point on the Western Cape of South Africa.

HMS Birkenhead was one of the first iron-hulled ships built for the Royal Navy. Designed as a steam frigate, she was converted to a troopship before being commissioned. After seven years of service the ship’s final voyage began in January 1852. Under the command of Captain Robert Salmond RN, the Birkenhead left Portsmouth conveying troops from ten different regiments, including the 74th Regiment of Foot and Queen's Royal Regiment, to take part in the Eighth Xhosa War against the Xhosa in the Cape Colony. On January 5th, she picked up more soldiers at Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland, and conveyed some officers' wives and families.

Final voyage  On February 23rd, 1852, Birkenhead docked briefly at Simon's Town, near Cape Town. Most of the women and children disembarked, as did a number of sick soldiers. Nine cavalry horses, several bales of hay and 35 tons of coal were loaded for the last leg of the voyage to Algoa Bay.

Two days later, at 6 pm on February 25th, the Birkenhead sailed from Simon’s Bay with between 630 and 643 men, women and children aboard [1]. To make the best possible speed, Captain Salmond decided to hug the South African coast, setting a course that was generally within 3 miles of the shore. Using her paddle wheels, she maintained a steady speed of 8.5 knots. The sea was calm and the night clear as she headed east.

Collision  Shortly before 2 am on February 26th, the Birkenhead struck an uncharted rock off Danger Point near Gansbaai, Western Cape. Barely submerged, this rock is clearly visible in rough seas, but it is not immediately apparent in calmer conditions. Captain Salmond quickly ordered the ship’s anchor dropped, the quarter-boats to be lowered, and a turn astern to be given by the engines. As the ship backed off the rock, however, the sea rushed into the large hole made by the collision. The ship struck the rock a second time buckling the plates of the forward bilge and ripping open the bulkheads. The forward compartments and the engine rooms were soon flooded, and over 100 soldiers were drowned in their berths.

The surviving soldiers mustered and awaited their officers' orders. Salmond ordered Lieutenant-Colonel Seton of the 74th (Highland) Regiment of Foot to send men to the chain pumps. Sixty were directed to this task, a similar number were assigned to the tackles of the lifeboats, and the rest were assembled on the poop deck to raise the forward part of the ship. The women and children were placed in the ship's cutter which lay alongside. Two other large boats, with a capacity of 150 souls each, were manned, but one was immediately swamped and the other could not be launched due to poor maintenance and paint on the winches. Only three smaller boats were left available.

The surviving officers and men assembled on deck, where Lieutenant-Colonel Seton took charge of all military personnel and stressed the necessity of maintaining order and discipline to his officers. As Ensign Lucas, a survivor, later recounted: ‘Almost everybody kept silent, indeed nothing was heard, but the kicking of the horses and the orders of Salmond, all given in a clear firm voice’ [2].

From bad to worse  Ten minutes after the first impact, the engines still turning astern, the ship struck again beneath the engine room, tearing open her bottom. She instantly broke in two just aft of the mainmast. The funnel went over the side and the forepart of the ship sank at once. The stern section, now crowded with men, floated for a few more minutes. Captain Salmond called out that ‘all those who can swim jump overboard and make for the boats’. Lieutenant-Colonel Seton, however, recognising that rushing the lifeboats would risk swamping them and endangering the women and children, ordered the men to stand fast, and only three men made the attempt. The cavalry horses were freed and driven into the sea in the hope that they might be able to swim ashore. Eight did indeed make it safely to land.

The soldiers did not move, even as the ship broke up barely 20 minutes after striking the rock. Some soldiers managed to swim the 2 miles to shore over the next 12 hours, using pieces of the wreck to stay afloat, but most drowned, died of exposure or were killed by sharks.

The next morning, the schooner Lioness discovered one of the cutters and, after saving the occupants of the second boat, made her way to the scene of the disaster. Arriving in the afternoon, she found 40 people still clinging to the rigging. It was reported that, of the approximately 643 people aboard, only 193 were saved. Captain Edward WC Wright of the 91st (Argyllshire Highlanders) Regiment of Foot was the most senior army officer to survive. He was awarded a brevet majority for his actions during the ordeal [3].

