Cinque Ports

Cinque Ports

The Confederation of Cinque Ports is a historic series of coastal towns in Kent and Sussex. It was originally formed for military and trade purposes, but is now entirely ceremonial. It lies at the eastern end of the English Channel, where the crossing to the continent is narrowest...

 is also the name for a group of five English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 port towns, the namesake

Namesake

Namesake is a term used to characterize a person, place, thing, quality, action, state, or idea that has the same, or a similar, name to another....

 of this ship.

Cinque Ports is the name of an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 galley whose sailing master was Alexander Selkirk

Alexander Selkirk

Alexander Selkirk was a Scottish sailor who spent four years as a castaway when he was marooned on an uninhabited island. It is probable that his travels provided the inspiration for Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe....

, generally accepted as the model for the fictional Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...

. The ship was part of an 1703 expedition commanded by William Dampier

William Dampier

William Dampier was an English buccaneer, sea captain, author and scientific observer...

 who captained an accompanying ship the St George (26 guns, 120 men).

When the War of the Spanish Succession

War of the Spanish Succession

The War of the Spanish Succession was fought among several European powers, including a divided Spain, over the possible unification of the Kingdoms of Spain and France under one Bourbon monarch. As France and Spain were among the most powerful states of Europe, such a unification would have...

 broke out in 1701, English privateers were recruited to assist against French and Spanish interests. Despite a court-martial

Court-martial

A court-martial is a military court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the armed forces subject to military law, and, if the defendant is found guilty, to decide upon punishment.Most militaries maintain a court-martial system to try cases in which a breach of...

 for cruelty to one of his crew in an earlier voyage, Dampier was granted command of the two-ship expedition which departed England on April 30, 1703 for the port of Kinsale

Kinsale

Kinsale is a town in County Cork, Ireland. Located some 25 km south of Cork City on the coast near the Old Head of Kinsale, it sits at the mouth of the River Bandon and has a population of 2,257 which increases substantially during the summer months when the tourist season is at its peak and...

 in Ireland.

Dampier's original companions dropped out of the plan and finally a new agreement was made with Captain Pickering of the Cinque Ports. The two ships left Kinsale on 11 September 1703 with the intention of attacking Spanish galleons returning from Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

. When this plan fell through the privateers decided to make for the South Seas by way of Cape Horn

Cape Horn

Cape Horn is the southernmost headland of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago of southern Chile, and is located on the small Hornos Island...

. While the ships were off the coast of Brazil an outbreak of scurvy

Scurvy

Scurvy is a disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C, which is required for the synthesis of collagen in humans. The chemical name for vitamin C, ascorbic acid, is derived from the Latin name of scurvy, scorbutus, which also provides the adjective scorbutic...

 on board the Cinque Ports led to the death of 48 men, including the captain who was replaced by 21-year-old lieutenant Thomas Stradling.

After rounding the Horn and cruising up the South American coast as far as Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

, capturing several Spanish ships on the way, the two captains decided to separate. Captain Stradling stopped at one of the islands of the Juan Fernández

Juan Fernández Islands

The Juan Fernández Islands are a sparsely inhabited island group reliant on tourism and fishing in the South Pacific Ocean, situated about off the coast of Chile, and is composed of three main volcanic islands; Robinson Crusoe Island, Alejandro Selkirk Island and Santa Clara Island, the first...

 archipelago off the Chilean coast

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

 in October 1704 to resupply. According to Selkirk there was a dispute with Stradling regarding the Cinque Ports seaworthiness, and Selkirk chose to be put ashore on an uninhabited island. He remained there in solitude for 4 years and 4 months, being finally rescued by the 1709 expedition led by Woodes Rogers

Woodes Rogers

Woodes Rogers was an English sea captain, privateer, and, later, the first Royal Governor of the Bahamas. He is known as the captain of the vessel that rescued the marooned Alexander Selkirk, whose plight is generally believed to have inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.Rogers came from an...

. His experiences were the inspiration for the character Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...

 in the book by Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...

.

Selkirk's suspicions were soon justified, as the ship sank a month later in 1704 with the loss of most of her crew.

An eye-witness account of the 1703 expedition is given by William Funnell, an officer on board the Saint George who went on to circumnavigate the globe after abandoning Dampier.