Dampier - Piracy, Turtles and Flying Foxes

Sumatra, 1686

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A New Voyage Round the World first published 1697

This extract published in Penguin Books 2007

All rights reserved

Inside-cover maps by Jeff Edwards

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-141-96314-3

William Dampier (16511715) had a long and unbelievably chaotic career, managing more by accident than design to sail around the world three times and participate in a wilderness of almost uniformly unsuccessful piratical and semi-piratical ventures. At a low point in his career, broke and back in London, he wrote A New Voyage Round the World, the first great travel book in English. In it he recounts his adventures, first in the Caribbean and Spains Pacific empire, then across Southeast Asia, Australia (of which he gives the first account in English) and home via the Cape of Good Hope. The book had an immense impact on a generation of writers, including Defoe, Swift and Pope and remains a marvellously vivid picture of people, places, animals and plants as well as being an unforgettable account of the life of a failed pirate.

In later years Dampier went on first to lead a wholly mishandled expedition to Australia and then at last to become very rich piloting a raid on a Spanish treasure-ship.

These extracts highlight several of his most memorable exploits.

Before the Reader proceeds any further in the perusal of this Work, I must bespeak a little of his Patience here to take along with him this short account of it. It is composed of a Mixed Relation of Places and Actions, in the same order of time in which they occurred, for which end I kept a Journal of every Days Observations.

In the Description of Places, their Product, &c., I have endeavoured to give what satisfaction I could to my Countrymen, though possibly describing several things that may have been much better accounted for by others. I have chosen to be more particular than might be needful, with respect to the intelligent Reader, rather than to omit what I thought might tend to the Information of Persons no less sensible and inquisitive, though not so Learned or Experienced. For this reason, my chief Care has been to be as particular as was consistent with my intended brevity, in setting down such Observables as I met with. Nor have I given myself any great Trouble, since my Return, to compare my Discoveries with those of others. Rather, because, should it so happen that I have described some places or things which others have done before me, yet in different Accounts, even of the same things, it can hardly be but there will be some new Light afforded by each of them. But after all, considering that the main of this Voyage has its Scene laid in long Tracts of the Remoter Parts, both of the East and West Indies, some of which very seldom visited by Englishmen, and others as rarely by any Europeans, I may without vanity encourage the Reader to expect many things wholly new to him, and many others more fully described than he may have seen elsewhere. For not only this Voyage, though itself of many years continuance, but also several former long and distant Voyages have qualified me for this.

As for the Actions of the Company among whom I made the greatest part of this Voyage, a Thread of which I have carried on through it, it is not to divert the Reader with them that I mention them, much less that I take any pleasure in relating them. But I do this for methods sake, and for the Readers satisfaction, who could not so well acquiesce in my Description of Places, &c. without knowing the particular Traverses I made among them, nor in these, without an Account of the Concomitant Circumstances. Besides, I could not prejudice the Truth and Sincerity of my Relation, though by Omissions only. And as for the Traverses themselves, they make for the Readers advantage, how little soever for mine, since thereby I have been the better enabled to gratify his Curiosity; as one who rambles about a Country can give usually a better account of it, than a Carrier who jogs on to his Inn, without ever going out of his Road.

*

As to my Style, it cannot be expected that a Seaman should affect Politeness. For were I able to do it, yet I think I should be little solicitous about it in a work of this Nature. I have frequently indeed divested myself of Sea-Phrases to gratify the Land Reader, for which the Seamen will hardly forgive me. And yet, possibly, I shall not seem complaisant enough to the other, because I still retain the use of so many Sea-terms. I confess I have not been at all scrupulous in this matter, either as to the one or the other of these. For I am persuaded that if what I say is intelligible, it does not matter greatly in what words it is expressed.

For the same Reason I have not been curious as to the spelling of the Names of Places, Plants, Fruits, Animals, &c. which in any of these remoter parts are given at the pleasure of Travellers, and vary according to their different Humours. Neither have I confined myself to such Names as are given by learned Authors, or so much as enquired after many of them. I write for my Countrymen, and have therefore, for the most part, used such Names as are familiar to our English Seamen, and those of our Colonies abroad, yet without neglecting others that occurred. As it might suffice me to have given such Names and Descriptions as I could, I shall leave to those of more leisure and opportunity the trouble of comparing these with the ones which other Authors have assigned.

I have nothing more to add, but that there are, here and there, some mistakes made, as to expression and the like, which will need a favourable Correction as they occur upon Reading. In other places also I may not have expressed myself so fully as I ought. But any considerable Omission that I shall recollect or be informed of, I shall endeavour to make up in those Accounts I have yet to publish. And for any Faults, I leave the Reader to the joint use of his Judgement and Candour.

I first set out of England on this Voyage at the beginning of the year 1679, in the Loyal Merchant of London, bound for Jamaica, Captain Knapman Commander. I went a Passenger, designing when I came there to go from there to the Bay of Campeachy in the Gulf of Mexico to cut Logwood, where in a former Voyage I had spent about three years in that employ. And so I was well acquainted with the place and the work.