Desperately Seeking Crusoe
“You’ve no doubt heard of Robinson Crusoe. Did you know he came from Fife? Neither did I.”
The statue of Andrew Selkirk in Fife’s seaside village of Lower Largo.
I thought he was a work of fiction. He is… but his role model was a fiesty Fifer from Lower Largo.
The book ‘Robinson Crusoe’ written by Daniel Defoe was first published over 300 years ago and has been translated into almost as many languages as the Bible! It’s still in print today!
There’s a movie version with Tom Hanks, ‘Cast Away’ where his ‘Man Friday’ he called ‘Wilson!’ after a basketball! The character might have faired better with a set of Wilson irons & balls. Then he could’ve fashioned a rudimentary golf course on the beach simultaneously kick-starting the golf tourism industry in the South Pacific and getting really good at bunker play!
Cardy House was built in 1871 overlooking the Cardy Net Works and was owned by Selkirk’s decendants.
A few years ago, I was visiting Lower Largo and bumped into a relative of Andrew Selkirk, Ivy Jardin. At the time, she was running a tiny museum dedicated to her late husband’s direct descendant. She was just closing up for the day but invited me home for tea!
The house was a time capsule of Victoriana, ornately decorated inside and out and retaining its complete Victorian décor and furnishings. Ivy told me she was trying to get Historic Scotland interested in taking the entire building over.
She told me, she and her son had visited the Chilean island of Más a Tierra where, in 1704, the hapless Selkirk had spent 4 years & 4 months before being rescued by an English privateer. (By the way, the Chilean government have renamed it ‘Robinson Crusoe Island’).
Today’s village of Lower Largo has been enhanced with some interesting garden decorations.
How did he end up abandoned on a desert island on his own for so long? Was he shipwrecked? The story goes that Selkirk was a feisty Fifer, the youngest of 7 boys and unruly from the get-go. At the age of 15, he ran away to sea, eventually becoming a navigator on a ship called Cinque Ports, captained by one Thomas Stradling. Selkirk and the captain were at constant odds, Selkirk insisting the ship was unseaworthy, riddled with shipworm and they were eating away the hull.
The village of Lower Largo.
Whether Selkirk chose to leave the ship or was forcibly put off is not clear. The fact is he was left to his own devices with only his personal sea chest, a pound of gunpowder, his musket and some basic cooking utensils.
As a side note, the quarrelsome navigator's suspicions about the state of the Cinque Ports hull were right! The ship foundered 400 km from the coast of what is now Colombia.
That in a nutshell is Selkirk’s tale. The author, Daniel Defoe heard the story 10 years later, along with others and penned what many considered to be the world’s first novel.
comes in is a little more problematic. Either he heard of Selkirk’s and based the character Robinson Crusoe or quite possibly Selkirk heard the book and insisted it was based on his exploits.
But there is controversy to this tale and I wonder if this is why the local tourist authority doesn’t make more of it. Some say Selkirk hijacked the story and said it was himself that Defoe had written about when in fact there were, according to more scholarly studies, a number of tales that Defoe had drawn from.
I did not raise this with Mrs Jardine at the time as she was so involved in promoting the village and the idea that her relative had indeed inspired the book. She invited me to her home for a cup of tea and what a place that was; a Victorian preserve. She explained she was offering it to the National Trust for Scotland to take over but wasn’t making any headway. I’ve since noticed that it’s been turned into private flats overlooking the rope works that once were owned by the family.
The village is well worth a wander, not only for the Crusoe connection but the wonderful decorations the locals have concocted.
