William+Dampier

[[image:William_Dampier_(Source_Wikipedia_Commons).jpg width="240" height="271" align="left" caption="William Dampier (Source: Wikipedia Commons)"]]William Dampier (1651-1715)
William Dampier was an English buccaneer*. He was also a sea captain, and a naturalist (someone who studies plants and animals) and he wrote books about his travels which were very popular.

**First landing in Australia** He was the first Englishman to make landfall in Australia, landing on the North West coast of Western Australia near King Sound in 1688 in a ship called the //Cygnet//. He stayed there for a while because his ship needed repairs.

When he got back to England and wrote a book about his travels, the king and queen were so impressed that he was given command of a Royal Navy ship called the //Roebuck// and sent back to discover more about Australia.

He returned in 1699 in a ship called HMS Roebuck. His mission was to explore the east coast of Australia (which was called New Holland in those days). He landed at Shark Bay in Western Australia and started exploring. He observed plants and animals and made notes about them in his journals.
 * Second landing in Australia**

He then went northeast along the coast to Roebuck Bay, collecting specimens to take back to England. He was supposed to sail to the east coast after that but couldn't because his ship was full of holes from borers and the carpenter who was supposed to fix it wasn't very good. So he sailed off for Timor and New Guinea but had to run ashore on Ascension Island because the ship was sinking. They were marooned there for five weeks before being rescued.

Dampier was the first Englishman to make maps of Australia. Most of his papers and specimens were lost when the Roebuck sank, but they were able to save many of the maps and charts, and Dampier also had his journals which he used to write his next book. He was very careful to write down the proper names of things in his travel journal and he took back to England words like 'barbecue', 'avocado', and 'chopsticks', words which had never been heard in England before.

Dampier was not very impressed by Australia because he was looking for places to trade and there weren't any towns in Australia then. This is because the Aborigines from the Yaburara and Ngarluma tribes were hunter-gatherer nomads and they moved about from place to place to find food. They traded with each other, and in the Northern Territory the Aborigines traded sea-cucumbers with visiting Indonesians, but they did not build any towns or trading places. Dampier also wanted to find treasure to take back to England and he couldn't find any because the Aborigines did not use gold or any other metals. So Dampier went back to England saying that Australia was a miserable place.

He was also the first person to circumnavigate the world three times, in 1679, 1703 and 1708. Circumnavigate means go all the way round the world, back to where the ship started from. __Dampier landed in Australia in 1688 in the //Cygnet// on his first circumnavigation.__ His second voyage to Australia in 1699 in //HMS Roebuck// was not part of a circumnavigation because the ship sank.

1679 Dampier left England (Europe); sailed to Central America (America); then to the Spice Islands and China (Asia); then King Sound in north-west Western Australia in New Holland/ Australia); then Cape of Good Hope (Africa); then back to England. 1703 Dampier left England (Europe); sailed round Cape of Good Hope (Africa); then to Chile and round Cape Horn (South America), and then back to England. 1708 Dampier left England (Europe); then Cape Horn (South America); then Mexico (Central America); then to the Spice Islands (Asia); then round the Cape of Good Hope (Africa); and then back to England.
 * First circumnavigation 1679-1691 (mostly on a ship called the //Cygnet//).**
 * Second Circumnavigation 1703-1707 (mostly on a ship called //St George//)**
 * Third Circumnavigation 1708-1711 (mostly on a ship called //the Duke//)**

Sites to visit William Dampier, a Most Unusual Pirate [|Linda Hall Library Voyages of Circumnavigation : William Dampier]


 * Buccaneers were like 'legal' pirates. They came from Britain, France and Holland. They attacked Spanish colonies and ships in the late 17th century to steal from them. The British government gave British buccaneers a licence (called a //letter du margue//) to do this because they were always at war with Spain. The licence meant that what the buccaneers did was legal but they had to give a share of their loot to the government.