How to Survive Alone: ​​Robinson Stories. The miraculous rescue of Alexander Selkirk

KING PEDRO In Aragon, after the death without offspring of the last king of the Celtiberian-Gothic dynasty, only one representative of the royal house remained - Ramiro, who was dedicated to the Lord from childhood and lived in a monastery. Extraordinary session ricos ombres adopted

The fictional hero of the novel by Daniel Defoe spent 28 years on a desert island. This record has been broken in real life.

World map with marked points where the Robinsons were located

1. 1515, Portuguese, aged 30

In 2000, the historian Fernanda Durão Ferreira discovered in the chronicles of the 16th century references to Fernao Lopes, a soldier of the Portuguese colonial contingent in India. He went over to the side of the enemy during the siege of Goa and allegedly converted to Islam. When the Portuguese caught the defector, they cut off his right hand, ears, nose and landed on the island of St. Helena - in 300 years Napoleon Bonaparte will end his life there.

Like the literary Robinson, Fernao had his Friday - a Javanese shipwreck survivor. Instead of a parrot - a trained rooster.

Ships occasionally landed on the shores of St. Helena to replenish fresh water supplies. The sailors knew about the hermit and considered him a saint. Realizing his ugliness, Fernand did not seek to leave the island. He was persuaded to board the ship only after 10 years. The soldier received a pardon from the King of Portugal and an indulgence from the Pope, but chose to return to the island and lived there for another 20 years.

Liberation from punishment for sins.

Admiral di Albuquerque in 1510 recaptured Goa from Adil Shah, the founder of the Bijapur Sultanate. The former owners made several attempts to return it.

View of Saint Helena from space. Photo: NASA

2. 1540, Spaniard, 10 years old

Sailor Pedro Serrano was the only survivor of the wreck of a Spanish galleon off the coast of Peru. The island was unlucky: only 8 kilometers long, with a minimum of vegetation and no sources of fresh water. But there were a lot of turtles on it.

Pedro made fire by hitting stones, burning algae and pieces of wood thrown ashore. Turtles provided food, their shells served as bowls for collecting rainwater and made it possible to make a canopy from the sun.

Three years later, another sailor swam to the island, also a victim of the crash. Together with Serrano, they lived for 7 years, until the smoke of their fire was noticed by a passing sailboat.

Aerial view of Serrano Bank Island, where Pedro Serrano lived for 10 years. Source: militar.org.ua

During the wars of that time, private shipowners received official permission to rob enemy merchant ships. They were called capers. At the beginning of the 18th century, the War of the Spanish Succession was going on. The famous English navigator (the first to circumnavigate the world 3 times) William Dampier equipped two ships for the expedition. One of them was Cinque Ports.

3. 1704, Scot, 4 years old

The navigator of the galley "Cinque Ports" ("Five Ports") Alexander Selkirk had a heavy character even by the standards of privateers. The captain got rid of him while staying on the island of Mas a Tierra off the coast of Chile, leaving him on the shore with a musket, a blanket, an ax, a knife and a telescope.

After the discoverers of Mas-a-Tierra, feral goats remained there. They became a source of milk and meat for Selkirk. The sailor built a hut from trunks and leaves, learned how to make fire. He often saw sails on the horizon, but these were the Spaniards, from whom the British pirate could not ask for help. Compatriots rescued him after 4 years and 4 months - these were again privateers led by William Dampier. The ship's commander was impressed with Selkirk's physical form and peace of mind:

“We were convinced that loneliness and excommunication from the world is not as painful as people think, especially if the person who found himself in such a situation had no other choice than this person had.”

The rescued man continued to sail with pirate crews. The island of Mas-a-Tierra is now named after Robinson Crusoe - according to one version, the story of the Scot formed the basis of the novel by Daniel Defoe. In 2007, archaeologists found the remains of Selkirk's hut and his navigational instruments on the island.

Selkirk Awaits Rescue, sculpture by Thomas Stuart Burnett. Photo: Herbert A. French / Library of Congress

4. 1742, Russians, 6 years old

A fishing vessel with a crew of 14 people was blocked by ice not far from one of the islands of eastern Svalbard. The sailors sent four people ashore to find a wooden hut left from previous winterings. The scouts found her and stayed overnight, and in the morning they did not find the ship, which was carried away and smashed by the waves. Thus began the misadventure of Alexei Khimkov and his comrades.

