Dampier the writer/privateer

In 1697 William Dampier published a book entitled
‘A New Voyage Round The World’. It was an account
of his extensive travels with privateers and pirates in
the period 1679-1691 that also contained a large
amount of information including draughts (maps) of
geographical features, comment on the peoples
encountered and the natural history of the places
visited.


A portrait of William Dampier by Thomas Murray hanging
in the National Portrait Gallery in London.: . The portrait, probably
executed in the year 1698 is entitled
‘Captain William Dampier: Pirate and Hydrographer’

In 1699 he also published a supplement to the work,
that was part-titled ‘A Discourse of Trade-winds,
Breezes, Storms Seasons of the Year, Tides and
Currents of the Torrid Zone throughout the World
&c’ detailing oceanographic and other
phenomena. This proved of long lasting benefit
to mariners.



His New Voyage proved such a literary and maritime
sensation, that it was translated into French and Dutch
in 1698 and into German in 1702. By 1703 it had gone
through 5 editions in English and has been in print ever
since as one of the great English classics. Even today,
it appears an astounding and gripping narrative.

Throughout the work Dampier emerges as a complex
and gifted man, well worthy of consideration as one
of England’s ‘greats’ despite his joining with privateers
and pirates in the pursuit of the knowledge and
experience he craved. He ‘ever abhorred
drunkenness’, (Beken Edition of A New Voyage: 175)
for example, and he regularly stepped back from the
nefarious activities surrounding him to comment
dispassionately on them and the people involved.


His role on the voyage and his position on board is
certainly difficult to define as he appeared to rove
across the accepted barriers between poop and
forecastle, having the ear of the crew, yet often
appearing to have been in the confidence of the
commanders. As an acute shortage of provisions
appeared imminent, for example, he learnt of a plot
to kill and eat both he and his Captain. With only
three days supplies left before they were to be
despatched for the dinner table, the situation
was relieved by their fortuitous landing and
obtaining of food. Here Dampier recorded events
in a manner that provide insights into both his
position on board, his objectivity and of his
literary flair

‘This made Capt. Swan say to me, after our
arrival at Guam, Ah! Dampier, you would have
made but a poor Meal. For I was as lean as the
Captain was lusty and fleshy’ (Beken Edition: 134)

Swan was marooned soon after and command passed to
John Read, resulting in an even less palatable situation for
Dampier and even more insights into his complex character.

In one violent storm near the Philippines and when presented
with plans to travel even further into danger with a crew,
of which he was becoming increasingly weary, Dampier
presented the reader with a clear statement of his intent
and of his apparent willingness to gamble all, including his
own life, in the pursuit of knowledge and experience.

‘I was well enough satisified, knowing that the farther we
went, the more Knowledge and Experience I should get,
which was the main Thing that I regarded.

Dampier in New Holland
In respect of the Australian connection that was
the root of the Western Australian Maritime Museum’s
interests, these were best enunciated for Western
Australians in recent years in Alex George’s ‘William
Dampier in New Holland: Australia’s first natural
historian’ that was published in 1999 and in Leslie
Marchant’s tome entitled ‘An Island unto Itself: William
Dampier and New Holland’. Published in 1988, this
work traces Dampier’s path along this coast and it
also serves to place him into a European social and
literary context.

Elsewhere, mainly in Britain, there have been
numerous commentaries on the man and his travels
over the ages, each from a perspective reminiscent
of the individual author’s interests and times. These
attest to his influence, to the fact that his works were
carried on virtually all subsequent voyages by explorers
of many nations and to the influence his accounts and
voyages had on the literature of the time, including
Gulliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe.

In this particular instance, while extensively utilising
George and Marchant, recourse has also been made
to Clennell Wilkinson's 1929 edition of Dampier's work
J.A. Williamson’s learned Introduction in his 1939
edition of Dampier’s ‘Voyage to New Holland’ and to
copies of original documents in the archives, including
the court martial. These were sourced for the team
by professional British researcher Hannah Cuncliffe
of Wiltshire.

In essence, Dampier documents a landing on the
north west coast in January 1688 in the privateer
Cygnet. Under the command of John Read, they
stayed for two months, camping ashore, obtaining
water and careening the ship. Dampier provides
quite detailed accounts of his stay, as did the Dutch
East India Company explorers who preceded him on
the north and west coast of New Holland after 1606.
His disparaging comments on the peoples encountered
and the quality of the land visited were to remain the
commonly-held view of New Holland and its indigenous
peoples. These persisted until the advent of the post-
revolutionary visits of the French under Baudin. For a
variety of reasons, none of the explorers appreciated
the age-old traditions, the complexity and richness
of the Aboriginal culture.

It was a failing based on their use of the ‘yardstick’
of material wealth, riches and edifices, that has been
shared by the vast majority of Australians right up
until the 1970s and the advent of ‘multiculturalism’.

