We walked on foot to Yarmouth, signed "Wal Paget," bottom right, page 8. Vignetted: approximately 12.6 cm high by 12.6 cm wide. Although there story offers a number of shipwrecks, this situation is somewhat different because Crusoe is not alone.
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Passage Illustrated — Running Head: "My Obstinacy," page 9
We were not much more than a quarter of an hour out of our ship till we saw her sink, and then I understood for the first time what was meant by a ship foundering in the sea. I must acknowledge I had hardly eyes to look up when the seamen told me she was sinking; for from the moment that they rather put me into the boat than that I might be said to go in, my heart was, as it were, dead within me, partly with fright, partly with horror of mind, and the thoughts of what was yet before me.
While we were in this condition — the men yet labouring at the oar to bring the boat near the shore — we could see (when, our boat mounting the waves, we were able to see the shore) a great many people running along the strand to assist us when we should come near; but we made but slow way towards the shore; nor were we able to reach the shore till, being past the lighthouse at Winterton, the shore falls off to the westward towards Cromer, and so the land broke off a little the violence of the wind. Here we got in, and though not without much difficulty, got all safe on shore, and walked afterwards on foot to Yarmouth, where, as unfortunate men, we were used with great humanity, as well by the magistrates of the town, who assigned us good quarters, as by particular merchants and owners of ships, and had money given us sufficient to carry us either to London or back to Hull as we thought fit. [Chapter I, "Start in Life," page 9]
Commentary
Of the many shipwrecks in the novel, this one is unusual because it occurs immediately off a major English port. Readers in 1891 would have recalled the shipwreck in David Copperfield, when Ham Peggotty risks his life in surf at Yarmouth to rescue passengers and crew, a scene which Fred Barnard in the Household Edition dramatically realised in The Storm. Paget's approach to the shipwreck off Yarmouth Roads is his reaction to the epic canvasses of the earlier Cassell edition because he has elected to show the human consequences of the maritime disaster as the ship's boy in the background (young Robinson Crusoe) trudges along the road with the more experienced sailors. Enduring this disaster close to home prepares Crusoe for the more serious Caribbean shipwreck that he alone survives.
Related Material
- Daniel Defoe
- The Reality of Shipwreck
- Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe by various artists
- Illustrations of children’s editions
- The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe il. H. M. Brock at Project Gutenberg
- The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe at Project Gutenberg
Parallel Scene from the Cassell Edition (1863-64)
Above: Cassell's highly realistic wood-engraving of the destruction of the vessel in the storm, The Shipwreck at Yarmouth Roads. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Reference
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