The exciting adventures of the protagonist of Daniel Dafoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" have long become classics. But in history there are many cases when people found themselves alone on uninhabited islands, and everything turned out to be much more prosaic than in an adventure novel.
How did we survive in extreme conditions real "Robinsons" - read on.
Alexander Selkirk is the prototype of Robinson Crusoe.
He lived on the island for 4 years and 4 months.
In 1703, a British expedition was sent to South America. One of the ships was the Scottish boatswain Alexander Selkirk. This man had a bad temper and in a very short time quarreled with the whole team.
Once, after another skirmish, the boatswain began to exclaim to be dropped off on the nearest island, because he cannot bear the whole crew. The captain fulfilled with great satisfaction what the sailor had so hastily requested.
When Selkirk was escorted to the shore of the island of Mas-a-Tierra, he would have been glad to apologize, but it was already too late.
Monument to Alexander Selkirk in Scotland
Alexander had something to survive: an ax, a gun, a supply of gunpowder, etc. Suffering from loneliness, Selkirk got used to the island and gradually acquired the necessary survival skills.
He ate mollusks, but over time he got used to and found feral domestic goats on the island. Once upon a time people lived here who brought these animals with them, but after they left the island, the goats ran wild. He hunted them, thereby adding to his diet much-needed meat for him.
Soon Selkirk tamed them and received milk from them. From plant crops, he discovered wild turnips, cabbage and black pepper, as well as some berries.
Rats posed a danger to him, but luckily, wild cats, previously brought by people, lived on the island. In their company, he could sleep peacefully without fear of rodents.
At the beginning of 1709, the British ship Duke anchored off the coast of Mas-a-Tierre, the crew of which discovered and rescued Selkirka, who had already settled on the island.
Returning to his homeland, the Scotsman became a celebrity: they wrote about him in the newspapers, and in pubs a queue of people wishing to treat him with a drink and listen to stories from the life of a hermit lined up.
Pavel Vavilov - month and 3 days
In August 1942, in the Kara Sea, the Soviet icebreaker Alexander Sibiryakov was defeated in a battle with the German cruiser Admiral Scheer.
The ship sank, and only the fireman could escape Pavel Vavilov... The lifeboat in which he found himself contained an emergency supply, which included matches, biscuits and fresh water.
Vavilov was lucky to find warm clothes and a supply of bran among the floating wreckage of the ship. The sailor decided to sail towards the lighthouse. So he ended up on an island inhabited only by polar bears.
When food supplies were already running low, Vavilov managed to attract the attention of a passing ship "Sacco". The fireman was rescued.
Sergey Lisitsyn - 7 months
The Russian Robinson Crusoe is called the nobleman and hussar Sergei Petrovich Lisitsyn, who, because of his tough disposition, found himself on the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk.
In 1847, Lisitsyn was on a ship heading for Alaska. Again, the landing on the island was a quarrel between the nobleman and the captain, and he dropped him ashore, giving him clothes, matches, writing supplies, food and a couple of pistols.
If in the famous novel about Robinson Crusoe the main character turns out to be on a tropical island, then in the case of Lisitsyn, it happened in a much colder climate.
S. Lisitsyna's hut
The would-be hussar spent seven months alone. Then, after another storm, he found a man lying on the shore. The rescued person introduced himself as Vasily and said that the ship he was on had leaked. Everyone sailed away, but he was forgotten. To Lisitsyn's delight, there were cattle and sheep on the ship.
At the same time, the Chinese began to more actively raid the Amur region, so Russian warships began to come there. One of them discovered the "Russian Robinsons".
Gerald Kingsland and Lucy Irwin - 1 year
Sometimes people come to the island of their own accord. So in the early 1980s, an elderly British journalist Gerald Kingsland decided to conduct a social experiment and live a year on a tropical island far from civilization.
In an attempt to find a companion, he posted an ad in Time Out magazine, to which young Lucy Irwin responded. In 1982, adventurers traveled to Tain Island, located between New Guinea and Australia, after getting married to simplify the visa process.
Once on Taina, the couple realized that they had nothing in common, but since there were not only people on the island, but also a registry office in which a divorce could be filed, they had to learn to get along and endure the hardships of tropical life together. According to Irwin and Kingsland, the lack of understanding was harder for them than everyday discomfort.
In 1983, the island was hit by a drought, and the couple were left without fresh water supplies. They were rescued by the natives from the nearby island of Badu.
Back in Britain, Gerald and Lucy finally got divorced and wrote the bestselling books: The Thrown Out (based on the novel in 1986 they made a film) and The Islander.
Before the novel by the English writer Daniel Defoe was published, no one would have identified a man who had ended up on a desert island with Robinson. Today, anyone who is left alone in some wilderness calls their adventure a Robinsonade.
But there are often cases when people whom we can call Robinsons experienced such vicissitudes of fate that Defoe's book hero never dreamed of.
Alexander Selkirk is the prototype of Robinson Crusoe
It is known that the hero of Daniel Defoe is not a fiction, but a story about a real person. His name is Alexander Selkirk. What this Scotsman had to endure is very similar to the misadventures of Crusoe. But the writer naturally brought his own fiction into the novel.
