Patrick Watkins (sailor) explained

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. Watkins was the only one of the six to survive the journey.

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.^[4]

References

Bibliography

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Notes and References

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. Book: Heinzel, Hermann. Hall, Barnaby. Galapagos Diary : A Complete Guide to the Archipelago's Birdlife. University of California Press. 2000. 119. 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. https://web.archive.org/web/20131224121012/http://film.thedigitalfix.com/content/id/3536/iguana.html Iguana DVD Video Review