The sailors made spears and bows, fished, ate half-baked meat of fur-bearing animals - in the Arctic, wood was tight, and driftwood thrown by the waves went to heat the hut. One sailor died of scurvy, three were picked up by a merchant ship. They returned home with wealthy people, because they brought about 200 skins of bears, deer and arctic foxes.

A disease caused by a severe deficiency of vitamin C.

Archipelago Spitsbergen. Photo: ashokboghani / Flickr

5. 174?, Dutch, 6 months

In 1748, the crew of an English ship discovered human remains and a diary with the story of a Dutch sailor on Ascension Island in the Atlantic. Leendert Hasenbosch was the ship's treasurer. He was accused of homosexuality and sentenced to marooning, given various equipment, a Bible, a gun without gunpowder, a tent and writing materials.

The Dutchman knocked down birds with stones, ate turtles, and went to the other end of the island for fresh water. The diary tells of desperate daily attempts to get food. Six months later, the water source dried up, the captive drank the blood of birds and turtles, then urine, then died of thirst. A permanent settlement was founded on Ascension only in the 19th century.

Punishment by landing on a desert island.

Ascension Island in the Atlantic. Photo: Drew Avery / Flickr

6. 1805, Russian, 7 years old

Yakov Minkov was a hunter on a fishing vessel. He was landed on Bering Island near Kamchatka for the extraction of furs and promised to be picked up in two months. But the ship did not return. Yakov ate fish and meat of animals, built a yurt, sewed clothes from the skins of fur seals and arctic foxes. In 1812 he was taken by a passing schooner.

Steller Arch on Bering Island. Photo: Chuyan Galina Nikolaevna / CC BY-SA 4.0

7. 1809, American, age 5

When the brig "Negotiant" collided with an iceberg in the South Pacific Ocean, 21 crew members managed to board a lifeboat. For a month and a half, the boat was carried along the waves, people were dying.

Only sailor Daniel Foss made it to land. His home was a rocky piece of land inhabited by seals. Robinson ate their meat, sewed clothes from the skins. From the recesses in the stones collected fresh water. Five years later, the man was spotted from a passing ship. Because of the shallows, the ship could not land, and Foss got to it by swimming.

Seal rookery. Photo: Judith Slein / Flickr

8. 1835, Indian, age 18

The island of St. Nicholas off the coast of California was inhabited by the Indians. By 1835, there were about two dozen of them left, and the Catholic mission decided to take the survivors to the mainland. In a hurry, because of the storm that had begun, one woman was forgotten on the island.

Only 18 years later, fur hunters found the lost woman, she was in good health. The islander lived in a hut made of whale bones, wore clothes made from the skin of fur seals and feathers of seagulls, wove baskets from bushes and seaweed. She could not communicate with anyone - the tribe died out, and no one understood her language. The woman was named Juana Maria. She died two months later of dysentery.

Probable photograph of Juana Maria. Photo: Edwin J. Hayward and Henry W. Muzzall / Southwest Museum of the American Indian

9. 1921, Eskimo, 2 years old

Ada Blackjack is hired on a Canadian Arctic expedition as a cook and seamstress to earn money and cure her son, who is suffering from tuberculosis. Five polar explorers reached Wrangel Island and stayed for the winter. But the stocks quickly depleted, the hunt was unsuccessful. Three members of the expedition decided to return. Ada stayed at the cabin with a seriously ill Lorne Knight and Witz the cat. The departed companions disappeared on the way, Knight soon died.

The woman learned to survive in extreme cold, and a year and a half later, a rescue expedition stumbled upon her. Ada took the skins of the hunted animals home, sold them profitably, and cured her son. The fate of the cat is unknown.

I think everyone knows and many people love the book by Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe. But does everyone know who became the prototype of the protagonist of this book?

Alexander Selkirk (1676-1721) - Scottish sailor who spent 4 years and 4 months (in 1704-1709) on the uninhabited island of Mas a Tierra, which is part of the Juan Fernandez archipelago, located in the Pacific Ocean, 640 kilometers from the coast of Chile. It was this man who served as the prototype of the literary hero of the novel.

Alexander came to the island not after a shipwreck, but of his own free will. In 1704, after another skirmish with the captain of the ship, on which Selkirk, being a member of the team (boatswain), went on a predatory expedition, usual for that time, with the aim of capturing and robbing Spanish ships, he decided to leave the ship, which by that time was already pretty worn out and gave a leak.