As the boatswain of a pirate ship, Selkirk fell out of favor with the captain in May 1704. The consequences of the quarrel was the landing of a sailor on the deserted island of Mas a Tierra, which is located in the Pacific Ocean, and where they did not even hear about his friend Friday.Despite the difficult living conditions, Alexander was able to achieve some success during his stay on the island.
For example, tame wild goats. It was in the company of these horned ones that English ships found him in 1709, and already in 1712 Selkirk managed to return home. The editors recall that Defoe had Robinson's stay on the island for 28 years.
Traveler Daniel Foss
Daniel Foss, whose cruise on the Negotsiant ship ended with a collision with a huge iceberg. He turned out to be the only passenger of the ship who managed to escape, having sailed to the rocky island in 1809.
Daniel Foss was noticed by the sailors of a ship sailing past the island. This piece of land was deserted, and there was nothing but a seal rookery. The hero was helped to survive by an ordinary wooden oar, which washed up on the coast of the island in waves. The hero waved it like a flag when 5 years later he was seen from a passing ship. Moreover, Daniel reached him by swimming, because the captain was afraid to land the ship on a rocky bottom.
Voluntary Robinson - Tom Neal
Knows history about voluntary Robinsons. The coral island of Suvorov sheltered Tom Neil in 1957. Unlike his predecessors, the hermit hero had everything he needed with him: food, hygiene products, pets, and even fuel.
Tom Neal twice voluntarily stayed on desert island In addition, the island was rich in its tropical gifts. When, after 3 years, Tom's stay in paradise was violated by the Americans, he did not even want to hear anything about the world of people. Nevertheless, in 1966, Tom took a short sortie back to publish his memoirs and make money.
After a long life in solitude, Tom Neal wrote a book With the book "An Island for Myself", he returned to the island. His inspiration lasted another 10 years, after which Tom Neal returned to civilization and went to live out his life in his native lands of New Zealand.
The magic of Defoe's book
It is not known how much of Daniel Defoe's book was involved in the shipwreck of the schooner "Beautiful Bliss" in 1911, but the fact that she helped Jeremy Biebs survive is reliably certain. 14-year-old teenager was able to escape on a piece of land in the Pacific Ocean.
Jeremy Bibs survived on a desert island thanks to the famous book by Daniel Defoe. Only in 1985, at the age of 88, he found himself on a German ship accidentally passing by.
Alexey Khimkov - Russian "Robinson"
Under the leadership of the helmsman Alexei Khimkov, the merchant ship went fishing in 1743. In search of walruses near the island of Svalbard, the ship got stuck in arctic ice... A team of several hunters, led by the captain himself, went to dry land, where they found a hut. They took few supplies, since they planned to return to the ship the next day. However, fate decreed otherwise: in one night the ice together with the wind carried the ship to the open sea, where it soon sank.
Aleksey Khimkov and his team were cut off from civilization. Khimkov had no choice but to insulate the discovered building for the winter. Shotgun cartridges did not last long, but with the help of handy items, the brave team made homemade bows and spears. This was enough to hunt deer and bears. The island was also rich in small game and fish, and salt was obtained directly from the sea water.
Unfortunately, it was not hunger or cold that awaited them, but ordinary scurvy. With a lack of essential vitamins, one in four died five years later. Another year and a half passed before in the summer of 1749 a passing ship led by Commander Kornilov noticed the feral Robinsons.
The appearance of the ship near the Arctic island was a lifesaver for these people. It must be said that they did not board the ship empty-handed. During the years of their stay on the uninhabited island, these hunters managed to get more than 200 skins of a large animal, and the same number of small foxes, and there were also reserves of reindeer fat.
Over time, news of the surviving hunters reached Count Shuvalov himself, who was listed at the royal court. It was he who instructed the French citizen Le Roy to write a book about the misadventures of Khimkov called "The Adventures of Four Russian Sailors Brought to the Island of Spitsbergen by a Storm", which was later published in several languages in different countries the world. We invite you to learn the stories of the most famous travelers.
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According to the novel by Daniel Defoe, on June 10, Robinson Crusoe returned to England after 28 years on a desert island. Columnist site Alexey Baikov tells stories of real Robinsonades.
Robinson Crusoe, aka Captain Blood
It is believed that the prototype of the protagonist of the novel Defoe was precisely Alexander Selkirk. This fact now seems to be generally known and indisputable. Right now, wake up any high school student who has read at least something, and ask - "what was the name of Robinson Crusoe?" and he, without hesitation, will answer - "Selkirk!". Because that's what it says in the preface to the book.
Only when comparing the adventures of the book Robinson with the history of the real Selkirk's Robinson, a number of inconsistencies are immediately revealed. We will talk about them a little later, but for now it is worth immediately dispelling any theories and saying that this is in the order of things for fiction. Especially for the adventure, written in the centuries before last, when it was impossible to say a lot directly. And without any politics, many authors were simply not interested in turning the life of a real person into an entertaining reading, and in some especially difficult cases it was fraught with legal action.