Birkenhead drill  Only 193 of the estimated 643 people on board survived. The scale of the disaster led to a number of sailors being court martialled on May 8th, 1852 aboard HMS Victory in Portsmouth. Unsurprisingly the court martial attracted a great deal of interest but, as none of the senior naval officers of the Birkenhead survived, no-one was found to be blameworthy.

The soldiers' chivalry gave rise to the unofficial ‘women and children first’ code of conduct for abandoning ship. While this has absolutely no basis in maritime law, the notion still holds sway over popular imagination, reinforced in both novels and on film. The ‘Birkenhead drill’ as it was termed in Rudyard Kipling's 1893 tribute to the Royal Marines, ‘Soldier an' Sailor Too’, would later come to describe courage in the face of hopeless circumstances.

Endnotes:

1. The number of personnel aboard is in some doubt, but an estimate of 638 was published in The Times newspaper. It is generally thought that the survivors comprised 113 soldiers (all ranks), 6 Royal Marines, 54 seamen (all ranks), 7 women, 13 children and at least one male civilian. Regrettably, as the muster rolls and books were lost with the ship these numbers cannot be substantiated.

2. The transcript of a ‘letter’ written in Cape Town on March 20th 1852 by Ensign G.A. Lucas of the 73rd (Perthshire) Regiment of Foot recounting ‘The wreck of H. M. Steamer "Birkenhead", 26 Feb 1852’.

3. A brevet was a warrant giving a commissioned officer a higher rank title as a reward for gallantry or meritorious conduct but may not confer the authority, precedence, or pay of real rank.

On This Day: Fishguard's women defend Britain

The last battle on British soil is commonly accepted as being the French invasion at Fishguard in 1797. Under the command of Irish-American Colonel William Tate, a force of 1,400 French soldiers had sailed from Camaret to invade Wales with the aim of instigating a French-style revolution in Britain. Of the 1,400 troops, some 600 were French regular soldiers that Napoleon Bonaparte had not required for his conquest of Italy, and 800 were irregulars, including republicans, deserters, convicts and Royalist prisoners. All were well-armed, and some of the Tate’s officers were Irish. Officially known as the Seconde Légion des Francs, they became more commonly known as La Légion Noire (‘The Black Legion’) on account of using captured British uniforms dyed very dark brown or black.

The last invasion  The French force landed at Carregwastad Point near Fishguard in Pembrokeshire on February 22nd, 1797. The French moved inland and secured some outlying farmhouses. A company of French grenadiers under Lieutenant St. Leger took possession of Trehowel Farm on the Llanwnda Peninsula about a mile from their landing site, and it was here that Colonel Tate decided to set up his headquarters.

By February 23rd, Tate was having serious problems with his troops and with lowering morale, the invasion began to lose momentum. Discipline among the convict recruits quickly collapsed with many of them rebelling and mutinying against their officers. Having been instructed to live off the land, many of the convicts simply deserted to loot nearby local villages and hamlets where they soon discovered the locals' supply of wine [2]. Those troops left to Tate were the French regulars, including his Grenadiers. The rest mainly lay drunk and sick in farmhouses all over the Llanwnda Peninsula.

Instead of welcoming Tate's invaders, the Welsh had turned out to be hostile, and at least six Welsh and French had already been killed in clashes. Tate's Irish and French officers counselled surrender, since the departure of the French ships that morning meant there was no way to escape.

By 5 pm, the British forces had reached Fishguard. The remaining French troops were thus confronted by a quickly assembled group of around 600 Welsh reservists, local militia, and sailors all under the command of John Campbell, 1st Baron Cawdor and captain of the Castlemartin Troop of the Pembroke Yeomanry Cavalry. Many local civilians also organised and armed themselves. Battle was averted when Cawdor called off the attack due to the failing light and returned to Fishguard.

