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A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer,
Naturalist, and Buccaneer : The Life of William Dampier
Selkirk's Island: The True and Strange
Adventures of the Real Robinson Crusoe
In Search of Robinson Crusoe
In Search of Robinson Crusoe
Background to Discovery: Pacific
Exploration from Dampier to Cook
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 September 5,
1651 William
Dampier (d. 1715)
was christened in St Michael’s Church, East
Coker, in South
Somerset, England
(his date of birth is unknown).
He was an explorer, sea
captain, and scientific observer, and known as a buccaneer
– although he used the word himself, some dispute this.
Dampier Archipelago off Western Australia is named after him.
He was a crewmember of the pirate ship, the Cygnet,
which was beached on the northwest coast of Australia (somewhere
near
King Sound in Western Australia). He died a pauper in London in
1715.
A pirate of exquisite mind: Dampier
influences
Dampier is little known outside Britain and
Australia (and, sadly, almost forgotten in those countries), but he
had an unusual degree of influence on figures better known than he:
His observations and analysis of natural history
helped Charles
Darwin’s
and Alexander von Humboldt’s development of their
theories.
He made innovations in navigational
technology that were studied by Captain James
Cook and Admiral Horatio
Nelson.
His reports on breadfruit
led to Captain William
Bligh’s ill-fated voyage.
“Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge called Dampier a
genius and ‘a man of exquisite mind’ and advised contemporary
travel writers ‘to read and imitate him’.
“Diarists John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys dined with
Dampier. Evelyn recorded their meeting, writing of Dampier’s
‘very strange adventures’ which were ‘very extraordinary and
his observations very profitable.’ He described Dampier as ‘a
famous buccaneer’ and ‘a more modest man than one would
imagine.’ Evelyn considered Dampier such a ‘great traveler’
and ‘illustrious person’ that he recommended a medal be struck
in his honor.
 “Jonathan
Swift admired Dampier’s clear, lucid style. Captain Lemuel
Gulliver refers to his ‘cousin Dampier’ in the opening passages
of Gulliver’s Travels and there are clear parallels between
Dampier’s voyages and Gulliver’s …
“Charles Darwin took Dampier’s books, which he called ‘a mine
of information,’ aboard the ‘Beagle’ and was influenced by
them, e.g. by Dampier’s first use of the word ‘sub-species’
and by his description of the Galapagos, and drew on Dampier in
framing his theories of evolution. Darwin felt so familiar with
Dampier despite the more than 100 years between them that he
referred affectionately to ‘old Dampier’ in his diary.
“Captain James Cook and his naturalist Joseph
Banks studied and admired Dampier’s books prior to their voyages
and cited them in their own subsequent works, commending Dampier’s
accuracy …
“Admiral James Burney, a distinguished former shipmate of Captain
James Cook and brother of novelist Fanny, wrote in 1802: ‘It is
not easy to name another voyager or traveler who has given more
useful information to the world; to whom the merchant and mariner
are so much indebted, or who has communicated his information in a
more unembarrassed and intelligible manner ... unassuming, equally
free from affectation and from the most distant appearance of
invention.’
“Alexander von Humboldt, the very famous German
explorer and naturalist, was another great admirer. He believed that
later illustrious European scholars and travelers ‘added little’
to Dampier’s ‘observations’ and considered him ‘the finest
travel writer’.
“Benjamin Franklin praised the accuracy of
Dampier’s meteorological observations and cited his work.” Source
He was the first person to make the connection
between winds and currents, and the first to make integrated wind
maps of the world. His maritime charts were used by the greatest
navigator of all time, Captain James
Cook (1728 - 1779), and many others, and were of such quality
that some were used by the British Navy into the 20th
century.
Prolific wordsmith
Dampier was more than an influential writer, he
enriched the English language to an extraordinary degree and is
cited more than a thousand times in the Oxford English Dictionary.
According to
Diana Preston and Michael Preston, A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist,
and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier, among the many words and
expressions William Dampier introduced into the English language:
avocado; barbecue; breadfruit; caress (verb); cashew; chopsticks;
excursion (trip); kumquat; Nor'wester (wind); posse;
rambling; sea-breeze; sea-lion; serrated; settlement; snapper;
soy sauce; stilts (house supports); subsistence (farming);
sub-species (pre-Charles Darwin); swampy; thunder-cloud; to make
snug (as a phrase); tortilla (source).
Dampier and Robinson
Crusoe
On February
1, 1709 Real-life
castaway, Alexander Selkirk (or Selcraig) (1676 - 1721), the model for Daniel Defoe’s
Robinson
Crusoe, was rescued by the ship Duke, after four years on a deserted
island four hundred miles west of Valparaiso, Chile, by Captain Woodes Rogers and
Dampier.
After his rescue, Selkirk became a
crew member in the Rogers/Dampier pirate raids on the coast of South
America, preying on Spanish merchant ships, for another two years and did not
see the coast of England again until September 22,
1711.