It was much easier to "collect" your character from several real-life people and spice up the fictitious circumstances with hints that allowed an understanding public to guess what this was really about. For example, Dumas hid in the story about Milady and diamond pendants a hint of the famous "necklace scam", which, according to Mirabeau, became the prologue to the French Revolution. And many authors of fiction did the same thing before and after him.
So, as of today, at least three are claiming the place of the Robinson Crusoe prototype: Alexander Selkirk itself, Henry Pitman and the Portuguese Fernao Lopez. Let's start with the second, in order to at the same time explain where in this story Captain Blood suddenly came from from a completely different book.
An unremarkable English doctor, Henry Pitman, once went to visit his mother in the small town of Sanford, in South Lancashire. It happened just in 1685, when James Scott, Duke of Monmouth and part-time bastard of Charles II, landed in the port of Lyme in Dorset to lead all those dissatisfied with the accession to the English throne of "papist" Jacob Stewart. Pitman joined the rebels not because he was an adherent of the idea of "good old England", but rather out of curiosity and assuming that someone "might need his services." Services were really required - the young doctor was quickly noticed by Monmouth himself and appointed as his personal surgeon.
The uprising did not last even a year. On July 4, at Sedzhmoor, the royal forces utterly defeated the army of Monmouth, which consisted mainly of farmers and burghers, armed with scythes, sickles and other pickaxes. Disguised as a peasant, the duke tried to hide in a roadside ditch, but was pulled out and hanged. In the meantime, they got him out of there, the royal troops carefully combed the surroundings in search of not only the fled insurgents, but also those who could provide them with at least some help. Pitman was still lucky - he was captured and tried, and many others, less fortunate, were killed on the spot on the mere suspicion that they had shared at least a piece of bread with one of Monmouth's supporters.
From this moment, in fact, the story of Peter Blood known to us begins. According to one of the points adopted after the defeat of the "Bloody Assiz" uprising, the healing of the rebels was equated with participation in the uprising. And all the participants, in fact, were supposed to have one and a half meters of official rope on their brother. But here, again, fortunately for the real Pitman and the fictional Blood, a small financial hole was discovered at the crown, so they decided to sell everyone who had not yet been hanged into slavery in the West Indies. At that time, it was a quite widespread practice, similar to Stalin's sentence "10 years without the right to correspond."
Then everything again matches up to the letter. A batch of "convict slaves" was taken to Barbados, where Pitman was bought by the planter Robert Bishop (those who read Sabatini sigh again at the abundance of coincidences). The former doctor absolutely did not like chopping and carrying sugar cane. He tried to protest, for which he was mercilessly whipped, and then subjected to the most terrible punishment for tropical latitudes - exposed for a day in stocks under the scorching sun. After lying down, Pitman firmly decided - it was time to run. He secretly bought a boat from a local carpenter and together with nine companions, choosing a darker night, sailed away to nowhere.
Here the life of Peter Blood ends, and the story of Robinson Crusoe of interest to us begins. Finally, you can recall that the navigator on the "Arabella" was called Jeremy Peet. The hint is pretty obvious.
Well, in reality, Pitman's boat got into a storm. It is not clear what they were counting on at all - apparently, that they would be picked up rather quickly by a French, Dutch or pirate ship. But the sea judged differently. All of the boat's passengers died, except for Pitman, who was thrown onto the uninhabited island of Salt Tortuga off the coast of Venezuela. There he settled down, and even found his Friday - an Indian, recaptured by him from the Spanish corsairs who had accidentally swam to the island. In 1689 he nevertheless returned to England, was amnestied and published the book "The Tale of the Great Suffering and Wonderful Adventures of the Surgeon Henry Pitman". It came out 30 years before the first publication of Daniel Defoe's novel. Most likely, they were old friends, considering that the author of "Robinson Crusoe" also took part in the Monmouth rebellion, but somehow escaped punishment.
Alexander Selkirk in person
With "Robinson No. 2" sorted out, it's time to say a few words about No. 1. Alexander Selkirk was a pirate, that is, excuse me, a corsair or privateer, as you like. The only difference was that while some were robbing in the Caribbean at their own peril and risk, while others did the same, having an official patent on their pockets, and even the crowned persons invested in organizing their expeditions. It was on such a ship that 19-year-old Alexander Selkreg was hired by a certain captain Thomas Streidling.
Yes, yes, no typo, that's exactly what his real name sounded like. Just before boarding the ship, he changed her because of a quarrel with his father and brother. The Selkregs seem to have had an unbearable temperament that was inherited through the male line. In the sea, this feature of him manifested itself in full breadth, and over the year the new ship's carpenter got so bad for Captain Streidling and the whole crew that, while staying on the island of Mas a Tierra off the coast of Chile, they decided to get rid of him.
