Pirates and Privateers
The History of Maritime Piracy

Cindy Vallar, Editor & Reviewer
P. O. Box 425, Keller, TX  76244-0425

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In 1617 John Woodall published a book entitled The Surgeon’s Mate. Never before had anyone bothered to pen an instruction manual to help the surgeon at sea, or whoever acted in that capacity in his absence. Copies were included in medical chests. Woodall’s book became a “bible” to many. Considered the Father of Sea Surgery, Woodall practiced what he preached. At sixteen he apprenticed with a barber-surgeon, and three years later, he was a military surgeon. Eventually he became the surgeon general of the East India Company.

One must understand that the world of medicine in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries differed from medicine today. There were two classes of doctors, and not all of them were treated with the respect one currently associates with this field. A physician graduated from university. He was a gentleman concerned with knowledge, desiring to learn as much as he could about the human body. If a patient fell ill or was injured, the physician prescribed medicines to assist in the patient’s recovery, but he rarely examined, or even saw, any patients. Barber-surgeons, however, treated and operated on their patients, but the law prohibited them from writing prescriptions. They acquired their skills through an apprenticeship. While they performed amputations more than other types of surgery, they made most of their money from bloodletting, lancing boils, and pulling teeth. Closely aligned with the doctors were apothecaries, (druggists/pharmacists now), who mixed medications, or physics as they were called then. From behind the shop’s counter, the apothecary dispensed free medical advice with the pills and purges he concocted from the ingredients kept in the many bottles lining his shelves.

Both barber-surgeons and physicians crossed paths with pirates, in part because the Royal College of Surgeons in Scotland certified eighty percent of all doctors. Since there weren’t enough jobs at home for these men, they set sail for distant shores. Sometimes pirates attacked their ships, and the doctors became pyrate surgeons whether they wanted to or not. Unlike other men who went on the account, though, surgeons did not have to sign the Articles of Agreement. If the pirates seized another vessel with a doctor on board, the forced surgeon was free to go and the new man became the pirates’ surgeon. Regardless of whether these doctors signed the articles or not, they received 1¼ shares of any plundered booty. That sum usually surpassed what a legitimate ship’s surgeon might earn in a month, for those wages averaged £3 to £4. Alexandre Exquemelin, one of the more famous of the pyrate surgeons, wrote, “…[A] competent salary for the surgeon and his chest of medicaments…usually is rated at 200 or 250 pieces-of-eight.” (Esquemeling, 60 – approximately $6000-$7500 today)

Pyrate surgeons were some of the more literate men aboard their ships, but not all vessels had a doctor on board. If this was the case, if a man became sick, he might or might not get better since whoever tended him guessed at what to do, especially if no one could read the labels on the medicine bottles, for those were often written in Latin. If a pirate had the misfortune of being wounded and had to have a limb amputated, that job fell to the carpenter because his tools were similar to those the surgeon used. Good pyrate surgeons relied not only on their training, but also on the knowledge they acquired when they came in contact with native peoples, who sometimes knew remedies unknown to the Europeans.

The pirates considered these learned men valuable. The loss of one might mean the difference between life and death, and the rogues knew this. Surgeons, however, were as susceptible to disease and imprisonment as the rest of the pirates. When the buccaneers raided Arica, Chile, Exquemelin told of the loss of nine doctors “…taken prisoners…while they were dressing the wounded at the hospital; which loss of our surgeons increased our damage very much…” (Esquemeling, 274) For the pirates, the capture of those nine men was greater than the forty who died in the attack.

So who were the pyrate surgeons? Perhaps the best known is Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin (also known as Exmelin or Oexmelin or John Esquemeling). His fame came not from his medical skill, but from a bestseller he wrote. Originally published in Dutch in 1678, De Americaenshe Zee-Rovers was translated into several languages. Six years later, two separate editions of his book appeared in English, and the book is still available today under the title The Buccaneers of America. An extraordinary source of information about the pirates of the seventeenth century, the book does contain some errors. “…[T]he reliability of Exquemelin as a source…is that he is almost never totally and utterly wrong and sometimes is remarkably right….” There are so many adventures included in the book, though, that he probably did not participate in all of them. “He makes too many elementary mistakes in naming people and places and he very often gets a story just a little bit wrong, as if he had heard it in a tavern rather than experienced the events himself.” (Earle, 251)

