William Dampier, 1651–1715 Expedition (1699–1701): One ship (Roebuck), 50 men [Click on the images below for high resolution versions.] |
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Portrait of William Dampier. From C. I. Johnstone’s Lives and Voyages of Drake, Cavendish, and Dampier, Including an Introductory View of the Earlier Discoveries in the South Sea, and the History of the Bucaniers (New York, 1832) [General Library Collection] |
What do the words avocado, barbecue, breadfruit, cashew, catamaran, and chopsticks have in common? They, and hundreds of others, were introduced into the English language by the explorer/naturalist/buccaneer William Dampier. Though he has been largely forgotten, Dampier was the most important English maritime adventurer of the seventeenth century: he was the first person to circumnavigate the world three times, the first Englishman to reach and map parts of Australia and New Guinea, and the first English best-selling travel writer. Bookended by the careers of Sir Francis Drake in the 1500s and Captain James Cook in the 1700s, Dampier's exploits fused the rakish plundering of the former with the scientific inquiry of the latter. His contributions were numerous and his influence far-reaching. |
Bellin, Jacques Nicolas, 1703–1772. “Carte des Nouvelles Philippines” (Paris, 1757). Copperplate map, with added color, 18 × 20 cm. [Historic Maps Collection] A curious map of Palau, including some of the area traversed by Dampier in the 1680s. Born in Bohemia, Jesuit Pavel Klein (Pablo Clain) arrived in the Philippines in 1682. He is credited with putting Palau on the map for Europeans, a sketch of which accompanied a letter he sent to his superior in 1697. In it, he described how a group of natives had been stranded on the northern coast of the Philippine island of Samar in December of the preceding year. The natives used a set of 87 pebbles to describe their islands, indicating in numbers the days needed to sail around or between them. Klein's letter and map were frequently reprinted, bearing the natives' inconsistencies in spelling and inaccuracies in location. [For more, see Augustin Krämer's Palau volume 1 in G. Thilenius, Results of the South Seas Expedition, 1908-1910, Hamburg, 1917.] |
Dampier’s book about his exploits, A New Voyage Round the World (1697), was a unique combination of seafaring adventure and natural history not seen before, which the public loved and the Royal Society respected. In his preface, he acknowledged that he was “Choosing to be more particular than might be needful, with respect to the intelligent Reader, rather than omit what I thought might tend to the information of persons no less sensible and inquisitive, tho not so Learned or Experienced.” And without vanity, he boasted that the reader could “expect many things wholly new to him.” In 1699, Dampier followed it with Voyages and Descriptions, which contained a significant technical work, “A Discourse of Trade-Winds, Breezes, Storms, Tides, and Currents.” Included for the first time were maps of the winds across all the world’s oceans, produced from his own experience. (See one of Dampier’s wind maps in
the Pacific Winds box in the Pacific Ocean section.) |
The Roebuck’s voyage was the British Navy’s first expedition devoted to science and exploration—a harbinger of Samuel Wallis’s, Philip Carteret’s, and James Cook’s voyages to the Pacific in the next century and numerous expeditions in the North Atlantic in search of a Northwest Passage. Dampier’s orders included bringing back specimens from places he visited and “willing” inhabitants; among the crew was someone skilled in drawing. However, several factors complicated his mission: by leaving late (the ship departed on January 14, 1699, several months before the publication of Dampier’s second book), he lost the opportunity to take the preferable route around Cape Horn despite stopping in Brazil; as a non-Navy man, he immediately encountered difficulties with the sailors. Moreover, doubts about the soundness of the ship began to surface. So the Roebuck approached New Holland from the west instead of the east, reaching the continent on August 1, 1699. They first made landfall at today’s Shark Bay, then proceeded northward for a month, during which time Dampier made a thorough scientific record of the area’s flora and fauna. His only encounter with Aborigines turned into a frightening skirmish in which he probably killed a man with his gun. In September, the ship sailed to Timor and then around the northern coast of New Guinea, where it encountered menacing natives every time the crew attempted a landing. On March 24, they entered a strait at the easternmost part of New Guinea that no voyager had previously noted; to the east was more land. Dampier had discovered new territory, which he called Nova Britannia, or New Britain. He could have sailed southward to fulfill his original plan of surveying the eastern coast of New Holland, but the Roeb uck was worm-eaten, and the men were anxious to get home. |