In fact, the pirates' landing on a desert island was considered a more brutal alternative to the famous "boardwalk." As a rule, such a punishment was assigned to the members of the team guilty of the mutiny, or to the captain in the event that the mutiny was successful. The island was selected as far as possible from busy sea routes and, preferably, without sources of fresh water. Those sentenced to disembark on the road were given a gentleman's kit: some food, a flask of water, and a pistol with one bullet in the barrel. The hint is more than transparent - you could drink and eat everything, and then carry out the death sentence yourself, or die painfully from hunger and thirst. Edward Teach, nicknamed Blackbeard, treated the characters of the famous song "Fifteen Men for a Dead Man's Chest" even more fun, giving them a bottle of rum instead of water. Strong alcohol in the heat makes you thirsty, and the Dead Man's Chest is the name of a small rock in the British group. Virgin Islands completely devoid of any vegetation. So the song, in general, is not far from the truth.
Illustration by Igor Ilyinsky for the book "Robinson Crusoe"
But Selkirk was not a rebel, and his only fault was that he did not know how to get along with people. Apparently, therefore, he was not given a "suicide bomber set" with him, but everything necessary for survival: a musket with a supply of gunpowder and bullets, a blanket, a knife, an ax, a telescope, tobacco and a Bible.
Having all this, a hereditary carpenter could easily arrange his Robinson life. Walking around the island, he found an abandoned Spanish fort, where he found a small supply of gunpowder hidden just in case. In the surrounding forests, wild goats, imported by the same Spaniards, peacefully grazed. It became clear that death by starvation certainly did not threaten him. Selkirk's problems were of a completely different kind.
Since Mas a Tierra was first discovered by the Spaniards, it was their ships that most often passed by the island, stopping here to replenish fresh water supplies. Meeting with them did not bode well for the sailor who was expelled from the British corsair ship. With a high degree of probability, Selkirk could immediately, without unnecessary ceremony, be hanged on the yard, or they could have been "thrown" to the nearest colony to be tried there and sold into slavery. That is why the real Robinson, unlike the book one, was not happy with every potential savior, and when he saw a sail on the horizon, he did not make a fire to the skies, but, on the contrary, tried to hide in the jungle as best as possible.
After 4 years and 4 months, he finally got lucky in the face of the British privateer "Duke" who accidentally stuck to the island, commanded by Woods Rogers - the prototype of the governor of the same name from the TV series "Black Sails". He kindly treated Selkirk, tonsured, changed, fed and returned to England, where he suddenly became a national celebrity and also published a book about his adventures. True, he did not manage to sit at home - as a true sailor he died on board the ship, and his body rested somewhere near the coast West Africa... The island of Mas a Tierra in 1966 was renamed by the Chilean authorities to the island of Robinson Crusoe.
Poor unfortunate Lopez
The Robinsons # 3 candidate was discovered relatively recently by the Portuguese explorer Fernanda Durao Ferreira. In her opinion, Defoe was inspired by the adventures of Fernao Lopez, set out in the marine chronicles of the 16th century. Like Selkirk, Lopez became a reluctant Robinson - he was a soldier in the Portuguese colonial contingent in India and defected to the enemy during the siege of Goa. When military luck once again changed and the troops of Admiral Albuquerque still recaptured the city from Yusuf Adil-Shah, the defector was taken prisoner, his right hand, ears and nose were cut off, and on the way back they landed St. Helena, where Napoleon ended his days 300 years later.
There he spent the next few years, settled down and even got himself Friday - a Javanese thrown out by a storm. And as a pet he had a trained rooster who followed him everywhere like a dog. During this time, St. Elena was repeatedly molested by ships, but Lopez categorically did not want to go out to people. When they did find him, for a long time he refused to even talk to his rescuers, and instead muttered "O poor, unfortunate Lopez." So there are still parallels with the hero Defoe - he also kept repeating to himself under his breath, "I am poor, unfortunate Robinson."
Illustration by Igor Ilyinsky for the book "Robinson Crusoe"
In the end, Lopez was persuaded to board the ship. There he was put in order, fed and taken to Portugal, where he had already become something of a legend. He was offered forgiveness from the king and complete indulgence from the Pope, as well as life support in any of the monasteries, but he chose to return to the island, where he died in 1545.
Robinsons and Robinsons
If one day someone rallies his strength and writes a complete history of survivors on uninhabited islands, then her reader may get the impression that there were no uninhabited islands in the oceans at all. On every piece of land the size of a football field, at least someone once lived, And these are only the famous Robinsons, that is, those lucky few who, in the end, were found and rescued. Much more of those who remained on their island, they will be lucky to return to history unless by sheer coincidence, if tourists or archaeologists suddenly stumble upon their remains. But the list of survivors and rescued in itself is impressive - how amazing they were and how nontrivial the circumstances were, thanks to which they ended up on a desert island. An ordinary person could not always find the strength in himself so that, finding himself in a practically hopeless situation, not to break down and literally force himself to survive, in spite of everything. We can say that these people "prepared" to become Robinsons from childhood, without knowing about it.
