A Pirate Looks at 300

Old Dampier, a rough sailor, but a man of exquisite mind
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Everybody loves pirates, or at least the romantic notion of pirates. In reality, pirates, all the way back to Antiquity, were universally reviled as the worst sort of sea scum--to be exterminated without mercy. Julius Caesar was captured and ransomed by pirates as a young man. Years later, he returned to their lair and executed the lot. To this day Venetians celebrate the Feast of the Seven Virgins, commemorating the victory of the Cabinetmakers Guild in 1433 over sea rovers from Trieste who abducted a group of young brides and their dowries. The Cabinetmakers hunted the pirates down, killed them all, and retrieved the dowries (no mention is made of the erstwhile brides). My dad, in researching family history, found Triestini pirates (hopefully not hanging) on several branches of the Giraldi family tree. One presumes they called in sick for the Venetian job.

William Dampier always took pains to call himself a privateer. There was often a thin line between the two; privateers were hired men o’ war, with a warrant from the king or colonial governor to harass the enemy (usually the Spanish and later, the French). Pirates were out-and-out brigands, preying on any ship they happened across, regardless of nationality, including their own—that’s what got Blackbeard in trouble.

Born in 1651 and soon orphaned, Dampier received a good basic education in mathematics and literature, including Latin. With bleak prospects ashore, he shipped out as a sailor in the Royal Navy, learning navigation and gunnery. While still in his teens, he managed a plantation in Jamaica and worked as a logwood cutter in Yucatan. Logwood was used for textile dyes and made many a man wealthy; but not Dampier. He shipped out once again from Jamaica as mate on a merchant vessel and was the last to leave when the entire crew jumped ship in the Bay of Campeche, joining a privateer off to harass the Spanish and gather plunder in the bargain. Dampier was the first person to circumnavigate the world three times and was a keen observer of exotic places, people, and events. Unique among his fellows, he kept a journal of his voyages and published them upon each return to England.

I mentioned him to Pat around Christmas time, hinting for a copy of A Pirate of Exquisite Mind, a recent biography of the old scoundrel. Instead she found me a Dover reprint of his Third Voyage Around the World in 1692. This is infinitely superior to any biography; Dampier’s voice comes through, unfiltered, across 300 years. The Dover edition keeps the syntax and spelling of the original; Dampier talks about Indian canoas (canoes) and guanoes (iguanas). His matter-of-fact descriptions of breadfruit, bananas, and “avogado pears” were their first introductions to the English-speaking world. Dampier sailed the West Indies as well as the East Indies and cruised the Galapagos Islands, writing extensively about the giant tortoises and marine iguanas he encountered. He ends each description of an exotic plant or animal with a comment on its culinary qualities. “Most sweet and wholesome a meat” when describing what is today an endangered species makes me cringe a bit, but perhaps we shouldn’t judge too harshly. These fellows were living on the edge and in one chapter, Dampier describes his timely acquisition of several sea turtles for provisions, thereby quelling an incipient mutiny. Had he been unsuccessful, he writes, the starving crew would have eaten the ship’s officers, including him.

Dampier always kept his journals with him, tucking them into a hollowed-out bamboo sealed with wax, when he was ashore trekking across the isthmus of Darien or hobnobbing with the locals on Guam or the Philippines. Dampier was the first Englishman to explore and write about Australia (New Holland). He gave the English language the word “typhoon” and, having survived a West Indian hurricane, was the first to figure out that these storms are giant whirlwinds.

The narrative of his first voyage was a huge best seller and brought him to the attention of Samuel Peppys and the Royal Society. An adventure-hungry public snapped up his books as soon as they were printed and clamored for more. Dampier became something of a cottage industry—anyone having any vague association with him published books of their travels under his “authorship” or just mentioned his name (“Sailed with Dampier against the Spanish”) in the title.

Jonathan Swift, in Gulliver’s Travels, calls him “Cousin Dampier” in the first chapter and uses Dampier’s voyage to Australia as the model for the Land of the Talking Horses in Gulliver’s fourth voyage. Daniel Defoe modeled Robinson Crusoe on Alexander Selkirk, the sailing master of a ship sailing in company with one captained by Dampier. Selkirk had grave doubts about the seaworthiness of the Cinque Ports, and asked to be put ashore. He was marooned for four years until Dampier, on his next round-the-world voyage and serving as navigator under another captain, remembered to stop and pick him up. (It turns out that Selkirk was correct in his assessment; the Cinque Ports sailed off, never to be seen again.) Defoe also borrowed from Dampier’s account of a “Moskito Indian” picked up from another island where he was five years marooned. Samuel Taylor Coleridge based the nautical bits of his Rime of the Ancient Mariner, as well as the description of the albatross, on Dampier’s observations. A century after their publication, Captain James Cook used Dampier’s books as a pilot’s guide for anchorages and prevailing currents during his own historic voyages throughout the Pacific. A half-century after Cook, Charles Darwin read Dampier for information on the natural history of South America and the Galapagos Islands. Dampier’s observations of prevailing winds in the South Seas were included the British Admiralty’s “Sailing Instructions” until the 1930 edition.

Dampier was the first modern travel writer, giving first-hand accounts of his experiences and carefully pointing out any hearsay as such. Writer, traveler, navigator, hydrographer, naturalist, and buccaneer—how cool is that.