William Dampier is the most remarkable seaman that England produced in the century and a half between Drake and Captain Cook. They each circumnavigated the world once; Dampier did so three times. He commanded the first government-funded voyage of discovery with a specific mission to report on matters of geography and science. A good seaman, but a bad commander, he spent most of his life as a privateer, buccaneer or pirate, and his career culminated in the capture of the great treasure galleon sent each year from the New World to Spain.

What is most interesting today is that he was a great writer, author of the first major English travel book, A New Voyage round the World, and of scientific treatises and descriptions of natural history. If his expedition to Australia was a disaster, in that the ships were lost, the book that came out of it, A Voyage to New Holland, is rich in evocative accounts of the peoples and places he had found or visited. His books were reference works used extensively not only by subsequent voyagers but by modern scientists who continue to cite his observations. This edited account of his voyages gives an admirable picture of this fascinating and unorthodox figure in his own words.

Interesting facts
One of England’s greatest sailors and navigators, he was the first man to circumnavigate the globe three times.

Believed to be first Englishman to set foot on Australia (1697, with the pirate ship Cygnet)

Given a Royal Navy commission to explore seas around and coastline of Australia, the first government-funded voyage of discovery. Ended in disaster but named many features: Roebuck Bay, Dampier Archipelago, Shark Bay, Dampier Straits (off New Guinea), New Britain.

Cited over 1,000 times in the Oxford English Dictionary. Introduced “barbecue”, “avocado”, “chop-sticks” and “sub-species” among many others.

Many of his scientific descriptions of animals or plants were the first in English.

Rescued Alexander Selkirk from his island.

His report on Breadfruit led to Captain Bligh’s infamous and ill-fated voyage aboard The Bounty.

The only pirate with a portrait in the National Portrait Gallery?

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Excerpts

Dampier and some of the crew make away Captain Swan’s ship, the Cygnet, as it lies off Mindanao in the Philippines:

The whole crew were at this time under a general disaffection, and full of very different projects; and all for want of action. The main division was between those that had money and those that had none […] for they that had money lived ashore, and did not care for leaving Mindanao; whilst those that were poor lived aboard, and urged Captain Swan to go to sea. These began to be unruly as well as dissatisfied, and sent ashore the merchants’ iron to sell for arrack and honey to make punch, wherewith they grew drunk and quarrelsome […].
Yet these disorders might have been crushed if Captain Swan had used his authority to suppress them… If he has yet come aboard, he might have dashed all their designs; but he neither came himself, as a captain of any prudence and courage would have done, nor sent till the time was expired. So we left Captain Swan and about thirty-six men ashore in the city, and six or eight of them that run away; and about sixteen we had buried there, the most of which died by poison. The natives were very expert at poisoning, and do it upon small occasions; nor did our men want for giving offence, through their general rogueries, and sometimes by dallying too familiarly with their women, even before their faces. Some of their poisons are slow and lingering; for we had some now aboard who were poisoned there; but died not till some months after.
Pages 104-105

Dampier’s description of the appearance of St Elmo’s fire during a typhoon was among the very first to appear in English:

After four o’clock the thunder and the rain abated, and then we saw a corposant at our main topmast-head, and on the very top of the truck of the spindle. This light-rejoiced our men exceedingly; for the height of the storm is commonly over when the corposant is seen aloft; but when they are seen lying on the deck, it is generally accounted a bad sign.
A corposant is a certain small glittering light; when it appears as this did, on the very top of the mainmast or at a yardarm, it is like a star; but when it appears on the deck, it resembles a great glow-worm. The Spaniards have another name for it (though I take even this to be a Spanish or Portuguese name, and a corruption only of Corpus Sanctum) and I have been told that when they see them, they presently go to prayers, and bless themselves for the happy sight. I have heard some ignorant seamen discoursing how they have seen them creep, or, as they say, travel about in the scuppers, telling dismal stories that happened at such times: but I did never see any one stir out of the place where it was first fixed, except upon deck, where every sea washes it about: neither did I ever see any but when we have had hard rain as well as wind; and therefore do believe it is some jelly: but enough of this.
Pages 114-5

In 1707, stung by criticism from previous crew members, Dampier published a strongly-worded broadsheet in his defence, a fierce rebuttal of his critics but nevertheless a very telling portrait of his abilities as a commander:

I mention only the two actions of the voyage, on which depend the miscarriage of the whole, by the men’s disorder.
The first of which is the French ship that we engaged, that was coming to the island of Juan Fernandez to whom we gave chase from three in the afternoon, and fetched upon her so fast, that making of her to hull, I found she was a European ship and not a Spaniard, upon which I was not willing to pursue her any further, but the men being (as they pretended) in a desire of engagement, right or wrong, I followed her; and next morning early, we came up with her, and when I saw nothing would disengage them from an insignificant attempt, I encouraged them all I could. By this time my consort had given her a broadside, so I ranged up her other side and gave her a broadside likewise. Now to show the confusion they were then in, they fired upon our own consort in his falling astern, and hindered his help. Notwithstanding this I came up again, and exchanged three or four broadsides with her, wherein ten of my men suffered, nine killed and one wounded; which dismayed my men so much, they actually run off down the deck, and made nothing of it afterwards, so that when I could have boarded her and carried her, the mate, Clipperton by name, cried ‘The men are all gone’; and Bellhash, the master, whose office it was to be always upon deck, was gone also; though this gentleman is now a valiant talker to my detriment.
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