On 2nd of February 1709 Alexander Selkirk was rescued from an uninhabited island where he had been stranded by the Captain of the ship he was serving on.

His story became the inspiration for the bestseller by Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe.

Alexander Selkirk did publish his own account but Robinson Crusoe has remained a ‘classic’ of English literature.

The actual story of Alexander Selkirk, born in 1676 in Lower Largo, Fife, is itself an interesting one – a time of high seas piracy (buccaneering) and survival.

February 1709:

‘We arrived at the island of Juan Fernandez on 31 January. We lay there to recoup ourselves until 13 February. At the island we found one Alexander Selkirk, a Scotchman who was left there by Captain Stradling, Captain Dampier’s consort the last voyage and survived four years and four months without conversing with any creature, having no company but wild goats The National Archives

And who remembers this?