Cheat Sheet

Dear Diary, today I pillaged half a dozen pirate ships, rescued a castaway, and sailed the South Seas. Or so (presumably) goes the recently unearthed 300-year-old journal of British explorer Captain Woodes Rogers. A rare copy of Rogers’ journal was found in Bristol and will be auctioned at the end of January. He is hailed for finding Alexander Selkirk, the real-life Robinson Crusoe, stranded on a remote Pacific island: “He had with him his clothes and bedding, with a firelock, some powder, bullets and tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a Bible and books." Rogers sailed the South Seas, the East Indies, and the Cape of Good Hope in the 1700s on a mission to victimize pirates who were after fellow British merchants. Fire up the film adaptation.