The French waver  Later that evening, Tate decided to try and negotiate a conditional surrender. He sent his second in command, Baron de Rochemure, and his aide-de-camp Francois L’Hanhard who could speak English, to negotiate a conditional surrender allowing the entire French force to return to France. They were guided to a house in Fishguard Square, which in later years would become the Royal Oak public house, where Cawdor had set up his headquarters. A discussion took place between the senior British officers who decided to reject the French approach and insist on unconditional surrender. Tate was given until 10 am on February 24th to surrender on Goodwick Sands, otherwise the French would be attacked.

By 8 am on the following morning, the British forces lined up in battle order on Goodwick Sands. As these local troops were being deployed, Cawdor rode over to Trehowel Farm where Tate agreed to the unconditional surrender. According to reports, when formally surrendering his sword, Tate was notably confused and frightened. The scene on Goodwick Sands was just as pathetic. Having stacked their arms, the prisoners waited until there were boats to carry them round to Fishguard. Further accounts claim that many of the men were ‘very ill of a flux’ which they had brought over with them and that some even died.

Jemima Fawr  The story continues that the inhabitants of Fishguard had assembled on the cliffs above Goodwick Sands to watch and await Tate's response to the ultimatum. Among those present were women wearing traditional Welsh costume. According to the tale Jemima Nicholas, a 47-year-old cobbler’s wife also known as ‘Jemima Fawr’, is credited with tricking the French invaders into surrender by telling the local women to dress in their red ‘whittles’ (shawls) and tall, black steeple-crowned hats. It is reputed that the same Jemima Nicholas single-handedly captured a dozen, drunken French soldiers and imprisoned them overnight in the nearby St Mary’s Church. Regardless, it is claimed that, from a distance, some of the French mistook the women to be regular line infantry in red coats and black shakos. Thus it was that the French commander thought his soldiers were outnumbered and sought to surrender.

All of this makes for a cracking story, one that has been told and retold so many times that certain key elements have become enshrined in the telling. Indeed, the story of this event is told in an embroidered tapestry that was commissioned in 1997 to commemorate the bicentenary of the Invasion. Similar in shape and design to the Bayeux tapestry, the Fishguard version is also 30.5 m long (100 feet). It was designed and sewn by around 80 Fishguard women and took four years to complete. The tapestry is on permanent exhibition in ‘The Last Invasion Tapestry Gallery’ attached to the Library in Fishguard Town Hall. Unsurprisingly the women of Fishguard are shown in their national dress arriving to watch proceedings. Historically, however, there may be a problem as this ‘traditional’ dress may have been ‘invented’ some years later by one Augusta Hall (Hutton, 2009, 247).

National dress  According to St Fagan’s National History Museum, the popular image of Welsh 'national' dress, of a woman in a red cloak and tall black hat, is based on clothes worn by Welsh countrywomen during the early 19th-century. By the middle of the century, this fashion had became part of a conscious revival of Welsh culture at a time when traditional values were under threat. Thus the ‘national dress’ that developed consisted of a striped flannel petticoat, worn under a flannel open-fronted bedgown, with an apron, shawl and kerchief or cap. The style of the bedgown varied, with loose coat-like gowns, gowns with a fitted bodice and long skirts and a short gown very similar in style to a riding habit. The women’s hats were generally the same as those worn by men of the period. The iconic tall 'chimney' or ‘stove-pipe’ hat did not appear until the late 1840s, some forty years after the vents at Fishguard. That said, such hats seem to be based on a fusion of men's top hats and a form of high hat worn in country areas during the 1790-1820 period.

All things Welsh  Augusta Hall, nee Waddington, was the daughter of a London family that had made its fortune in the American trade, before making Monmouthshire the seat of their family home. Augusta had married Benjamin Hall, a Welsh civil engineer and Member of Parliament for Monmouth, in 1823. Her husband is most famous for becoming the First Commissioner of Works in 1855 with the ‘direct responsibility for the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster and [possibly] having the bell of the new clock tower named after him’ (Hutton, 2009, 247). In 1859 Hall was elevated to the peerage as Baron Llanover, of Llanover and Abercarn in the County of Monmouth. Through his wife, Augusta, he inherited the Llanover estate in Monmouthshire.