Margarita de la Roque - Robinson for love
A young and inexperienced girl just wanted to see the world - women from the noble class in those days had such happiness extremely rarely. When, in 1542, either her own or her cousin Jean-François de la Roque de Roberval was appointed governor of New France (Canada), Marguerite begged him to take her with him. Well, on the way, it turned out that absolute power and going beyond the framework of civilization can corrupt a person beyond recognition and turn him into a real monster.
On board the ship, Margarita began an affair with one of the crew members. When everything was revealed, Jean-François was furious at such an attempt on the family honor and ordered to drop his sister on the deserted island of Demons off the coast of Quebec. According to other sources, her lover was ordered to disembark, and she followed him voluntarily along with her maid.
Illustration by Igor Ilyinsky for the book "Robinson Crusoe"
As soon as they managed to somehow rebuild and, with the help of muskets, explain to wolves and bears that they were no longer welcome in this part of the island, it turned out that Margarita was pregnant. Her child died almost immediately after birth, then a servant and, finally, her lover followed him into another world. Margarita de la Roque was left alone on the Demon Island. Since practically nothing edible grew there, she had to learn to shoot and hunt in order to feed herself. In 1544, Basque fishermen accidentally brought there by a storm discovered Margarita and brought home. She was immediately given an audience with Queen Margaret of Navarre, who recorded her story for her collection Heptameron, thanks to which this story has survived to this day.
"Pomeranian Robinsons"
In 1743, the merchant Yeremey Okladnikov from the city of Mezen, Arkhangelsk province, equipped a koch at his own expense, hired a team and sent it to hunt whales off the island of Spitsbergen. The base for the expedition was to serve as the Starotinskoye encampment located on the shore, which consisted of three huts and a bath - there were hunters from all over the Russian North.
At the moment of leaving the throat Of the White Sea, the strong north-west that swooped in knocked the koch off course and carried it to the coast of Little Brown Island east of Svalbard, where the ship was frozen into the ice. This land was well known to the Pomors, and the feeder Aleksey Khimkov also knew that not so long ago the hunters from Arkhangelsk had visited here, who seemed to be going to winter and cut down a hut for this. Four people were sent in search of her: the helmsman himself, the sailors Fyodor Verigin and Stepan Sharapov, and a 15-year-old boy named Ivan. The exploration was successful - the hut was in its place and its previous inhabitants even managed to fold the stove. There they spent the night, and in the morning, returning to the shore, the scouts found that all the ice around the island had disappeared, and with it the ship. I had to do something.
In principle, they had everything for a successful Robinsonade: going in search of a hut, the party took with them guns and a supply of gunpowder, some food, an ax and a kettle. The island was full of deer and arctic foxes, so at first they were not threatened with starvation, but gunpowder tends to run out. In addition, Little Brown was by no means in the Caribbean, winter was just approaching, and there was practically no vegetation above the bootleg on the island. They were saved by the "fin" - in this place the sea regularly washed ashore a wide variety of pieces of wood, from the wreckage of dead ships to trees that fell somewhere in the water. Some of the wreckage had nails and hooks sticking out. Having exhausted the reserves of gunpowder, the Pomors made bows and arrows for themselves, and during their Robinsonade they killed with them some unimaginable amount of local fauna: about 300 deer and about 570 Arctic foxes. From the clay found on the island, they made dishes for themselves and fatty lamps-smokehouses. From animal skins they learned to sew clothes, in a word they repeated Defoe's novel practically word for word. They even managed to avoid the scourge of all polar explorers - scurvy, thanks to the decoctions of herbs that Aleksey Khimkov cooked.
Six years and three months later, they were discovered and picked up by one of Count Shuvalov's ships. All four returned to Arkhangelsk, successfully sold the fox skins collected during their imprisonment on Maly Brown, and became very rich on that. But the fate of their boat and the remaining crew members is still unknown.
Leendert Hasenbosch is a loser Dutchman
In 1748, British Captain Mawson discovered sun-bleached bones and the diary of a Dutch sailor sentenced to maroning (as the punishment for disembarking on a desert island was officially called) on one of the islands of the Ascension archipelago for homosexual cohabitation with another member of the crew. They even left him some utensils, a tent, a Bible and writing materials, but they forgot about gunpowder, so his musket turned out to be a useless piece of iron.
Illustration by Igor Ilyinsky for the book "Robinson Crusoe"
At first, the Dutchman ate seabirds, which he knocked down with stones, and turtles. The worst thing was with water - its source was located a few kilometers from the coast, where he got his food. As a result, the poor fellow had to carry water in kettles for almost half a day. Six months later, the source dried up and the Dutchman began to drink his own urine. And then he slowly and in terrible agony died of thirst.
Juana Maria - the sad maiden of the island of San Nicolas
Initially, this island off the coast of California was quite inhabited - a tiny Indian tribe settled there, living in its own isolated world and gradually hunting sea animals. At the beginning of the 19th century, it was completely exterminated by a party of Russian sea otter hunters who accidentally swam to the island. Only a couple of dozen people survived, whose salvation was taken up by the holy fathers from the Catholic mission of Santa Barbrara. In 1835, they sent a ship for the surviving Indians, but right during the landing a storm broke out, forcing the captain to give an urgent order to sail. As it turned out later, in the confusion, one of the women was forgotten on the island.
