Cinque Ports (1703 ship)
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- Cinque Ports is also the name for a group of five English port towns, the namesake of this ship.
| Career | |
|---|---|
| Built: | — |
| Launched: | — |
| Fate: | Sank in 1704 |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 96 tons |
| Length: | 172 ft (52 m) |
| Beam: | 33 ft (10 m) |
| Draught: | — |
| Type: | Galleon |
| Hull: | Wood |
| Propulsion: | Sail |
| Speed: | — |
| Range: | — |
| Complement: | 63 |
Cinque Ports is the name of an English Government galleon (96 tons, 16 guns, 63 men) whose sailing master was Alexander Selkirk and captain was Thomas Stradling. The ship was part of an 1703 expedition commanded by William Dampier who captained an accompanying government ship the St George (26 guns, 120 men).
When the War of the Spanish Succession broke out in 1701, English privateers were recruited to assist against French and Spanish interests. Despite a court-martial for cruelty to his crew in an earlier voyage, Dampier was granted command of the two-ship expedition which departed England on April 30, 1703 for the South Seas.
After capturing several Spanish ships and travelling through the West Indies they stopped at one of the islands of the Juan Fernández archipelago off the Chilean coast in October 1704 to resupply. Selkirk had a dispute with Stradling regarding the Cinque Ports seaworthiness, and Selkirk chose to be put ashore on an uninhabited island. He remained there in solitude for 4 years and 4 months. His experiences were the inspiration for the character Robinson Crusoe in the book by Daniel Defoe.
Selkirk's suspicions were soon justified, as the ship sank a month later in 1704 with the loss of most of her crew.
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