William Dampier (1651-1715) was an important British explorer in the 17th and into the 18th century. He was arguably the greatest explorer of his own time and introduced many words to the English language. Jan Rose explains.
A portrait of William Dampier. By Thomas Murray.
The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge said he was a genius and a man of exquisite mind. He has 1,000 entries in the Oxford English Dictionary and introduced barbecue, chopsticks, cashew and kumquat to the language. All were seen or used during his three circumnavigations of the globe, 200,000 miles, in an age when ocean travel was a life and death affair.
William Dampier, adventurer, hydrographer, naturalist - and pirate, was the pre-eminent adventurer of his day. Born in 1651 at East Coker in the western part of England, the second son of a tenant farmer, Dampier put to sea at age 21. Over the next 35 years of travel to five continents his curiosity, analytical mind and acute powers of observation would make lasting contributions in numerous fields.
He was perhaps the only truly important maritime explorer between Francis Drake of the 16th century and Capt. James Cooke in the 18th. Before piracy Dampier labored in Jamaica on a sugar plantation, harvesting logs in a mangrove swamp before deciding his way to fortune was by joining buccaneers who raided Spanish ships and Spanish-controlled coastal settlements. The life was as adventuresome as it was dangerous. To attack the town of Santa Maria, for example, the pirates had to travel overland across the Isthmus of Panama through snake and insect infested jungles and swamps. Through the years, regardless of location, Dampier always carried pen, ink, paper, and a waterproof tube to protect his notes.
He was the first to deduce that wind determines ocean currents and the first to draw wind maps. In response to an appeal from the Royal Society for sailors to provide information to improve sea travel, he not only furnished new and accurate information but also suggested theories about how his data should be interpreted. The Society summarized his work in a publication and Dampier was invited to address members, an accolade for a man with basic education.
Dampier proved a gifted navigator, pioneering new sea routes, pinpointing new lands with unsurpassed accuracy and giving tips on the best approach to avoid obstacles like shoals and reefs. His A Discourse of Trade Winds, Breezes, Storms, Seasons of the Year, Tides and Currents, written over many years by Dampier, was recommended by Admiral Horatio Nelson to lower officers, and was in use by the Royal Navy well into the 20th century.
Dampier’s travels, from the Caribbean to the Pacific, allowed him to make comparisons and contrasts between various areas of the world. Based on his observations of Brazilian waterfowl he introduced both the word and the concept of sub-species, a term borrowed by Charles Darwin in his Origin of the Species; Darwin referred to Dampier’s books as a mine of information. Possibly the first Briton to set foot in Australia, predating Cook by 80 years, Dampier first visited in 1688, and again in 1699 as captain of the Roebuck. He brought back to England species of flora and fauna sandwiched between book pages, botanical notes and drawings, and descriptions of wildlife.
Three books written in accomplished prose, A New Voyage Round the World, published in 1697, Voyages and Descriptions in 1699, and A Voyage to New Holland, published in two parts in 1703 and 1709, met with rave reviews from critics and public alike. Opening new vistas to his countrymen, his books promised things “wholly new” and they did not disappoint. Their influence led Jonathan Swift to write Gulliver’s Travels and Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe.
Dampier died in 1715.
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