Alexander Selkirk, a Scot born in 1680, went to sea just for the hell of it. He joined a squadron commanded by William Dampier, a privateer with years of experience of the Spanish Main and the Pacific Ocean. Dampier's object was to grab as prizes any Spanish ship he could capture, particularly the great treasure-galleon which every year crossed the Pacific from the East Indies to Chile and thence to prop up the ailing economy of Spain.
Unfortunately Dampier, although an excellent sailor and navigator, was an appalling commander. He accepted bribes for releasing the prizes he had captured; his crews died in their hundreds of scurvy, malaria and the bloody flux. They mutineed; they beat up their officers; they could agree on only one thing - Dampier's hopeless incompetence.
Selkirk shipped as a "sailing master" on one of Dampier's smaller vessels. His lieutenant, Thomas Stradling, was his bitter enemy. (Selkirk disliked Englishmen on principle.) They detested one another, so when Selkirk gave Stradling some lip while the ship was anchored off the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandes, Stradling dumped him on dry land with nothing but a pistol and ammunition, a hatchet, a knife, a cooking-pot and a little rum and tobacco. He would certainly have starved to death but for the goats which populated the island.
At first it was a place of terror. He dreaded the thousands of rats which ran over him and nibbled him when he tried to sleep. He dreaded the huge sea-lions, though they were in fact quite harmless and easily killed with his hatchet. His worst fear was being caught by the crew of a Spanish ship which would certainly torture an English (or Scottish) privateer and set him to work as a slave in their silver-mines. The French, also England's enemies, would treat him quite well if they caught him. He would surrender to them, but never to Spaniards.
After a while Selkirk's fears subsided and he adapted himself to a castaway's life. Every day he spent hours on his look-out peak, watching for a friendly or hostile ship. He made a raft and on calm days paddled round the island. Rubbing together two dry sticks, he contrived to make a fire which he never let go out.
On the beach he found nails, iron hoops, a rusty anchor. With his precious fire he managed to make an axe, a knife-blade and fish-hooks. He varied his diet with berries, birds' eggs, seal-meat, little black plums and good imitations of turnips and cabbages. He milked his goats and made cheese. All he lacked was bread and salt. (Why could he not have made salt from the sea?) His hair and beard became a single hirsute tangle. He made a habit of praying aloud, at specific times, confident that God would hear him.
THERE was no Man Friday on his island though he hoped to find one. For sex, he raped female goats and masturbated when he could find none. This he found less satisfactory than shipboard buggery and the "black misses" available in harbours. It is not clear how Diana Souhami found out about Selkirk's sexual problems. Certainly not from his own memoirs. Perhaps it was all in Souhami's remarkable mind?
Eventually, after hiding in a tree-top from the crew of a Spanish ship which hunted him, Selkirk was taken off the island by an English ship which carried him to London where he was lionised, as Robinson Crusoe, by the best-selling author, Daniel Defoe.
He certainly never admitted such escapades as goat-rape, and readers who hoped for something spicier felt cheated by the ordinariness of his story. (They would have to wait for Souhami.) He joined the navy and commanded a ship which beat up and down the Channel until it was sent to the Guinea coast to protect British merchant ships against pirates. There he died, probably of malaria.
Charles Chenevix Trench's most recent book is Grace's Card: Irish Catholic Landlords 1690-1800, published by Mercier Press
The feral goats were the saving of Alexander Selkirk on Juan Fernandes: he ate them, he tamed and milked them, and later found a certain companionship with them.