The Loneliest Algorithm

On February 2, 1709, a ship called the Duke spotted a fire on an island 400 miles off the coast of Chile. The crew sent a boat ashore and found a man dressed in goatskins, nearly incoherent, who had been alone on the island for four years and four months. His name was Alexander Selkirk. He was a Scottish privateer who had demanded to be left on the island in 1704 after deciding his ship was unseaworthy. He was right. The ship sank shortly after, killing most of the crew.

Selkirk survived on Mas a Tierra by hunting feral goats, eating wild turnips, and building shelters from pimento trees. He kept two fires burning constantly, one for cooking and one as a signal. He fought off rats at night by sleeping near feral cats he'd tamed. When he was rescued, the Duke's captain, Woodes Rogers, described him as a man in remarkable physical condition but barely able to speak.

Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe ten years later, in 1719. Whether Defoe based his novel directly on Selkirk's story is debated, but the parallels are unmistakable. Defoe moved the island to the Caribbean, added a companion named Friday, and stretched the solitude from four years to twenty-eight. He turned a privateer's stubbornness into a fable about civilization and self-reliance.

statue of alexander selkirk in lower largo, fife, scotland, the village where he was born in 1676. source: wikimedia commons

Selkirk never adjusted to life back in society. He returned to the sea and died of fever off the coast of West Africa in 1721. The island was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966 by the Chilean government. The real story is messier than the fiction. No Friday. No moral arc. Just a difficult man who chose isolation over a leaking hull, survived on instinct, and was forgotten while his fictionalized version became immortal.