20. Llandoger Trow

The Llandoger Trow is a famous pub that has existed since 1664. A Llandoger trow is a Welsh coastal trader, a flat bottomed vessel. 
This part of the harbour is known as Welsh Back, and is where all the Welsh ships docked.  

It was opened by Captain Hawkins in 1664, a direct descendant of Sir John Hawkins of Plymouth. The name originates from the flat bottomed trows which plied the shallow waters of the Severn Estuary and Llandogo the small creek on the River Wye which ran downstream into Chepstow, where Hawkins lived.

Originally 5 gables fronting the river Avon, 2 were lost in the 2nd World War, the remaining 3 were upgraded this century exposing underground tunnels not previously recorded. The Public House could accommodate a lot of men quickly and they could move within the city walls to avoid the press gang.  Blackbeard would have known it and probably enjoyed more than a few pints of ale there.

Daniel Defoe met Alexander Selkirk in the "Llandoger Trow" and Robinson Crusoe was born. 

Daniel Defoe is said to have met Alexander Selkirk there, on whom he based Robinson Crusoe, and it was also thought to be the model for the Admiral Benbow in Treasure Island.   

Alexander Selkirk was abandoned on the remote island of Juan Fernandez (off the coast of Chile in the South Pacific) in 1704 by William Dampier. On the 1708 Woodes Rogers voyage, Dampier steered the fleet to Juan Fernandez for urgent fresh water supplies and was surprised to see the awkward Scotsman that he had abandoned there 4 years earlier. The wretched skeleton of the man Alexander Selkirk had survived, living as a goat with the herd on the mountainside and dressed entirely in their skins.

Woodes Rogers, Dampier and Selkirk returned to Bristol in 1712. Bristol welcomed the returning adventurers, who must have made an unusual sight in the snug, Rogers badly wounded and having lost his younger brother due to enemy action was disheartened, Selkirk in a dishevelled state having lived off goats for 4 years and still dressed in their skins and the always impecunious Aristocrat, Dampier. 

We know Selkirk is around, as local court papers were served on him at 28 Queens Square for rowdyism in the Naval Volunteer Inn.

As an accomplished surveyor Dampier published a book on his experiences that drew Daniel Defoe's attention. Defoe knew Woodes Rogers and probably Dampier as well. Defoe is supposed to have met Selkirk in the Llandoger Trow.

The larger than life swashbuckler, Dampier, had been marooned on Ascension island with his native servant. They were both eventually rescued by a Dutch fleet who called into the mid Atlantic refuge for fresh water. Back in London the always impecunious aristocrat has to sell his Man Friday as a servant. The unfortunate native dies soon after. Dampier died under impoverished circumstances in the East End of London and is buried there. An end not befitting the adventurer who discovered Australia & returned to tell the Queen.

Tim Severin in his book "Seeking the ‘real’ Robinson Crusoe" discovers that there were several other stranded sailors whose experiences Defoe drew on. In addition to Selkirk and Dampier, Henry Pitman, a former surgeon and convict marooned on a desert island in the Caribbean, is the principal model on which Daniel Defoe based his 18th century novel. Man Friday was likely based on a Miskitu Indian from the coast of Nicaragua and Honduras. And there was Pedro Serrano, a 16th-century mariner who maintained he had lived for seven years on a desolate cay devoid of fresh water.

However Selkirk may have inspired the book. All Defoe needed was a name, a hero to lead the novel. He found this on a tombstone in a churchyard whilst hiding from Cromwell's roundheads in Somerset in 1685. One of his duties as a Royalist was to act as a spy for the Crown. His father a butcher in the east end of London had brought him up to respect the King.

Selkirk left Bristol and went to Plymouth where he married a country girl and enlisted on H.M.S. Weymouth which capsized off the African coast with the loss of all hands on board.    

Soon the novel a best seller was born and the notes of Llewwellin Penrose who lived in the Seamans Almshouse opposite in King St added the flavour to the story  

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