Historians are uncertain as to Exquemelin’s origins, but he was probably Flemish or French. He arrived in Saint Domingue aboard the Saint Jean in July 1666 as an engagé (indentured servant). His first master was “the wickedest rogue in the whole island,” and after three years, Exquemelin fell ill. (Marley, 144) Unfit to work, he was sold to a kind barber-surgeon, who taught Exquemelin to be a surgeon like himself. After one year, his master “offered to set me free for 150 pieces of eight, agreeing to wait for payment until I had earned the money.” (Marley, 144) Exquemelin may have sailed with Jean-David Nau (l’Olonnais), but he was with Henry Morgan when he sacked Panama in 1671, as he is listed on the ship’s roster. His accounts of Morgan are laced with derogatory comments, and the admiral sued Exquemelin’s publishers for slander and libel. The court awarded Morgan £200 and ordered the publisher to revise future editions of the book.

Three years later, Exquemelin retired from plundering and returned to Europe. He studied medicine while living in Amsterdam, and became a doctor in October 1679, according to the Surgeon’s Guild. In 1697 he returned to the West Indies aboard the eighty-four-gun Sceptre, commanded by Admiral Bernard de Pointis, and participated in the sack of Cartagena. Ten years later, he was living in France, but historians do not know when he died.

After receiving his Bachelor of Medicine degree from Cambridge University and his license from the Royal College of Physicians, Thomas Dover opened his practice in Bristol, England. Then in 1708, at the age of 48, he changed careers to become a privateer on Woodes Rogers’ expedition. On 2 February 1709, they were off Juan Fernandez Island when someone spotted a beacon fire ashore. Not wishing to encounter any Spaniards, Rogers sent a few armed men to investigate. One of those men was Dover. Instead of finding the enemy, they came upon “a man clothed in goat skins, who looked wilder than the first owners of them.” (Cordingly, 140) “He had so much forgot his Language for want of Use, that we could scarce understand him, for he seem’d to speak his words by halves.” (Souhami, 133) After being marooned on the island for more than four years, Alexander Selkirk rejoined his fellow Englishmen on their privateering venture.

After the privateers seized a Spanish vessel, Dover was named her captain in spite of having no navigational skills. In April 1709, he participated in the sacking of Guayaquil (Ecuador). At the time of the attack on the town, plague was present and many of the dead were stacked in the local churches, which the pirates ransacked. In the process, they were exposed to the disease.

In a very few Days after we got on Board…several of my Men were taken after a so violent Manner with the Langour of Spirits, that they were not able to move. I immediately went among them, and to my great Surprise soon discerned what was the Matter. In less than forty-eight Hours we had in our several Ships one hundred and eighty Men in this miserable Condition.

I ordered the surgeons to bleed them in both Arms, and to go round to them all, with Command to leave them bleeding till all were blooded, and then come and tie them up in their Turns. They lay bleeding and fainting, so long, that I could not conceive they could lose less than an hundred Ounces each Man. (Eloesser, 45-46)

Dover only lost seven or eight men, which he attributed “to the strong Liquors which their Mess-Mates procured for them.” (Eloesser, 46)

Near Acapulco, they captured another ship with booty totaling more than £1,000,000. After sailing around the world, Rogers’ expedition returned to England in October 1711, at which time Dover retired from his pirating ways. His total earnings from the venture included wages of £422, £100 in “storm money,” £24 of “plunder money,” and booty worth £2,755.

After his retirement, Dover became a respected physician in London. He saw patients every day at the Jerusalem Coffeehouse on Cecil Street, Strand. He invented what became known as “Dover’s Powder,” which contained ipecac and opium. This medicine was just the thing if the patient suffered from a cold, a cough, insomnia, rheumatism, pleurisy, or dysentery, and was still in use at the beginning of the twentieth century. Dover also acquired a nickname, “Doctor Quicksilver,” because he prescribed large doses of mercury for whatever ailed his patients. Before his death in 1742 at the age of eighty-two, he wrote The Ancient Physician’s Legacy to His Country. It was successful enough to be printed seven or eight times.

