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).

William Dampier

The English privateer and author William Dampier (1652-1715) explored the Western Australian coastline and stimulated interest in the Pacific through popular travel books.

William Dampier was born the son of a Somerset farmer in June 1652. He sailed to Newfoundland and the East Indies while still a boy and took part in the Third Dutch War (1672-1674). After a brief sojourn in Jamaica as undermanager of a plantation, he joined the buccaneers of the Caribbean in Capt. Morgan's heyday. In 1686 Capt. Swan of the Cygnet, in which Dampier was sailing, decided to seek prizes in the Pacific before returning to England. After spending 6 months in the Philippines, Swan's crew seized the ship and cruised in Far Eastern waters between China and Australia. Dampier accordingly spent the summer of 1688 at King Sound in Western Australia. After being marooned on one of the Nicobar Islands, he traveled by native canoe to Sumatra and served as a gunner at Bencoelen before returning to England.

Dampier recorded details of his amazing adventures along with navigational data in a diary on which he based A New Voyage round the World (1967) and Voyages and Descriptions (1699). Impressed with his work, the English Admiralty commissioned him with the rank of captain to command an expedition to explore the Australian coastline. He reached Shark Bay, Western Australia, in August 1699, and using Tasman's charts, he sailed up the coast for a month seeking an estuary. After revictualing at Timor, he proceeded along the north coast of New Guinea and discovered New Britain but abandoned plans to explore the east coast of Australia because his ship, the H. M. S. Roebuck, was in poor condition. On the way home, the Roebuck was lost off Ascension Island, and the crew were rescued by returning East India men.

A court-martial in 1702 found Dampier unfit to command a naval vessel. During the next 4 years he led an unsuccessful privateering expedition in the South Seas. Between 1708 and 1711 he again sailed around the world as pilot for Capt. Woodes Rogers, a privateer sponsored by Bristol merchants. It was on this voyage that Alexander Selkirk, who had previously been marooned by the crew of a ship under Dampier's command, was picked up at one of the Juan Fernández Islands in the South Pacific. Dampier died in London in March 1715 before receiving his share of the expedition's spoils.

Further Reading

An account of Dampier which notes both his achievements and defects is Christopher Lloyd, William Dampier (1966). See also Clennell Wilkinson, Dampier: Explorer and Buccaneer (1929). There is an exciting account of buccaneers in the Caribbean and Pacific in P. K. Kemp and Christopher Lloyd, The Brethren of the Coast (1960). □

Dampier, William (1652–1715). Dampier was a seaman whose experiences in the Anglo-Dutch War of 1674 set him off on his career as a pirate in the West Indies. In 1679 he crossed the Isthmus of Darien to plunder Spain's South American possessions. He returned in 1683 via Cape Horn and then sailed on across the Pacific eventually reaching Australia before returning to Britain. He now showed talent as a writer whose New Voyage round the World of 1697 rekindled British interest in the Pacific. The Admiralty hired him to return in a half-rotten ship. He reached the west coast of Australia and in 1700 discovered the islands of New Ireland and New Britain. He was half-way home when the ship finally foundered. Dampier returned to a buccaneering life, including marooning and later rescuing Alexander Selkirk (‘Robinson Crusoe’) on Juan Fernández and another circumnavigation of the world. Despite further publications, Dampier died in poverty and bitterness before the large sums of prize money due to him had been paid.

Roy C. Bridges

Dampier, William (1652–1715), navigator, explorer, and buccaneer, who travelled to South America, Yucatan, the Pacific, Australia, and the East Indies. His accounts of his travels (New Voyage round the World, 1697; Voyages and Descriptions, 1698; A Voyage to New Holland, 1703–9, edited by J. Masefield in 2 vols, 1906), written in a lively and straightforward style and showing precise scientific observation, heralded an era of great interest in travel and voyage literature. (See also Selkirk, A.)

Dampier, William (1652–1715) English explorer and adventurer. In 1683 he set out on a privateering expedition from Panama, crossing the Pacific to the Philippines, China, and Australia before eventually reaching England again in 1691. In 1699 he was commissioned by the British government to explore the NW coast of Australia and circumnavigated the globe again, despite being shipwrecked on Ascension Island on the way home.