He is remembered as the captain of the vessel that rescued marooned Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, whose plight is generally believed to have inspired Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe.

On his return, he was successfully sued by his crew on the grounds that they had not received their fair share of the expedition profits, and Rogers was forced into bankruptcy.

He wrote of his maritime experiences in the book A Cruising Voyage Round the World, which sold well, in part due to public fascination at Selkirk's rescue.

Woodes Rogers spent part of his childhood in Poole, England, where he likely attended the local school; his father, who owned shares in many ships, was often away nine months of the year with the Newfoundland fishing fleet.

His biographer, Brian Little, suggests that this might have been a way for the newcomers to become part of Bristol maritime society, as well as making it possible for Woodes Rogers to become a freeman, or voting citizen, of the city.

Forty of the Bristol crew deserted or were dismissed, and he spent a month in Ireland recruiting replacements and having the vessels prepared for sea.

Considering the latter the more important problem, the expedition made a stop at Tenerife to stock up on the local wine, and later sewed the ships' blankets into cold weather gear.

The next morning Rogers sent a party ashore and discovered that the fire was from Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, who had been stranded there four years previously.

[10] Rogers found Selkirk to be "wild-looking" and "wearing goatskins", noting in his journal, "He had with him his clothes and bedding, with a firelock, some powder, bullets and tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a Bible and books.

[22] After leaving Juan Fernández on 14 February 1709, the expedition captured and looted a number of small vessels, and launched an attack on the town of Guayaquil, today located in Ecuador.

Rogers was able to get a modest ransom for the town, but some crew members were so dissatisfied that they dug up the recently dead hoping to find items of value.

His ship beset by storms, Hatley shot an albatross in the hope of better winds, an episode memorialised by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

This tension was dispelled by the expedition's capture of a rich prize off the coast of Mexico: the Spanish vessel Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación y Desengaño.

Rogers only reluctantly agreed to giving the inexperienced Captain Dover command of Encarnación, a decision that may have been eased by naming Selkirk as its sailing master.

[27] The ships then went to the Dutch port of Batavia in what is now Indonesia, where Rogers underwent surgery to remove a musket ball from the roof of his mouth, and the expedition disposed of the less seaworthy of the two Spanish prizes.

[28] When the ships finally dropped anchor in the River Thames on 14 October 1711,[24] a legal battle ensued, with the investors paying the East India Company £6,000 (about £1,129,000 at today's values)[29] as settlement for their claim for breach of monopoly, about four per cent of what Rogers brought back.

The investors approximately doubled their money, while Rogers gained £1,600 (now worth perhaps £301,000)[29] from a voyage which disfigured him and cost him his brother, who was killed in a battle in the Pacific.

[31] Edward Cooke, an officer aboard Duchess, also wrote a book, A Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World, and beat Rogers to print by several months.

[33] He describes the area of the River Plate in detail because it lay "within the limits of the South Sea Company",[33] whose schemes had not yet burst into financial scandal.

Sir William Whetstone had died, and Rogers, having failed to recoup his business losses through privateering, was forced to sell his Bristol home to support his family.

[35][36] His wife gave birth to their fourth child a year after his return—a boy who died in infancy—and Woodes and Sarah Rogers soon permanently separated.

His connections included several of the advisers to the new king, George I, who had succeeded Queen Anne in 1714, and Rogers was able to forge an agreement for a company to manage the Bahamas, which were infested with pirates, in exchange for a share of the colony's profits.

[40] Until Rogers obtained his commission, the islands had been nominally governed by absentee Lords Proprietor, who did little except appoint a new, powerless governor when the position fell vacant.

The attempt failed, but the naval vessels were forced out of the west end of Nassau harbour, giving Vane's crew an opportunity to raid the town and secure the best local pilot.

[47] On 14 September 1718, Rogers received word that Vane was at Green Turtle Cay near Abaco, about 120 miles (190 km) north of Nassau.

As the weeks passed, and hopes of their return dimmed, Rogers declared martial law and set all inhabitants to work on rebuilding the island's fortifications.

"[48] The executions so cowed the populace that when, shortly after Christmas, several residents plotted to overthrow Rogers and restore the island to piracy, the conspirators attracted little support.

He redoubled his efforts to repair the island's fortifications, buying vital supplies on credit in the hope of later being reimbursed by the expedition's investors.

Two ex-slave sentries alerted the town to the presence of the Delicia of 32-guns, and the British frigate HMS Flamborough of 24-guns under Captain Johnathan Hildesley[53] as well as 500 ready waiting militia, many of them ex-pirates helped cause the Spanish withdrawal.

The resulting work, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, published under the pseudonym Captain Charles Johnson, was an enormous hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and catapulted Rogers for the second time to the status of a national hero.