The Complete Works of William Dampier: Containing Particular Descriptions of Life in the Torrid Zone at the Dawn of Modern Science and at the Intersection of the Golden Age of Sail, the Golden Age of Exploration, and the Golden Age of Piracy THE PIRATE-SCIENTIST WILLIAM DAMPIER (1651-1715) lived at a remarkable time in human history: at the dawn of modern science and at the intersection of three golden ages: the golden ages of sail, exploration, and piracy. Curious to see the world and keen to add to the world's sum total of useful knowledge, he ventured out upon the high seas. He kept a careful account of his adventures in the world's Torrid Zone, describing as he went the soil, rivers, harbours, tides, currents, winds, plants, fruits and animals of the lands he visited, together with the inhabitants, their customs, religion, government and trade. WILLIAM DAMPIER sailed the great southern Pacific ocean four times, was the third Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, was the first person to circumnavigate the globe three times, was the first person to visit six continents, captained England's first scientific expedition, and touched Australian shores nearly 100 years before Captain James Cook. His writing immediately made him famous throughout Europe and impacted England's great poets and writers: Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Daniel Defoe, and Jonathan Swift. His scientific efforts influenced the work of Charles Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt, Edmund Halley, and Matthew Flinders. His writing inspired the English to challenge the Spanish and Dutch dominance in the South Seas. He wrote of free trade a century before Adam Smith. He introduced important new words to the English language, words like: banana, barbeque, castaway, sea-breeze, and subspecies. He was once left for dead by a crew of vicious mutineers, but survived against all odds. Dampier was a poor pirate, but precisely because he was a pirate he was able to travel the world and discover true and lasting treasure: hard and useful foundational knowledge in the realms of science, natural history, economics and political economy, hydrography, botany, zoology, ethnography, anthropology, navigation, geography, map-making, literature, and language. INSIDE this volume you will find the complete written works of William Dampier: A New Voyage Round The World A Supplement of a Voyage Round The World Two Voyages To Campeachy A Discourse Of Winds A Voyage To New Holland A Continuation Of A Voyage To New Holland Captain Dampier's Vindication Of His Voyage To The South-Seas In The Ship St. George Available in the PIRATE JOURNAL COLLECTION The Complete Works of William Dampier: Includes A New Voyage Round the World, Voyages & Descriptions (containing: A Supplement of the Voyage Round the World, Two Voyages to Campeachy, and A Discourse of Wind), A Voyage to New Holland, A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland, and Captain Dampier's Vindication of His Voyage to the South-Seas In the Ship St. George By William Dampier Wafer's New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of Darien: The Story of His Exploits, Written by Himself By Lionel Wafer Ringrose's Buccaneers of America: The Dangerous Voyage and Bold Attempts of Captains Sharp, Watlin, Sawkins, Coxon, and Others, Performed Upon the Coasts of the South Sea: From The Journal Of Basil Ringrose By Basil Ringrose Captain Sharp's Journey Over the Isthmus of Darien and Expedition Into the South Seas: The Journal of His Expedition, Written by Himself By Bartholomew Sharp Cowley's Voyage Round the Globe: The Journal of His Adventures, Written by Himself By William Ambrosia Cowley
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Dampier's (1651-1715) adventures and writing inspired both Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels, but in his own right he was a remarkable, observant and enjoyable writer - whether on a woefully mishandled pirate raid in Spanish America or on a desperate journey to Sumatra in an open boat or on the habits of manatees or bats. He also left the first description in English of the Aborigines of Australia - thus initiating a painful, now three centuries' long encounter between peoples on opposite sides of the world. Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries � but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.
This fascinating travel and adventure book tells of pirate life and offers a rare look at the 17th-century botany and anthropology of Central and South America and the East Indies. 7 illustrations.
A man born with few advantages, William Dampier's single-minded determination to see the world bore all before it. A self-taught geographer, hydrographer and navigator, Dampier was also a keen natural historian who showed his contemporaries then-unknown regions of the world, and vividly described the exotic creatures and plants that inhabited them without exaggeration. Impressing the Admiralty with his book, A New Voyage round the World, Dampier was given command of the infamous Roebuck expedition and became the first Englishman to explore parts of Australia. But Dampier's past reared its head when he employed acquaintances from his buccaneering days, and numerous problems beset him along the way; upon his eventual return Dampier was court-martialled for cruelty. Though he lived and worked like a buccaneer Dampier filled in blank spaces on the map, and in pioneering the seaways he opened up the oceans for exploration, thus laying the foundations for the British Empire. Although lauded in his day and going on to influence many in both literary and scientific spheres, Dampier died in obscurity and his name, associated with piracy, disappeared for many years. Comprehensive and compellingly told, Anton Gill's biography charts the life and endeavours of William Dampier, his successes and his failings, and reinstates him into the pantheon of great explorers. Anton Gill has been a freelance writer since 1984, specialising in European contemporary history but latterly branching out into historical fiction. He is the winner of the H H Wingate Award for non-fiction for 'The Journey Back From Hell'. He is also the author of 'Into Darkness', 'Dance Between the Flames' and 'An Honourable Defeat'. 'The Devil's Mariner' was his first biography.
Over eighty years before James Cook arrived on the east coast of Australia, Dampier had landed on Western Australian shores -- the first English explorer to set foot on Australia. A pirate who collected plant specimens as his booty? The enigma that was William Dampier, has puzzled historians for centuries. Adventurer, explorer, travel writer, botanist, hydrographer, natural historian -- Dampier was all of these. His voyages of 1688 and 1699 resulted in an extraordinary collection of specimens, drawings and journal accounts of plants, marine and land animals, shells and insects. These were the first specimens to be taken back to England for extensive scientific scrutiny. Many of these specimens have survived to this day and are here reproduced and matched with modern photographs taken near the sites where he saw them.