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Outside Magazine June 2004
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The Hard Way
Captain Retro (Cont.)

NANSEN, AMUNDSEN, Shackleton, Hillary. I put Severin in this elite company of great adventurers who have left a meaningful legacy. Not for his skill at re-creating ancient vessels, nor for his ability as a captain at sea, not even for so thoroughly succeeding in his vast ocean voyages, but rather for his incisive interpretations of some of the greatest literature of humankind.

Upon reaching Sumatra on the Sinbad Voyage, Severin was able to connect the original tales of cannibalistic tribes that fed their victims drugged food to modern tribes that still use the island's marijuana in their cooking.

In retracing Wallace's journey through the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Severin resurrected one of the most unheralded evolutionary theorists of all time, filling in the biographical blanks that no professor scouring libraries ever could.

And in his most recent book, In Search of Robinson Crusoe (2002), Severin discovers that an obscure runaway white slave named Henry Pitman, who was once marooned on an island in the Caribbean, may have provided Daniel Defoe with his prototype for Robinson Crusoe, much more than the infamous Scotsman Alexander Selkirk did.

When I list these examples for Severin, he is visibly pleased but says nothing. For several minutes his eyes stare right through me, as if he were out upon the ocean. Then he grins and his whole face lights up.

"From the first book I wrote, my editors have said, ‘Put more of yourself into it.' And my response has always been: No. It's not about me. The book is about the project, the ideas." So what is Severin's next adventure? He refuses to say.

"I much prefer to do it first, then talk about it."




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