[lit-ideas] The Voyages of William Dampier
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 11:48:23 EST
Today's Review From
Times Literary Supplement
A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: The Life of
William Dampier
by Diana Preston
<<>
Read today's review in HTML at:
http://www.powells.com/tls/review/2005_01_30
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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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