Patrick Watkins (sailor)

Patrick Watkins was an Irish sailor who was marooned on Floreana, an island of the Galápagos Islands, from 1805 to 1809.[1] He is the first known permanent resident of the Galapagos.[2] According to later accounts,[3] Watkins managed to survive by hunting, growing vegetables, and trading with visiting whalers,[2] before finally stealing an longboat from a whaling ship, impressing five of its crew as his "slaves", and navigating to Guayaquil, Ecuador.[4] Watkins was the only one of the six to survive the journey.[4]

Legacy

Spanish novelist Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa based his 1982 novel Iguana on the case of Watkins. Later, the novel was cinematized by American director Monte Hellman in 1988.[5]

References

Citations
  1. Ira Basen, Jane Farrow, Amy Wallace, and David Wallechinsky, "9 ORDINARY MEN WHO PLAYED KING," The Book of Lists: The Original Compendium of Curious Information, Canadian Edition (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2005), 270.
  2. Heinzel, Hermann; Hall, Barnaby (2000). Galapagos Diary : A Complete Guide to the Archipelago's Birdlife. University of California Press. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-520-22836-8.
  3. John Coulter retails a hearsay story about Pat in Adventures in the Pacific (Dublin, 1845; facsimile ed., New Delhi, Isha Books, 2013), chap. V.
  4. Jackson (1993), p. 3.
  5. Iguana DVD Video Review

Bibliography
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