William Dampier (abt. 1651 - bef. 1715)

Born about 1651 in Hymerford House, East Coker, Somerset, England

Ancestors

Died before 23 Mar 1715 before about age 64 in London, Middlesex, England [uncertain]

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Biography

William Dampier is Notable.

William Dampier was born in Somerset, England.

William Dampier was an Australian explorer.

William Dampier (baptised 5 September 1651; died March 1715) was an English explorer, ex-pirate, and navigator who became the first Englishman to explore parts of what is today Australia, and the first person to circumnavigate the world three times. He has also been described as Australia's first natural historian, as well as one of the most important British explorers of the period between Sir Walter Raleigh and James Cook.

William Dampier was born in 1651, at East Coker, Somerset, England, the second son of a tenant farmer, George Dampier, who died in 1658. In 1665, his mother Anne died in the Great Plague.

At school William had a grounding in Latin and Arithmetic.
In 1669, he was apprenticed to a shipmaster in Weymouth and sailed to France and later to Newfoundland. In 1670, sailed to Java via the Cape of Good Hope on East Indiaman "John and Martha". He enlisted in the ‘Royal Navy’ in 1672 and served on board the "Royal Prince" in the battle of Texel against the Dutch in 1673.

In 1674, he sailed to Jamaica to work on Squire Helyar’s sugar plantation, where William Whaley was the manager. In 1675, he left the plantation and departed Port Royal by trading ketch for the Bay of Campeachy (Captain Hudsel). He saw the illegal ‘log-wooding’ (dye extraction) camps in progress, and sailed back to Jamaica with Hudsel. They were almost captured by the Spanish. In 1676, William went back to Campeachy to enter the logwood trade: Doing well until a hurricane struck the coast, he joined the buccaneers.

He returned to Port Royal in 1678, then went back to England. Purchased an estate, (possibly with his brother), married Judith^[1] (who is in the household of the Duchess of Grafton). Sailed back to Jamaica in 1679, after sending home the deeds of his estate, then joined the buccaneers, who in 1680 seized Portobello.

Together with the surgeon Lionel Wafer, they crossed the Isthmus of Darien (Isthmus of Panama) with the assistance of the Kuna Indians. Basil Ringrose joined them. They arrived at Panama Bay, captured a ship and sailed with some seamen from the Mosquito Coast (then called Moskito, Mosquito or Muskito Indians) to the Juan Ferdandez Islands, and arrived in late December 1680.

In 1681, at Juan Ferdandez a Moskito Indian named Will was abandoned as Spanish ships surprised them there. They headed back towards Panama and crossed the Isthmus to the Caribbean coast. There in a ship commanded by Captain Wright they joined a buccaneer fleet.

In July 1682 William arrived in Virginia, a centre for tobacco production. In 1683, Captain John Cook arrived in the "Revenge". After some unspecified problems ashore Dampier joined him.

The quartermaster was Edward Davis, the navigator Ambrose Cowley. They sailed across the Atlantic to Sierra Leone, where in an act of blatant piracy they seized a Danish slave ship and renamed the 36-gun ship "Bachelors Delight" (or "Batchelor’s Delight"). [See 1709 entry.]

In 1684, they rounded Cape Horn and sailed up the Pacific coast of South America in company with Capt. Eaton in the "Nicholas", attacking towns and ships. In March, the privateers landed on Juan Fernandez Island and recovered ‘Will’ the Moskito Indian accidentally left there three years earlier. They headed for the Galapagos. From there they proceeded to New Spain (Mexico). Cook died in June and Davis took command. Soon they were joined by the 16-gun "Cygnet" under Charles Swan and became part of a fleet of 10 ships (some French) with over 500 men in total.

