Buccaneer, Navigator and Explorer
William Dampier was born in Somerset, England, in 1652. Orphaned as a teenager, he began his naval career as an apprentice to a ship's captain on a voyage to the fishing grounds of Newfoundland. He hated the cold so much, however, that he spent the rest of his voyages in the tropics, first as a sailor in front of the mast on an East Indiaman to Java. When he returned, he served for a time in the Royal Navy. He then worked, in 1674, as manager of a sugar plantation in Jamaica, after which he found employment with the loggers at Campeachy, Mexico.
William Dampier, by Thomas Murray, about 1697–98 (x)
The dye from the logs was highly prized for textiles, but it was strenuous work. The area was the hotbed of English buccaneers at the time and Dampier was attracted to their free-spirited lifestyle. Much of his life from then on was buccaneering. He never hid his buccaneering voyages btw, but never glorified this activity, describing it as soberly as he did his observations of nature. It was a particularly pretty town with a beautifully decorated church. (...) When they refused to pay us the ransom, we burned it down.
Dampier circumnavigated the globe three times, visiting all five continents and entering regions of the world largely unknown to Europeans. When he wasn't busy pillaging, he made careful notes about the places he visited, their geography, botany, food, zoology and the culture of the local people. He was the first to describe the banana and the flamingo, the breadfruit and the sloth, the barbecue, the avocado and the chopsticks.
He carried his diary in a piece of bamboo sealed with wax at both ends. It was published in 1697 as A New Voyage Around the World and was followed by several other popular books, like Voyages and Descriptions (1699), A Voyage to New Holland (1703), A Supplement of the Voyage Round the World (1705), The Campeachy Voyages (1705), A Discourse of Winds (1705) and A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland (1709)
A Voyage Round the World (x)
As a result, Dampier was taken up by London society and he gained the fame of the British Admiralty. In 1699 he was sent on a voyage of discovery around Australia with HMS Roebuck. Unfortunately, he lost the ship when it was wrecked at Ascension Island, which precluded further employment with the Royal Navy and he even had to stand trial. He went back to buccaneering in that case more piracy. On 11 September 1703, he set sail with the St George and the Chinque Ports Gallery.
His drawings, in : Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland in the year 1699 (x)
The voyage against French or Spanish ships around the world lasted from 1703 to 1707, but again did not bring the hoped-for success. The St. George soon ran aground and the crew fell into Spanish captivity. Dampier failed due to his inability as captain to keep the crew in line. The voyage resulted in the voluntary abandonment of Alexander Selkirk (Daniel Dafoe later used his life on the island for his novel Robinson Crusoe) on the uninhabited island of Mas a Tierra in the Juan Fernández Archipelago in 1704. This island was renamed Isla Robinson Crusoe in 1966. Dampier experienced a third circumnavigation of the globe in 1708-1711 as navigator on the ship of Privateer captain Woodes Rogers. This capture tour resulted in plentiful booty. During a stopover to replenish fresh water on Isla Mas a Tierra, Alexander Selkirk was found again and taken on board by Rogers. Before the now over-indebted Dampier could be paid his share of the capture proceeds, however, the adventurer died in London in 1715.
Future mariners benefited from Dampier's geographical surveys and observations, especially his A Supplement of the Voyage Round the World 1705
A Supplement of the Voyage Round the World 1705 (x)
This was the world's first integrated account of the direction and extent of the trade wind systems and main currents around the world. His research reports and chart work were to be considered standard works for generations to come and influenced almost all his more famous successors such as James Cook, William Bligh and Admiral Nelson into the nineteenth century: even Humboldt, Darwin and Sir John Franklin carried their Dampier in their shipboard library as a matter of course.
