It is thought that the
story in is based on the life of Alexander Selkirk (1676-1721), a Scottish
sailor and buccaneer known for being quarrelsome as a youth, as he beat up his father and
brothers and left two women claiming to be his wife. Selkirk spent four years alone on an island
in the South Pacific before he was rescued. In 1704, he was on a buccaneering expedition and
asked to be let off the ship on an island that was part of the San Juan Archipelago, 400 miles
from Valparaiso, Chile. He predicted that the ship he was traveling on would founder, which it
indeed later did off the coast of Colombia. While on the island, which was not inhabited, he
constructed huts out of pepper trees and hunted wild goats and drank their milk.
In 1709, after four years and four months of solitary living, he was rescued by William
Dampier, the same privateer whose boat Selkirk was on when he was marooned on the island. The
Captain of the Duke (the ship that rescued Selkirk), Woodes Rogers, found
Selkirk's ability to live independently amazing, and Rogers later wrote about Selkirk in his
book on his own adventures called Cruising Voyage Round the World,
published in 1712. Later, Richard Steele also wrote about Selkirk in The Englishman in 1713.
Selkirk went on to a life of continued fighting, and he later joined the Royal Navy and died of
yellow fever while on a journey with the navy.
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