Selkirk chose to commit himself to fate on a deserted island than to remain on a dilapidated ship under the command of a hostile captain. In his heart, he hoped that he would not have to stay on the island for a long time. After all, ships often came here for fresh water. In the meantime, in order not to die of hunger, it was necessary to take care of food - food supplies were left to him only for one day. And besides, he took with him: a flintlock gun, a pound of gunpowder, bullets and flint, clothes and linen, tobacco, an ax, a knife, a cauldron, he did not even forget the Bible.

In total, Alexander Selkirk spent 4 years and 4 months on the island, and was rescued in January 1709. But only on October 14, 1711, he returned to England, and 8 years later Daniel Defoe wrote the book "The Life and Amazing Adventures of the Sailor Robinson Crusoe", which has been read all over the world for almost three centuries.

Spanish sailor Pedro Serrano 1540 - 1547:

In 1540, a Spanish galleon was wrecked off the coast of Peru. The only survivor was the sailor Pedro Serrano. His salvation was a small piece of land on which there was no water and the only vegetation was dry algae. Also, there was not a single stone on the sandy spit, and in order to get fire, the sailor had to search the seabed and get a few small pebbles. The only thing you could eat in this place - turtles. After three years of loneliness, fate gave Serrano a companion - a sailor from a ship that was wrecked off the coast of this island. So together these two lived on the island for another 4 years, until they were rescued by sailors passing by the ship.

English sailor Daniel Foss (late 18th century):

This tragic story began when the Negociator ship, which was hunting seals in the northern seas, collided with an iceberg and sank. 21 crew members managed to lower the boat and escape. After 1.5 months of wandering on the waves, only two survived. The boat was washed ashore, and Foss lost his last comrade. He lived on the island for five years, eating only seals, and rainwater saved him from thirst. After this long time, the poor fellow was noticed on a passing ship, but it was impossible to approach the island. Then, seizing his oar, the optimistic sailor threw himself into the water and swam to the ship.

Four Russian sailors (approximately 1742-1749):

A ship with a crew of 14 people fell into an ice trap near one of the islands of the eastern Svalbard. It made no sense to stay on the ship, and the sailors decided to land on the island and spend the winter here. From the previous wintering on the island, a wooden hut should have been preserved. The scouts sent to the island discovered it and stayed overnight, and in the morning they hurried to the shore, but to their horror there was no ship - the storm raged all night and the ship, most likely, either crashed or was carried away to the open sea.

People ate half-baked meat obtained on the hunt, because. were forced to save precious fuel for heating the hut. After seven long years, when only three survived - one of the sailors Verigin died of scurvy - a ship belonging to a rich merchant approached the island, and he returned them to their homeland. The sailors took with them all their savings, bear and deer skins, fox skins, etc. in September 1749, the Pomors returned to Arkhangelsk.

This story formed the basis of two books - the first (1766) by the French scientist Pierre Leroy, the second by the American writer David Roberts.

dutch sailor (name not known):

In 1748, the English captain Mawson discovered human remains and a diary on one of the gloomy islands of the Ascension archipelago, which told the sad story of a Dutch sailor accused of a terrible crime and left on this island. At that time, the island was far from sea routes and was uninhabited.

The convict was left with some equipment and weapons, which were useless, because. forgot to leave gunpowder. The sailor at first ate birds, which he knocked down with stones and turtles. Instead of water, he chewed shellfish. Later, the Dutchman found water, but it was located far from the place where he got his livelihood. Every time, languishing from the heat, he carried water in bowlers. These journeys took him a whole day, and it all ended with the fact that the source that gave him water dried up, and the man slowly died of thirst and hunger. Plus, he was tormented by remorse and hallucinations appeared, which made his end even more terrible.

Vavilov Pavel Ivanovich, sailor of the Arctic fleet (1942):

On August 24, 1942, the icebreaker "Alexander Sibiryakov" left the city of Dikson, carrying out a voyage with equipment and personnel for a new polar station on Severnaya Zemlya. The next day, near Beluga Island in the Kara Sea, a Soviet icebreaker met the German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer. A battle broke out between the ships, the Sibiryakov was sunk, and the surviving part of the crew was taken prisoner by the enemy. Fireman Pavel Vavilov was the only survivor who managed to escape capture.

