Selkirk's Island by Diana Souhami (new books to read .txt) 📗

November Selkirk, too, became unfit for service. His symptoms were the same as those of other men: burning fever and a shivering chill, headache and muscle pains, vomiting and bloody diarrhoea. He knew that he was dying. It was not the loneliest journey of his life, or the judgement he had feared from The Island’s might. He was in the company of men. They offered consolation. As he died he bled from his eyes and mouth.†

On 13 December John Barnsley, First Lieutenant of the Weymouth wrote in his Log, ‘North to northwest. Small Breeze and fair. Took 3 Englishmen out of a Dutch ship and at 8 pm Alexander Selkirk and Wm King died’. The following day it was the turn of William Worthington, Owen Sullivan and Abraham Hudnott.

Wednesday 13 December was a day of small consequence, like the day that preceded and the day that followed. Selkirk’s soul was committed to God, his body to the sea, the usual prayers were said. It was not, as he had supposed, The Island’s cats he tamed that fed on the meat from his bones, but the fishes of the Atlantic Ocean.

By dying he missed the drama of the pirates’ capture: Their trial on board ship. The erection of a scaffold by the shore. The parade of those deemed guilty. The singing of psalms for the sake of their souls. The execution of six men one day, fourteen the next.

In Defoe’s novel, Crusoe reached a safe old age. Death for him was another fictional journey. He travelled to heaven in the company of angels, God and Jesus Christ. Selkirk was forty-one when he died. His death was registered in his paybook. There was no other comment on his going. It was silent and unexplained like The Island’s night. Money, as ever, signified. The wages owing to him were £35 15s 9d. From this was deducted fifteen shillings for the cost of his seaman’s chest and seven and sixpence for fifteen months’ medical insurance with the Greenwich hospital.

1722–4 Wages, Estate and Effects, Goods, Chatells and Credits

IN HER public house in Plymouth, Frances Selkirk heard of her husband’s death at sea. Her thoughts turned to his ‘Wages, Estate and Effects’ his ‘Goods, Chatells and Credits’. She wished to marry a more suitable man, Francis Hall, a tallow chandler.*

She applied to His Majesty’s Navy office in Broad Street for Selkirk’s wages from the Weymouth. Her application was blocked. Sophia Bruce had put in a prior claim. She too said she was Selkirk’s widow. She had had his Will proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.* In it, he had, devised and bequeathed to her his ‘Wages Goods Weres Profitts Merchandizes Sume and Sumes of Money Gold Silver Wearing Apparel Bonds Books and any other Thing whatsoever’.

The wives went to lawyers. Sophia protested that she had married Selkirk in March 1717. Her grievance was acute. She claimed the later Will was fraudulent. He had not been free to marry another woman. If he had gone through some spurious wedding ceremony, it was ‘when he was much intoxicated with Liquor and non Compos Mentis’.

Frances was determined to get every penny of Selkirk’s this Sophia had. She maligned her as ‘a person of very indifferent character and reputacion’. She married her tallow chandler and let him know that her previous husband had been a worthless rogue.

From scrutiny of Sophia’s Will, Frances found that her husband of a week had been richer than she knew. She learned of the Largo house at Craigie Well, rental income, gold and silver, bills, bonds and smart money.* She filed an objection at the Canterbury Court. It was upheld. The Court ruled Sophia’s Will null and void. Its probate was revoked.

Frances then applied to have her own Will proved. Sophia contested the application and reiterated her case. Frances and her new husband sued her for refusing to part with Selkirk’s goods, money, estate and effects ‘although she hath been severall times thereunto requested in a friendly manner by your Orators’. She had, they said, ‘pieces of Gold, gold rings, and other particulars and effects of a Considerable Value’.

Sophia was arrested, offered bail of £500 which she could not raise, and so was imprisoned. While she was in gaol Frances had her own Will probated. She collected Selkirk’s wages from the Weymouth then went up to Largo and claimed his land, tenements, orchards and house at Craigie Well.

It was not enough. When Sophia was released from gaol Frances Hall asked her to relinquish all she had in her possession that had once been Selkirk’s. But Sophia would not part with such inheritance as she had: his silver tobacco box and gold-headed cane, his clothes and sea books and silver-hilted sword ‘and other particulars left in her custody’.

Though harassed and goaded, she would not give in. If Selkirk had been married to anyone it was to her. It was she who had offered him consolation for his abandonment on The Island, stayed with him when he was in trouble with the law and lived with him for months on end, not for mere days like this avaricious woman who craved his money, but had cared nothing for his life.

The lawsuits were protracted.† Frances’s Petition was heard in the Chancery Courts in January 1723. Selkirk, she said, had sworn he was single when he wooed her. She repeated that she had not wanted to marry him, but he insisted. She gave proof of when and where this marriage took place, its registration and who had witnessed it, and proof of the Will, signed that same day.

She asked that Sophia give account of where and when she had been married, ‘in what particular parish Church or place was such pretended marriage solempnized’, where was it registered and who had witnessed it. Sophia’s Will, she claimed, was a pretence, Selkirk must have been intoxicated and out of his senses if he made it, and anyway it was of a much earlier date, it was null and void, its