Augusta had fallen in love with Wales and instigated a new wave of measures to preserve and revive a distinctive cultural identity for the principality. Under her leadership she built on an ongoing restoration of national heritage in the shape of traditional literature and music (including the institution of eisteddfod to encourage new productions) and added external symbols of nationhood. In the period 1825 to 1850 she gave Wales a national hero in the shape of Twm Sion Catti [1] and a national costume, designing a female dress of tall black hat, red cloak, gown and petticoat - the same costume famously worn by the women of Fishguard nearly 30 years earlier. Of course it is possible that Augusta Hall simply promoted a national dress based on that already worn in Pembrokeshire.

Traditions championed  As Lady Llanover, Augusta was very influential in encouraging the wearing of a 'national' dress, both in her own home and at eisteddfodau. She considered it important to encourage the use of the Welsh language and the wearing of an identifiable Welsh costume. She succeeded in her aim mainly because people felt that their national identity was under threat and the wearing of a national dress was one way to preserve and promote that identity.

A further influence was the work of artists producing prints for the rising tourist trade, which had the effect of popularising the idea of a typical Welsh costume. Later the work of photographers who produced thousands of postcards would do the same. All of these efforts contributed to the creation of a stereotypical 'national' dress at odds with the numerous styles undoubtedly worn earlier in the century.

References:

Hutton, R., (2009), ‘Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain’, Yale University Press.

Endnotes:

1. An outlaw and trickster who was something of a local legend in Cardiganshire. Augusta sponsored his conversion into a figure known to the British public in general through her patronage of Thomas Jeffrey Llewelyn Pritchard, a writer who produced a bestselling novel about Twm.

2. A Portuguese ship had been wrecked on the coast several weeks previously and many of the locals had stocked their homes with the alcoholic spoils of salvage.

On This Day: The last invasion of Britain

February 22nd, 1797: ‘Britain invaded’ [1].

The 200th anniversary re-enactment of the
Battle of Fishguard that took place in 1997.

On February 22nd, 1797 over 1,200 French troops landed near Fishguard in Pembrokeshire, South Wales. This was at a time when Britain was at war with revolutionary France and an American in French service, Brigadier-General William Tate, intended to incite an uprising and attack Bristol, then Britain’s second largest city.

The mission, however, was ill-conceived. It was originally planned as a diversion, but Tate had proceeded regardless when the larger assault at Bantry bay in Ireland was aborted. Tate was in his 70s and his troops, mostly ex-prisoners, were considered expendable. The landing was completed during the night and at daybreak on the 23rd the French set out. Before not too long many of the troops were drunk on plundered wine.

That evening they were met by British troops led by Lord John Cawdor. He had mustered the nearby yeomanry and militia, although there were only about 500 men available. Tate may have mistaken the numerous women who had come to see the spectacle for additional troops, as they stood with the British soldiers wearing their red shawls and black hats. Or it may have been a simple lack of confidence in his men. But the American commander decided to surrender to the smaller British force, and the last invasion of Britain was over.

Endnotes:

1. Smith, R., (2005), ‘Britain is invaded’, BBC History Magazine Volume 6, Number 2, p. 11.

Ludi: the ancient Egyptian game of Mehen

Mehen is an ancient Egyptian game references to which have been found already in the predynastic period before 3100 BC. The gameboard is in the form of a spiral representing a coiled snake with the snake’s head in the centre of the disk. The name Mehen can refer to the spiral form of the game or its representation of the Egyptian snake-god Mehen. Unfortunately, the original rules of the game are unknown.

Egypt, it is known that Mehen was also played in Cyprus and in Jordan, near the Dead Sea region, where examples of the game have been found at some archaeological sites.

Mehen was unique from other Egyptian games in that it seems to have been a multi-player game involving up to six players. Examples of the game have been found with six playing pieces in the shapes of dogs, hippos, and most commonly, lions. Accompanying these pieces were round balls the use of which is uncertain. The number of cells in the coil of the game board varies from as low as 40 to as high as 400, but it seems the number of cells did not affect the rules of the game. A complete set of Mehen is depicted in a fresco in the Mastaba of Hesy-re at Saqqara [1].

