Selkirk's Island - Diana Souhami
Selkirk's
Island
The Original Robinson
Crusoe
Diana
Souhami
Phoenix
Publishers
ISBN
0753813343
Pirates! Gold! Plunder!
Cannon! Scurvy! Shipwreck! Goats! Best of all, it's all
true...
Selkirk's
Island is a great read, but awkwardly
structured. On the one hand it offers a rich and compelling insight into the
frankly awful life of 18th century sailors, and particularly into the eventful
life of Alexander Selkirk, but some of the book seems pasted on, interesting but
disjoint from the human
stories.
Despite the title and
sub-title, much of this book isn't about Selkirk at all. Indeed the book opens
and closes with discussion of the real main character - The Island. Located off
the coast of Chile, The Island is far from a barren rock - harbouring abundant
fish, lobsters, seals and vegetation, it offered sailors a welcome respite, an
ideal place to careen their worm-eaten ships. Selkirk was famously marooned
there for more than four years, but this isn't the focus of the story - merely
one of many colourful episodes in the history of the island, and in the journey
of Selkirk's ship. (You probably know by now to ignore book covers, but this one
is particularly awful, leading you to think that Selkirk was marooned for nearly
thirty years. He wasn't, he was marooned for over four. The cover conflates him
with the fictional Crusoe.)
What you
get is much more than just the tale of a marooning.
The
Island is a rich slice of nautical history -
we follow the hapless voyages of William Dampier ('the Old Pyrateing Dog') and
his crew on their mission, under the flag of the patriotic privateer, to plunder
the Spanish treasure galleons on their way back from the New World. Trust me,
this isn't Hornblower. By turns cowardly, drunken, unlucky and just plain
ridiculous, Dampier leads his crew mainly to their doom. It's colourful and
interesting, but it's not comfortable reading for the squeamish, or those with
romantic notions of life aboard
ship.
That Selkirk is famously marooned
we already know, but his life after rescue, and how he rose to fame, and failed
to profit from it, also make an appealing tragic tale. I don't think anyone,
excepting Defoe, did well from these
voyages...
The
Island tries to tie together Dampier's
voyages, Selkirk's biography, and a potted history of The Island. Sadly, I don't
think Souhami marries the strands together well, and a more ruthless editor
might well have pruned some of the less colourful material away to give a more
natural flow to the narrative. On the plus side, her research seems excellent,
and few paragraphs pass without original quotes or well placed insights into the
historical aspects of the main action. Perhaps
The
Island reads a little too academic at times;
Souhami has a good eye for incident or detail, and an obvious love for her
material, but I felt that her writing lacked the effortless extra something
needed to write good non-fiction. Still, recommended if you spent any time as a
kid wearing a parrot on your shoulder.
Posted: Wed - August 13, 2003 at 09:35 PM