After the ship went under water, most of the sailors were drawn into the resulting water funnel, Pavel Vavilov was lucky to grab hold of the wooden remains of the ship and stay on the surface. With the last of his strength, he was able to get out onto an empty lifeboat floating nearby and was able to get to the uninhabited island of Belukha. In the boat, the sailor found food, matches, an ax, a loaded revolver, fished out a sleeping bag and a bag of clothes from the water. There was a lighthouse on the island, in which Vavilov found refuge.

According to various sources, Pavel Ivanovich Vavilov spent 34 to 37 days on a polar rocky island. Passing steamers did not notice the sailor, hoping to wave his jersey on the shore. However, when the food was almost over and frosts were approaching, he was noticed from the Sakko steamer passing by and a seaplane was sent for the sailor.

In history, another polar robinsonade is known, this time single-handedly committed by a Russian hunter Yakov Minkov who lived on Bering Island (from the Commander Islands group) in the Pacific Ocean for seven whole years.

It happened in 1805, when the navigator Potapov left him in a yurt for
this island to protect fox pelts caught during the fishing season. The schooner was to return here in a few days. Weeks, months passed, and she was still gone. However, deprived of the most necessary things, Minkov did not lose his presence of mind: his ingenuity and ingenuity saved him. Nearby was a river rich in fish. To provide himself with food, Minkov made
hook and started fishing. Fire was made with flint. Only in 1812, Yakov Minkova took off a passing by from a deserted island.
schooner.

And in 1983 in the jungle of the famous Indonesian island
Sumatra, on the banks of the river South Sarmat, hunters accidentally met
12 year old girl Imayatu who lived here alone from above
six years old. In February 1977, she went with her friends to fish on the river.
ku did not return. Everyone believed that Imayata died when the boat with the unlucky fishermen capsized.

The girl went wild, forgot her native language, but her happy parents immediately
did know. It is interesting that they found the girl just 20 km from her native
villages. This is probably the youngest of the known modern Robinsons.

A few examples of "voluntary Robinsons":

1. Japanese pensioner Masafumi Nagasaki has been living alone on the island of Sotobanari (Okinawa) for 20 years without a source of fresh water. Once the Japanese worked as a photographer, then he fully experienced the dark side of the entertainment industry. He says he wanted to get away from all this once and for all.

2. David Glashin and his dog Quasi are the only residents on tiny Recovery Island near Cape York. Glashin, 65, is a former businessman who traded laptop bags about 2 decades ago after the stock market crash in 1987. His first marriage, from which he has two daughters, ended at the same time. The former CEO of the company considers the loss of his entire fortune one of the best things that happened in his life.

Glashin moved to the island in 1993. He improved the island somewhat, but it still remains a "wild" place. I liked its simplicity and remoteness Russell Crowe And Daniel Spencer who stopped there to spend their honeymoon.

Apart from the occasional tourist visits and passing yachts, he admits he gets lonely in his little paradise, which is why the now divorced father of three puts up ads looking for a woman who loves a quiet and lonely life, without any neighbors.

3. The unusual experience of Swiss snowboarder Xavier Rosset - he decided to try to survive on a deserted island in the South Pacific for ten months, with only the essentials. The island with an area of ​​60 km2 lies 1600 km from New Zealand, with an active volcano, a rocky coast 20 meters wide and a large crater lake. There are many wild boars on the island and the vegetation is so dense that it is impossible to pass without a machete.

A machete, a knife, a first aid kit, and equipment to upload new videos to his site weekly are all that is in his backpack.
Rosset says the lonely island project combines his dream of adventure with a strong belief in being able to live in harmony with nature without harming it. “It's really important for me to show that I can live 300 days without polluting the environment. But mostly I will do it because it's great to make your dreams come true."

4. A mechanic from Munich, disappointed in life, decided to settle on a small island in the South China Sea, renting the island for 99 years. Friedrich Texter was able to rent this island for as much as 99 years for the amount he paid for the rent of his apartment per year, namely 6,000 German marks. Friedrich settled in a small hut made of bamboo. His clothes are all quite simple, which is made from various pieces of fabric. On the islet, Texter has a mini-farm for chickens, numbering about five dozen birds. He grows a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. All the food he easily suffices for a good existence. By the way, the space owned by Friedrich Texter reaches approximately 5 square kilometers, including only the jungle, sand and rocks.

