1712 The South Sea Bubble
THERE WAS always another journey to make, other prizes to be won. It seemed that Selkirk’s long voyage to remote Isles, beyond the Seas, was to be with the new South Sea Company. Peace between England and Spain was imminent in 1712 and English exclusion from the South Sea would end. A huge expeditionary force was planned to set up trading posts along the coast of South America. It would sail in June. ‘There has not been in our Memory an Undertaking of such Consequence’ Defoe wrote in an Essay on the South-Sea Trade.†
We shall, under the Protection, in the Name, and by the Power of Her Majesty, Seize, Take and Possess such Port or Place, or Places, Land, Territory, Country or Dominion, call it what you please, as we see fit in America, and Keep it for our own. Keeping it implies Planting, Settling, Inhabiting, Spreading, and all that is usual in such Cases: And when this is done, what are we to do with it? Why, we are to Trade to it, and from it; Whither? Where ever we can with Spaniards, or any Body that will Trade with us.
The Company’s objectives were, he said, ‘capable of being the Greatest, most Valuable, most Profitable, and most Encreasing Branch of Trade in our whole British Commerce’. Its profits would pay off the national debt – which stood at nine million pounds, lead to trading agreements with Spain and bring wealth to all involved.†
The expeditionary fleet of 1712, would have 20 warships and bomb vessels, 40 transport ships, hospital ships and 4000 soldiers. Woodes Rogers was to command it. He met at South Sea House with the deputy governor of the South Sea Company, Sir James Bateman.
Selkirk would go too. His Island would be colonised. He knew its virtues. It was safe for ships. It would bring great riches to Great Britain. It had given to him, it would give to others too. He would advise on its harbours and tides, its topography and climate, where to build and when to plant.
The Company spent £120,000 on fitting ships, but more investment was needed. In March, the Secretary of State, Henry St John, pledged government money for this voyage ‘to carry on the Trade to those Parts’.† Queen Anne intimated that she would ‘be pleased to assist this Company with a Sufficient Force’.
Selkirk hung around the port of Bristol drinking flip in the bars. Month after month went by. No money for the grand scheme came. The Treaty of Utrecht was signed. It marked peace with Spain and gave trading rights to the South Sea Company. But letters from the Company to the Most Honourable Robert, Earl of Oxford, Lord High Treasurer of Great Britain and to Queen Anne went unanswered.
Selkirk waited. He believed this voyage must happen. It seemed inconceivable that such grand plans should come to nothing and such effort and money be squandered. He wanted again to sail with Rogers, the man who had rescued him, who called him Governor and Monarch. He wanted again to see The Island.
The safe time for sailing passed. The acquired ships stayed idle. Their cargoes rotted. The South Sea scheme was a shining bubble, floating high and filled with air. The Island, remote and far beyond the seas, receded. Selkirk would not return to it. Boredom and drink led to trouble. On 23 September 1713 he was charged in the parish of St Stephens in Bristol, with common assault. He had beaten up Richard Nettle, a sailor. As with previous brushes with the law he did not show up for the hearing.† He moved to the obscurity of London for some months, then went home to Largo.
* Woodes Rogers introduced Steele to women who, he said, would make him ‘throw away his cane and dance a minuet’. To one of these, a Mrs Roach, Steele paid some hundreds of pounds.
*Addison and Steele when students shared lodgings in Bury Street. They co-wrote the Tatler. Addison was godfather to Steele’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth. In 1711 Steele owed Addison £100.
*On 1 October 1713 the last issue, no. 175, of the Guardian appeared. On 6 October, the first number of the Englishman, Being the Sequel to the Guardian, was published.
*Between 1708 and 1711, Selkirk had not had a moment’s separation from Company. He had been off The Island for three years.
*These inventories and accounts, muddled and unsorted, are in dusty boxes in Chancery C104/36, in the Public Record Office, London. And see David J. Starkey, British Privateering Enterprise in the Eighteenth Century (1990).
*There was no agreement by any scribe about the spelling of Acapulco.
6
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Selkirk’s Deposition of 1712 and the house where he was born.
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1714 Punch or Flip
EIGHT HUNDRED POUNDS would buy the streets of Largo. The family legend was that Selkirk returned to his home town on a Sunday morning in Spring in gold-laced clothes. There was no one at his father’s house. He went to the Church. His parents were there. His mother, ‘uttering a cry of joy’
Even in the house of God, rushed to his arms, unconscious of the impropriety of her conduct and the interruption of the service.†
He had booty to show for his danger and daring. He impressed them with ‘Several Summes of Money’, silver and gold, ‘a considerable Parcell of Linnen Cloth’, his sea books and instruments, the accounts of his adventures by Edward Cooke, Woodes Rogers and Richard Steele.
He had with him, too, his glazed, brown stoneware flip-can and four years and months of The Island etched into his mind. Drink was again an addiction, a kind of rescue. The can was engraved with a rhyme:
Alexander Selkirk, this is my One
When you me take on Board of Ship
Pray fill me full
