‍A DESOLATE and rocky island, studded with volcanic cones, craters, and lava fields, 900 miles from anywhere became a grave for one of the world’s first real Robinson Crusoes.

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‍This tiny speck of land between Brazil and Africa with hardly any rain and scorching temperatures was like another planet. It was impossible to find fresh water and marooned Dutch sailor, Leendert Hasenbosch, in his early thirties, had to survive by drinking the blood and urine of turtles. 

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‍Ascension Island was his Hell on Earth.

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‍His ordeal began when his Dutch trading ship, the ‘Prattenburg’ dumped him ashore on May 5, 1725, after he was caught having sex with another man on board, who it is said he loved.

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‍Found guilty of sodomy he was thrown off the ship with a small survival pack … some water, onions, peas, chickpeas, rice, a frying pan, a hatchet, a few blankets and a tinder box. His lover was thrown over the side in mid-ocean.

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‍Leendert’s most treasured possession was his journal in which he recorded his ordeal and his desperate search for water. When the diary was found it was turned into a bestselling pamphlet called ‘Sodomy Punish’d’ in Europe. And it was met with pity for the young Crusoe, even though gay sex was illegal.

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‍In London, papers like the Daily Courant, the London Gazette and the Daily Post ran extracts from Leendert’s miserable story to survive. His plight captured the public’s imagination as ‘Robinson Crusoe’ by Daniel Defoe, was published in 1719, a few years before.

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‍But no trace was ever found of Leendert, who was the ship’s bookkeeper and had broken the law. 

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‍The journal makes sad reading. It was found in January 1726, when two English ships, the ‘Compton’ and the ‘James and Mary’, anchored in a small bay on the remote and uninhabited island in the South Atlantic for repair work.

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‍A few sailors went ashore to look for green turtles from the island’s famously large colony. Kept alive on the ships to remain fresh, some could be eaten during the homeward voyage; the rest would be sold, at an attractive price, to wealthy citizens in London.

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‍While hunting for the turtles, the sailors stumbled across a tent on the beach, with bedding inside. They also found a kettle, tea, tobacco pipes and the journal.

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‍With not enough food or water to last him more than a few weeks, Leendert

‍writes: “I went on the hills, to see what there might be on the other side of the island proper for me, or any greens or other things to subsist on.

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‍“But to my sorrow found nothing worthy of notice. I wished some accident would befall me to finish these my miserable days.”

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‍He tells how he set up his tent on the beach, which he secured with stones and erected a white flag on a hill near the sea in the hopes that a passing ship might come to his rescue.

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‍Thanks to the seabirds and turtles he found and killed, he ate surprisingly well. But hydration was making him ill. Much of his journal recounts his unsuccessful search for a reliable freshwater spring.

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‍He began digging holes in desperation, hoping he might reach water. His shoes were disintegrating and firewood fast running out, without which he could only eat raw meat.

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‍Lack of water and the island’s sweltering heat, led to vivid hallucinations. He wrote: “I was surprised with a noise of the most horrid and dreadful swearing and cursing, mixt with such blasphemous discourse, that no humane creature can express, nor dare I write it with my pen; it seem’d to be as tho’ all the Devils had broken out of Hell.

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‍“I was certain there was no man on the island but myself, and yet I felt myself pull’d by the nose, cheeks, and ears and beaten all over my body and face. They tormented me without ceasing for several hours.”

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‍Over the next few months, he explored much of Ascension in search of water and firewood, making new tents for shelter and praying constantly for rain that never came. By this point, he had resorted to drinking the blood of turtles he had killed, along with the water he found in their stomachs, and his own urine.

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‍On August 24, he recorded: “This morn I fetcht my eggs, then boild some tea in my own urine, which in the miserable times tasted tolerably well.”

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‍At his most desperate, the sailor even drank urine from the bladder of a dead turtle — which, “to my great astonishment, proved as cool as ice, and tasted like rainwater, but bitter, so that I drank the whole bladder out with a good relish”.

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‍It is believed that the sad castaway may have died by suicide, thirst, sickness, or perished in a fatal accident, sometime in 1725.

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‍SECRET MISERY OF THE MAN WHO

‍CREATED LIONS TO GUARD NELSON

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‍Sir Edwin Landseer at work on the Trafalgar Square lions

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‍THE DINNER guests were alarmed when the manservant entered the room and asked his master in calm Jeevesian style: “Did you order a lion sir?”

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‍The host, seeing the shock on everyone’s face, laughed and led his guests to the front door and there at the gates was a cart with a dead lion in it.

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‍The elderly lion, Nero, had died at the Zoological Gardens in nearby Regent’s Park and the zoo had sent the body to artist Sir Edwin Landseer, who was about to embark on the biggest mission of his career, sculpturing the lions that would guard Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square.

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‍The Government told him: “The lions must be imposing and dignified in honour of the victorious Admiral Horatio Nelson — but not too lofty to discourage affection. They will be grand adornments of the street scene, yet reflective of the square’s friendly informality.”