In August 1685, the buccaneers split up. Davis elected to go to Peru, Dampier transferred to the "Cygnet" under Swan for Mexico, where they waited for the Manila Galleon at Acapulco. In 1686, after just missing the galleon, Swan, with Dampier’s backing, decided to sail across the Pacific from Mexico to the East Indies in search of a galleon. They left in March. In May, an acute shortage of provisions led to a plot to eat those responsible (Dampier and the captain). This was relieved by their fortuitous landing at Guam and obtaining food, including an abundance of breadfruit.

In 1687, Swan was replaced as captain by John Reed (Read) at Mindanao. They cruised the China Sea, the mouth of the Mekong, Thailand, and Canton (Guangzhou). They decided to head for the southern tip of India, which they did via the Philippines and the Celebes in the East Indies. They reached Timor and deviated south on the voyage to India to New Holland (mainland Australia).

On 6 January 1688, they landed near Swan Point, east of Cape Leveque. On 12 February they sailed out into the Indian Ocean, towards the Cocos, stopping at Christmas Island and Sumatra: On to the Nicobar Islands and in May Dampier was put ashore. Escaping he sailed in the "Nicobar Canoe" towards the English factory at Achin (Banda Aceh) but he was hit by a violent storm. In July, he left Achin for Tonquin (Tonkin) in north Vietnam, then, Cachao (Hanoi).

In February 1689, he left Cachao to return to Achin and in September left as mate on an English trading vessel bound for Malacca. There he learnt that William and Mary had been crowned King and Queen of England. He left for Fort St George. In April 1690, he met Captain Moody who had with him Prince Jeoly and his mother, who were originally from the island of Meangas near Sulawesi. In July they headed for Sumatra, where Dampier was briefly in charge of a fort at Bencoolen (Bengkuli) for the East India Company. He purchased Prince Jeoly and his mother, but she soon died.

In January 1691, he left for England with Jeoly in the "Defence" under Captain Heath, calling at Cape Town, where he described the Hottenots. He left in May, reaching the Downs in September, where he was reunited with Judith. Jeoly was sold in 1692 and exhibited at the Blue Boar Inn, London. Jeoly died later in Oxford.

In August 1693, William Dampier joined the ‘Spanish Expedition Shipping’, a privateering venture. A mutiny broke out led by William Avery. In 1694, Dampier and all who did not join the mutiny were forced to remain at La Coruña in Spain. In February 1695, the ‘Spanish Expedition Shipping' finally folded. In May, Dampier testified at a lawsuit in London for wages owing to him and others. In October 1696, he testified for the defence at the trial of the captured pirates.

In January 1697, he was still in court. In April he signed power of attorney to his wife Judith. A New Voyage Round the World is published, and he is appointed to a post in the customs at £35 per annum. In 1698, he submited a proposal to the British Admiralty for a voyage to the East Indies and New Holland: Dined with diarist John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys.

His portrait entitled ‘Pirate and Hydrographer’ was commissioned by Hans Sloane and executed in this year. In 1699, he sailed from England in the "Roebuck", down to Bahia, Brazil, mistreated and abandoned Lt Fisher RN, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, anchored in ‘Sharks Bay’ and landed on Dirk Hartog Island, East Lewis Island, Dampier Archipelago, Lagrange Bay, Ninety Mile Beach, and then Timor. At what is now Selat Dampier near New Guinea his men land on an island he called Cockle Island recovering clams ranging from 10 pounds (c.4 kg) to 258 pounds (c. 110 kg) weight. Wafer’s and Crowley’s accounts on their exploits are published.

Dampier published Voyages and Descriptions, a second volume to New Voyage, including as Part III a section entitled Discourse of the Trade-Winds, Breezes, Storms, Seasons of the Year, Tides and Currents of the Torrid Zone throughout the World, which dealt with oceanographic, meteorological, and other phenomena of import to mariners generally.

In 1700, he sailed around New Guinea to New Ireland, named New Britain, then, with his ship in need of repairs, headed back home via Batavia and Cape Town. In 1701, his ship "Roebuck" foundered at Ascension Island in the South Atlantic. They remained on Ascension Island from 24 February to 3 April when they were picked up by British ships. He arrived in England in August. In 1702, William Dampier was Court-martialled for his treatment of Lt. Fisher, and for the loss of the "Roebuck".