In 1721 Bartholomew Roberts and his fellow pirates captured a merchant ship christened Mercy. On board was the ship’s surgeon, a man named Peter Scudamore. Unlike most pyrate surgeons, this man willingly signed Roberts’ Articles of Agreement, and afterward boasted that he was the first surgeon to do so. He also boarded seized prizes. From the King Solomon he confiscated that ship’s surgeon’s instruments and medicines. He also took a backgammon board, but only retained it after winning a violent argument with a fellow pirate.

Scudamore’s signature on the articles, of course, also became his death warrant, for after Roberts was killed during an encounter with a ship of the British Royal Navy, his men were taken prisoner. Scudamore was pronounced guilty and condemned to hang at Cape Coast Castle in Africa. During his imprisonment, he repented his evil ways and on hearing his fate, he begged the court to grant him three days of grace so he could pray and read the Bible. When he finally stood on the gallows at the age of thirty-five, he asked those who came to watch him hang to sing Psalm 31 with him.

¹In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed; deliver me in thy righteousness!
²Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily: be thou my strong rock, for an house of defence to save me!
³For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me.
⁴Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me: for thou art my strength.
⁵Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O LORD God of truth.

Like Alexandre Exquemelin, Lionel Wafer was a barber-surgeon. As a child, he spent part of his time in the Scottish Highlands and the rest in Ireland. In 1677 he went to sea as a surgeon’s mate aboard the Great Ann bound for Java. Eventually, he made his way to Port Royal where his brother worked for Governor Sir Thomas Modyford. Wafer opened his own surgery there, but four months later he was once again at sea as a surgeon aboard a privateer. During his adventures, he met Basil Ringrose and William Dampier, and like these men, he later published an account of his time with the buccaneers. He was with John Coxon when that pirate captain sacked Portobello. He also survived the raid on Arica, mentioned earlier by Exquemelin, because he remained behind with the expedition’s boats to prepare salves and plasters for the wounded.

Growing dissension amongst the pirates forced the council to convene. During this meeting, they ousted Bartholomew Sharp as captain and elected John Watling to replace him. They decided to attack another fort, but this proved an unsuccessful venture. During their disorganized retreat, the Spanish crushed some pirates with boulders and fired upon those still standing. Half of the men returned to their ships, but Watling was slain. The enemy paraded his impaled head around the town. Also left behind were three surgeons, leaving Wafer the only one to tend the pirates.

Since most men refused to permit Sharp to become captain again, the buccaneers separated. Ringrose went with Sharp aboard the Trinity. Dampier and Wafer followed John Cook, a “very intelligent person,” “a sensible man.”  On 17 April 1681, they and forty-one others sailed north in canoes to trudge back over the Isthmus of Darien (Isthmus of Panama). Unfortunately, they began their six-hundred-mile trek at the start of the rainy season; the violent and relentless rain made the tangled jungle almost impossible to cross. While they rested at an Indian plantation on 5 May, disaster struck. Lionel Wafer later wrote, “I was sitting on the Ground near one of our Men, who was drying of Gunpowder in a Silver Plate, but not managing it as he should, it blew up, and scorch’d my Knee to that degree, that the Bone was left bare, the Flesh being torn away, and my Thigh burnt for a great way above it. I applied to it immediately such Remedies as I had in my Knapsack, and being unwilling to be left behind by my Companions, I made hard shift to jog on….” (Wafer, 4) Unable to carry anything, Wafer gave all his medicines and belongings to a slave, who later disappeared into the jungle with those items, and “…left me depriv’d of wherewithal to dress my Sore; insomuch that my Pain increasing upon me, and being not able to trudge it further through Rivers and Woods, I took leave of my Company, and set up my Rest among the Darien Indians.” (Wafer, 5)

Under the care of the Indians, Wafer got better. They “…apply’d to my Knee some Herbs, which they first chew’d in their Mouths to the consistency of a Paste, and putting it on a Plaintain-Leaf, laid it upon the Sore. This prov’d so effectual that in about 20 Days use of this Poultess, which they applied fresh every Day, I was perfectly cured; except only a Weakness in that Knee, which remain’d long after, and a Benummedness which I sometimes find in it to this Day.” (Wafer, 6)

Later, Wafer had the opportunity to repay the Indians’ kindness. Lacenta, the leader of those living in the southern portion of the isthmus, had several wives. When one fell ill, Wafer watched how the tribal doctors treated her.

