William Dampier, born in Somerset in 1651, served briefly in the Royal Navy, managed a Jamaican plantation, logged in Mexico, married in 1679 and joined buccaneer crews under captains Bartholomew Sharp, John Cook and Charles Swan. While they crossed the Darien Gap and raided Spanish ships and towns, he recorded winds, currents, avocados, flamingos and manatees, sealing his journals in wax-plugged bamboo tubes. His first world voyage reached the Philippines, China, the Spice Islands and northwest Australia in 1688. Marooned on the Nicobar Islands, he rigged a canoe with a sail and outrigger and survived a storm to reach Sumatra, returning to England penniless in 1691.
His 1697 book A New Voyage Round the World was a sensation, and King William III gave him command of HMS Roebuck to explore New Holland, where he named Shark Bay. Shipworms rotted the Roebuck until she sank off Ascension Island, and a court martial for his treatment of Lieutenant George Fisher barred him from naval command. As captain of the privateer St. George he lost Alexander Selkirk, marooned in the Juan Fernandez islands. Serving only as pilot under Woodes Rogers in 1708, he helped rescue Selkirk and capture a Manila galleon, yet died in 1715 nearly 2,000 pounds in debt.
- He brought home Jeoly, a tattooed enslaved man bought in Mindanao, sold him to London’s Blue Boar Inn as a sideshow, and Jeoly died of smallpox three months later.
- His journals are the first known English source for barbecue, chopsticks, avocado and subspecies.
- Selkirk’s survival on the island inspired Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.
- Captain James Cook relied on his charts, and Humboldt and Darwin studied his natural history.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him a rough sailor but a man of exquisite mind.
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