Selkirk's Island
Diana Souhami Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 256pp, £14.99
ISBN 0297643851
In 1704, Alexander Selkirk, the 23-year-old master of the sailing ship Cinque Ports, quarrelled with his captain and was abandoned on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez, 363 miles off the coast of Chile. For a year the Cinque Ports had sailed the South Seas, attacking the galleons of Spain in the hope of seizing treasure. Fever, starvation, gangrene and scurvy had ravaged the crew, and the ship itself had become unseaworthy, its oak timbers eaten away by worms. As the ship anchored off Juan Fernandez, Selkirk argued that to continue voyaging in such a leaking vessel was madness, that their destination must be the ocean bed. When the captain disputed this opinion, Selkirk flew into a rage and used his fists, at which he was held down and charged with mutiny. His sea-chest, clothes and bedding were put ashore and, though he begged for pardon for his outburst, he, too, was landed on the beach.
As the title of Diana Souhami's masterly book suggests, the island is as important as Selkirk himself: the two become fused. It is an account of a man entwined in the wild and riotous foliage of paradise. As the island claimed him, the old necessities dropped away. He could do without salt, liquor, shoes, tobacco and, above all, company: his relationship was to the island. A tough and violent man, he was educated by its beauty. Gradually, he came to know its plants, its thorny shrubs, its scented laurels, its useful animals and freshwater springs, its natural shelters, birds and fishes, its lizards basking in the sun. He had all the time in the world to notice rainbows and stars, the glitter of the sea, mist in the valley, the shapes of mountains, the shadows of evening. By day, he hunted for food, slaughtered the rats that disturbed his sleep, kept his fire burning, gathered vegetables and herbs, learnt to outrun the goats that leapt on the rocky heights.
The goats served as his domestics, his family. He caught the young ones, broke their hind legs to keep them from straying, and buggered them when lust took hold. He looked like a savage, but his behaviour was in harmony with nature, with the rampant and verdant growth of a tropical island. Though he scratched the passage of solitary years on the bark of a tree, time ceased to exist. He lived alone for 52 months, or 38,000 hours, or 2,250,000 minutes - or for no time at all. When at last he was rescued, he was so unused to speech that all he could utter was the word "marooned".
He didn't reach England for another two years, and now he was wealthy, because he had been taken on board a vessel far more successful in the business of plundering than the Cinque Ports had been. When his ship sailed up the Thames, he had £800 in his possession and wore a swan-skin waistcoat, a blue linen shirt, new breeches and shoes with scarlet laces. Returning to his native Scotland, he bought a large house and acquired land, gardens and orchards. He had a tale to tell of a journey round the physical world, of raw survival, of rags to riches. But soon he found it difficult to engage in everyday life, and returned to the sea. In 1719, Daniel Defoe's enduring classic Robinson Crusoe was published; the character of Crusoe was based on Selkirk. Defoe gave him a companion, Man Friday, presumably to take the place of the goats.
The heroic pitting of man against nature has all gone now. There can be no more Captain Scotts, Colonel Fawcetts, Mallorys or Selkirks, because we live in a tamed and vanquished environment. Souhami's excellent book should be read for its insight into a vanished world.
Beryl Bainbridge's forthcoming novel is According to Queeney
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