Chapter IV - First Weeks on the Island

By: Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731

Building the Raft during a Shipwreck

Using the spare yards, spars of wood, and topmasts in the ship to work with. They threw them overboard and tied them together to form a raft. They laid planks on it but found it could not bear weight. They cut a spare topmast into three lengths and added them to the raft, putting in significant effort. The hope of providing the necessary supplies motivated them to go beyond their capabilities.

Supplies

Once the raft was strong enough to bear weight, they decided to load it with provisions. They filled three seamen's chests with:

• bread
• rice
• Dutch cheeses
• dried goat's flesh
• European corn
• bottles of cordial waters
• rack
• carpenter’s chest
• 2 fowling-pieces
• 2 pistols
• Bag of shot
• 2 rusty swords
• 2 barrels of powder

Fleeing

I had three encouragements -

• 1st, a smooth, calm sea
• 2ndly, the tide rising, and setting in to the shore
• 3rdly, what little wind there was blew me towards the land

There appeared before me a little opening of the land, and I found a strong current of the tide set into it; so I guided my raft as well as I could, to keep in the middle of the stream.

Survival

But here he almost had a second shipwreck, which, if he had, he would be heartbroken. The uneven grounding caused a risk of cargo slipping into the water. Despite efforts to secure the cargo, he struggled to free the raft, holding onto the chests to prevent them from falling. After some time, the rising water level eventually floated the raft again. Using an oar, he directed the raft into a channel and ended up at the mouth of a small river with land on both sides. They carefully looked for a suitable place to reach the shore, aiming to stay close to the coast in the hope of encountering ships at sea in the future.

Robinson Crusoe