ABSTRACT
Alexander Selkirk was always in trouble. As a boy living in the small Scottish town of Fife, he got in trouble for fistfights and being disrespectful to his elders. Alexander had been fooled into drinking seawater. He got so mad that he fought with two of his brothers, a sister-in-law, and his dad. This time, Alexander didn’t even go to the church meeting. Instead, he ran away to sea and became a privateer—a pirate working for the king of England. The privateers paid themselves with whatever they could steal and because they had a letter of marque, they were not supposed to be tried and hanged as pirates. Some countries went ahead and hanged privateers as pirates anyway, but at least they would not be tried in England. Stradling and the other survivors had been locked away in Spanish prisons or killed for being pirates.
