Surgeon in the Mercy galley, and taken by Captain Roberts in 1721. It was a rule on all pirate vessels for the surgeon to be excused from signing the ship's articles. When the next prize was taken, if she carried a surgeon, he was taken in place of their present one, if the latter wished to leave. But when Scudamore came on board the Royal Fortune he insisted on signing the pirate articles and boasted that he was the first surgeon that had ever done so, and he hoped, he said, to prove as great a rogue as any of them.
When the African Company's Guinea ship, the King Solomon, was taken, Scudamore came aboard and helped himself to their surgeon's instruments and medicines. He also took a fancy for a backgammon board, but only kept it after a violent quarrel with another pirate. It came out at his trial that on a voyage from the Island of St. Thomas, in a prize, the Fortune, in which was a cargo of slaves, Scudamore had tried to bring about a mutiny of the blacks to kill the prize crew which was on board, and he was detected in the night going about amongst the negroes, talking to them in the Angolan language. He said that he knew enough about navigation to sail the ship himself, and he was heard to say that "this were better than to be taken to Cape Corso to be hanged and sun dried."
The same witness told how he had approached the prisoner when he was trying to persuade a wounded pirate, one James Harris, to join him in his scheme, but fearing to be overheard, Scudamore turned the conversation to horse-racing.
Scudamore was condemned to death, but allowed three days' grace before being hanged, which he spent in incessant prayers and reading of the Scriptures. On the gallows he sang, solo, the Thirty-first Psalm. Died at the age of 35.
SEARLES, Captain Robert.
In 1664 he brought in two Spanish prizes to Port Royal, but as orders had only lately come from England to the Governor to do all in his power to promote friendly relations with the Spanish islands, these prizes were returned to their owners. To prevent Searle's doing such things again, he was deprived of his ship's rudder and sails. In 1666, Searle, in company with a Captain Stedman and a party of only eighty men, took the Island of Tobago, near Trinidad, from the Dutch, destroying everything they could not carry away.
SELKIRK, Alexander. The original Robinson Crusoe.
Born in 1676 at Largo in Fifeshire, he was the seventh son of John Selcraig, a shoemaker. In 1695 he was cited to appear before the Session for "indecent conduct in church," but ran away to sea. In 1701 he was back again in Largo, and was rebuked in the face of the congregation for quarrelling with his brothers. A year later Selkirk sailed to England, and in 1703 joined Dampier's expedition to the South Seas. Appointed sailing-master to the Cinque Ports, commanded by Captain Stradling.
In September, 1704, he arrived at the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez, in the South Pacific. Selkirk, having quarrelled with the captain, insisted on being landed on the island with all his belongings. He lived alone here for nearly four years, building himself two cabins, hunting the goats which abounded, and taming young goats and cats to be his companions.
On the night of January 31st, 1709, seeing two ships, Selkirk lit a fire, and a boat was sent ashore. These ships were the Duke and Duchess of Bristol, under the command of Captain Woodes Rogers, while his old friend Dampier was acting as pilot. Selkirk was at once appointed sailing-master of the Duchess, and eventually arrived back in the Thames on October 14th, 1711, with booty worth £800, having been away from England for eight years. While in England he met Steele, who described Selkirk as a "man of good sense, with strong but cheerful expression." Whether Selkirk ever met Defoe is uncertain, though the character of Robinson Crusoe was certainly founded on his adventures in Juan Fernandez. In 1712 he returned to Largo, living the life of a recluse, and we must be forgiven for suspecting that he rather acted up to the part, since it is recorded that he made a cave in his father's garden in which to meditate. This life of meditation in an artificial cave was soon rudely interrupted by the appearance of a certain Miss Sophia Bonce, with whom Selkirk fell violently in love, and they eloped together to Bristol, which must have proved indeed a sad scandal to the elders and other godly citizens of Largo. Beyond the fact that he was charged at Bristol with assaulting one Richard Nettle, a shipwright, we hear no more of Selkirk until his first will was drawn up in 1717, in which he leaves his fortune and house to "my loving friend Sophia Bonce, of the Pall Mall, London, Spinster." Shortly after this, Alexander basely deserted his loving friend and married a widow, one Mrs. Francis Candis, at Oarston in Devon.