Alexander Selkirk (1676 – 13 December 1721) was a Scottish privateer and Royal Navy officer who spent four years and four months as a castaway (1704–1709) after being marooned by his captain, initially at his request, on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean.

He survived that ordeal, but died from a tropical illness (most likely yellow fever)[1] years later while serving as a lieutenant[2] aboard HMS Weymouth off West Africa.

Stradling's ship stopped to resupply at the uninhabited Juan Fernández Islands, west of South America, and Selkirk judged correctly that the craft was unseaworthy and asked to be left there.

By the time he was eventually rescued by the privateer Woodes Rogers, who was accompanied by Dampier, Selkirk had become adept at hunting and making use of the resources that he found on the island.

His story of survival was widely publicized after his return, becoming one of the reputed sources of inspiration for the English writer Daniel Defoe's fictional character Robinson Crusoe.

In 1703, he joined an expedition of English privateer and explorer William Dampier to the South Pacific Ocean,[6] setting sail from Kinsale in Ireland on 11 September.

[7] They carried letters of marque from the Lord High Admiral authorizing their armed merchant ships to attack foreign enemies as the War of the Spanish Succession was then going on between England and Spain.

[5] In February 1704, following a stormy passage around Cape Horn,[10] the privateers fought a long battle with a well-armed French vessel, St Joseph, only to have it escape to warn its Spanish allies of their arrival in the Pacific.

[12] The easy capture of Asunción, a heavily laden merchantman, revived the men's hopes of plunder, and Selkirk was put in charge of the prize ship.

Dampier took off some much-needed provisions of wine, brandy, sugar, and flour, then abruptly set the ship free, arguing that the gain was not worth the effort.

[13] In September 1704, after parting ways with Dampier,[14] Captain Stradling brought Cinque Ports to an island known to the Spanish as Más a Tierra located in the uninhabited Juan Fernández archipelago 670 km (420 mi) off the coast of Chile for a mid-expedition restocking of fresh water and supplies.

More foods were available there: feral goats—introduced by earlier sailors—provided him with meat and milk, while wild turnips, the leaves of the indigenous cabbage tree and dried Schinus fruits (pink peppercorns) offered him variety and spice.

[30] Captain Rogers was impressed by Selkirk's physical vigour, but also by the peace of mind that he had attained while living on the island, observing: "One may see that solitude and retirement from the world is not such an insufferable state of life as most men imagine, especially when people are fairly called or thrown into it unavoidably, as this man was.

At Guayaquil in present-day Ecuador, he led a boat crew up the Guayas River where several wealthy Spanish ladies had fled, and looted the gold and jewels they had hidden inside their clothing.

[34] His part in the hunt for treasure galleons along the coast of Mexico resulted in the capture of Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación y Desengaño,[35] renamed Bachelor, on which he served as sailing master under Captain Dover to the Dutch East Indies.

[36] Selkirk completed the around-the-world voyage by the Cape of Good Hope as the sailing master of Duke,[37] arriving at the Downs off the English coast on 1 October 1711.

His fellow crewman Edward Cooke mentioned Selkirk's ordeal in a book chronicling their privateering expedition, A Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World (1712).

"[47] As the ship sailed down the coast of West Africa, men went into the forests to cut wood and began to contract yellow fever from the swarms of mosquitoes, and perhaps typhoid.

An illustration on the first page of the novel shows "a rather melancholy-looking man standing on the shore of an island, gazing inland", in the words of modern explorer Tim Severin.

This incongruity supports the popular belief that Selkirk was a model for the fictional character,[52] though most literary scholars now accept that he was "just one of many survival narratives that Defoe knew about".

In 1869 the crew of HMS Topaze placed a bronze tablet at a spot called Selkirk's Lookout on a mountain of Más a Tierra, Juan Fernández Islands, to mark his stay.

[63] On 1 January 1966 Chilean president Eduardo Frei Montalva renamed Más a Tierra Robinson Crusoe Island after Defoe's fictional character to attract tourists.