ROBINSON CRUSOE’S ISLAND

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 8, 7 August 1946, Page 3

ROBINSON CRUSOE’S ISLAND

MAY BECOME AN AIRPORT Robinson Crusoe’s Island, we are told, may become an airport. The Juan Fernandez group, the setting of Daniel Defoe’s classic, is being considered as a station for the proposed trans-Pacific air service between Chile, New Zealand and Australia. Thus, it may be, schoolboys of the future will take a flight during their mid-summer vacation to explore the haunts of Crusoe and his man Friday.

The islands take their name from one Juan Fernandez, a Spaniard, who discovered them in 1563. They were visited by the bucanners in their marauding expeditions, against the Spaniards on the west coast of South America. In 1681 a Mosquito Indian was left there by Captain William Dampier, and was taken off by him in March, 1684. It was this incident, and the subsequent marooning on Juan Fernandez of Alexander Selkirk, who remained there for four years, that inspired Defoe’s immortal story of Robinson Crusoe.

In August, 1708, an expedition fitted out by Bristol merchants and commanded by Captain Woodes Rogers sailed in two little ships, the Duke of 320 tons, and the Duchess of 260 tons. The former carried 117 officers and men and the latter 108. Captain William Dampier was engaged as “Pilot for the South Seas.” The ships passed the meridian of Cape Horn on January 10 in latitude 61deg 58min South, “for aught we know the furthest that anyone has yet been to the Southward.” Three weeks later, the Duke and Duchess, with many men “sick of the Scurvy,” arrived off Juan Fernan dez. The finding of “Robinson Crusoe” is well told by Captain Woodes Rogers: “Our Pinnace returned from the shore and brought abundance of Craw-Fish, with a Man cloth’d' in Goat-Skins who looked wilder than the first Owners of them.. He had been on the Island four Years and four Months, being left there by Captain Stradling in the CinquePorts. His name was Alexander Selkirk, a Scotch man, who had been Master of the Cinque-Ports, a Ship that came here last with Captain Dampier, who told me that this was the best man in her so I immediately agreed with him to be a Mate on board our Ship. ... He told us that he was born at Largs, in.the County of Fife, in Scotland, and was bred a Sailor from his Youth. . . . “He diverted and provided for himself as well as he could; but for the first eight months had much ado to bear up against Melancholy and the Terror of being left alone in such a desolate place. He built two Hutts, covered them with long grass and lined ’em with the skins of goats. ... In the lesser Hutt he dressed his Victuals and in the larger he slept and employed himself in reading, singing Psalms and praying; so that he said he was a better Christian while in this Solitude than ever he was before, or than, he was afraid, he should eve.’ be again. . “He might have had Fish enough, but could not eat ’em for want of Salt, except Craw-Fish. These he sometimes boiled and at other times broiled, as he did his Goats’ Flesh. He kept an Account of 500 goats that he killed while there, and caught as many more, which he marked on the Ear and let go. ‘When his Power failed, he took them by speed of foot. For his way of living and continual Exercise of walking and running, cleared him of all gross Humours, so that he ran with wonderful Swiftness thro’ the Woods and up the Rocks and Hills, as we perceived when we employed him to catch Goats for us. . . .

“After he had conquered his Melancholy he diverted himself by cutting his Name on the Trees, and the Time of his being left and Continuance there. He was at first much pestered with Cats and Rats that had bred in great numbers from some of each Species which had got ashore from Ships. The Rats knawed his Feet and Clothes while asleep, which obliged him to cherish the Cats with Goats’ flesh; by which many of them became so tame that they would lie about him in hundreds and soon, delivered him from the Rats ....

“So that by the Care of Providence and Vigour of his Youth, being now but about 30 years old, he came at last to conquer all the Inconveniences of his Solitude and to be very easy. ... By this one may see that Solitude and Retirement from the World are not such an unsufferable State of Life as most Men imagine. ... It may likewise instruct us how much a plain and temperate way of living conduces to the Health of the Body and Vig-

our of the Mindj both which we are apt to destroy by Excess and Plenty. . . The Juan Fernandez Islands were used as a coaling base by the S'charnhorst and Gneisenau and the other cruisers commanded by Admiral Graf Spee in October-Novem-ber, 1914. After the Battle of the Falkland Islands, in which four of the German ships were sunk, th' cruiser Dresden made her way b Juan Fernandez. She was intercepted there some weeks later and sun 1 V H.M. Ships Glasgow and Kent.