Dampier, William

Dampier, William (1652–1715), British navigator and surveyor who became first a buccaneer and then a privateer. He was born at East Coker, Somerset, and was orphaned while still a boy. He went to sea at 18 and after serving his apprenticeship joined an East Indiaman as an able seaman and sailed in it to Java, a part of the world which delighted him and to which he was often to return. He returned to England in 1672 and, at the outbreak of the Third Dutch War (1672–4), enlisted in the Royal Navy. He was present at the two battles of Schooneveld but was invalided at the end of the war.

The offer of a job in Jamaica led him indirectly to joining a band of buccaneers, though he was probably attracted to this new life in the hope not so much of finding riches but of sailing to new places. In 1683 he joined a new band on a piratical voyage to the South Seas which was eventually to take him round the world. His new companions were no more successful than his previous ones and he and some of the crew eventually left the ship and set off on their own account, sailing to China and then to the Spice Islands (Moluccas) and New Holland (the Australian mainland). After a number of cruises in these waters, pillaging the few merchant ships they found, Dampier was marooned with two others and half a dozen Malays on the Nicobar Islands. There they found a canoe which Dampier managed to navigate to Sumatra, and in 1691, after more dubious employment at sea, he found his way back to England.

During all these extraordinary adventures Dampier had been keeping a journal, not only recounting his voyages but, more notably, his observations on the winds and tides, and the flora and fauna of the places he had visited. In 1697 he had it published under the title A New Voyage round the World. This brought him to the notice of the British Admiralty and in 1699 he was sent out as captain of HMS Roebuck on a voyage of discovery around Australia. He made a careful survey of much of the west coast, but the lack of fresh water and provisions ashore, and of suitable harbours or inlets in which to refit his ship, forced him to abandon the voyage, and sail to Timor to refit his ship. From Timor he sailed to New Guinea where he resumed surveying, but this was cut short by a mutiny, and he returned to Timor. He then set sail for England, but the Roebuck foundered off Ascension Island and Dampier and his men were lucky to attract the attention of a passing East Indiaman which took them to England. On his return in 1701 Dampier was court-martialled, declared unfit for any further employment in the Royal Navy, and fined the whole of his pay that he had accumulated during the voyage.

Despite this, in 1703 he managed to persuade the owners of two ships fitting out for a privateering voyage in the Pacific that he should take command of the venture and captain one of the ships, the St George. This voyage proved as disastrous as his previous one, his autocratic and erratic behaviour leading to another mutiny which left him with only 27 men. However, he managed to bring them back to England by way of the East Indies and the Cape of Good Hope, not in the St George, whose bottom fell out in the Gulf of Panama, but in a small Spanish ship which they had captured. It was during this voyage that one of the crew, Alexander Selkirk, was marooned on Juan Fernandez Island at his own request. It was Selkirk's story of his time on the island that gave Daniel Defoe the basis for his famous novel Robinson Crusoe, one of the classics of marine literature.

Dampier reached England in 1707, thus completing his second voyage round the world. Within a year he set out on another privateering adventure to the Pacific, this time as navigator of one of the ships, and during it Selkirk was rescued from Juan Fernandez Island after living alone there for over four years. The voyage proved financially successful, and when Dampier returned to England in 1711 he had not only circumnavigated the world for a third time but would have been a rich man if he had not died before receiving his full share of the profits.

A new edition of A New Voyage round the World with additional illustrations and a foreword was published in 1998.

Bibliography

Lloyd, C. , William Dampier (1966).
Preston, D., and and Preston, M. , A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: The Life of William Dampier (2004).