Selkirk's Island, Diana Souhami [the best books to read TXT] 📗

46 Masefield, op. cit.

46 See the Burney Collection of early newspapers in the British Library

48 For details of eighteenth-century shipboard life see N.A.M. Rodger, The Wooden World (1988).

48 A letter from William Price to Edward Southwell, 10 July 1703. Quoted in Anton Gill, The Devil’s Mariner (1997).

48 There is disagreement over the size of the Cinque Ports. This description is taken from its Letter of Marque in the Public Record Office (HCA 26/18). William Funnell in his Voyage Round the World (1707) describes it as weighing 90 tons, with 20 guns and 63 men.

48 For speculation on Selkirk’s rank, see C.D.Lee, ‘Alexander Selkirk and the Last Voyage of the Cinque Ports Galley’, Mariner’s Mirror, 73 (1987).

49 John Howell, Selkirk’s first biographer, gleaned such anecdotal information from a great-grand-nephew of Selkirk. See The Life and Adventures of Alexander Selkirk (1829).

50 G.H. Healey (ed.), The Letters of Daniel Defoe (1955).

50 See Largo Parish Records; R.L.Mergoz, The Real Robinson Crusoe (1939); and A.S.Cunningham, ‘Upper Largo, Lower Largo, Lundin Links and Newburn’ (undated).

51 John Prebble, The Darien Disaster (1968).

51 William Paterson, ‘A Proposal to Plant a Colony in Darien’ (1701). And see G.P.Insh, The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies (1932).

53 Lionel Wafer, A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America (Hakluyt Society, 1934).

55 See ‘Upper Largo, Lower Largo, Lundin Links and Newburn’.

56 See his Voyage Round the World (1707).

57 As well as ‘The South Sea Waggoner’, Selkirk would have referred to Mount and Page, ‘New Sea Atlas’ (1702); by Captain Greenvile Collins (Hydrographer in Ordinary to the King and Queen’s most Excellent Majesties), ‘Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot’ (1693) and John Seller, ‘Southern Navigation’ (1703). Originals of these charts and pilot books are in the National Maritime Museum, London.

57 See Derek Howse, ‘Navigation and Astronomy in the Voyages’ in Background to Discovery: Pacific Exploration from Dampier to Cook (1990).

58 Op. cit. And see Dava Sobel, Longitude (1996).

59 Funnell, A Voyage Round the World.

59 John Welbe’s accusations and Dampier’s ‘vindication’ of these, are included in John Masefield (ed.), Dampier’s Voyages (vol. II). And see dusty cardboard boxes of unsorted contemporary documents about the voyage, stained with seawater and sprinkled with sand, in Chancery 104/160, in the Public Record Office, London.

60 Funnell, A Voyage Round the World. And following.

61 The Wellcome Institute Library, London, has an archive on the history of medicine at sea. For ghoulish detail see John Woodall, The Surgeon’s Mate (1617).

62 See Francis E. Cuppage, James Cook and the Conquest of Scurvy (1994), and J.J.Keevil, Medicine and the Navy (1958).

64 Funnell, A Voyage Round the World.

65 John Welbe, ‘An Answer to Captain Dampier’s Vindication of his Voyage to the South Seas in the Ship St George’, in John Masefield (ed.), Dampier’s Voyages, (vol. II).

65 Selkirk’s criticisms of the voyage are in a sworn Deposition, dated 10 July 1712, Chancery 24/1321, Public Record Office.

67 See Funnell, A Voyage Round the World; B.M.H.Rogers, ‘Dampier’s Voyage of 1703’; Welbe’s ‘Answer to Captain Dampier’s Vindication’; and Selkirk’s Deposition.

68 Eighteenth-century mariners described The Island in their published books. They showed no sparkle in their choice of titles for these journals. As well as Funnell’s Voyage Round the World, see Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World (1712); Edward Cooke, A Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World (1712); George Shelvocke, A Voyage Round the World by Way of the Great South Sea (1726); and George Anson, A Voyage Round the World (1748).

68 See Funnell, A Voyage Round the World. And following.

71 John Welbe, An Answer to Captain Dampier’s Vindication. Depositions corroborating Welbe’s account of Dampier’s behaviour were given in 1712 in the Chancery Courts by Selkirk, William Sheltram and Ralph Clift. Public Record Office (Chancery 24/1321).

71 Sheltram’s Deposition.

72 Funnell, A Voyage Round the World.

73 John Woodall, The Surgeon’s Mate (1617). And see John Kirkup’s introduction and appendix to a facsimile of this (1978).

74 Welbe’s ‘Answer’ to Dampier’s ‘Vindication’.

75 See Clift’s Deposition, and those of Selkirk and Sheltram.

77 Welbe’s ‘Answer’ to Dampier’s ‘Vindication’.

79 Dampier’s ‘Vindication’.

80 Welbe’s ‘Answer’, and the Depositions of Selkirk, Sheltram and Clift.

83 See Selkirk’s Deposition.

3. THE ARRIVAL

91 For contemporary accounts of Selkirk on The Island, see Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World (1712); Edward Cooke, A Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World (1712); and an article by Richard Steele in the Englishman (26), 1–3 December, 1713.

96 Steele, the Englishman, December 1713.

99 See John Howell, Alexander Selkirk (1829); Edward Cooke, A Voyage to the South Sea; Woodes Rogers, Cruising Voyage; Richard Steele, the Englishman.

100 The poet William Cowper (1731–1800) in 1782 wrote Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk, during his solitary abode in the island of Juan Fernandez:

I am monarch of all I survey,

My right there is none to dispute,

From the centre all round to the sea,

I am lord of the fowl and the brute.

O solitude! Where are the charms

That sages have seen in thy face?

Better dwell in the midst of alarms,

Than reign in this horrible place.

Etcetera.

100 Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage.

100 Steele, the Englishman.

100 Deposition, 1712.

101 C.D.Lee, ‘Alexander Selkirk and the Cinque Ports Galley’, Mariner’s Mirror, 73 (1987).

103 See John Masefield (ed.), Dampier’s Voyages (Vol. II); and the Depositions of Selkirk, Clift and Sheltram.

105 Funnell, A Voyage Round the World.

106 Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage.

106 Ibid.

108 Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage

109 See J.M.Coetzee, Foe (1986); Pat Rogers, Robinson Crusoe (1979); Derek Walcott, The Castaway and Other Poems (1965).

111 Nicolaus Copernicus, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543). Before his time the Earth was thought to be at rest, with the Sun, Planets and Stars circling round it.

111 See Welbe’s ‘Answer’, Dampier’s ‘Vindication’ and Funnell’s Voyage.

112 B.M.H.Rogers, ‘Dampier’s Voyage of 1703’.

113 Dampier’s ‘Vindication’.

115 See the Depositions of Selkirk, Clift and Sheltram, and the Chancery Papers 104/160 in the Public Record Office.

4. THE RESCUE

121 For source material for this 1708 voyage, see the published journals of Woodes Rogers and Edward Cooke; David J. Starkey, British Privateering Enterprise (1990); Glyn Williams, The Great South Sea (1997); B.M.H.Rogers, ‘Woodes Rogers’s Privateering Voyage of