History's Most Unbelievable Survival Story Is Actually True

hey 42 here as an englishman i was raised to speak well english and over the years i've developed a special fondness for my mother tongue i love the odd idioms with phrases like all mouth and no trousers a different kettle of fish and bubs your uncle even though my uncle's name is actually derek i also love the bizarre words you find buried away in the english lexicon like death and straight an utterly useless word that's incredibly hard to get into a sentence unless you happen to be throwing someone out of a window or how about bum fiddle which is a musical instrument not something you like to do in dark rooms on a saturday night then there's robinson aid it sounds like something you might drink when you've got fierce diarrhoea but it's actually a genre of fiction about people getting marooned on desert islands as you might have guessed the word was introduced to describe an entirely new genre of literature spawned by a single story the tale of robinson crusoe written by daniel defoe the book became an instant classic when it was first published over 300 years ago and it's often touted as the first novel in english literature but the release actually caused a bit of confusion at the time because the title page contained the words written by himself as a result many people thought it was a true story which it isn't or at least not exactly because whilst robinson crusoe is indeed a work of fiction it turns out it was heavily influenced by the incredible survival story of a real man now if you love traveling then you'll love the fastest and easiest vpn surf shark did you know surf shark helps you to avoid price discrimination based on your location so you can save money on plane tickets and car rentals whilst travelling surfshark runs on any device anywhere and it's packed full of features such as industry-leading uncrackable encryption ip and dns leak protection an internet kill switch if your vpn drops out and 24 7 customer support personally i use surfshock to watch netflix content from other countries such as the us that's usually blocked here in the uk it's so easy all i have to do is switch over my location settings and there i have it access to all my favorite programs surfshark maintains a strict no logs policy and their network of 3200 servers in over 95 countries runs 100 on ram so they couldn't log your data even if they wanted to by using the code 42 you'll benefit from an 83 percent discount plus three extra months for free all you have to do is click the special link in the description below don't miss out and thanks to surfshark for sponsoring this video alexander selkirk was born in 1676 in lower largo scotland as these were the days before tv and condoms he was one of seven brothers and the youngest two so to use another colourful english expression he sucked behind teat that may be why as a lad he was a bit of a loose cannon a lower largo church record from 1693 shows he was once summoned to a meeting with the town elders for indecent conduct in church just what exactly counted as indecent conduct in the mid 17th century is anyone's guess but it must have been something pretty bad because rather than face the justice of the elders selkirk sailed out into the stormy waters of the north sea and didn't return to his hometown for a full eight years not that he seems to have learnt all that much whilst he was away selkirk had hardly been home five minutes before he found himself in trouble again with the local parish this time for the much less ambiguous crime of assaulting his family the story goes he was somehow pranked into drinking salt water from a can a ruse that apparently went down like a fart and a lift because he responded by giving the brother he was responsible a thorough beating when another of his brothers stepped in to break things up selkirk beat him up too then his father and finally his brother's wife at this point it's fair to say it had become clear selkirk wasn't really cut out for life in lower largo where there was a distinct lack of jobs requiring experience in indecent conduct and domestic violence but luckily he found his calling in the form of privateering basically piracy that had been legalized by the british government for all his faults he was said to be an excellent sailor and navigator and in 1703 he used those skills to secure himself a place as second in command aboard an english ship called cinco ports at the time spain and france were pitted against their so-called grand alliance of england the dutch republic and the holy roman empire in the war of the spanish succession sinkaport was one of the many vessels tasked with harassing spanish and french ships and settlements off the coast of south america so the crew had the full backing of the crown but the voyage was not without problems the food was infested with cockroaches and rats infectious disease ripped through the crew including dysentery a condition which causes diarrhea so bad not even robinson aide can cure it and the lack of vitamin c in the sailor diets led to an outbreak of scurvy which claimed multiple lives including that of the ship's captain charles pickering pickering was replaced by 21 year old lieutenant thomas stradling an upper class sort he was unpopular with the crew and absolutely despised by our man alexander selkirk the two men spent most of their time in open conflict and in october 1704 things came to a head [Music] the sinkaport was anchored off what are today known as the juan fernandez islands an archipelago about 650 kilometers off the coast of chile quite literally in the middle of nowhere and the ship's crew were getting some much-needed r r between plundering sessions but selkirk wasn't happy to simply put his feet up the sinkaport was leaking badly and possibly infested with woodworm as far as selkirk was concerned the ship was hardly seaworthy a point he made very clear to his new captain but straddling was having none of it and soon enough the two men were engaged in a blazing round as is often the case during particularly spirited arguments selkirk said something in the heat of the moment he would quickly come to regret he claimed the sinkaport was in such poor condition he'd rather stay on juan fernandez than risk spending another single day on the ship out in the open ocean obviously this bold statement was nothing more than an idle threat designed to show straddling just how desperately the ship needed repairs but the sinkaport's captain immediately called selkirk's bluff full of self-righteous indignation selkirk