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After twenty-eight hours at sea, we catch our first glimpse of Isla Robinson Crusoe, rising faintly out of the mist on the horizon. As we approach the island, the ship rolling in the swell, we’re struck by how small it is. Only 36 square miles in area and 2,800 feet above sea level at its highest peak, this island has, for all its isolation, long been a part of the world’s consciousness. It is a storied island that features in tales of explorers, pirates and privateers, buried treasure, shipwrecks, castaways and sea battles. One nineteenth-century visitor, the writer Richard Henry Dana, called it “the most romantic spot of earth” because of its unique history and its association with the fabled Crusoe.
If this is an island of dreams and romance, it is because of the three-hundred-year-old tale of Robinson Crusoe and his real-life inspiration, Alexander Selkirk. A native of Largo, which is north of Edinburgh on the rugged Fife coast, Selkirk was a troubled lad who ran away from the censure of his village and found a haven in a life at sea. He fared well, advancing in rank from ship’s boy to officer over the next several years. The lure of adventure and riches led him in 1703 to join a privateering venture into the Pacific led by William Dampier.
One man’s privateer is another man’s pirate, and Dampier’s ships and crews faced the wrath of Spain, which controlled the Pacific to the extent that the ocean was known as a “Spanish lake.” Thanks to Dampier’s incompetence, the venture ended badly, with very little gained and a number of men lost. One of Dampier’s ships, the privateer Cinque Ports, anchored at Mas a Tierra in October 1704, leaking and in bad condition. Her captain, Thomas Stradling, wanted to repro-vision before heading south and trying for home. Selkirk, his sailing master (mate), was convinced that the ship would never reach a safe port and decided that he would rather stay on the island than take his chances at sea.
The captain was more than happy to leave the quarrelsome, headstrong Selkirk behind and so set him ashore with a few tools, his gun and bedding, and his Bible. As the ship’s boat pulled away from the island, Selkirk regretted his decision and dashed into the surf, begging them to return. Stradling reportedly yelled back, “Stay where you are and may you starve!” Thus began a lonely exile that lasted four years and four months, until another English privateer, Woodes Rogers, landed for provisions. Rogers reported that “Immediately our pi
Selkirk sailed with Rogers and returned to a life of privateering in the Pacific before reaching London in 1711, eight years after he left England. He also brought home a small fortune from his years with Rogers. Selkirk’s adventures were first recounted in Rogers’s account of A Cruzing Voyage Round the World in 1712, and then again in 1713 in a short article by journalist Richard Steele in a magazine called The Englishman. But the story took on even greater fame in 1719, when author Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe, based in part on Selkirk’s adventures. The book was an immediate success; three hundred years later, it remains the second-most published book in the world, next only to the Bible, translated into most languages and available in nearly every country. Robinson Crusoe and the real-life Selkirk have also been the inspiration for other literary endeavors, paintings and movies— and, in time, for the decision by the Chilean government, in the 1960s, to change the name Mas a Tierra to Isla Robinson Crusoe.
Dresden rests beneath the waters of Cumberland Bay off Isla Robinson Crusoe. Every day, we load up one of Valdivia’s launches with dive gear and position ourselves over the wreck. Working with Willi Kramer and me, master diver Mike Fletcher breathes a complex mix of gases and descends to make the first survey the warship, relaying what he sees by video camera to the surface as we guide him through the ruined ship in the deep blue twilight below. It is far more difficult than this simple explanation — Mike is working hard, pulling 330 feet of heavy hose and electrical lines, clearing himself when they snag or catch on wreckage, and all the while using his eyes and experience along with ours to find and identify important areas of the ship, searching for clues about what happened in the final hours.
The dives are limited to 30 minutes, and then Mike has to decompress for more than twice that time to eliminate the deadly gas bubbles in his blood caused by the depth. In a series of later dives, Willi and I join Mike in surveying the wreck, slowly investigating the cruiser from bow to stern. Mike’s son Warren is also diving, filming the scene from a distance to capture as much of the wreck and the survey action as he can. Dresden lies as she sank, pointing almost due north and towards the beach, resting on the starboard (right) side. The fu
The bow is heavily damaged, and the severed end of it rests upright on the seabed. One of our first conclusions is that Dresden sank heavily by the bow, hitting the bottom of the bay with enough force to break off the huge steel ram at the bow. As the ship twisted and sank, the hull cracked and the decks opened up. But the damage is so severe that we wonder if hitting the bottom was responsible for all of it. Gradually, it becomes clear that the split decks and the ripped-out hull near the bow are the result of the massive internal explosions when the Germans’ scuttling charges detonated. Despite the damage, one anchor remains on the deck, at the ready. A long string of anchor chain trails off the bow and heads off into the gloom of deeper water, where the anchor that held Dresden in place when the cruiser sank remains set in the sand.
The bridge is gone but the wood decking remains in place under the debris of broken steel, torn wiring, machinery and loose fittings. The stub of the aft mast rises up out of the deck, and the broken mainmast, lying in two pieces, rests on the deck at an angle. We see three empty cartridge shells, and I am tempted by the thought that they might just be from those three shots that Dresden’s crew managed to fire before the ship sank. But an even more interesting discovery awaits us. Nearby, still in place, is the cruiser’s auxiliary steering station, a paired set of steering wheels that stops Mike in his tracks as we all admire them.
A 4-inch gun, possibly hit by British shellfire, angles inward and points at Dresden’s deck. I count three perfectly spaced shell holes, one after the other, along the ship’s hull towards the casemate, which is partially collapsed. At least it is still here. Its partner, the forward casemate on the port side, is gone — gun, thick armor and all — disintegrated by the scuttling explosions. The level of damage is greater than we had expected. Accounts of the battle emphasize that after a few hits on the stern and on the deck guns, Dresden sank intact when the crew set off a scuttling charge deep in the hull. But what we are finding is evidence of a sustained shelling and at least two massive internal explosions. The entire aft section is heavily damaged, with the main deck gone, shell holes in the steel plates that lie inside the ship’s exposed interior, and plates bent out near the aft port casemate from an internal explosion.
Lying amidst the wreckage is a German sailor’s boot. Willi Kramer believes it to be the evidence of a dead man. Fifteen of Dresden’s crew died, thirteen in the battle and two who succumbed later from their wounds. Willi reminds us that as floating men die, their bodies relax and their boots fall off. Hundreds of boots lie around the Second World War wreck of the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic, grim testimony to the majority of the crew who perished while bobbing in the cold, oil-stained waters. This solitary shoe on the deck of Dresden is a reminder of the individual cost of war, just as the broken hulk of the cruiser is a reminder of the larger costs and waste of war.