Perhaps we need to start a new series called Wessex Unworthies. The happy-looking fellow above is William Dampier, a famous Wessaxon who is best known as the man who rescued Alexander Selkirk, believed to be the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, and for being the first person to circumnavigate the globe three times. But he was also a pirate, a racist and a slave trader, who was court-martialled by the Admiralty for cruelty.
Dampier was born in East Coker in 1651 and educated at King’s School, Bruton. He sailed to Newfoundland and Java before joining the Royal Navy in 1673. Ill health cut short his naval career, but by 1679, he had recovered enough to join the crew of Captain Bartholomew Sharp, a pirate of the Caribbean. He later transferred to another pirate ship, the Cygnet. upon which he managed his first circumnavigation. During a long layover in Australia, Dampier made a detailed description of the local fauna and flora, interspersed with racist remarks about the natives. He returned to England in 1691 accompanied by his new best friend, an Indonesian named Jeoly, who he promptly flogged off to London slave dealers after exhibiting him like a zoo animal at the Blue Boar Inn on Fleet Street , and who died of smallpox three months later.
In 1697, he published his diaries in the form of a bestselling book called A New Voyage Round the World, interest in which led to the Admiralty giving him command of a 26-gun warship, the HMS Roebuck. Under Dampier’s command, the Roebuck ran aground on Ascension Island. and Dampier and his crew had to be returned to England by a ship belonging to the East India Company. He was court-martialled on three charges, including the death of his boatswain, and found guilty on one; excessive cruelty to his lieutenant, George Fisher, who Dampier had removed from his ship and jailed in Brazil.
This was not the end of his career, however. During the War of Spanish Succession in 1701, Dampier was given command of another warship, the St George, but this ended up running aground in Peru, and Dampier once again had to hitch a lift back to England. Astute readers may be starting to notice a pattern here.
Unable to persuade the Admiralty to let him destroy any more of their warships, Dampier was employed as a sailing master on the privateer Duke, under the captaincy of Woodes Rogers. It was on this voyage, his third and final circumnavigation of the globe, that he rescued Alexander Selkirk, his former crewmate, now a castaway on the island of Más a Tierra, since renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in honour of the fictionalised account of Selkirk’s life.
Dampier returned to London in 1711, and died four years later, at the age of 63. The exact date and circumstances of his death are not recorded. He is cited over 80 times in the Oxford English Dictionary, introducing such words as avocado, barbecue and chopstick into the English language, as well as translating recipes for mango chutney and guacamole into English. Less happily, his exhibition of Jeoly kick-started the later fashion for “human zoos”, while his writings on breadfruit inspired the ill-fated voyage of the HMS Bounty. Whilst his achievements cannot be overlooked, he comes across as a thoroughly nasty piece of work, and a reminder of the less savoury aspects of Wessex’s maritime heritage.