Daniel Defoe really seemed to luck out with Robinson Crusoe. He realised the narrative potential in Alexander Selkirk’s tale, sanded off the rough edges and created the archetypical desert island narrative. He even managed to create one of the most iconic moments in literature when Crusoe finds the footprint of another human on the beach. The Life, Adventures and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton is less lucky in this regard but is probably a more entertaining book.
It’s a typical Defoe novel in some ways, someone without the wealth to easily do good finds themselves committing crime, earning enough cash to repent of their evil deeds and live happily ever after. As usual, the actions of the character are more interesting before they repent and he better describes processes than he does characters. However, Captain Singleton does have some sly humour in the telling and Defoe does create a genuinely fun and likeable character - though not the one of the title.
Our protagonist starts off as a reasonably well off little boy who is kidnapped in toddlerhood from outside his Islington home. Siân Rees’s Moll, went into quite a lot of detail about the Mayor of London’s underhanded encouragement of kidnappers to rid his streets of waifs, strays and embryonic footpads (and the selling of them to the New World, slavery not yet being coded by skin colour).
Of course the people kidnapping the young boy are ‘gypsies’, a peculiar racial myth that was the latter Victorian equivalent of quicksand in the eighties. His mother being soon hanged for “her good works”, a little sardonic note, and one of many that pepper this book and give it more character than other Defoe works.
He’s dragooned onto a ship and becomes the property of a Portuguese man. There’s a lot of Portuguese bashing in this book, just being in their presence teaches the boy (now named Bob) to be “an arrant thief” and (worst of all to the British mind) “a bad sailor.” These Portuguese are every brand of despicable, and they are defined by their underhandedness and cowardice, and, as we know every English person hates a coward. At one point, the Portuguese sailors go to a Spanish port and try to get the inquisition off their back by declaring him to be Muslim - something a quick foreskin check denies.
His master takes his wages and beats him, so Bob is pretty keen to get out of his company. When a group of sailors mutiny, he joins that as the nearest way to get away. This leads him and the mutineers stranded on Madagascar. It’s genuinely interesting how the group of mutineers form themselves into a band and the roles they take within the group. Much like historical pirates, much of their planning is done democratically but there are voices that hold more sway. One of these is Bob’s, he’s young, brave, and has more of a knack for strategy than the weak, cowardly Portuguese - though Bob’s plans are usually the most violent option. Eventually they cobble together a raft that gets them off the island and into mainland Africa.
A big chunk of the book then tells the group’s travel across Africa to get to a safe port. Much of the continent was unknown to Europeans at the time and the journey attempts to be within the realms of possibility but bears no relation to reality. If possible, the group avoid inhabited areas, and they generally try to barter their ways through other civilisations with trinkets and gewgaws made by a very skilled metal worker. It’s interesting how Defoe tries to differentiate the people he meet, he’s aware of Africa as a place containing multitudes of people with many different languages - it’s not a non-racist view of the people, but it does allow for variation and difference. For example, the more aggressive Africans they meet are those who have met Europeans before, which is rather telling.
One of the first groups they meet have a misunderstanding, resulting in a battle where Bob leads from the front. The king of the group is killed and the prince injured. Because they have experience in bullet wounds, they heal the prince, who then pledges himself and a number of his people to carry the Europeans stuff. Again, we have the familiar image of the black people carrying the white men’s stuff, but Defoe gives the prince as much character and agency as he gives most of his characters.
They reach the far coast, having acquired a fortune in gold nuggets and ‘elephant’s teeth’ and go their separate ways. Bob squanders his fortune in London and so quickly hops back on a boat, joining a mutiny and emerging as a pirate captain.
It’s odd that when Bob becomes a pirate, the book loses a lot of it’s swashbuckle. These pirates are generally more into stealing beef than booty, and the book reads more like a merchant’s tally than a tale of derring-do. There’s a lot about tactics, about the right place for a pirate to ply his trade, and the right kinds of ships to rob - both for the goods within them, and the potential repercussions of robbing certain kinds of ships. There’s also a lot about how the pirates share equally and the level of trust they have for each other. One of the strangest parts of this book is when the crew besiege a tree-trunk, which is linked to a whole network of Vietcong-esque tunnels.
This is when Defoe introduces one of the most compelling characters in any of the works I’ve read by him, William the Quaker. As a Quaker, William is a pacifist, but he’s still a pirate. Not only that, he’s the wisest and wiliest character in the book, who would probably make a far better captain than Bob. He serves as a conscience, speaking against killing the slaves who took over their pirate ship, but he steps back when the pirates sell those slaves on. He’s frequently funny and reads situations better than Bob, or anyone else on the crew. There’s something compelling about this contradictory character.
After a while of sailing about and plunder, Bob is getting to the stage of the book where he has enough money to have a spiritual conversion and end the book. This is conveyed more organically than similar conversions in Defoe works, and starts with Bob’s profound sense of rootlessness and loneliness. Bob has no family, no place that’s ever been a home, and his life as a pirate has been partly a consequence of his lack of connection. William the Quaker prods him along this path, emphasising the belongingness in Christendom, learning to accept a brotherhood of man rather than everyone for himself.
This conversion is painful to Bob. He looks at his previous life and sees it as, pointless at best, downright villainous at worst. He’s even led to consider suicide. William convinces him to lay that aside and to join him in England, disguised as Armenians, where Bob eventually settles down and even marries William’s sister - leading to our happy ending.
Captain Singleton hasn’t had the cultural impact of Robinson Crusoe, or even Moll Flanders, but it is one of Defoe’s more engaging works, with themes of belonging and identity and an (albeit tentative) attempt at humanising the ‘barbarians’ of Africa. It’s not perfect, but it is worth being read more.
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