Isola Fernandez, a small, poorly accessible, now Chilean island in Pacific waters, named after its 16th century discoverer, was in colonial days the secret Spanish trump for shorter and safer sailing thereabout. Because they imported goats, who ruined most of the land for agriculture, the Spanish settlement was soon abandoned as inviable. The goats became the closing ingredient to supply the very privateers they hoped to outsmart. One of their ships marooned Alexander Selkirk there for correctly warning woodworm had rendered it unfit for the ocean. He remained there 4 years, hunted in vain by a Spanish naval patrol. His true story partially inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, but archaeologists believe their never was a pirate treasure on 'his' island, nor a native Friday.
—KGF Vissers