In 1703, A Voyage to New Holland &c. was published. He was introduced to Queen Anne by the Lord High Admiral. He was arrested in a civil action brought by Lt. Fisher; bailed and left England in command of the "St George" for a privateering voyage. He teamed up with the "Cinque Ports" and left Ireland in September for Brazil.

In 1704, he rounded the Horn and sailed up to the Juan Fernandez Islands and the coast opposite. Then up to Panama Bay, where he took several small ships. "Cinque Ports" went back down to Juan Fernandez Islands where Alexander Selkirk was marooned. Dampier in "St George" remained in Panama Bay. The mate John Clipperton and twenty others mutiny and leave in a captured prize. His crew and fleet depleted and heavily outgunned, Dampier fails to seize a Manila Galleon after a short skirmish.

Another mutiny occurred in 1705, this time on the Mexican coast. William Funnell, the mate, and John Welbe deserted and set off with others in a captured ship. Heading back towards Panama and the Gulf of Guayaquil, Dampier attacks the island of Puna, seizes a Spanish brig and abandons the now rotten "St George" in readiness to sail across the Pacific. (There are no records of this voyage).

They arrived in Batavia in 1706, but unable to produce his Letter of Marque, authorising him to be a privateer, Dampier was imprisoned. He was released in 1707 and arrived back in England, where he published his "Capt. Dampier’s vindication of his voyage to the South-Seas in the ship St. George: With some small observations…on Mr. Funnel’s chimerical relation of the voyage round the world".

In 1708, he agitated for a new privateering voyage and was appointed ‘pilot’ (navigator) under Woodes Rogers. Together the vessels "Duke" and "Dutchess" travelled via Brazil and the Falkland Islands, to Cape Horn. Edward Cooke was onboard. In 1709, they proceeded to Juan Fernandez Island picking up Alexander Selkirk who was made mate on the "Duke". They headed up the coast taking small trading vessels, sack Guayaquil, capture a French and some Spanish ships, sail up to Acapulco, capture a rich galleon, but then miss one even larger. They renamed the captured galleon "Batchelor" after one of their backers.

In 1709, the English captains Woodes Rogers, Etienne Courtney, and William Dampier, along with a crew of 110, looted Guayaquil and demanded ransom; however, they suddenly departed without collecting the ransom after an epidemic of yellow fever broke out.^[2]

Continuation of a New Voyage to New Holland &c. in the Year 1699 was published in London while he was away. In January 1710, the fleet headed home via Guam, arriving at Batavia in June and Cape Town in December, where they waited for a convoy of East Indiamen to escort them home. They left in April 1711 and travelled around the north of Scotland to Amsterdam, arriving in July. They returned to London in October. The following year, 1712, Woodes Rogers published his account.

In 1714, ’Diseased and weak in body but sound and perfect mind’, living in Coleman Street, Old Jewry, in the Parish of St Stephen; William Dampier mades his will. (Judith apparently predeceased him some years earlier), allocating one tenth of his estate to his brother George, the rest to his cousin and executrix Grace Mercer, who appears to have been his housekeeper. While £1351 14s 10d appears to have been disbursed to him from the time he embarked with Woodes Rogers to his death, there is quite some confusion how much he and his heirs actually received.

In March 1715, William Dampier died and was buried in an unmarked grave.^[3]

Dampier's will was proven 23 March 1715. It has been suggested that he died earlier that month, but he exact date and place of his death is unknown.^[4]

The Pirate Who Penned the First English-Language Guacamole Recipe

William Dampier’s food-writing firsts included the use of the words “barbecue” and “chopsticks.” Atlas Obscura author: Luke Fater

For all the perceived glamour of piracy, its practitioners lived poorly and ate worse. Skirting death, mutiny, and capture left little room for comfort or transformative culinary experience. The greatest names in piracy, wealthy by the day’s standards, ate as one today might on a poorly provisioned camping trip: dried beef, bread, and warm beer. Those of lesser fame were subject to cannibalism and scurvy. The seas were no place for an adventurous appetite.