There she spent the next 18 years. And by the way, thanks to the skills learned from childhood to turn the gifts of nature into things useful for the economy, I got a good job. From the bones of whales that were washed ashore, she built herself a hut, from the skin of fur seals and seagull feathers she sewed clothes for herself, and from the bush and seaweed growing on the island, she wove baskets, bowls and other utensils.
In 1853, the captain of the hunting ship George Naidwer found her. He took a 50-year-old woman with him to Santa Barbara, but there it turned out that no one was even able to understand what she was saying, since by that time those who remained from her tribe had died for various reasons and their language was completely forgotten. She was baptized and named Juana Maria, but to begin new life under this name she was not destined - two months later she burned out from amoebic dysentery.
Ada Blackjack is a fearless innuit
In search of adventure, need drove her - her husband and older brother died, and her only son fell ill with tuberculosis. To earn a little money, she hired a cook and seamstress on the ship of the Canadian polar explorer Williamur Stefansson, who intended to establish a permanent settlement on Wrangel Island. On September 16, 1921, the ship landed the first batch of five winterers, including Ada, on the island. And next summer they were promised to send a change.
At first, everything went well - the settlers killed a dozen polar bears, several dozen seals, and without counting birds, which allowed them to create very good reserves of meat and fat. Winter passed, summer came, and the ship he had promised did not appear. The next winter, they began to starve. Three wintering participants decided to get to the mainland on the ice of the Chukchi Sea, went into impenetrable ice hell and disappeared without a trace. Ada, the sick Lorne Knight, and the ship's cat Vic remained on the island. In April 1923, Knight died and Ada was left alone. With a cat, of course.
Ada Blackjack with her son
She spent the next five months hunting Arctic foxes, ducks and seals in conditions that would have made the adventures of the 18th century Pomeranian Robinsons an easy picnic. In the end, she was taken off the island by another member of Stefansson's expedition, Harold Noyce. Ada took with her a good supply of Arctic fox skins, obtained during the Robinsonade, which she finally sold to pay for her son's treatment.
Pavel Vavilov - wartime robinson
On August 22, 1942, the Soviet icebreaker "Alexander Sibiryakov" took an unequal battle with the German cruiser "Admiral Scheer" off the coast of about. Homemade in the Kara Sea. During these events, the first class fireman Pavel Vavilov found himself in the part of the ship cut off by fire, and therefore he simply did not hear the command to open the kingstones and leave the ship. The explosion threw him into the water, floated nearby lifeboats, in one of which Vavilov found three boxes with biscuits, matches, axes, a supply of fresh water and a revolver with a supply of cartridges for two drums. On the way, he rescued a sleeping bag with warm clothes folded inside and a burnt dog from the water. Armed with such a set, he sailed to Belukha Island.
There he found a small gas beacon built of wood, in which he settled. It was impossible to hunt - the family of polar bears settled on the island interfered, so Vavilov had to interrupt himself with a brew of biscuits and bran and wait for at least someone to notice and save him.
But the lighthouse and the fire lit on the shore passing by the court seemed to be deliberately ignored. Finally, 30 days later, a seaplane flew over the island, which dropped a bag of chocolate, condensed milk and cigarettes, in which there was a note "We see you, but we cannot sit down, very a big wave... We'll fly again tomorrow. "But the storms raged such that the famous polar pilot Ivan Cherevichny was able to break through to Belukha Island only after 4 days. The plane landed and the rubber boat that approached the shore finally completed Vavilov's 35-day robinsonade.
The Kennedy Coconut Diet
The future president of the United States also had a chance to porobinson - in 1943 the PT-109 torpedo boat, which he commanded, was attacked by a Japanese destroyer. Two crew members were killed and two more were injured. Eight sailors, along with their captain, were in the water. From the wreckage floating around, they hastily built a raft, loaded the wounded into it, and in a few hours reached a tiny piece of land that bore the name of Raisin Pudding Island.
John F. Kennedy. Photo: AP / TASS
There were no edible animals or water on the island, but coconut trees grew in abundance, which provided them with food and drink for several days. Kennedy thought of scratching messages on the coconut shells asking for help and indicating the coordinates. Soon one of these messages was nailed to the board of a New Zealand torpedo boat, which took the Americans off the island. For saving the lives of his subordinates, the future president received from the command the Medal of the Navy and the Marine Corps, and from grateful compatriots - the nickname "the red prince of America", with whom he will enter politics after the war
Williams Haas - Get The Savior In The Face
In 1980, a yacht, driven by athlete Williams Haas, was blown to pieces by a storm in the area Bahamas... Without any problems, Haas managed to swim to the tiny island of Mira Por Vos.