From the archaeological record, it appears that Mehen fell out of favour from the end of the Old Kingdom, about 2300 BC, and was thereafter replaced by Senet and Aseb. Yet Mehen did not completely vanish. In 1925, a British Colonial Administrator in Sudan, Reginald Davies, recorded a game called Lib El Merafib, the ‘Hyena Game’, played by Kababish Arabs of Northern Sudan, in Nubia, which closely resembles Mehen. The ‘Hyena Game’ was also played on a spiral board with all the pieces needing to reach the well in the centre and then eaten by the hyena on their way back.

Endnotes:

1. (Wikipedia) The Mastaba of Hesy-re is an ancient Egyptian tomb complex in the great necropolis of Saqqara in Egypt. It is the final resting place of the high official Hesy-re, who served in office during the Third Dynasty under King Djoser (Netjerikhet). His large mastaba is renowned for its well-preserved wall paintings and relief panels made from imported Lebanese cedar, which are today considered masterpieces of Old Kingdom wood carving. The mastaba itself is the earliest example of a painted tomb from the Old Kingdom and the only known example from the Third Dynasty. The tomb was excavated by the Egyptologists Auguste Mariette and James Edward Quibell.

On This Day: Mary, Queen of Scots beheaded

February 8th, 1587: After 19 years of imprisonment, Mary Queen of Scots is beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle.

Why?  Fotheringhay Castle was the last of the many genteel prisons in which Mary, Queen of Scots spent the final 20 years of her life after she was forced to abdicate from the Scotland’s throne in 1567. Genteel it may have been – it had been a royal residence – but it was also remote, surrounded by marshland and difficult to escape or be rescued from. Those were important considerations: Mary was about to be tried for treason, after the discovery of the so-called Babington Plot had finally and firmly implicated her in a conspiracy to depose and murder Elizabeth I.

The outcome of Mary’s 1586 trial was a foregone conclusion, but it took Elizabeth several months to agree to sign the death warrant. Mary was not only an anointed queen, but Elizabeth’s own cousin: England’s queen couldn’t chop off Mary’s head without first giving it some thought.

The inevitable happened, however, in February 1587. Several macabre legends surround Mary’s beheading, including that when the executioner held the severed head up by its hair to show onlookers that the job was done, it became apparent that the queen had worn a wig – the hair came away in the man’s hand and the head rolled away across the floor.

The Babington Plot?  The goals of the Babington Plot in 1586 were to assassinate Elizabeth I and place the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots on the English throne. To ensure success, Spain promised an invasion force. The plot was named for Anthony Babington who wrote to Mary - the figurehead of several Catholic plots during Elizabeth’s reign - with details of her rescue from captivity and execution of her cousin.

In 1586 an English Catholic named Anthony Babington (right) was recruited by Jesuit priest John Ballard to communicate with Mary, Queen of Scots about the details of a plot to assassinate Elizabeth and rescue Mary from captivity in Chartley Hall, Staffordshire. Mary had been imprisoned on Elizabeth’s orders for 18 years since the former’s forced abdication from the Scottish throne. Conditions of Mary’s captivity demanded she have no contact with the outside world. Babington, therefore, had to arrange for messages to be smuggled between him and Mary.

Coded messages [1], passed to and from Mary’s residence in Chartley concealed in the stopper of a beer barrel, were intercepted and decoded by agents of Elizabeth’s chief spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham (right). Babington and 13 others were caught, tried and sentenced to death for treason by being ‘hanged, drawn and quartered’ in September 1586. More than uncovering the plot, the letters provided hard evidence that Mary had been complicit. After Elizabeth finally, and reluctantly, signed her death warrant, Mary was executed at Fotheringhay Castle on February 8th, 1587.

Walsingham was able to keep tabs on closet Catholics and would-be assassins, intercept and decode correspondence, and foil numerous plots against the Queen. So effective was Walsingham’s operation that he had a double agent, Gilbert Gifford, inside Babington’s circle from the beginning, as well as a codebreaker, Thomas Phelippes, at Chartley to decipher the secret messages.

Endnotes:

1. Code: a system of words, letters, figures, or symbols used to represent others, especially for the purposes of secrecy.