But when one gifted pirate permitted himself a curiosity for food, he played a pioneering role in spreading ingredients and cuisines. He gave us the words “tortilla,” “soy sauce,” and “breadfruit,” while unknowingly recording the first ever recipe for guacamole. And who better to expose the Western world to the far corners of our planet’s culinary bounty than someone who by necessity made them his hiding places?

British-born William Dampier began a life of piracy in 1679 in Mexico’s Bay of Campeche. Orphaned in his late teens, Dampier set sail for the Caribbean and fell into a twentysomething job scramble. Seeing no future in logging or sugar plantations, he was sucked into the burgeoning realm of New World raiding, beginning what would be the first of his record-breaking three circumnavigations. A prolific diarist, Dampier kept a journal wrapped in a wax-sealed bamboo tube throughout his journeys. During a year-long prison sentence in Spain in 1694, Dampier would convert these notes into a novel that became a bestseller and seminal travelogue.

Parts of A New Voyage Around the World read like a 17th-century episode of No Reservations, with Dampier playing a high-stakes version of Anthony Bourdain. Aside from writing groundbreaking observations on previously un-researched subjects in meteorology, maritime navigation, and zoology, food was a constant throughout his work. He ate with the locals, observing and employing their practices not only to feed himself and his crew but to amass a body of knowledge that would expand European understanding of non-Western cuisine. In Panama, Dampier traveled with men of the Miskito tribe, hunting and eating manatee. “Their flesh is … [extraordinarily] sweet, wholesome meat,” he wrote. “The tail of a young cow is most esteemed. A calf that sucks is the most delicate meat.” His crew took to roasting filleted bellies over open flames.

Dampier was later smitten, on the island of Cape Verde, by the taste of flamingo. “The flesh of both young and old is lean and black, yet very good meat, tasting neither fishy [nor] any way unsavoury,” he wrote. “Their tongues are large, having a large knob of fat at the root, which is an excellent bit: a dish of flamingo’s tongue [is] fit for a prince’s table.” Of Galapagos penguins, Dampier found “their flesh ordinary, but their eggs [to be] good meat.” He also became a connoisseur of sea turtles, having developed a preference for grass-fed specimens of the West Indies: “They are the best of that sort, both for largeness and sweetness.”

While you won’t find flamingos, penguins, or turtles on too many contemporary menus, several contributions from A New Voyage reshaped our modern English food vocabulary.* In the Bay of Panama, Damier wrote of a fruit “as big as a large lemon … [with] skin [like] black bark, and pretty smooth.” Lacking distinct flavor, he wrote, the ripened fruit was “mixed with sugar and lime juice and beaten together [on] a plate.” This was likely the English language’s very first recipe for guacamole. Later, in the Philippines, Dampier noted of young mangoes that locals “cut them in two pieces and pickled them with salt and vinegar, in which they put some cloves of garlic.” This was the English language’s first recipe for mango chutney. His use of the terms “chopsticks,” “barbecue,” “cashew,” “kumquat,” “tortilla,” and “soy sauce” were also the first of their kind.

One entry, however, would have dire consequences for the Crown and one unfortunate crew in the South Pacific. Dampier wrote passionately of a Tahitian fruit: “When [it] is ripe it is yellow and soft; and the taste is delicious … The inside is soft, tender, and white, like the crumb of a pennyloaf.” He and his men dubbed it breadfruit. For British sugar planters of the West Indies, who struggled to feed their slaves on small plots of land, these broad-branched, fast-growing, nutritious fruits, which required little cultivation and stood up to hurricane winds, rang of an ideal solution. Dampier unknowingly sold the British on breadfruit, which served as the impetus for a British mission to bring a thousand potted breadfruit trees from the South Pacific around the Horn of Africa to the West Indies. With the ship retrofitted to shelter the saplings, the miserably crammed and mistreated crew mutinied, leading to the fiasco, book, and film that came to be known as the Mutiny on the Bounty.

