Book description
Who was the real Robinson Crusoe? In search of the world's most famous
castaway Tim Severin travels where men were shipwrecked or abandoned in
the days of the pirates and buccaneers... and lived to tell their tales
of survival. A Scottish sailor, Alexander Selkirk, has long been
considered as the real life inspiration for Crusoe. So Severin begins
his quest on the islands of Juan Fernandez 400 miles off the coast of
Chile where Selkirk was marooned for four years. Daniel Defoe, author of
Robinson Crusoe, also knew the extraordinary survival tale of an English
buccaneer surgeon, Lionel Wafer, wounded in a pirate raid and abandoned
in the jungle of Panama. So Severin goes to meet the Indian tribe, the
Kuna, who rescued him. Carrying on his journey he finally takes a 100
year old sailing boat to Salt Tortuga, a small uninhabited island off
the coast of Venezuela. There he establishes the truth about a runaway
'white slave', Henry Pitman, marooned by pirates thirty years before
Defoe created Crusoe...
