Piracy expelled, commerce restored.

Longtime readers of Fosco Lives! know that Fosco has a soft spot for things piratical and for Robinson Crusoe (it is the first real novel in English, after all...). And here's a story that has some of both!

According to The Telegraph, the extremely rare journal of a British pirate hunter has been recovered. Interestingly enough, this is the same guy who rescued the "real life" inspiration for Robinson Crusoe. The diary

chronicles a three-year round-the world voyage of the swashbuckling privateer Capt Woodes Rogers, who made a fortune pillaging from pirate ships and Spanish galleons.

During that journey, Rogers, who was a friend of the author Daniel Defoe, even stopped off at a remote Pacific island and found castaway Alexander Selkirk, who inspired the character and book Robinson Crusoe. He said he found him "wild-looking" and wearing "goatskins", adding: "He had with him his clothes and bedding, with a firelock, some powder, bullets and tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a Bible and books."

Rogers, who left Britain in 1708, had been tasked with "victimising" pirates targeting his fellow British merchants.

[...]

The slogan of his epic voyage, "Piracy expelled, commerce restored", remained the [Bahama] islands' own motto until independence was declared in 1973.

Now that's a good yarn. Harr.