Pedro Serrano (sailor)

Pedro Luis Serrano, also referred to as Pedro de Serrano,[1][2] was a Spanish sailor who was supposed to have been marooned for seven or eight years in the sixteenth century on a small desert island. Details of the story differ, but the most common version has him shipwrecked on a small island in the Caribbean off the coast of Nicaragua in 1520s. Serrano survived by eating shrimp, cockles and other animals he found washed up on the shore, and by collecting drinking water in sea turtle shells when it rained. When rainwater was unavailable, he also drank the blood of the turtles he had captured.[2]

Pedro Serrano
Born
Pedro Luis Serrano
NationalitySpanish
OccupationSailor
Known forBeing marooned on a desert island

Some versions of Serrano's story state that he was joined by another Spanish castaway after three years on the island. Initially mistaking one another for the Devil, both men fled from one other, but they reconciled when both were able to invoke the name of Jesus Christ. The two men lived together on the island for about four years.[2]

Rescue

Serrano and his companion were eventually rescued by a ship that had sighted their smoke signal. The sailors dispatched to pick them up, also mistaking both the men for the Devil, attempted to flee, but returned and rescued the men when they again invoked the name of Christ. Whilst Serrano's companion died on the voyage back to Spain, Serrano returned home safely and exhibited himself for money, never cutting his hair or his beard, which had grown "to his waist" during his time as a castaway. After receiving a sum of 4000 pieces of eight from the King of Spain, Serrano sailed to the Americas to collect the money, but died during the voyage.[2] Other versions of Serrano's story state the he had become insane by the time he was rescued.[1]

Historicity
Serrana Bank, an atoll in the Caribbean Sea, may have been the island on which Pedro de Serrano was stranded.

The tale of Serrano may have been loosely based on the historical case of "Maestre Joan", who stranded on cay of what is now named Serrana Bank in 1528, and was rescued eight years later.[3]

The name Serrana Bank first appears on a Dutch map of 1545. Other versions place the events in the Pacific off the coast of Peru as late as the 1540s. There is some doubt about the historicity of the tale. The earliest known source is Garcilaso de la Vega's Comentarios Reales de los Incas (1609).

See also

Further reading
  • Simpson, Lesley Byrd (1929), "The Spanish Crusoe: An Account by Maese Joan of Eight Years Spent as a Castaway on the Serrana Keys in the Caribbean Sea, 1528-1536", The Hispanic American Historical Review, 9 (3): 368–376, JSTOR 2506628
  • Leslie, Edward E. (1988). "Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls: True Stories of Castaways and Other Survivors". New York: Houghton Miffin Company. 1-20, ISBN 978-0395911501

References
  1. Souhami, Diana (2012). Selkirk's Island. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
  2. Leslie, Edward E. (1988). Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls: True Stories of Castaways and Other Survivors. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 978-0395911501.
  3. Voigt, Lisa (2009), Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic: Circulations of Knowledge and Authority in the Iberian and English Imperial Worlds, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, pp. 96–97, ISBN 978-0-8078-3199-1.
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