On reaching the Atlantic, Dampier found some buccaneer ships and joined them, arriving at Virginia in July, 1682. In this country he resided for a year, but tells little about it beyond hinting that great troubles befell him. In April, 1683, he joined a privateer vessel, the Revenge, but directly she was out of sight of land the crew turned pirates, which had been their intention all along. Two good narratives have been written of this voyage, one by Dampier, and the other by Cowley, the sailing-master. This venture ended in the famous circumnavigation of the world, and Dampier described every object of interest he met with, including the country and natives of the north coast of Australia, which had never been visited before by Europeans. Dampier must have found it very difficult to keep his journal so carefully and regularly, particularly in his early voyages, when he was merely a seaman before the mast or a petty officer. He tells us that he carried about with him a long piece of hollow bamboo, in which he placed his manuscript for safe keeping, waxing the ends to keep out the sea water.
After almost endless adventures and hardships, he arrived back in England in September, 1691, after a voyage of eight years, and an absence from England of twelve, without a penny piece in his pocket, nor any other property except his unfortunate friend Prince Jeoly, whom he sold on his arrival in the Thames, to supply his own immediate wants. Dampier's next voyage was in the year 1699, when he was appointed to command H.M.S. Roebuck, of twelve guns and a crew of fifty men and boys, and victualled for twenty months' cruise. The object of this voyage was to explore and map the new continent to the south of the East Indies which Dampier had discovered on his previous voyage. Had he in this next voyage taken the westward course, as he originally intended, and sailed to Australia round the Horn, it is possible that Dampier would have made many of the discoveries for which James Cook afterwards became so famous, and by striking the east coast of Australia would very likely have antedated the civilisation of that continent by fifty years. But he was persuaded, partly by his timid crew, and perhaps in some measure by his own dislike of cold temperatures, to sail by the eastward route and to double the Cape of Good Hope. The story of this voyage is given by Dampier in his book, published in 1709, "A Voyage to New Holland, etc., in the Year 1699."
After spending some unprofitable weeks on the north coast of Australia, failing to find water or to make friends with the aboriginals, scurvy broke out amongst his somewhat mutinous crew, and he sailed to New Guinea, the coast of which he saw on New Year's Day, 1700.
By this time the Roebuck was falling to pieces, her wood rotten, her hull covered with barnacles. Eventually, using the pumps day and night, they arrived, on February 21st, 1701, at Ascension Island, where the old ship sank at her anchors. Getting ashore with their belongings, they waited on this desolate island until April 3rd, when four ships arrived, three of them English men-of-war.
I was told, only the other day, by a friend who lives in the Island of St. Helena, and whose duties take him at least once each year to Ascension Island, that a story still survives amongst the inhabitants of these islands that there is hidden somewhere in the sandhills a treasure, which Dampier is believed to have put there for safe keeping, but for some reason never removed. But poor Dampier never came by a treasure in this or any other of his voyages, and though the legend is a pleasant one, it is a legend and nothing more. Dampier went on board one of the men-of-war, the Anglesea, with thirty-five of his crew. Taken to Barbadoes, he there procured a berth in another vessel, the Canterbury, in which he sailed to England.
Dampier had now made so great a name for himself by his two voyages round the globe that he was granted a commission by Prince George of Denmark to sail as a privateer in the St. George, to prey on French and Spanish ships, the terms being: "No purchase, no pay." Sailing as his consort was the Cinque Ports, whose master was Alexander Selkirk, the original of Robinson Crusoe. This voyage, fully recounted in Dampier's book, is a long tale of adventure, hardship, and disaster, and the explorer eventually returned to England a beggar. However, his travels made a great stir, and he was allowed to kiss the Queen's hand and to have the honour of relating his adventures to her.
Dampier's last voyage was in the capacity of pilot or navigating officer to Captain Woodes Rogers in the Duke, which sailed with another Bristol privateer, the Duchess, in 1708. The interesting narrative of this successful voyage is told by Rogers in his book, "A Cruising Voyage Round the World," etc., published in 1712. Another account was written by the captain of the Duchess, Edward Cooke, and published in the same year. This last voyage round the world ended at Erith on October 14th, 1711, and was the only one in which Dampier returned with any profit other than to his reputation as an explorer and navigator.
Dampier was now fifty-nine years of age, and apparently never went to sea again. In fact, he henceforth disappears from the stage altogether, and is supposed to have died in Colman Street in London, in the year 1715. Of Dampier's early life in England little is known, except that he owned, at one time, a small estate in Somersetshire, and that in 1678 he married "a young woman out of the family of the Duchess of Grafton." There is an interesting picture of Dampier in the National Portrait Gallery, painted by T. Murray, and I take this opportunity to thank the directors for their kind permission to reproduce this portrait.
One other book Dampier wrote, called a "Discourse of Winds," an interesting work, and one which added to the author's reputation as a hydrographer. There is little doubt that Defoe was inspired by the experiences and writings of Dampier, not only in his greatest work, "Robinson Crusoe," but also in "Captain Singleton," "Colonel Jack," "A New Voyage Round the World," and many of the maritime incidents in "Roxana" and "Moll Flanders."
DAN, Joseph.