On This Day: 'Crusoe' rescued

February 1st, 1709: Alexander Selkirk, believed to be the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel ‘Robinson Crusoe’, was rescued after being marooned for over four years on the Juan Fernandez Islands.

Who? Alexander Selkirk (also spelled Selcraig) was born in 1676 in Largo, Fife, Scotland. The son of a shoemaker, Selkirk ran away to sea in 1695 whereupon he joined a band of buccaneers in the Pacific [1]. By 1703 he was sailing master of a galley on a privateering expedition [2]. In September 1704, after a quarrel with his captain, he was put ashore at his own request on the uninhabited Más a Tierra Island.

Where?  The Juan Fernández Islands (Spanish: ‘Islas Juan Fernández’) are a small cluster of islands in the South Pacific Ocean, situated about 650 km (400 miles) West of, and administratively part of, Chile. They consist of the 93 km2 (36 mile2) Isla Más a Tierra (also called ‘Isla Robinson Crusoe’); the 53 km2 (33 mile2) Isla Más Afuera (also called ‘Isla Alejandro Selkirk’), 161 km (100 miles) to the west; and an islet, Isla Santa Clara, southwest of Isla Más a Tierra.

The islands are volcanic peaks rising from the Juan Fernández submarine ridge. Robinson Crusoe has a summit 915 m (3,002’) above sea level, and Alejandro Selkirk rises to 1,650 m (5,415’). Bahía Cumberland (Cumberland Bay), on the northern side of Robinson Crusoe, and Bahía Padre, at the western extremity, are the only fair anchorages.

The islands were discovered about AD 1563 by Juan Fernández, a Spanish navigator, who received a grant and lived there for some years, stocking them with goats and pigs. After his departure, the islands were visited only occasionally until 1704 when Selkirk was put ashore at Bahía Cumberland. The islands passed into Chilean possession in the early 19th-century. Since then, they have been used as penal settlements on many occasions, particularly for political prisoners. Isla Santa Clara is now uninhabited. Robinson Crusoe and Alejandro Selkirk are sparsely populated, most of their inhabitants being concentrated in the village of Robinson Crusoe, on Bahía Cumberland. Their principal occupation is fishing for lobsters. In 2018 the Chilean government created Juan Fernández Islands Marine Park, a protected area that encompasses over almost 260,000 km2 (100,000 miles2) of ocean around the islands.

Survival  At first, Selkirk remained along the shoreline of Más a Tierra, foraging and eating spiny lobsters. Reputedly suffering from loneliness, misery and remorse at this time, Selkirk scanned the ocean daily hoping for rescue. When hordes of raucous sea lions gathered on the beach as part of their mating season, however, Selkirk was forced to retreat to the island's interior (Steele, 1713, 169-171). Here life took a turn for the better. For starters, more foods were available. The goats introduced by Juan Fernández, now feral, provided Selkirk with meat and milk, while wild turnips, the leaves of the indigenous cabbage tree and dried Schinus fruits (pink peppercorns) offered him variety and spice. Plagued by rats at night, Selkirk was able to sleep soundly and in safety by domesticating and living near feral cats (Rogers, 1712, 127-128).

He proved resourceful in using materials found on the island: he forged a new knife out of barrel hoops left on the beach (Rogers, 1712, 128), he built two huts out of pepper trees, one of which he used for cooking and the other for sleeping, and he employed his musket to hunt goats and his knife to clean their carcasses. As his gunpowder dwindled, he had to chase prey on foot. During one such chase he was badly injured when he tumbled from a cliff, lying helpless and unable to move for about a day. That his prey had cushioned his fall probably spared him a broken back (Rogers, 1712, 126-127).

Childhood lessons learned from his father, a tanner, now served him well. For example, when his clothes wore out, he made new ones from goatskins using a nail for sewing. As his shoes became unusable, he had no need to replace them as his toughened, calloused feet made such protection unnecessary (Rogers, 1712, 128).