The problems started further. In this area, shipping was quite busy, but as Haas did not try, not a single ship reacted to the fire he set. The poor fellow had to build himself a hut, make a desalination plant for drinking water and learn to catch lizards. As it turned out later, the sailors of Mira who went in this area considered Vos to be a cursed place and they were afraid to stick to its shores. Because of this superstition, Haas stayed on his island for three whole months and managed to become a complete misanthrope. His hatred of humanity took on such an aggressive form that he met the helicopter pilot who had flown in after him not with shouts of joy, but with a direct hook to the jaw.
Exactly 350 years ago, in the fall of 1659, wrecked a sailor from York Robinson Crusoe was thrown onto a desert island. And only 28 years later he was rescued by British sailors. This case went down in history, and a little later the English writer Daniel Defoe described Robinson's forced hermitage in his famous novel.
It would seem that today there are no lost lands on Earth where a person could remain completely alone. But no! Robinsons are still found today, and not only on deserted islands, but also almost next to the civilized world.
Young Robinsons
For example, in 1983, in the jungle of the famous Indonesian island of Sumatra, on the banks of the South Sarmat river, hunters accidentally met a 12-year-old girl Imayata, who had lived here alone for over six years. In February 1977, she went fishing with her friends on the river and never returned. Everyone believed that Imayata died when the boat with the hapless fishermen capsized. During her forced hermitage, the girl went wild, forgot her native language, but her happy parents recognized her immediately. Interestingly, the girl was found only 20 km from her native village.
But 14-year-old boy Jeremy Bibs was less fortunate. Back in 1911, during a strong storm in the southern part The Pacific the ship on which the boy served sank, to get to the coast of a desert island, he was lucky alone. Biebs built himself a hut, made a bow and arrows for hunting birds, ate their eggs, fished, ate fruits coconut tree drinking coconut milk. He was helped to survive by a detailed knowledge of the novel by Daniel Defoe, like its protagonist, Jeremy kept a "wooden calendar". Being completely isolated, he knew nothing about what was happening in the world. Only in 1985, the crew of a German ship that happened to be here unexpectedly discovered Biebs, who had already reached 88 years old, and brought him home.
Decades underground
There are cases when people became hermits, fleeing persecution. So the soldier Ivan Bushilo spent 42 years in the Belarusian forests, hiding from the authorities. It all started with a tragic meeting in 1947, when Bushilo, returning from work in lumbering, met a local district police officer and a senior NKVD lieutenant from the regional center.
They began to mock the former soldier, and when Ivan abruptly cut off the insolent people, they promised to send him into exile. On the same night Ivan Bushilo gathered his things and went into the forest. They searched for him for a long time, but, having decided that he had died, they stopped searching. All 42 years spent in the forest, Ivan slept in a hut on a sack full of straw, ate mushrooms, berries, fished, set traps. He forgot how to write, but he regularly shaved so as not to lose his human appearance, from time to time he read the newspapers that relatives left for him at the appointed place. Ivan came out of the forest only at the beginning of 1990, believing in perestroika.
An even longer period (from 1947 to 1991) was spent underground by a resident of the small Carpathian town of Tlumach, Yaroslav Galashchuk. A 26-year-old former Ukrainian rebel army soldier hid with his sister after his unit was defeated by the NKVD. There were no serious crimes for Yaroslav, and therefore no one was looking for him. He was a tailor underground. Sister Olga took measurements from clients, and Galashchuk sewed clothes. For forty-four years spent in voluntary confinement, he never appeared on the street. Only in 1991 did he finally decide to go out to the people.
Ukrainian Mark Dyatchenko was also "buried" by his sister. During the Great Patriotic War he was surrounded near Brest. Having buried the rifle, Mark changed into civilian clothes and returned home to the village of Medvedovka, Cherkasy region. After the liberation of the village from the Nazis, the deserter climbed into a cache in the attic of his own house, where he spent 45 years. Sister Praskovya brought him food and newspapers. There was also a radio in the attic. After the death of his sister in 1990, Dyatchenko was born. His first trip was to Kiev, to the Reception Room of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine. Since his desertion was not subject to criminal liability over the years, Dyatchenko was reinstated in rights and got a job as a security guard on a farm.
Return to nature
If more than half a century ago they became hermits out of fear of arrest, today some people leave civilization to reunite with nature. So a whole current arose - ecological settlers. On this moment in Europe, there are 13 national associations of ecovillages, which include 42 colonies. In Russia, such settlements began to appear in the early 90s of the last century, and in Ukraine only about seven years ago.
Today at Kiev region there is a settlement Dzherel Valley. It's not so easy to get to it: the road to the settlers' houses scattered across the field looks more like an obstacle course, and the further from the capital, the more difficult it is to overcome it. True, local voluntary robinsons are always ready to help guests.
The first thing one has to face in this Ukrainian ecovillage is paradoxes. So, the settlers extended a power line (apparently, they do not shy away from the benefits of civilization), but they refuse to install wind turbines so as not to scare the birds away, not to disturb the ecological balance. Also, you cannot install standard diesel generators to generate light in houses - exhaust gases will poison the air, and engine vibrations will be transmitted into the soil and destroy its microcosm.
