Posted on 10/14/2002 3:54:58 PM PDT by blam
Shipwreck adventurer's fiction revealed as true after 270 years
British writer of a stirring adventure tale is unmasked as its real hero
Robin McKie
Sunday October 13, 2002
The Observer
An eighteenth-century adventure story involving slavery on a desert island, violent death and escape became the literary sensation of its day and has been pronounced by experts since as exciting stuff but utter fiction. Now a British archaeologist has discovered the startling truth about Robert Drury and the story of his escape from Madagascar. The experts were wrong. His fantastic, graphic tale of torture, enslavement, battles between rival tribes and shipwreck was true and has opened an unexpected new window on a lost period of history.
Drury's captain and crewmates were indeed slaughtered by violent islanders, while he survived only after enduring years of slavery before escaping, a tale that Drury detailed in his 1729 book, Madagascar: or Robert Drury's Journal During 15 Years' Captivity on that Island.
The truth of Drury's encounter, which he called a plain, honest narrative of matters of fact', has been pieced together by British archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson, who last year uncovered the wreckage of the East India Company ship Degrave in which the young midshipman sailed to the island. On the same field trip, Pearson, of Sheffield University, dug up the remains of the village in which Drury was a captive.
It is a remarkable piece of detective work, in which Pearson - in keeping with the Boys' Own nature of his material - was himself captured by local people and freed only after complex negotiations. 'Today white people are suspected by locals of being head-hunters who want their brains to find cures for Aids,' said Pearson, whose account of his expeditions, In Search of the Red Slave, was published last week. 'Once we convinced them we were no such thing, they let us get on.'
Drury's original story was published several years after Daniel Defoe achieved widespread success with Robinson Crusoe, the fictionalised account of the adventures of the Fife sailor Alexander Selkirk. Selkirk's tale, though, was relatively benign. By contrast, Drury had a very different, far more violent story to tell, as Pearson outlines in the current issue of British Archaeology.
In 1703 Drury and his 180 shipmates were washed up on the southern shore of Madagascar after the Degrave was wrecked. They were captured by the warlike Tandroy people who still inhabit much of the island, conscripted into the local army, and ordered to join the Tandroys in battles with local tribes.
The captive crew decided to escape. They seized the Tandroys' king and held him hostage while they fled in the hope of finding a part of Madagascar more sympathetic to their plight. Pursued by 2,000 enraged warriors, the sailors headed eastwards but were eventually caught. Only a handful escaped. All except four boys were slaughtered. Drury was one of the four youngsters.
He was kept as a slave of the Tandroys in a village for eight years. Again he tried to escape, this time fleeing to the west. There he was recaptured, this time by the army of the neighbouring Sakalava people. Again he was enslaved, and released only when an English ship arrived. Drury returned home on it.
He later returned to Madagascar as, of all things, a slave trader, but spent his final years frequenting Old Tom's Coffee House in Birchin Lane, London, where he would tell of his adventures to anyone prepared to listen.
'We only learnt the truth about Drury a few years ago, when an American academic found proof of his birth and death, and of his record as a midshipman,' said Pearson. 'Before that, a lot of people thought he was merely a figment of an unnamed fiction writer's imagination.'
The fact that Drury was real did not mean his tale was true, of course, but Pearson was convinced. 'I'd become fascinated with his story, and when I joined an archaeological project in Madagascar I decided to prove Drury was telling the truth.'
The team was aided by lavish detail Drury had included in his book, both of local practices - eating the local tubers, called Faungidge, and making beehives out of hollow trunks - and of the geography, including the names and positions of settlements.
After several trips to the area, Pearson has found the sites of both the ancient capital Fennoarevo, and of Mionjona, where Drury spent eight years as a slave to the Tandroy king's grandson.
'We have also found the site of the wreck of the Degrave,' said Pearson. 'Two iron cannon of the period lie on the reef and lobster divers report seeing several others and an anchor on the seabed.'
The discovery that Drury's adventures are largely true is intriguing for several reasons. Apart from validating a highly dramatic narrative, it shows the importance of maintaining good historical records and knowing how to explore them. It has shed critical light on how Madagascar was settled and ruled in a long-forgotten period of its history.
'It has also been an adventure into the formation of the modern world, understanding how the period around 1700 was the moment at which the world "went global", with London the beating heart at its centre,' adds Pearson.
Now the archaeologist is planning to arrange for the reprinting of Drury's book, which was last published in this country in the 1890s.
One mystery remains about the work remains, however. Who wrote it? While Drury obviously supplied the facts, it is unlikely that an unschooled sailor actually provided the prose. Pearson believes he has also found the answer to this puzzle.
'In its introduction we are told that Drury's manuscript was "put in a more agreeable method" by an anonymous editor. The text reveals that the editor was a Dissenter, a political commentator, and a verbose scribbler - almost certainly Defoe!'
I demand to be made whole!
I demand to be made whole!
Well, about the only thing they can pay you with is Lemurs!
Thanks for the 'ping'!
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And a lot of mags...
wow great story with a story. Very interesting too that they think Defoe was the editor.
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