It is widely known that the English writer Daniel Defoe (circa 1660-1731), the author of the novel about Robinson Crusoe, did not invent the story of his hero. The prototype of the latter was a Scottish sailor, boatswain of the English ship "Five Ports" Alexander Selkirk, who lived alone on the island of Masa Tierra for 1580 days, or 4 years and 4 months (from 1705 to 1709)
However, not many people know that A. Selkirk had a predecessor who, more than half a century earlier, managed to live on a barren piece of land off the coast of Peru for 7 long years - from 1540 to 1547. It turned out to be the Spanish sailor Pedro Serrano. This brave man, having shown will, perseverance, courage, conquered death and came out with honor from single combat with nature. And this was extremely difficult to do.
The island he came to after a shipwreck was a long 8-kilometer sand spit. There was absolutely no vegetation here and not a drop of fresh water. The plight of the sailor was aggravated by the fact that of the most necessary things he had at his disposal only a knife and the clothes he was wearing.
By the way, A. Selkirk, when he left the ship, had clothes, a gun, gunpowder, bullets, a knife, a flint, a bowler hat, as well as a compass, a pickaxe and a Bible. In addition, on his island he did not experience a shortage of drinking water or food. Boatswain-Robinson ate fish, lobster, goat meat, and even diversified his diet with cabbage, which grew in abundance on Mas a Tierra.
All this Pedro Serrano could only dream of. He was tormented by hunger, thirst, cold brought suffering at night. Although there were many dry seaweed and debris around, there was nothing to light the fire with. The sailor was close to despair, as he well understood that he was doomed to starvation. And then one day, once again examining his "possessions", he noticed turtles climbing up the dry sand to the island.
P. Serrano turned several of them on his back, then cut one animal's throat and pressed his dry lips to the wound … The blood of the reptile quenched his thirst, it was fresh and somewhat resembled fish juice. Turtle meat turned out to be edible, and most importantly, quite nutritious. In the future, Pedro prepared it for future use - cut it into small pieces and dried it in the sultry sun.
Animal shells came in handy too. The sailor made vessels from them, into which he collected the heavenly moisture. The unfortunate man was saved.
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There were a great many turtles on this piece of land lost in the ocean, but their raw meat was disgusting. Fire was needed. You can cook hot food on a fire, and the smoke rising to the sky gave hope of salvation. As already mentioned, there was plenty of fuel. The thread from dry clothes could have served as a tinder, a metal knife as a chair, but there was not a single stone around. Perhaps they can be found underwater? During the calm at sea, the sailor dived to exhaustion near the coast, trying to find even small stones …
Finally he was lucky, and with the help of the found "flint" a fire blazed with a bright flame. To prevent the rain from extinguishing the hard-won fire, Serrano erected a canopy of tortoise shells over it. As it turned out, the animals were useful for all occasions.
Three years have passed. All attempts to attract at least some ship to the island with the smoke of a fire were in vain. Every day, for long hours, Robinson gazed at the horizon with pain in his eyes, but the snow-white sails, showing in the distance, invariably "dissolved" in the vast expanses of the ocean.
One morning during breakfast, an involuntary settler of the island saw a two-legged creature heading for his hearth. At first, the man did not notice the hermit … but when he saw the overgrown Robinson, he screamed and rushed away. Serrano did the same, for he thought the devil himself had visited him. Without stopping, he shouted at the top of his lungs: "Jesus, deliver me from the devil!" Hearing this, the stranger stopped and shouted: “Brother, don't run from me! I am a Christian, just like you! " Serrano did not stop. Then the stranger began to read a prayer aloud. The sailor turned back. He walked over to a man dressed in blue trousers and a shirt, wrapped him in his arms.
An unknown person said that his ship was wrecked, and he himself, grabbing a piece of the mast, reached the island. Unfortunately, the annals of history did not preserve the name of the second Robinson. Serrano offered everything he had - water, meat, fish, which he now harpooned with a harpoon made from a piece of wood tipped with a sharp fishbone.