It so happen’d, that one of Lacenta’s Wives being indisposed, was to be let Blood; which the Indians perform in this manner. The Patient is seated on a Stone in the River, and one with a small Bow shoots little Arrows into the naked Body of the Patient, up and down; shooting them as fast as he can, and not missing any part. But the Arrows are gaged, so that they penetrate no farther than we generally thrust our Lancets. And if by chance they hit a Vein which is full of Wind, and the Blood spurts out a little, they will leap and skip about, shewing many Antick Gestures, by way of rejoicing and triumph.

Wafer offered to demonstrate a better way to bleed the patient that would lessen her torment.

I bound up her Arm with a piece of Bark, and with my Lancet breached a Vein. But this rash attempt had like to have cost me my Life. For Lacenta seeing the Blood issue out in a Stream, which us’d to come only drop by drop, got hold of his Lance, and swore by his Tooth, that if she did otherwise than well, he would have my Heart’s Blood. I was not moved, but desired him to be patient, and I drew off about 12 Ounces, and bound up her Arm, and desired she might rest till the next Day, by which means the Fever abated, and she had not another Fit. This gained me so much Reputation, that Lacenta came to me, and before all his Attendants, bowed, and kiss’d my Hand. Then the rest came thick about me, and some kissed my Hand, others my Knee, and some my Foot, after which I was taken up into a Hammock, and carried on Men’s Shoulders, Lacenta himself making a Speech in my Praise, and commending me as much Superiour to any of their Doctors. Thus I was carried from Plantation to Plantation, and lived in great Splendor and Repute, administring both Physick and Phlebotomy to those that wanted. For tho’ I lost my Salves and Plaisters, when the Negro ran away with my Knapsack, yet I preserv’d a Box of Instruments, and a few Medicaments wrapt up in an Oil Cloth, by having them in my Pocket, where I generally carried them. (Wafer, 19)

Eventually Wafer rejoined his fellow buccaneers, and after several more adventures, he arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, where he was arrested for piracy, or as he put it: “There I thought to settle: But meeting with some Troubles, after a three Years residence there, I cam home for England in the Year, 1690.” (Malt, 470). Once there, he convinced the authorities that he had taken the King’s pardon and was acquitted of all charges in March 1693. Since they had seized his hard-earned money and belongings – 1,158 pieces of eight, 162 pounds of plate, 1 ½ ounces of gold, silk and cloth worth £40 – upon arrest, he sued to get it back. (Malt, 471) They acquiesced and returned all but £300, which was kept to help fund the College of William and Mary in Virginia. In 1699 his book, A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America, was published. His book was published in Dutch before his death, but the editions in French, German, Swedish, and Spanish came after later. He is believed to have died in 1705.

Richard Brown served as the surgeon-general of Henry Morgan’s fleet. He survived many adventures, including an explosion aboard the Oxford that almost killed Morgan. While anchored off Cow Island, south of Hispaniola, the admiral dined aboard the flagship with his commanders on 2 January 1669. Brown wrote, “I was eating my dinner with the rest when the mainmast blew out and fell upon Captains Aylette and Bigford and others and knocked them on the head. I saved myself by getting astride the mizzenmast.” (Goss, 67) Whether an accident or sabotage, the powder magazine ignited, and the explosion killed around two hundred men. Morgan, and those men who sat on the same side of the table as himself, survived, as did ten crewmembers, according to Browne. Those who occupied the chairs on the side opposite Morgan died.

Other known pyrate surgeons include John Ballet, who sailed with Woodes Rogers aboard the Duke. Ballet was Third Mate on that voyage, rather than surgeon, yet that was his trade by training. He had been the surgeon, however, on an earlier privateering venture that included William Dampier.

Adam Comrie was the Elizabeth’s surgeon when a squadron of pirates under Bartholomew Roberts attacked the ship. Comrie tended the pirates against his will, and later gave evidence against them at trial.

John Hincher studied medicine at Edinburgh University. After Edward Low captured the vessel Hincher sailed on, Low forced him to become a pyrate surgeon. After he punched Low for denigrating his handiwork, Hincher transferred to another pirate vessel, the Rebecca. Captured by HMS Greyhound in 1723 and imprisoned on charges of piracy in Newport, Rhode Island, he was acquitted in July of that year. So was a seventeen-year-old lad. The other twenty-four pirates were hanged.

