Pedro de Serrano -The Ultimate Castaway

Pedro de Serrano was a Spanish sailor who was marooned on a small Caribbean Island in the early part of the sixteenth century.

The recorded circumstances of his experience are rather vague and most certainly open to dispute. The basic details are that he was the only survivor of a ship wreck and was washed up on a deserted, barren strip of sand. He had only the clothes he stood up in. For years he endured the most primitive of living conditions. As there was no fresh water supply on the island, he survived the first days be drinking turtle blood. Soon he was able to use upturned turtle shells as rain water receptacles. The only other food he was able to find was sea weed and the occasional shell fish. He had no shelter from the sun and, during the hottest hours of the day, he buried himself in wet sand to keep cool. Soon his clothes had rotted and Serrano wandered his domain naked, but for a thick down of body hair. A flint, washed up from the ship wreck was his salvation, he was able to make fire and therefore retained the faint hope that a passing vessel might see his distress signal.

After some years, two other sailors were washed up on the beach. When they saw the furry image of Serrano, who also boasted a waist length beard by now, they were terrified and, at first, did not believe him to be human. Although there was still no imminent hope of rescue, Serrano was overjoyed to have the company of other humans again, his joy was short lived - Within a few days, one of the men began raving. Soon he began eating his own arms, and then he quickly died. A short time later the intense heat from the sun and the harsh living conditions on the island took the life of the other man. Serrano was alone again.

After seven or eight years marooned, Serrano was eventually rescued by a passing ship, many other vessels has passed, but none were able, or willing, to risk the dangerous coral that barricaded the island.

Understandably, Serrano never fully recovered from his years of isolation, he died a mad man in his native Spain.

Your humble scribe signs off for the evening, he wonders how he would have survived seven years of wild isolation and concludes his own mental health would have also been irreversibly altered.