Emily B.
Joined: 05 Mar 2008
Posts: 9
Location: Chapel Hill, NC, USA
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 Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 8:54 pm Post subject: Robinson Crusoe as Recruiting Tool for Navy |
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I've now found several casual nods to /Robinson Crusoe/ as the story that inspired various men (Alexander Ball and Samuel Leech among them) to join the navy. I'd love to compile a fuller list of those who attributed their career choice to the book. Does anyone know of any others?
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Emily B. |
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PMarione
Site Admin
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
Posts: 883
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| Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 11:08 pm Post subject: |
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MATTHEW FLINDERS (1774-1814)
| Quote: | | He was educated at Donington Grammar School and by the vicar of Horbling; then, having developed a longing to go to sea, partly through reading Robinson Crusoe, and determined to embark upon a life of exploration, he entered the navy in 1789. |
Australian Dictionary of Biography
JOHN NICOL (1755–1825)
| Quote: | | His father appears to have tried to give all his children a good education but John, on his own admission, did not make the most of it. From reading Defoe's Robinson Crusoe many times over he longed to be at sea. His father, however, insisted that he learned a trade and he was apprenticed to a cooper. When in 1776 his period of ‘bondage’ expired, after a few months as a journeyman to become proficient at his trade, he volunteered for the Royal Navy. ‘Now I was Happy, for I was at Sea’ (Life and Adventures, 1937, 2.38 ) |
DNB
WILLIAM ULLATHORNE (1806–1889), Roman Catholic bishop of Birmingham
| Quote: | He was a bookish child, whose first great literary passion was Robinson Crusoe, to which he partly attributed his love for the sea.
Ullathorne attended the village school at Burnby, Yorkshire, until, when he was nine or ten, the family moved to Scarborough, where he soon left Mr Hornsey's school to help in the family business. ... Living in Scarborough fed the boy's dreams of seafaring and his reluctant parents let him go to sea at the age of fifteen. By his own account, he set forth as cabin boy on the brig Leghorn and later on Anne's Resolution, with scarcely a thought for religion (though he had brought a few devotional books with him on ship, including Challoner's Garden of the Soul). ... He immediately gave up the seafaring life and returned home. |
DNB |
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