Now there were two of them, and they lived in friendship and harmony. The farm was run jointly: one watched the fire, collected dry algae or fragments of wood thrown out by the sea, the other got food. In their free time, they had long conversations, telling each other about their past lives. However, then the topics of conversation were exhausted. People barely exchanged a few phrases. Then there were reproaches, anger, absolute silence. Often, even fights arose because of insults for insignificant reasons …
They broke up. Now everyone hunted for turtles, caught fish, kept the fire on their territory of the island. Time passed - and reconciliation came. One of the sailors had the determination to be the first to take a step forward. Tears of shame ran down their faces, lips trembled, but there was also boundless joy - the joy of being together again.
Finally, a ship approached the island. A lifeboat was lowered into the water, and the sailors threw themselves on the oars. Approaching the shore, the rowers saw two hairy "fiends of hell" standing on the sand. Frightened, muttering prayers, they immediately turned back. At any moment the thread of hope for salvation could break …
Serrano and his comrade shouted as best they could: "Come back, we are people!" But the boat was still moving towards the ship. Driven to despair, the Robinsons sang a prayer loudly. The boat again turned its nose to the sand spit.
The sailors with undisguised fear examined and felt the shaggy creatures, and then brought them to the ship, where Pedro Serrano's companion, unable to withstand the excitement, died of a heart attack. The survivor was taken first to Spain and then to Germany to show the emperor. To prove his story, Serrano did not cut his hair, and during the trip, like an exotic beast, he was shown to everyone for a certain reward.
The emperor granted the brave "Robinson" enormous wealth - 4000 ounces (1 ounce = 29.86 g) of gold. Using this gift, the sailor wanted to settle in Peru opposite the island where he spent 7 years, but on the way there he died.
A scene from the 2000 film "Rogue" about a modern Robinson (starring actor Tom Hanks)
Australian hermit
Are modern "Robinsons" known, after reading these lines, the reader will ask? Yes, they are. And the most dramatic was the fate of the Australian hermit James Carol. This happened in 1926. Once Dr. Korland and his friends went hunting in that part of the Green Continent, where the cannibal villages are still preserved. Having entered into friendly communication with them, the traveler learned that one white man lived nearby. A company of hunters became interested in this "dark-skinned" savage and decided to visit him …
Approaching the cave to which the aborigines pointed, they suddenly heard the growl of the beast. A few minutes later, a shaggy head emerged from her womb. Korland ran towards the gorilla-like creature, but as soon as it noticed the stranger, he attacked the alien with such force that the hunter fell. The doctor's companions rushed to the rescue and grabbed the furry creature. They tried to speak English, French, German and Dutch, but in response the savage only growled and tried to bite people. They tied him up and only then entered the cave.
To the greatest surprise, a thick diary was found there, which this man-beast had kept for a number of years. From the manuscript, it turned out that Dr. James Karol lived in a stone dwelling, who 25 years ago killed his wife out of jealousy and fled from despair and fear, no one knows where. In his diary, he wrote about his experiences in the wilderness, surrounded by dangerous beasts and poisonous animals. Over time, the fugitive turned into a beast. Karol was admitted to a sanatorium near Sydney. His further fate is unknown.
Yes, not everyone who was cut off from people managed to remain human. After all, a person is a social creature, and the most terrible punishment for him is the oppressive fear of Loneliness.
Poor experience
In 1962, the French radio reporter Georges de Caunes decided to try on his own experience what Robinson Crusoe had to do on a desert island. For his experiment, he chose the deserted isle of Henao in Polynesia, which once served as a place of exile for convicts, and decided to live on it all alone for a year. The reporter took with him a large supply of canned food, medicines, tools, and a radio transmitter that he could use for 5 minutes daily.
The experience ended in failure. After a 4-month stay on the island, having lost 15 kg in weight, he was taken to a hospital in the Marquesas Islands. De Con admitted that he could not stand the loneliness and gave up in front of mosquitoes and sharks, which did not allow fishing.
Masafuni Nagasaki was once a photographer, worked in the entertainment industry, but the norms set by society sickened his freedom-loving nature. Then he decided to leave the human world. For over 20 years, Masafuni has been living on Sotobanari Island, off the west coast of Iriomote Island, Okinawa Prefecture. The voluntary Robinson eats rice, drinks rainwater, which he collects in pots placed throughout the island.