An apothecary, rather than a surgeon, Mr. Hopkins assisted Doctor Dover aboard the Duchess. His mates described Hopkins as a “very good-tempered, sober man, and very well beloved by the whole ship’s company.” (Lampe, 9) Unlike Dover, though, he did not survive the voyage.

While Thomas Lodge didn’t serve as a ship’s surgeon while on the account, he later became a doctor. Born around 1557, he was the son of Sir Thomas Lodge, a grocer and Lord Mayor of London. Trained to be a merchant, he preferred poetry and joined the pirates in 1584. “Having with Captain Clarke made a voyage to the Islands of Terceras and the Canaries, to beguile the time with labour, I writ this book, rough, as hatched in the storms of the ocean, and feathered in the surges of many periolous seas,” he wrote. (Goss, 193)

In the fall of 1591, Lodge sailed with Sir Thomas Cavendish aboard the Desire, a vessel of 140 tons. Their destination was Brazil, where they attacked the town of Santa while its citizens attended mass. The pirates remained there until 22 January 1592, and during his stay, Lodge resided at the College of the Jesuits and spent much of his time in the library. Once they returned to sea, they sailed south. During a storm near the cliffs of Patagonia, he wrote “Margarite of America,” an Arcadian romance.

At one point, they brought aboard dried penguins for victuals, which became tainted.

…[A]fter we had passed the Equinoctiall toward the North, our men began to fall sick of such a monstrous disease, as I thinke the like was never hearde of: for in their ankles it began to swell; from thence in two daies it would be in their breasts, so that they could not draw their breath, and then fell into their cods; and their cods and yards did swell most grievously, and most dreadfully to behold, so that they could neither stand, lie, nor goe. Whereupon our men grew made with griefe. (Eloesser, 48)

The captain pleaded for the men’s patience, and they acquiesced, but the disease worsened. Only the captain and one boy escaped the malady.

…[A]ll our men died except 16, of which there were but 5 able to move. The captaine was in good health, the master indifferent, captain Cotton and my selfe swolne and short winded, yet better than the rest that were sicke…upon us 5 only the labour of the ship did stand. (Eloesser, 48)

The pirates reached the coast of Ireland in June 1593, but without enough men to handle the sails, they ran the ship aground at Bearhaven, Ireland on 11 June 1593. After he recovered, Lodge studied medicine at Avignon, graduating in 1600. Three years later he penned a treatise on the plague, a disease which claimed his life in 1625.

George Wilson was another victim of Bartholomew Roberts – taken not once, but twice. Like Scudamore, he voluntarily joined the pirates, but an unexpected separation forced him to live with an African tribe at Sestos. Five months later, Captain Sharp of the Elizabeth paid his ransom, goods valued at £3 5 shillings. Soon after, Roberts captured that vessel, and Wilson once again went on the account. His failure to dress wounds, though, earned him a dire threat from the pirate captain. Do his duty or lose his ears!

After Roberts’ death, the pirates were captured and tried. Wilson was found guilty and sentenced to hang, but never did. He informed on a group of mutinous prisoners, which earned him a stay of execution until the king decided what to do with him. Wilson died in Africa.

Howell Davis and his men seized a ship off Hispaniola in 1718 and forced Archibald Murray to join them as their surgeon. The son of Murray of Deuchar, Archibald later testified in Edinburgh against several pirates the authorities arrested, including an Irish rogue named Walter Kennedy. Another pirate, “Lord” John Clerk, believed Murray should hang more than several of the other condemned men.

I think they [pirates] are much wronged and unjustly condemned. Sentence might very justly have passed on the Doctor and me, for he and I were long engaged in these wicked Courses. But these poor men they are taken by us and…forced to the Working of the ship, which if they had refused they would have been shot to Death that Moment. (Graham, 57)

Scottish records contain two accounts of Murray’s interaction with the pirates. Richard Davis, a gunner forced to go on the account, suffered a deep laceration to his leg from a cutlass. The doctor applied dressings to the wound for six weeks before Davis was healed. The other recitation involves Murray, but doesn’t say whether he also treated William Green, another reluctant pirate. During an attack on another vessel, Green was handed a pistol, but refused to take it. Howell Davis intervened and forced the sailmaker to take the pistol. Davis used such force that the weapon discharged. The bullet went into Murray’s medicine chest and shattered several bottles. In retaliation, Davis had Green flogged.