Rescue  During Selkirk’s sojourn on the island, two vessels did anchor off the coast, but unfortunately for him both were Spanish. As a Scotsman and a privateer [1][2], he would have faced a grim fate if captured and therefore hid until the Spanish sailed away. Selkirk remained alone on Isla Más a Tierra until February 2nd, 1709 with the arrival of two English privateers, the Duke (Rogers, 1712, 124-125) and its companion ship the Duchess (Rogers, 1712, 6).

After four years and four months without human company, Selkirk was almost incoherent with joy (Rogers, 1712, 129) when he met the landing party led by Thomas Dover (Rogers, 1712, 124). The ships’ crews were suffering scurvy but with Selkirk’s help - the agile castaway caught two or three goats a day to feed them - they were restored to health (Rogers, 1712, 131-132). Presumably in gratitude, the Duke's captain and leader of the expedition, Woodes Rogers, rescued Selkirk returning him to England in October 1711. Rogers’ account ‘A Cruising Voyage Round the World…’, which includes a description of Selkirk’s life on the island, was published the following year.

Privateer of Pirate?

Privateering  After a spell as second mate on Duke, Rogers gave Selkirk command of Increase one of their prize ships (Rogers, 1712, 147). When it was ransomed by the Spanish (Rogers, 1712, 220) Selkirk returned to privateering with a vengeance. At Guayaquil in present-day Ecuador, he led a boat crew up the Guayas River where a number of wealthy Spanish ladies had fled and looted the gold and jewels they had hidden inside their clothing (Rogers, 1712, 178-179). His part in the hunt for treasure galleons along the coast of Mexico resulted in the capture of Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación y Desengaño (Rogers, 1712, 294), renamed Bachelor, on which he served as sailing master under Captain Dover to the Dutch East Indies (Rogers, 1712, 312). Selkirk completed the around-the-world voyage by the Cape of Good Hope as the sailing master of Duke (Cooke, 1712, 61), eventually arriving off the English coast on October 1st, 1711 (Rogers, 1712, 427). He had been away for eight years (Funnell, 1707, 3).

Six years later and Selkirk was back at sea having enlisted in the Royal Navy. Somewhat ironically given his history of privateering Selkirk was serving as master's mate on board HMS Weymouth, engaged in an anti-piracy patrol off the west coast of Africa, when he died. On December 13th, 1721, Selkirk succumbed to the yellow fever that had plagued the voyage. He was buried at sea.

Legacy  Selkirk's ordeal was mentioned by fellow crewmember Edward Cooke his book chronicling their privateering expedition, ‘A Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World…’ (Cooke, 1712). A more detailed recounting was published by the expedition's leader, Woodes Rogers, within months (Rogers, 1712). Selkirk’s story was also told by the essayist Richard Steele in ‘The Englishman’ of December 3rd, 1713. It was from these accounts that Daniel Defoe evidently drew inspiration for his The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe published in 1719.

References:

Cooke, E., (1712), ‘A Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World, Performed in the Years 1708, 1709, 1710 and 1711’, London: B. Lintot & R. Gossling.

Funnell, W., (1707), ‘A Voyage Round the World, Containing an Account of Captain Dampier's Expedition into the South Seas in the Ship St George in the Years 1703 and 1704’, London: W. Botham.

Rogers, W., (1712), ‘A Cruising Voyage Round the World: First to the South-Sea, Thence to the East-Indies, and Homewards by the Cape of Good Hope’, London: A. Bell.

Steele, R., (1713), ‘Alexander Selkirk, an Account of His Living Alone Above Four Years in a Desolate Island’, The Englishman, 1 (26), December 3rd, pp. 168-173.

Endnotes:

1. Buccaneers were pirates who attacked Spanish shipping in the Caribbean Sea during the 17th century. The term buccaneer is now used generally as a synonym for pirate. Originally, buccaneer crews were larger, more apt to attack coastal cities, and more localised to the Caribbean than later pirate crews who sailed to the Indian Ocean on the Pirate Round in the late 17th-century.

2. Privateers, or 'private men-of-war', were individuals or privately-owned ships authorised by a King or government by Letters of Marque and Reprisal to attack and capture enemy vessels and shipping during wartime. Pirates, in contrast to privateers, commit warlike acts at sea without the authorisation of any nation.