The son of a shoemaker and tanner in Largo, Fife,
Selkirk was born in 1676. In his youth he displayed a quarrelsome
and unruly disposition, and having been summoned on August
27, 1695
before the kirk-session for his indecent behaviour in church,
"did not compear, having gone away to the seas".
At an early period he was engaged in buccaneer
expeditions to the South Seas, and in 1703
joined the galley Cinque Ports as sailing master. The
following year he had a dispute with the captain, and at his own
request was in October put ashore on the archipelago
of Juan Fernandez off the Chilean
coast. His skipper had gladly
obliged, happy to be rid of his trouble-making Scot.
“Selkirk took ashore with him a musket,
bullets, gun powder, a few carpenter tools, some extra clothing
and bedding, tobacco, a hatchet and most importantly as it turned
out later, a Bible. He found a cave near the beach to live in but
during the first months he was so terrified by his isolation and
loneliness that he rarely left the beach, living on shell fish.
For days Selkirk sat on the beach looking to the horizon hoping to
see a ship to rescue him. He even contemplated suicide more than
once.” Source
The story of his solitary sojourn on Más a
Tierra Island (now Isla Róbinson Crusoe) was told in a number of
versions by early 18th-Century writers such as the British essayist
Sir Richard Steele. One
of the islands of Juan Fernandez has, in tribute, since been named
Alejandro Selkirk. Selkirk, after a troubled marriage in
England, went to sea again and died at sea on December 12,
1721 at the age of 45.
Dampier and Australia
On January
4, 1688,
Dampier touched on the coast of Western Australia. Although he is credited as making the
first English contact with Nova Hollandia (New Holland, or Australia), he was not the first,
but the first to land on the continent and make significant
observations. In 1622, three decades before Dampier was even born,
the Trial was wrecked at Trial Rocks. We do not
know where these rocks are but it is likely were in the coastal
waters immediately north of the Monte Bello Islands in Western
Australia.
Dampier and the Australian
Aborigines
In Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan
Swift took his inspiration for the Yahoos of Book IV from William
Dampier’s description of the natives of New Holland (Australia).
Dampier's account, the first known of the indigenous people of
Australia, is not at all flattering and reveals more of the
xenophobic Dampier than it does of his fellow human beings:
The inhabitants of this Country are
the miserablest People in the world. The Hodmadods of Monomatapa,
though a nasty people, yet for Wealth are Genlemen to these; who
have no houses, and skin garments, Sheep, Poultry and Fruits of
the Earth, Ostrich Eggs, &c as the Hodmadods have: And setting
aside their Human Shape, they differ but little from brutes. They
are tall, straight-bodied, and thin, with small long limbs. They
have great Heads, round Foreheads, and great Brows. Their Eyelids
are always half closed, to keep the Flies out of their Eyes; they
being so troublesome here, that no fanning will keep them from
coming to one’s Face; and without the Assistance of both Hands
to keep them off, they will creep into ones Nostrils, and Mouth
too, if the lips are not shut very close; so that from their
Infancy being thus annoyed with these Insects, they do never open
their Eyes as other People: and therefore they cannot see far,
unless they hold up their Heads, as if they were looking at
somewhat over them.
They have great Bottle-Noses, pretty full Lips, and wide Mouths.
The two Fore-teeth of their Upper-jaw are wanting in all of them,
Men and Women, old and young; whether they draw them out, I know
not: Neither have they any beards. They are long-visaged, and of a
very unpleasing Aspect, having no one graceful Feature in their
Faces. Their hair is black, short, and curl’d, like that of the
negroes; and not long and lank like the common Indians. The Colour
of their Skins, both of their Faces and the rest of their Body, is
Coal-black, like that of the Negroes of Guinea.
They have no sort of Cloaths, but a piece of the Rind of a Tree
tied like a Girdle about their Waists, and a handful of long
Grass, or three or four small green Boughs of Leaves, thrust under
their Girdle, to cover their nakedness.
William Dampier, The Discovery of New Holland, Chapter
16 Source
By contrast, his description
of the Miskito Indians of the New World (Panama, then called
Darien) was more balanced:
... tall, well- made, raw-bon'd,
lusty, strong, and nimble of Foot, long -visaged, lank black Hair,
look stern, hard favour'd, and of a dark Copper- colour Complexion
...
These Moskito's are in general very
civil and kind to the English, of whom they receive a great deal
of respect, both when they are aboard their Ships, and also ashore
either in Jamaica, or elsewhere, whither they often come with the
Seamen. We always humour them, letting them go any whither as they
will, and return to their country in any Vessel bound that way, if
they please.
A New Voyage Round the World,
London, 1697
Dampier's Map of New Holland, 1699
Australian Discovery, by Prof. Ernest Scott
(free online)
Index of articles on
folklore and other topics
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