In the years following its publication, A New Voyage became an international bestseller, skyrocketing Dampier to wealth and fame. The first of its kind, the work generated a hunger among European audiences for travel writing, serving as an inspiration for Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Charles Darwin brought a copy of A New Voyage with him aboard the Beagle’s voyage to South America, having cited the book as a “mine of information.” Noting his keen eye for wind and current mapping, the British Royal Navy consulted him on best practices, later extending him captainship of the HMS Roebuck, on which he was commissioned for an in-depth exploration of South Africa, Australia, and Indonesia.

Despite the popular excusal of his pirating days, Dampier eluded long-term renown due to one entry from A New Voyage. His observations on the aboriginals of Australia were employed, decades after its publication, as justification for the colonization of Oceania and the subsequent genocide of its original inhabitants. In 1697, he wrote that “the inhabitants of this country are the miserablest people in the world. They differ but little from brutes.” And indeed, viewing the aboriginals on a scientific expedition in 1770, Sir Joseph Banks, president of the British Royal Society and advisor to King George III, wrote, “So far did the prejudices which we had built on Dampier’s account influence us that we fancied we could see their color when we could scarce distinguish whether or not they were men.” The later publication of a full transcript of Dampier’s journals does indicate an up-close and far more favorable analysis of the aboriginals, yet by then the Crown’s campaign to colonize was well underway, and his reputation as a bigot was sown. For generations, Dampier was taught throughout much of the Commonwealth as, first and only, a piratical figure.

Other negative testimony accumulated against him in court-martials later on as well: He lost the Roebuck to a leak and was accused of mistreating and even marooning subordinates—par for the course in the life of a pirate. Disgraced and indebted by court fines, Dampier died penniless, and his exploits became mere footnotes between the nary-criminal lives of Sir Walter Raleigh and James Cook. Nevertheless, each time you order avocado toast, call some friends over for a barbecue, or ask for a pair of chopsticks, you are living Dampier’s legacy.

Sources

• Visit: Western Australia Divisions - Profile Tree

1. ↑ London Metropolitan Archives; London, England; Reference Number: P69/TRI2/A/007/MS09242B. Name: William Dampier; Gender: Male; Record Type: Marriage; Marriage Date: 9 Jan 1678; Marriage Place: Holy Trinity Minories, City of London, London, England; Spouse: Judith Wilson. Ancestry.com. London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: Church of England Parish Registers, 1538-1812. London, England: London Metropolitan Archives.
2. ↑ Wikipedia Guayaquil, accessed 7 Jul 2019.
3. ↑ The Western Australian Museum's."A brief timeline of Dampier's life". Revised and updated 4 April 2017.
4. ↑ Wikipedia biography Wikipedia

• Baptism: Ancestry.com. Somerset, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1531-1812 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016. Somerset Heritage Service; Taunton, Somerset, England; Somerset Parish Records, 1538-1914; Reference Number: D\P\cok.e/2/1/1.
• Memorial: Find a Grave (has image)
  Find A Grave: Memorial #178092067 (accessed 18 March 2024)
  Memorial page for William Dampier (1651-Mar 1715), citing St Katherine Coleman Church, London, City of London, Greater London, England; Maintained by Barry Michie (contributor 47110636).

See also:

• Wikipedia biography

• ADB Biography published first in hardcopy 1966

• William Dampier, Biography (Dutch) [dead link]

• Wikipedia Dampier Schiereiland (Dampier Island, named after William Dampier)

• IsGeschiedenis Dagelijkse historische achtergronden bij het nieuws William Dampier: wetenschapper en piraat 11 maart 2016 - by Jurrien Cremers

• https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-pirate-who-penned-the-first-english-language-guacamole-recipe?utm_source=pocket-newtab