ROBINSON CRUSOE ISLAND
Escorted by dolphins,
and overwhelmed by the
immensity of the ocean,
everyone was lost in
thought — apart from the
boatman, who seemed to find
nothing especially profound
in his daily commute
A
t first sight, Robinson Crusoe Island,
formerly known as Más a Tierra,
was an unprepossessing speck of
rock, picked out from a tiny twin-engine
plane. As we came closer, its steep, angular
profile, the red desert that occupied half
the island and the alarmingly short runway
transformed lyrical musings on history
and literature into a more pressing sense of
adventure. The brand new airport building
was empty, the land utterly barren. Nothing
was quite as I had imagined.
My journey had begun with a phone call
— an invitation to contribute to a German
film about the men who discovered the
island in the 1570s: Crusoe’s real-life alter ego
Alexander Selkirk, British naval officer Lord
Anson and Spanish sailor Juan Fernández.
Having safely landed, we hiked down to
Horseshoe Bay and caught a boat to San Juan
Bautista, the island’s only village. Escorted
by dolphins and overwhelmed by the
immensity of the ocean, everyone was lost
in thought — apart from the boatman, who
seemed to find nothing especially profound
in his daily commute.
Finally we hove into Cumberland Bay — a
strangely English name on a Chilean island
— passing over the German cruiser SMS
Dresden, which was sunk by the Royal Navy
in 1915. Several German soldiers lay in the
island’s cemetery, but such distant tragedies
paled into insignificance; eight months ago,
in February 2010, a massive tsunami had
roared into the bay, smashing the beachside
buildings, houses, a hotel, bars and the
museum to matchwood. There were now fresh
graves alongside the German memorial. On
the other side of the jetty, a Chilean warship
was loaded with bales of wreckage; more lay
on the beach, including a large satellite dish
festooned with weed.
The sole village of San Juan Bautista
includes a church, a modern municipal
building and some low-rise housing.
The population of around 800 is mostly
descended from a small band of the late 19th-
century settlers; today, the villagers retain
a strikingly small selection of surnames.
Everyone was polite, taking our intrusion in
their stride, and several got roles in the film
we were working on.Inhabited by pirates and castaways, this remote Chilean island has long
been a place of mythology, tragedy and peculiar EnglishnessThe island’s only export, the saltwater
crayfish, turns up in every traveller’s account
— mute symbols of the culinary riches on
offer. Alongside the crayfish, the island has
a powerful mythic history, mostly written in
English. Daniel Defoe based Robinson Crusoe,
the definitive story of castaway redemption,
on buccaneer tales, placing Crusoe on a
Caribbean island. Readers familiar with
Alexander Selkirk and his solitary residence
on the island of Juan Fernández imposed the
connection, wresting control of the story from
the author. Ever since, visitors and islanders
alike have melded the two characters into a
single occupant. Chile added to the confusion,
renaming the isle Robinson Crusoe Island in
an effort to boost tourism.
In the 18th century, Commodore George
Anson arrived; after ending an epidemic of
scurvy, he left to capture the fabled Manila
Galleon. Needless to say, there was no
treasure — and the Lord Anson Valley Mini
Market reminded me how Anson’s voyage (the
ultimate tale of tragedy, horror, redemption
and riches) was written into history. The
English took ownership of the island on the
pages of their books, in ways that Spanish —
and later, Chilean — authors rarely attempted.
These stories resonate on a tiny, constricted
space, the fragmentary wreckage of a remote
volcano in the South Pacific. High up on the
cliffs, the last remnants of a unique pre-
contact ecosystem has survived the ravages
of civilisation. The lower slopes are populated
by stringy cattle and thin horses. Today, the
Chilean Government is making efforts to
recover what man has destroyed.
The island works for those in search of
mythology, endless skies and ocean. Very
slowly, nothing happens. I left after a month.
As I watched the island disappear, I thought
about English insularity. The obsession with
islands and oceans, rather than continents,
is something that shaped responses to
everything from the Empire to the EU.
But why were the Germans making a film?
Read the first page of Defoe’s book...Professor Andrew Lambert is a naval historian and the
author of Crusoe’s Island: A Rich and Curious History
of Pirates, Castaways and Madness. Published by
ILLUSTRATION: JACQUI OAKLEY Faber & Faber (RRP £20).
NOTES FROM AN AUTHOR // ANDREW LAMBERT
November 2016 47SMART TRAVELLER