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“New Holland.” Views from Dampier’s A Voyage to New Holland . . . (London, 1703). [Rare Books Division] After leaving Brazil, Dampier and his men had spent more than three months at sea, traveling without stop, more than one-third of the way around the world. He describes first sighting the Australian continent from the west:
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Dampier as Ornithologist Birds seen on the coast of New Holland. From Dampier’s A Voyage to New Holland . . . (London, 1703). [Rare Books Division]
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Dampier as Botanist “Plants found in New Holland.” From Dampier’s A Voyage to New Holland . . . (London, 1703). [Rare Books Division]
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Dampier as Ichthyologist Fish taken on the coast of New Holland. From Dampier’s A Voyage to New Holland . . . (London, 1703). [Rare Books Division] [Fig. 5] This is a Fish of the Tunny kind, and agrees well enough with the Figure in Tab. 3 of the Appendix to Mr. Willughby’s History of Fishes under the Name of Gurabuca; it differs something, in the Fins especially, from Piso’s Figure of the Guarapucu. [p. 162] |
Book: Dampier, William, 1652–1715. A Voyage to New Holland, &c. in the Year 1699. . . . Vol. 3. London, 1703. Gift of Bernard Kilgore. [Rare Books Division] Dampier’s important third work, the result of his voyage of exploration and discovery aboard the Roebuck. |
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Bowen, Emanuel. “A Map of the Discoveries Made by Captn. Willm. Dampier in the Roebuck in 1699.” Copperplate map, with added color, 19 × 31 cm. From John Harris’s Navigantium atque itinerantium bibliotheca, or, A Complete Collection of Voyages and Travels (London, 1744). [Historic Maps Collection] A mixture of fresh, detailed cartography and revealing commentary. Dampier’s discovery of a strait separating New Guinea from the island he named New Britain has colonial significance, according to the note on the map: “Since it lessens the Difficulties of settling a Colony in this part of the World that might probably be attended with great Advantages, as well with respect to ye profits drawn from the Plantations as from the Commerce of the neighbouring countries.” New Guinea, however, is the “least known to Europe of any of the Eastern Countries.” As a result, Western imagination had been running wild: it is stated that most of the inhabitants are “Blacks, but there is a Nation of Whites seated in one part of it whom some have suspected to be a Remnant of ye Ten Tribes of Israel, who were carried into Captivity by the Assyrians.” Practically speaking, it is difficult to “say Positively what are the Products of New Guinea because no Europeans have penetrated beyond its coasts.” This latter statement still rings true, for, after 250 years, despite repeated European attempts at domination (Dutch, German, English), the large island country remains remote, recalcitrant, and reclusive. Probably the most telling discovery took place on August 4, 1938, when American zoologist Richard Archbold came upon the Grand Valley of the Baliem River, where fifty thousand yet-undiscovered Stone Age farmers were living in orderly villages. Known as the Dani, the people were the last large society to make first contact with the rest of the world. |
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Dampier’s route back to England took the ship to the Dutch port of Batavia on Java and then, joining a convoy of European ships, to the Cape of Good Hope, and St. Helena. By that time, the Roebuck was leaking seriously and had to be abandoned at Ascension Island. The men made tents from the sails and hunkered down until, five weeks later, they were rescued by Royal Navy vessels bound for Barbados. Once there, Dampier transferred to another ship and reached England in August 1701. He had managed to save some of his specimens and his journals. His reputation with the Admiralty, though, was tarnished forever when he was found guilty of mistreating an officer and deemed unfit to command a naval vessel. He was fined the amount of his three years’ salary. |
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“Capt. Dampiers New Voyage to New Holland & c. in 1699 &c.” Copperplate map, 16 x 28 cm. From Dampier’s A Voyage to New Holland . . . (London, 1703). [Rare Books Division] |