Robert Hunter of Kilmarnock was another Scot who became a forced pyrate surgeon. At the age of twenty-six, he sailed aboard the Jeremiah and Anne when she was taken by George Lowther. Hunter served aboard the Happy Delivery for almost a year. In 1723 Lowther sailed to a secluded cove on the island of Blanquilla, off the coast of Venezuela. While careening his vessel, Captain Walter Moore on the Eagle captured Lowther, Hunter, and the pirates.

Hunter, however, was not the first surgeon Lowther had forced. Early in 1722, John Crawford, also a Scot, was taken from the Greyhound as she sailed for Boston. Crawford did not take kindly to his capture and defied the pirates. He and several of the merchantman’s officers had lit fuses placed between their fingers. The agony of burning skin eventually caused someone to reveal the whereabouts of the hidden gold dust aboard their ship.

Mr. Bullock, one of three surgeons among Bartholomew Sharp’s men, “had been drinking while we assaulted the fort, and thus would not come with us when they were called.” (Lampe, 8) As a result, when the pirates fled Arica after their disastrous raid, he was left behind and captured by Spaniards. They forced him to divulge the prearranged smoke signals the pirates used to signal their vessels to send the longboats to pick them up, but the buccaneers had already returned to their ships before the soldiers could act on this information.

James Ferguson, a Scot from Paisley, was Samuel Bellamy’s surgeon. He may have become a pyrate surgeon to escape punishment as a rebel after participating in the Rising of 1715, one of the Jacobite rebellions to return the House of Stuart to the British throne. Ferguson died when the Whydah sank in the storm off Cape Cod in 1717. Among the artifacts recovered from the wreckage in the twentieth century was a syringe containing mercury, which may have belonged to Ferguson.

There were other pyrate surgeons, but either their names have been lost or nothing but their names are known. Whether they joined the pirates of their own free wills or were forced, the pyrate surgeons set broken bones, stanched bleeding wounds, extracted projectiles, treated venereal disease, tended the sick, amputated limbs, and pulled teeth. The life a sailor lived was fraught with danger – even more so if he was a pirate – and those who went to sea had a common saying about this: “There was the pox above-board, the plague between decks, hell in the forecastle, and the devil at the helm.” Whether a man lived or died was often more in God’s hands than those of the surgeon when pirates sailed the High Seas.

 

For additional information on Pyrate Surgeons I recommend:

Pyrate Surgeons Bibliography

Burl, Aubrey. Black Barty. Sutton, 2006.

Cordingly, David. Under the Black Flag. Random House, 1995.

Druett, Joan. Rough Medicine: Surgeons at Sea in the Age of Sail. Routledge, 2000.

Earle, Peter. The Sack of Panama. St. Martin’s Press, 2007.
Eloesser, Leo. “Pirate and Buccaneer Doctors,” Annals of Medical History VIII:1, 31-60.
Esquemeling, John. The Buccaneers of America. Rio Grande Press, 1992.
Exquemelin, Alexander O. The Buccaneers of America translated by Alexis Brown. Dover, 2000.

Gosse, Philip. The Pirates’ Who’s Who. Rio Grande Press, 1924.
Graham, Eric J. Seawolves: Pirates and the Scots. Birlinn, 2005.

Lampe, Christine Markel. “Surgeons in the Sweet Trade,” No Quarter Given (July 1999), 8-9.

Malt, Ronald A. “Lionel Wafer—Surgeon to the Buccaneers,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences XIV:10 (1959), 459-474.
Marley, David F. Pirates and Privateers of the Americas. ABC-Clio, 1994.
Marx, Jenifer. Pirates and Privateers of the Caribbean. Kriegar, 1992.

Rediker, Marcus. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Cambridge University, 1987.

Selinger, Gail. Complete Idiot’s Guide to Pirates. Penguin, 2006.
Souhami, Diana. Selkirk’s Island. Harcourt, 2001.

Wafer, Lionel. A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America. Printed for James Knapton, 1699.