You cannot burn garbage, bury it in the ground, throw it into ravines. "In the summer, there is such a scent from herbs, even spread it on bread!" - ecovillants explain. And therefore, they consider it sacrilege to throw at least something "into nature", moreover, even to spit or blow your nose into the grass. “We all ran away from civilization a little bit here. More precisely, for one reason or another, she pushed us out. That is why we live according to the laws of nature, ”the Ukrainian Robinsons explain their philosophy.
Eco-settlers invite everyone who wants to live alone with nature. They say that there are no generally accepted rules for living in an ecological settlement. Therefore, people who are tired of civilization can rest completely. So it is quite possible that soon it will become a new kind of recreation. But the conditions of a secluded life will not suit everyone.
The novel "Robinson Crusoe" immortalized the name of Daniel Defoe, and the name of the protagonist has long become a household name. In childhood, any child imagined how he would end up on a desert island and survive here. What can I say, not just a boy. So, more recently, we talked about a bankrupt millionaire who celebrated the 20th anniversary of his stay on the island. But what other real stories of the Robinsons are there?
Robinson Crusoe Island, where Alexander Selkirk spent 4 years
Lived on a desert island: 4 years and 4 months
The story of the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk inspired Defoe to write the novel, it was he who became the prototype for Robinson Crusoe. True, the literary hero stayed on the island for 28 years and during this long time, alone with nature and with himself, he grew spiritually. Selkirk stayed on the island for 4 years, and he got there not as a result of a shipwreck, but after a quarrel with the captain. And no Friday friend for you, and, of course, no cannibals. However, Alexander managed to survive in the harsh conditions, he ate shellfish, tamed feral goats and built two huts. In 1709, the sailor was discovered by English ships. When Selkirk returned to London, he told his amazing story to the writer Richard Steele, who published it in the newspaper.
By the way, the island where Selkirk lived alone was later named Robinson Crusoe. And 150 kilometers from it there is another island - Alexander-Selkirk.
Traveler Daniel Foss
Lived on a desert island: 5 years
The story of another traveler Daniel Foss is also surprising. At the end of the 18th century, a man traveled on the ship "Negotsiant" with a team in the northern seas, where they hunted seals. The ship collided with an iceberg, and 21 people managed to escape by boat. For a month and a half they swam on the waves until two people were left alive. Soon the boat was washed ashore, where Foss lost his last comrade. And this island turned out to be far from heavenly: a small stony patch of land, where there was nothing but a seal rookery. Actually, the meat of the seals helped Daniel to survive, and he drank rain water. Only five years later, in 1809, a ship passing by picked up Foss. At the same time, the poor fellow had to sail before him, as the captain was afraid that he would run the ship aground.
Tom Neal is a voluntary hermit
Lived on a desert island: about 16 years
But there are also stories of voluntary hermitage. So, for almost 16 years coral island Suvorov became the home of Tom Neil, a native of New Zealand. He first visited the island in 1952. The man domesticated chickens, started a vegetable garden, and fished crabs, shellfish and fish. Thus, the New Zealander lived on the island for almost three years, and after a serious injury he was taken out. But this did not stop him from returning: Tom returned to his paradise in 1960 for three and a half years, and then in 1966 for ten years. After his second stay, Neil wrote The Island for Myself, which became a bestseller.
Jeremy Bibs - Robinson, who managed to grow old on the island
Lived on a desert island: 74 years
In 1911, the ship "Beautiful Bliss" was shipwrecked. Only one Jeremy Biebs managed to survive. Then he was only 14 years old. Due to his age, he was very fond of adventure novels, and what do you think was one of his favorites? Robinson Crusoe, of course. Here he learned basic survival skills, learned how to keep a calendar, hunt and build huts. The young man managed to grow old on the island: he was taken away only in 1985 by an 88-year-old man. Just imagine, during this time two world wars have passed and man has conquered space.
Alexey Khimkov with his comrades - polar robinsons
Lived on a desert island: 6 years
This story is even harsher: no rainforests and warm sea... The team lived in the Arctic ice for six whole years. In 1743, led by the helmsman Alexei Khimkov, a merchant ship went fishing and got stuck in the ice. A team of four went to the coast of the Svalbard archipelago, where they found a hut. Here they planned to spend the night, but fate decreed otherwise: a strong Arctic wind carried the ice floes along with the ship into the open sea, where the ship sank. The hunters had only one way out - to insulate the hut and wait for rescue. As a result, they lived on the island for 6 years, during which time the team made homemade spears and bows. They hunted bears and deer, and also fished. So the harsh Arctic winter turned out to be in the teeth for men. However, in their small camp there was an outbreak of scurvy and one of the travelers died.
Six years later, a ship sailed past the island, which saved the polar Robinsons. But not empty-handed, they climbed aboard: during this long time they managed to get about 200 skins of a large animal and about the same number of Arctic foxes. About the misadventures of the Russian Robinsons, the book "The Adventures of Four Russian Sailors Brought to the Island of Spitsbergen by the Storm" was later published, which was translated into several languages.