Most importantly, the temperature here is constantly sunny and warm, it does not fall below 22 degrees. Sometimes this inhabitant of the island gives special signals thanks to mirrors and some friends from Palawan sail to him. Texter is constantly trading. He sells personally grown food, and buys the most necessary things for his existence.

Thank you all for your attention!

It is widely known that the English writer Daniel Defoe (circa 1660-1731), the author of the novel about Robinson Crusoe, did not invent the story of his hero. The prototype of the latter was a Scottish sailor, boatswain of the English ship "Five Ports" Alexander Selkirk, who lived alone on the island of Masa Tierra for 1580 days, or 4 years and 4 months (from 1705 to 1709)

However, not many people know that A. Selkirk had a predecessor who, more than half a century earlier, managed to live on a barren piece of land off the coast of Peru for 7 long years - from 1540 to 1547. It turned out to be the Spanish sailor Pedro Serrano. This brave man, having shown will, perseverance, courage, defeated death and came out with honor from combat with nature. And it was extremely difficult to do so.

The island on which he landed after the shipwreck was a long 8-kilometer sand spit. There was no vegetation of any kind and there was not a drop of fresh water. The dire situation of the sailor was also aggravated by the fact that of the most necessary things at his disposal there were only a knife and the clothes that were on him.

By the way, when A. Selkirk left the ship, there were clothes, a gun, gunpowder, bullets, a knife, a steel, a bowler hat, as well as a compass, a pickaxe and a Bible. In addition, on his island, he did not lack either drinking water or food. The Robinson boatswain ate fish, lobster, goat meat, and even diversified his diet with cabbage, which grew in abundance on Mas-a-Tierra.

Pedro Serrano could only dream of all this. He was tormented by hunger, thirst, at night the cold caused suffering. Although there were a lot of dry algae and fragments of wood around, there was nothing to start a fire with. The sailor was close to despair, as he well understood that he was doomed to starvation. And then one day, already for the umpteenth time examining his "possessions", he noticed turtles climbing along the dry sand to the island.

P. Serrano turned over several of them on his back, then cut the throat of one animal and pressed his dry lips to the wound ... The blood of the reptile quenched his thirst, it was insipid and somewhat reminiscent of fish juice. Turtle meat turned out to be edible, and most importantly, quite nutritious. In the future, Pedro harvested it for the future - cut it into small pieces and dried it in the hot sun.

Animal shells also came in handy. The sailor made vessels out of them, in which he collected heavenly moisture. The poor man was saved.

There were a great many turtles on this piece of land lost in the ocean, but eating their raw meat was disgusting. Fire was needed. Hot food can be cooked on a fire, and the smoke rising to the sky gave hope for salvation. As already mentioned, there was plenty of fuel. Threads from dry clothes could well have served as tinder, a metal knife as flint, but there was not a single stone around. Perhaps they can be found underwater? During a calm sea, a sailor dived to exhaustion near the shore, trying to find at least small stones ...

Finally, he was lucky, and with the help of the found “flint”, a fire blazed with a bright flame. To prevent the rain from extinguishing the fire, obtained with such difficulty, Serrano built a canopy over it from tortoise shells. As it turned out, the animals were useful for all occasions.

Three years have passed. All attempts to attract at least some ship to the island with the smoke of a fire were in vain. Every day, for long hours, Robinson peered into the horizon until his eyes hurt, but the snow-white sails that appeared in the distance invariably “dissolved” in the boundless expanses of the ocean.

One morning during breakfast, the unwitting settler of the island saw a two-legged creature heading towards his hearth. At first, the man did not notice the hermit... but when he saw the overgrown robinson, he screamed and rushed away. Serrano did the same, for he thought that the devil himself had visited him. Without stopping, he shouted at the top of his voice: "Jesus, deliver me from the devil!" Hearing this, the stranger stopped and shouted: “Brother, do not run away from me! I am a Christian, just like you!” Serrano did not stop. Then the stranger began to read a prayer aloud. The sailor turned back. He approached a man dressed in blue pants and a shirt and wrapped his arms around him.

The unknown person said that his ship was wrecked, and he himself, grabbing a piece of the mast, reached the island. Unfortunately, the annals of history have not preserved the name of the second Robinson. Serrano offered everything he had - water, meat, fish, which he now harvested with a harpoon made from a piece of wood tipped with a sharp fish bone.