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‍It was a tough task and hiring Landseer in 1858 was controversial. He was a painter, not a sculptor. But he was the age’s foremost animal artist, renowned for his painstaking approach to anatomical detail and a favourite in Society’s upper circles.

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‍Landseer was a Londoner, growing up in St John’s Wood, gazing over the fields that dominated the land between Marylebone and Hampstead and honing his skills drawing sheep and cows.

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‍Known as a wit, raconteur, lifelong bachelor and dandy, he had a menagerie in his garden and was a friend of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He was frequently seen at the great houses of England.

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‍He was fascinated by lions, after dissecting the bodies of big cats to find out how they moved, slept and sat. He would paint them and sell his works.

‍But creating the Trafalgar Square lions proved a lengthy process, so lengthy that it attracted Press ridicule. For behind-the-scenes Landseer was unstable. He suffered from breakdowns and depression and didn’t think he could go on.

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‍He was still making studies of them in London Zoo as late as 1862, because he was confused about the instructions on what the Nelson lions should look like.

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‍One idea was for them to be standing, mouths wide open, roaring. Then the commission required the lions to be lying down with heads raised, not standing or prowling, more reflective of Nelson’s dignified heroism.

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‍Finally, nearly 10 years after being commissioned, the lions were finished in January 1867. The colossal bronze statues — 20ft long, 11ft high and weighing seven tons each, were moved to their resting place at the bottom of the column to the great warrior of the seas.

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‍At first there were complaints to the Press about their ‘sphinx-like’ resemblance (the paws were modelled on those of a cat) and one individual was arrested for flinging stones at them.

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‍But when the troubled artist’s public funeral took place six years later, the lions were decorated with mourning wreaths, reflecting a nation’s gratitude.

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‍“Thank you Sir Edwin. England at last has done her duty,” said Punch magazine.

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‍Queen Victoria described his death at 37 as a ‘merciful release, because he had been in “a most distressing state, half out of his mind, yet not entirely so”.

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‍NEWS IN BRIEF

‍Street lamplighter Samuel Wardell in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, had trouble getting up in the morning to turn off the streetlights. So, he invented a contraption with a 10-pound rock attached to his alarm clock, which would crash to the floor and wake him up every day.

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‍On Christmas Eve, he rearranged his furniture for a party but forgot to change his room back afterwards. When the alarm mechanism went off the next morning, the rock fell on his head and killed him, the ‘Brooklyn Daily Eagle’ reported.

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‍TELEPHONE NIGHTMARE OF GILLER
AND THE SPORTS PACK IN BULGARIA

‍Wonderful snapshots of newspaper life in our old chum Daily Express football writer Norman Giller’s 100th book which I have just “skipped and dipped” through as he advised.

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‍Titled: ‘Headlines Deadline All My Life’, it tells his life story in a series of anecdotes. One involves the England under-23 summer football tour that coincided with the Six-Day War.

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‍At the height of hostilities, the squad was briefly stranded in Bulgaria. Among the football writers was Peter Corrigan, reporting for The Sun. As the war reached its peak, Norman said, it suddenly became impossible to make telephone or telex contact with our London offices.

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‍“I was earning my daily bread with the Daily Express, and along with my colleagues I sat fretting and frustrated in the team’s hotel in Sofia as the edition deadlines for our copy approached and disappeared into the distance.”

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‍The FA told reporters at the scene that they were going to ask the British government to send an RAF plane to rescue the England team if the war escalated.

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‍“It was a great story,” said Norman, “but we felt as frustrated as pianists trying to play with the piano lid locked.

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‍“In those non-STD days, you had to order your telephone calls through the hotel switchboard, and all lines were down. You must remember the mood at the time.

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‍“There was a wild rumour of Russia getting involved and nuclear weapons being used as Israeli tanks and jet fighters destroyed the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria.”

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‍The reporters agreed that if anybody should be lucky enough to get through, they would put over a shared story that could be distributed at the London end.

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‍After two days of total silence, Corrigan suddenly got the desperately awaited link and found himself being put through to the Sun sports desk from the lobby of the hotel.

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‍It was an appalling line, and he was reduced to repeatedly screaming “Peter Corrigan” into the mouthpiece in a bid to make himself heard at the other end.

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‍“The rest of us were gathered around,” said Norman, willing him to keep the precious line open. We couldn’t believe it when he suddenly threw down the receiver without having dictated a word!”

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‍On the other end of the line had been veteran sub-editor Larry Coates, who had a pronounced stutter.

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‍Peter, tearing out what little hair he had left, looked at us wild-eyed and said: “I’ve just been told that P-P-Peter C-C-Corrigan is in B-B-Bulgaria, and then he put down the phone and cut me off!”

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‍Footnote: The story reminds me of the time legendary reporter Norman Luck was in the Hilton Hotel in Beirut as the bombs were going off and news hacks couldn’t get a line. Norman got one and a queue of newsmen formed behind his telephone box at reception. But he ignored them rapping on the glass and went on for nearly half an hour until the line died.

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‍He later admitted he was filing his Do It Yourself column for the Express.

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‍TERRY MANNERS

‍25 May 2026

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