Robinsons reluctantly
But under what circumstances 44-year-old civil aviation pilot Henri Bourdin and his wife Jose began their Robinsonade. At the end of 1966, they embarked on a multi-month voyage on their yacht "Singa Betina" from Singapore to their homeland. The ensuing storm severely damaged the fragile sailing ship, knocked it off course, and after many weeks of drifting, the wrecked yacht brought to the shores of the small island of Bathurst, 5D miles north of the Australian port of Darwin.
The travelers were so confident that they would be quickly discovered that they did not bother with long-term food supplies. They carried only a little rice, flour and canned food from the yacht. But days, weeks passed, and the Bourdains realized that they were isolated.
When supplies ran out, the couple began to eat crabs, lizards, snails. “The island was swarming with venomous snakes,” Jose said. - I was so afraid that they would bite us. We listened to music - we had a portable radio and a transistor tape recorder that survived on the yacht. Bach and Mozart were our true friends. They helped us stay sane. Two long months passed, but the worst was ahead.
“My husband made a raft from the wreckage of a yacht. We decided to get to the mainland …”However, the wood from which it was built quickly swelled and lost its buoyancy. Alone in the endless water desert, without food - only a pot of fresh water - slowly, very slowly, they began to sink. It is unclear by what miracle the wood that absorbed moisture could still bear their weight. So endless hours passed. It seemed to people that death itself turned away from them. The spouses still had remnants of strength, they stood waist-deep in water, and the raft moved slowly across the ocean …
…. It was the fourth day. Jose and Henri were still alive. The heavenly body was leaning towards sunset, a little more, and it will go beyond the horizon. “I raised my head,” the woman continued, “and saw the ship … Mirage? Hallucination? Not! It seems, and it noticed us, I screamed. My husband had the strength to light a smoke bomb - I don’t know how he managed to keep it dry.” The unfortunate ones were rescued by an Australian patrol boat.
In 1974, four young adventurers who were shipwrecked spent 42 days on a coral reef in the Tasman Sea. Only when the seventh week of their "imprisonment" began, the fishing trawler managed to break through the storm and take on board the people who were completely exhausted by thirst and hunger.
Frivolous travelers challenged the sea elements by sailing on a small yacht from the New Zealand city of Auckland to the Australian port of Sydney. They had to overcome 1280 miles. As the specialists from the sea rescue center in Canberra later stated, it was one of the most unprepared travels. The ocean, however, took up the daring challenge: 350 miles off the east coast of Australia, the treacherous Middleton Reef was waiting for the yacht …
This underwater bank, completely hidden under water during the great excitement, has earned the notorious reputation of a ship graveyard. Among his victims were a cargo ship with a displacement of 13.5 thousand tons and a fishing schooner, in the wreckage of which the unfortunate robinsons were hiding from the scorching rays of the sun, wind and rain.
In the same year, members of the crew of an American warship, having landed on the Polynesian island of Antorazh in the Cook archipelago, which was listed as uninhabited in the sailing, found there … a Robinson. It turned out to be New Zealander Tom Neil. He said that for two years now he has been living on this piece of land, disillusioned with "the delights of a capitalist society of equal opportunities."
He raised chickens, pigs and pigeons on the island. Together with Neil was only his faithful dog. The hermit replied categorically to the offer to return home. And when the sailors offered him American newspapers and magazines, he said: "Your world does not interest me!" The path of voluntary loneliness chosen by him continues to this day.
Concluding the story, one cannot but dwell on the amazing fate of another modern Robinson - a 14-year-old boy Sasha Barash, who lived with his father in a village at one of the Soviet oceanological stations in Primorye.
In 1977, while sailing on the research boat "Burun", he was washed overboard. The boy swam to a desert island. All the victim's wealth consisted of: wearing clothes, a penknife, two large safety pins, a pencil stub, a two-meter piece of nylon cord and sneakers. He ate gull eggs, mussels, edible wild plants. A month later, the boy was rescued by Soviet border guards.
After a safe return, in a conversation with a correspondent for the Tikhookeansky Komsomolets newspaper, the young Robinson said: “One evening I once again recalled the islands described in the books of Jules Verne and Defoe. I suddenly felt funny. How these writers invented! None of the methods (of survival) described in "The Mysterious Island" and "Robinson Crusoe" were useful to me."
And indeed, as we can see, each Robinson found his own way to survive, each went his own way to salvation.
The story of N. A. Vnukov "One on One" is dedicated to the story of Sasha Barash