William Dampier (1652–1715) was an English navigator, pirate, and travel writer. He started as a buccaneer but explored Australia, New Guinea, and New Britain for the British Admiralty. A keen observer of natural phenomena, he was, in some respects, a pioneer in scientific exploration.
Born near Yeovil, Somerset, Dampier joined a band of buccaneers in 1679, crossed the Isthmus of Darien (in Central America,) and ravaged the coast south as the Juan Fernandez Islands. In a later expedition (1683,) after seizing a Danish ship at Sierra Leone, Africa, he sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and into the Pacific Ocean. He reached the Philippines, China, and Australia. He finally returned to England in 1691, where he published A New Voyage Round the World (1697.)
After exploring the west coast of Australia (1699–1700) and the shores of New Guinea and New Britain, Dampier gave his name to the Dampier Archipelago and Strait in Papua New Guinea and published his findings in A Voyage to New Holland (1703–09.) He was court-martialled for cruelty towards one of his lieutenants.
Dampier commanded two privateers to the South Seas in 1703. During this voyage, the Royal Navy officer Alexander Selkirk (the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe) was sent by his request into arid exile on one of the uninhabited Juan Fernandez Islands. Dampier returned home poor and broken in 1707 but sailed the following year again as a pilot on Privateer Woodes Rogers’s ship, which rescued Selkirk and ended his four years and four months as a castaway.
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Typhoons are a sort of violent whirlwinds. Before these whirlwinds come on… there appears a heavy cloud to the northeast which is very black near the horizon, but toward the upper part is a dull reddish color. The tempest came with great violence, but after a while, the winds ceased all at once and a calm succeeded. This lasted… an hour, more or less, then the gales were turned around, blowing with great fury from the southwest.
—William Dampier
Topics: Weather
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