Now there were two of them, and they lived in friendship and harmony. The household was run jointly: one watched the fire, collected dry algae or wood fragments thrown out by the sea, the other got food. In their free time, they had long conversations, telling each other about their past lives. But then the topics of conversation were exhausted. People barely exchanged a few phrases. Then followed reproaches, anger, absolute silence. Often, because of grievances on insignificant occasions, even fights arose ...

They broke up. Now everyone hunted turtles, fished, kept fire on their territory of the island. Time has passed and reconciliation has come. One of the sailors had the determination to be the first to take a step forward. Tears of shame streamed down their faces, lips trembled, but there was also boundless joy - the joy that they were together again.

And then, finally, a ship approached the island. A boat was lowered into the water, and the sailors unanimously piled on the oars. Approaching the shore, the rowers saw two hairy "fiends" standing on the sand. Frightened, muttering prayers, they immediately turned back. At any moment, the thread of hope for salvation could break...

Serrano and his comrade shouted with all their might: "Come back, we are people!" But the boat was still moving towards the ship. Driven to despair, the Robinsons sang a prayer loudly. The boat turned back to face the sandbar.

With undisguised fear, the sailors examined and felt the shaggy creatures, and then delivered them to the ship, where the companion Pedro Serrano, unable to withstand the excitement, died of a broken heart. The survivor was taken first to Spain, and then to Germany, to show the emperor. To prove his story, Serrano did not cut his hair, and during the trip he, like an exotic beast, was shown to everyone for a certain bribe.

The emperor granted the brave "robinson" great wealth - 4000 ounces (1 ounce = 29.86 g) of gold. Using this gift, the sailor wanted to settle in Peru opposite the island where he spent 7 years, but he died on the way there.

A still from the 2000 film Cast Away about a modern-day Robinson (starring actor Tom Hanks)

Australian hermit

And are the modern "Robinsons" known, after reading these lines, the reader will ask? Yes, they are known. And the most dramatic was the fate of the Australian hermit James Karol. This happened in 1926. One day, Dr. Korlyand and his friends went hunting in that part of the Green Continent, where the villages of cannibals were still preserved. Having entered into friendly communication with them, the traveler learned that a white man lived nearby. A company of hunters became interested in this "dark-faced" savage and decided to visit him...

Approaching the cave pointed out by the natives, they suddenly heard the growl of the beast. A few minutes later, a shaggy head emerged from her womb. Korlyand ran towards the gorilla-like creature, but as soon as it noticed the alien, it attacked the alien with such force that the hunter fell. The doctor's companions rushed to the rescue and grabbed the furry creature. They tried to speak English, French, German and Dutch, but in response the savage only growled and tried to bite people. He was tied up and only then entered the cave.

To the greatest surprise, they found a thick notebook-diary, which this man-beast kept for a number of years. From the manuscript it turned out that Dr. James Carol lived in a stone dwelling, who 25 years ago killed his wife out of jealousy and ran away from despair and fear, no one knows where. In his diary, he wrote about his experiences in the wilderness, surrounded by dangerous beasts and poisonous animals. Over time, the fugitive turned into a beast. Karol was placed in a sanatorium near Sydney. His further fate is unknown.

Yes, not everyone who was cut off from people managed to remain a person. After all, man is a social being, and the most terrible punishment for him is the oppressive fear of Loneliness.

Bad experience

In 1962, French radio reporter Georges de Connes decided to experience firsthand what Robinson Crusoe had to do on a desert island. For his experiment, he chose the deserted island of Henao in Polynesia, which once served as a place of exile for convicts, and decided to live on it all alone for a year. The reporter took with him a large supply of canned food, medicines, tools, as well as a radio transmitter, which he could use for 5 minutes daily.

The experience ended badly. After a 4-month stay on the island, having lost 15 kg in weight, he was taken to a hospital in the Marquesas Islands. De Kon admitted that he could not stand the loneliness and gave in to mosquitoes and sharks, which did not allow him to fish.

Once Masafuni Nagasaki was a photographer, worked in the entertainment industry, but the norms set by society disgusted his freedom-loving character. Then he decided to leave the human world. For over 20 years, Masafuni has lived on Sotobanari Island, off the west coast of Iriomote Island, Okinawa Prefecture. Volunteer Robinson feeds on rice, drinks rainwater, which he collects in pots placed throughout the island.

