"We hastened our destruction with our own hands" — illustration for Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" (1891)

We hastened our destruction with our own hands. (p. 31), initialed lower right. The illustration, positioned at the head of the page but facing the illustration of Crusoe studying his charts, prepares the reader for the crew's abandoning ship as a consequence of "a violent tornado, or hurricane" (29), mentioned immediately above the picture, which one must read proleptically, since the moment realised is two further pages ahead. Lower-third of page 29, vignetted: 7 cm high by 12.6 cm wide. Running head: "A Violent Tornado" (page 29).

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: An Autumn Storm in 1659, his eighth year as a sailor

And now our case was very dismal indeed; for we all saw plainly that the sea went so high that the boat could not live, and that we should be inevitably drowned. As to making sail, we had none, nor if we had could we have done anything with it; so we worked at the oar towards the land, though with heavy hearts, like men going to execution; for we all knew that when the boat came near the shore she would be dashed in a thousand pieces by the breach of the sea. However, we committed our souls to God in the most earnest manner; and the wind driving us towards the shore, we hastened our destruction with our own hands, pulling as well as we could towards land. [Chapter III, "Wrecked on a Desert Island," page 31]

Commentary

Paget is sparing of such maritime scenes, perhaps because the previous Cassell edition contained so many of them. Instead, Paget typically focusses on the human reaction to shipping disasters. Here, however, he foregrounds the European crew in their shoreboat, desperately fighting the high waves, having abandoned their vessel (left rear). Paget notably avoids the scene that had become by the end of the nineteenth century almost a cliché, Crusoe struggling to survive on the rocks, as in Cruikshank's 1831 woodblock engraving Crusoe clinging to a rock on the beach.

Related Material

References

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

Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner. As Related by Himself. With upwards of One Hundred and Twenty Original Illustrations by Walter Paget. London, Paris, and Melbourne: Cassell, 1891.

Last modified 25 April 2018