was forced to leave the ship when he realized no one was going to be joining him in his rebellion against straddling he apparently splashed out into the shallows and pegged to be let back on board it didn't help straddling may have been young but he wasn't a fool he knew his crew could mutiny at any moment leaving selkirk behind not only silenced one of the loudest dissenting voices it also made a very clear statement this new captain was not a man to be trifled with and so the singapores headed out back into the sea one man lighter as an aside selkirk's predictions of unseaworthiness turned out to be pretty spot-on the sinkaports did eventually go down off the coast of what is now colombia many drowned but straddling and a few of his men survived only to be captured and imprisoned by the spanish selkirk didn't know it but he was actually the lucky one because despite being completely alone on a very remote island at least he had a musket a knife a pot to cook with some bedding tobacco clothes and a copy of the bible it was marginally better than being locked in a spanish prison and a lot better than being dead to begin with selkirk lived on the beach surviving on a diet of lobsters because eating fish gave him the trots as you'd expect he spent a lot of time alone contemplating his existence which on the whole was pretty miserable even the arrival of multitudes of horny sea lions coming ashore for mating season couldn't improve selkirk's stormy mood and if the sound of shagging marine life can't cheer you up nothing can selkirk decided to relocate his camp inland and it was there that things finally took a positive turn selkirk built himself two sturdy huts out of wood from local pepper trees one he used for sleeping and the other for cooking goats left behind by previous visiting sailors presented him with a decent protein supply and he found various vegetables that could be spiced up a bit with the local peppercorns not that life was entirely rosy along with the goats over the years visiting ships had blessed the island with a fairly serious rat infestation and the little furry nightmares would attack selkirk as he slept ever resourceful the maroon sailor solved this little problem by taming some of the island's feral cats more cast aways from visiting ships earning himself some nocturnal security [Music] in the early days selkirk hunted the island's plentiful goats with his musket but it wasn't long before his small supply of ammunition ran out at that point he was forced to catch his dinner with his bare hands literally chasing the animals down on foot through the island's thick undergrowth the goats also provided selkirk with a source of clothing when the outfit he was marooned in began to fall apart as to son of a tanner he was able to fashion rudimentary goat leather clothes by stitching the hides together using an old scavenged nail in place of a needle during the course of selkirk's exile two ships visited the island unfortunately both were full of spaniards who would only have rescued selkirk in order to kill him or throw him in prison for the most part selkirk tried to stay out of sight but he was spotted on one occasion and the crew of one of the ships spent a good while trying to catch him in truth they never really had a chance selkirk had gone full native by this point he knew the island like the back of his hand and he moved through the thick underbrush with the speed and agility that can only come from years of chasing goats in the end the men gave up and simply sailed away as the years rolled by selkirk continued to hone his survival instincts and by the time he was eventually rescued he was perfectly adapted to island life that day was the 2nd of february when a ship belonging to an english privateer woods rogers anchored offshore selkirk's prayers had been answered but according to rogers those prayers would only have been comprehensible to god himself or perhaps more likely the holy goat in the four years and four months since he first set foot on the island selkirk had partially lost the ability to speak other than that he was reportedly in great shape and not badly dressed for a man whose entire wardrobe was made out of cloven-hoofed animals selkirk exhibited his skills by catching two or three goats a day for his undernourished and scurvy ridden rescuers ultimately helping to nurse them back to health and equipping them for a return to the high seas now after four odd years spent with horned goats and horny sea lions you may assume selkirk was eager to put his maritime career behind him but once aboard the duke rogers ship the skipper made him second mate and navigator some serious swashbuckling tales followed including the capture of a galleon carrying a massive hall of treasure things went so well that it was two for years before selkirk finally arrived back in london eight years older and 800 quid richer than the day he'd left that's well over a hundred grand in today's money back on british soil selkirk found he'd become a minor celebrity and he enjoyed a life of moderate wealth free dinners and bottomless pints as he toured the country's pubs telling his tale and it seems he was even starting to feel a bit more like his old self because he was soon charged with assault again this time escaping justice by eloping with alas from lower largo the two never married though old selkirk was always a sailor at heart and in his forties he enlisted in the royal navy which was his full-time occupation when daniel defoe published the life and surprising adventures of robinson crusoe in 1719 the novel's title illustration showed a solitary barefoot map in goatskins standing alone on the shore of an island to those familiar with selkirk's story the influence on defoe's creation would have been abundantly clear alexander selkirk died two years after the fictional character of robinson crusoe entered the world he was serving as an officer on a british naval vessel off the coast of africa when he contracted yellow fever and passed away in december 1721. he was buried at sea in a simple ceremony which basically means he was thrown overboard i can't help but think that perhaps something a little more significant would have been more appropriate for a man who survived half a decade alone on a desert island and inspired one of the most important works in english literature thanks for watching

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 489,371

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Id: DFNq1mvgpj0

Length: 15min 20sec (920 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2022