Robinson reluctantly

And here are the circumstances under which the 44-year-old civil aviation pilot Henri Bourdin and his wife José began their Robinsonade. At the end of 1966, they set off on a multi-month journey on their yacht "Singa Betina" from Singapore to their homeland. The storm that broke out badly damaged the fragile boat of sailors, knocked it off course, and after many weeks of drifting, the broken yacht was brought to the shores of the small island of Bathurst, 5D miles north of the Australian port of Darwin.

Travelers were so confident that they would be quickly discovered that they did not bother to worry about food supplies for a long time. They brought only some rice, flour and canned food from the yacht. But days, weeks passed, and the Bourdins realized that they were in isolation.

When the provisions ran out, the couple began to eat crabs, lizards, snails. “The island was full of poisonous snakes,” José said. “I was so afraid that they would bite us. We listened to music - we had a portable radio and a transistor tape recorder that survived on the yacht. Bach and Mozart were our true friends. They helped us stay sane." It took a long two months, but the worst was yet to come.

“My husband made a raft from the wreckage of a yacht. We decided to get to the mainland ... ”However, the wood from which it was built quickly swelled and lost its buoyancy. Alone in the vast water desert, without food - only a cauldron of fresh water - slowly, very slowly, they began to sink. It is not clear how miraculously the tree that absorbed moisture could still withstand their weight. So endless hours passed. It seemed to people that death itself had turned its back on them. The spouses still had the remnants of their strength, they stood waist-deep in water, and the raft slowly moved across the ocean ...

Four days passed. José and Henri were still alive. The celestial luminary was declining, a little more, and it would go beyond the horizon. “I looked up,” the woman continued, “and I saw a ship... Mirage? Hallucination? No! It seems that it noticed us, I screamed. The husband had the strength to light the smoke bomb—I don’t know how he managed to keep it dry.” The unfortunates were rescued by an Australian patrol boat.

In 1974, four shipwrecked young adventurers sat on a coral reef in the Tasman Sea for 42 days. Only when the seventh week of their "imprisonment" had gone did the fishing trawler manage to break through the storm and take on board the people completely exhausted by thirst and hunger.

Frivolous travelers defied the elements of the sea, setting off on a small yacht from the New Zealand city of Auckland to the Australian port of Sydney. They had to overcome 1280 miles. As specialists from the sea rescue center in Canberra later stated, it was one of the most unprepared trips. The ocean, however, accepted a daring challenge: 350 miles off the east coast of Australia, the treacherous Middleton Reef was waiting for the yacht ...

This underwater shoal, completely hidden under water during a big wave, has earned the sad reputation of a ship cemetery. Among his victims were a cargo ship with a displacement of 13.5 thousand tons and a fishing schooner, in the wreckage of which would-be Robinsons took refuge from the scorching rays of the sun, wind and rain.

In the same year, members of the crew of an American warship, having landed on the Polynesian island of Anthoraj in the Cook Archipelago, which was listed as uninhabited in the sailing boat, found there ... Robinson. It turned out to be New Zealander Tom Neal. He said that for the past two years he has been living on this piece of land, having become disillusioned with the "charms of a capitalist society of equal opportunities."

On the island he raised chickens, pigs and pigeons. Together with Neil there was only his faithful dog. On the offer to return home, the hermit answered with a categorical refusal. And when the sailors offered him American newspapers and magazines, he said: “Your world does not interest me!” The path of voluntary loneliness he chose continues to this day.

Concluding the story, one cannot help but dwell on the amazing fate of another modern Robinson - 14-year-old boy Sasha Barash, who lived with his father in the village of one of the Soviet oceanological stations in Primorye.

In 1977, while sailing on the Burun research boat, he was washed overboard. The boy swam to a deserted island. All the wealth of the victim was: worn clothes, a penknife, two large safety pins, a pencil stub, a two-meter piece of nylon cord and sneakers. He ate eggs of seagulls, mussels, edible wild plants. A month later, the boy was rescued by Soviet border guards.

After a safe return, in a conversation with a correspondent of the Pacific Komsomolets newspaper, the young Robinson said: “One evening, for the umpteenth time, I recalled the islands described in the books of Jules Verne and Defoe. I suddenly felt funny. How did these writers think! None of the methods (survival) described in "The Mysterious Island" and "Robinson Crusoe" were useful to me.

And indeed, as we see, each Robinson found his own way to survive, each went his own way to salvation.

The story of N. A. Vnukov “One on One” is dedicated to the story of Sasha Barash