"The Captain hung at the Yard-arm" for Daniel Defoe's "Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" (1863-64)

The Captain hung at the Yard-arm (page 185) — the volume's forty-ninth composite wood-block engraving for Defoe's The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. Related by himself (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1863-64). Chapter XVIII, "The Ship Recovered." As the tropical sun sets on Crusoe's island, the sun's disk draws the eye towards left of centre and the corpse of the rebel leader as a fitting denouement to the inset story of the mutiny that closes the initial Crusoe novel. The previous illustration, Death of the Rebel Captain, constitutes a violent climax to the course of events that culminate in Crusoe's return to Europe. Full-page, framed: 13.2 cm high (including caption) x 14.2 cm wide. The framing border unites two different motifs, the vines and leaves of the tropical island and the ropes and knots associated with the sailing ship that Providence has brought off-course to rescue Crusoe.

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

The Passage Illustrated

Being all met, and the captain with me, I caused the men to be brought before me, and I told them I had got a full account of their villainous behaviour to the captain, and how they had run away with the ship, and were preparing to commit further robberies, but that Providence had ensnared them in their own ways, and that they were fallen into the pit which they had dug for others. I let them know that by my direction the ship had been seized; that she lay now in the road; and they might see by-and-by that their new captain had received the reward of his villainy, and that they would see him hanging at the yard-arm; that, as to them, I wanted to know what they had to say why I should not execute them as pirates taken in the fact, as by my commission they could not doubt but I had authority so to do. [Chapter XVIII, "The Ship Recovered," p. 184]

Commentary

The realistic treatment of the conclusion of the mutiny in the 1863-64 Cassell's volume implies that the forces loyal to the captain have triumphed, and that nothing further will interrupt Crusoe's winding up his mariner's yarn with final scenes in England. However, with the resolution of the mutiny Defoe is also preparing readers for the sequel, in which Crusoe returns to the island in order to provide badly needed supplies for the English colonists, the former mutineers led by Will Atkins, the future Son of Empire. In this tranquil scene, the substantial corpse of the rebel reader in Death of the Rebel Captain becomes a diminutive scarecrow whom five sailors in the longboats matter-of-factly observe as (presumably) they load supplies for the transatlantic crossing.

Related Material

Relevant illustrations from the other Cassell editions, 1891

Above: Wal Paget's dramatic lithograph of the capitulation of the mutineers in the foreground to Crusoe's allies in the background, "They begged for mercy" (1891). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Left: Paget's intensely dramatic sequence of lithographs that culminates with Crusoe's showing mercy as the "Governor" of the island and thereby founding a colony: left, "He made Robinson hail them."; centre, Shot the New Captain through the Head (Chapter XVIII, "Recovery of the Ship," full-page lithograph); right, "I showed them the new captain hanging at the yard-arm of the ship". In the last of these Crusoe has abandoned "island" garb for conventional seventeenth-century fashion. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Bibliography

Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. Related by himself. With upwards of One Hundred Illustrations. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1863-64.

Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Exciting Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, as Related by Himself. With 120 original illustrations by Walter Paget. London, Paris,and Melbourne: Cassell, 1891.

Last modified 21 March 2018