"I showed them the new captain hanging from the yard-arm of the ship." — illustration for Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" (1891) (original) (raw)

Passage Illustrated: Crusoe in Command

When the captain was gone I sent for the men up to me to my apartment, and entered seriously into discourse with them on their circumstances. I told them I thought they had made a right choice; that if the captain had carried them away they would certainly be hanged. I showed them the new captain hanging at the yard-arm of the ship, and told them they had nothing less to expect. [Chapter XVIII, "The Ship Recovered," page 197]

Commentary

Paget disrupts the visual continuity by dressing Crusoe in the European fashion of the late seventeenth-century, signifying Crusoe's social reintegration. As the island plenipotentiary Crusoe has exerted his authority as "governor" of the island, lending rather than giving the captain and his subordinates firearms and insisting that his authority be superior on the island.

In the sequence of six illustrations involving Crusoe's role in quelling the mutiny aboard the British ship, in the first two, My eye plainly discovered a ship lying at anchor and "What are ye, gentlemen?", the middle-aged castaway is plainly wearing partial or full "island dress" (that is, goatskin breeches, jacket, and cap), so that one may readily distinguish him from the victims of the mutiny. In neither of these illustrations does Paget include Friday. In the third in the sequence, They begged for mercy, neither Crusoe nor Friday is present; rather, the three men in the rear of the picture are the captain and his two subordinates — Crusoe has apparently been watching the action from a distance, and only arrives after the captain's men have shot two of the mutineers: "By this time I was come" (184). However, only once Crusoe has arrived, presumably with Friday, do the three remaining mutineers capitulate and beg for mercy. Consequently, the picture is a distortion of the scene as Defoe presents it in that Crusoe should be among the figures at the back of the illustration since he sees the scene from the perspective of the captain and his supporters rather than, as in Paget's illustration, from behind the mutineers. In the fourth and fifth illustrations in the sequence Crusoe is not represented, so that, when he appears in the sixth illustration, I showed them the new captain hanging at the yard-arm of the ship, he is identifiable only by his gesturing towards the ship. Her is, in fact, an entirely different Crusoe, re-made in the fashion of the late seventeenth century, in a long leather surcoat, feathered hat, stockings, and buckled shoes. This, then, is the Crusoe who leaves the island for Europe and who will reappear as a prosperous Bedfordshire farmer in Part Two. Friday does not appear in "island garb" again; rather, having disappeared in the mutiny sequence, he reappears as the daredevil out on a limb with a European black bear in Gascony in "What, you no come farther?"

The Suppression of the Mutiny in Pictures

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 5 May 2018