[lit-ideas] The Voyages of William Dampier

Today's Review From
Times Literary Supplement

A Pirate of  Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: The Life of 
William  Dampier
by  Diana Preston

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Take  me to your treasure
A review by Richard Shelton

William  Dampier was a Somerset man, born in the village of East
Coker in the middle  of the seventeenth century. His memorial brass,
in the medieval parish church  of St Michael, speaks of a life
driven by a profound curiosity about the  natural world. Unstated,
but implicit in the brief list of his remarkable  achievements,
is the sustained courage essential for any exploration of  the
ocean at a time when wind was the only power, when the  determination
of longitude was problematic and many coastal seas were  uncharted:


TO THE MEMORY OF WILLIAM  DAMPIER BUCCANEER EXPLORER
HYDROGRAPHER and sometime Captain of  the Ship Roebuck
in the Royal Navy of King William the Third.  Thrice
he circumnavigated the Globe and first of all  Englishmen
explored and described the coast of Australia. An  exact
observer of all things in Earth, Sea and Air he  recorded
the knowledge won by years of danger and hardship  in
Books of Voyages and a Discourse of Winds, Tides  and
Currents which Nelson bade his midshipmen to study  and
Humboldt praised for Scientific worth.

Surely here  was a man of whom the people of East Coker could be
justly proud, a heroic  figure to add lustre and interest to an
otherwise obscure corner of England?  Strangely though, Dampier's
memorial was not erected until 1907, and even  then, its appearance
in the ancient church was not welcomed by all of the  worshippers.
One was even moved to dismiss the great explorer and  hydrographer
as "a pirate ruffian that ought to have been hung". The  basis
for his objection is given away in the otherwise laudatory words
of  the memorial which describe Dampier as first and foremost a
"buccaneer". The  word itself, the Prestons tell us, is derived
from the French boucan, the  frame of green sticks on which "boucaniers"
smoked or cured strips of meat  from the feral pigs and cattle
once common on Caribbean islands like  Hispaniola (now Haiti and
the Dominican Republic) and Tortuga. Indentured  servants who had
broken their contracts with their (usually French) employers  together
with a leavening of runaway slaves and other poor souls  living
outside the law were the original boucaniers. It was not  long
before some of this desperate company extended their  predatory
activities to the sea, where poorly defended Spanish trading  vessels
offered rich pickings to determined men with nothing to lose.
By  the time Dampier began his seafaring career, the term "buccaneer"
had become  so broadened as to embrace all categories of pirate
preying on Spanish  possessions and their merchant ships.

Some of the worst buccaneers of the  seventeenth century had started
their depredations in the semi-respectable  category of "privateers",
mariners sanctioned by "letters of marque" issued  by the British
and other governments seeking to weaken enemies by attacking  their
trade routes. At a time when governments took a far smaller  proportion
of gross national product than they do today, privateering  was
a much cheaper way of exerting sea power as an instrument of  economic
attrition than the commissioning of warships, with their  high
first cost and large crews. If the primary objective of the  parent
government was to extend its foreign policy by violent means,
that  of the privateer himself was the acquisition of wealth rather
than the  defence of his country. When a privateer placed himself
and his ship's  company in harm's way, it was usually because he
believed the potential  personal gains justified the risks rather
than in response to the kind of  Nelsonic patriotism that strengthened
the resolve of the best King's  Officers.

Great fortunes could be made by privateers and their  backers,
so the temptation to continue seizing ships and their  cargoes
after peace had returned and the letters of marque had lapsed
was  difficult to resist. The worst of such reprobates included
the ruthless  Welshman Henry Morgan, who would suspend Spaniards
by their testicles to make  them reveal their treasure, or the
equally unpleasant Edward Teach ("Black  Beard"), who swaggered
through his life of maritime robbery and extortion  with three
brace of pistols in his belt until his head was struck from  his
shoulders by the cutlass of a Scots sailor serving aboard HMS
Jane.  Small wonder then that the good people of East Coker were
hesitant about  commemorating a buccaneer in their Parish Church.

William Dampier's  father was a tenant farmer, and as a boy, William
had taken a close interest  in the progress of crops in their neighbourhood:
the first signs of his  delight in detailed observation. The squire,
Colonel William Helyar, was  impressed, and several years later,
when Dampier was already an experienced  sailor, he offered him
employment on his sugar plantation at Bybrook in  Jamaica. Tensions
between the squire and his protege meant that the job soon  came
to an end. Coming ashore at One-Bush-Key in the Gulf of  Mexico,
Dampier threw in his lot with a large and disreputable company
of  buccaneers whose principal prey was the rich but beleaguered
remnant of  Spain's colonial empire.
Like his freebooting companions, Dampier was driven  by the desire
to accumulate wealth, especially in the form of gold  bullion.
For this, he was prepared to risk his life in attacks on  ships
and settlements and to endure both the violence of hurricanes
and  the prolonged and debilitating agonies of tropical disease.
If this was  Dampier's bargain with the Devil, his bargain with
the elected captains of  the various pirate bands he joined was
to exchange their leadership and  practical experience as fighting
men with his exceptional flair for  navigation. It was a skill
for which he was to become greatly respected and  as much in demand
as that other sine qua non of sustained maritime  operations, a
competent ship's surgeon.

Had a good eye for the main  chance and a gift for position-fixing
been William Dampier's only  distinguishing attributes, his name
today is unlikely to have been  remembered. What set him apart
was his wider interest in his...

Read  the entire review  at:
http://www.powells.com/tls/review/2005_01_30



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