Dampier jumps ship

Dampier took many risks in the pursuit of the knowledge
and experience he craved and while at New Holland in
1688 he tried to foment rebellion and was threatened
with being marooned there as a result. This hardened
Dampier’s resolve and though he sailed with them into
even more adventures he eventually escaped from what
he describes as the ‘mad, fickle crew’ of the Cygnet.

Saving only his journal and some draughts
(maps), Dampier obtained a small vessel which he
describes as being not much larger than a ‘Thames
Wherry’ and names the ‘Nicobar Canoe’. This episode
was a real test of Dampier’s courage for in navigating
off Sumatra, they were struck by a violent storm.

Expecting to meet his end, the reader was presented
with Dampier’s mea culpa for all that had transpired to
that time when in his own words ‘our business was to
pillage’.

I had a lingering view of approaching Death, and little or no
hopes of escaping it. And I must confess that my Courage,
which I had hitherto kept up failed me here, and I made very
sad Reflections on my former life, looking back with horror
and Detestation on Actions which before I disliked, but now
trembled at the remembrance of. I had long before this
repented of that roving course of Life, but never with such
Concern as now.’
(Beken Edition, 237 18 May 1688)

It needs be noted, however, that after surviving, returning
home and conducting the voyage that is the chief subject
of this work, that Dampier returned to his roving ways. This
is dealt with in numerous other accounts, the most recent
being Alex George’s work.


Interest in the east coast of Australia

In respect of his interest in the Australian continent,
Dampier records that, after sailing 500 leagues east
from the coast of Chile, a fellow privateer, Captain Davis,
had seen a sandy island with high land behind it. Thinking
it ‘might probably be the coast of Terra Australis’, Dampier
reflected on the failure of better known explorer’s to
utilise this approach to the Great South Land.

As he does on many other occasions in the narrative,
Dampier drops his guard and openly states ‘… to
speak my Thoughts freely, I believe it is owing to the
neglect of this easy way that all the tract of Terra
Australis which bounds the South Sea is yet
undiscovered’ (Beken edition, 163).
In a statement reflecting the state of contemporary
knowledge, he said of the eastern part of the
continent:

‘New Holland is a very large Tract of Land.
It is not yet determined whether it is an island or a
main continent, but I am certain that it joins neither
to Asia, Africa nor America’.
Dampier, Beken Edition, 1998: 217

Dampier’s reputation after the publication of his
sensational account was such as to be able to
influence the Admiralty to support his leading a
voyage that was designed to remedy this situation
and to approach the uncharted eastern coast of
Australia from the Pacific Ocean and Cape Horn.

The intention was to survey it and the eastern
coast of New Guinea after making landfall around
35-40° S (about mid-way between Sydney and
Melbourne). He also intended to examine the partly
known islands between New Holland and the Dutch
Indies’ on the way home via the Cape of Good Hope
(Williamson, 1939, xxviii).


Dampier given the Roebuck

After finding the first vessel assigned to him totally
unsuited, Dampier was provided with HM Ship Roebuck
an armed three-masted vessel, 96 feet long, with a beam
of 25 feet and a crew of 50 men, including a RN officer.




William Dampier with his first book. From Neill McFall's
design for trhe stamp issue commemorating
Dampier’s arrival at Ascension Island.

Dampier’s appointment as a civilian and former privateer
to command a naval vessel, no matter how humble,
was remarkable, but his fame and influence amongst
royalty and powerful men was enough to transcend
such a hurdle, as the following quote from the diarist
John Evelyn attests
.
I dined with Mr Pepys, where was Captain Dampier, who
had been a famous buccaneer, had brought hither the painted
prince Job [Jeoly], and printed a relation of his very strange
adventure…He was now going abroad again by the King’s
encouragement, who furnished a ship of 290 tons. He
seemed a more modest man than one would imagine
by relation of the crew he had associated with’
(From George, 1999, pp 135-6).

Dampier was, on paper a reasonable choice as leader
in the long awaited explorations of the eastern coast
of Australia. To some learned commentators, his
deficiencies as a Captain were apparently as marked
as his strengths as an explorer and writer, however.
With he benefit of hindsight, Williamson was
led to remark thus, for example:

Dampier’s qualification to lead a difficult expedition lay
solely in the literary talent which had enabled him to describe
the distant parts of the earth in a book that has become a
classic. He had no record of command, or even of service as
an officer. He had occupied twelve years in drifting round
the world, for the most part in ruffianly company, and always
in subordinate positions in which he had displayed no
promise of leadership.




An impression of HM ship Roebuck by J. Allcott.

Other drifters had done the like, and there were doubtless
many scallywags who had seen as much as he had. But his
book set him in a class of his own. It proved him to be a
man of intellect, if not of character.

The Admiralty took the character for granted, and sent the
poor man out in command of a cheap expedition, with a
rotten ship and an inferior crew, and without a single
officer of any moral quality to supply his captain’s
deficiencies. The result was another classic and a
quantity of dirty linen for public laundering.
(Williamson, 1939, xxxi)



Go to the Roebuck!

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