ABSTRACT
The remarkable and affectionate friendship between William Walters and Captain Bob Singleton in Defoe's Captain Singleton has generated some intriguing, if ambivalent, interest. If the two parts of Robinson Crusoe are a narrative of barely controlled inclinations to roam, Captain Bob Singleton narrates a similarly driven man whose tenuous relationship to civil society is never satisfactorily resolved. Bob Singleton has amassed a fortune through piracy and trade, and taken on board a Quaker surgeon, William Walters. Bob Singleton's conversion is intertwined with his relationship to William as his earthly religious guide, and Daniel Defoe makes certain that William's role is imagined in metaphors appropriate to their sea-faring life and that connote Christian pastoral exemplars. The initial 'Certificate', William's proposal to return home and their masquerade as Persian merchants all underline the tremendous investment they have in secrecy.
