16 -The Age, Safurday, January 5 , 1963 
DAMPIER : FIRST ENGLISHMAN IN AUSTRALIA 
Historians have written mucli on Australia s “immunity from invasion” 
until the British settlement in 1788. Professor Clark’s new history dis- 
cusses in detail the lack of interest shown in Australia by the Hindu- 
Buddhist, Moslem, Chinese, and Christian civilisations after approaching 
her northern shores. The answer may have been provided by the first 
English explorer, William Dampier, who found Australia foodless, water- 
less, dangerous to navigation, and inhabitated by “the miserablest people 
in the world.” 
W ILLIAM DAMPIER 
was born in Somerset 
in 1651, on the day 
when Cromwell finally 
defeated the Royalists at Wor- 
cester. His parents seem to have 
died when he was young, and 
his guardian was probably glad 
when his restless ward went to 
sea as a deck-boy. 
Although he could romance when 
it pleased him. Dampier’s true ad- 
ventures would not be credited in a 
novel or film. After many voyages 
to France and Newfoundland, he 
joined the East India Company and 
the navy. Wounded in the Dutch 
vars, he went to Jamaica as a 
)lantation manager. 
He was born with two qualities 
lat influenced his whole life. First, 
had an insatiable desire to “see 
world,” not from sheer restless- 
but because he had a thirst for 
;raphical knowledge. Second, he 
•d cold weather, so that he much 
?erred « “warm voyage.’* 
Soon tiring of plantation life he 
entered the logwood industry in the 
forbidden Spanish territory of Yuca- 
tan. In the days before synthetic 
colors logwood was greatly valued 
as a dyestuff. Inevitably Dampier 
became a buccaneer when he inter- 
fered with the Spanish monopoly of 
logv.’ood. 
Students are usually puzzled by 
the words buccaneer, privateer and 
pirate. Theoretically they were quite 
different, but in the lawless days at 
sea before the British navy took 
control of the oceans in the 19th 
century they could, in fact, mean 
the same thing. 
A buccaneer was one of a group 
of adventurers (mainly English and 
French) who refused to accept the 
Spanish claim to a monopoly of 
trade in Central and South America. 
In reprisal for the death penalty 
fixed by Spain, they smuggled, 
plundered and killed from their 
West Indian strongholds. Though 
unsurpassed for cruelty and blood- 
shed. their history holds many tales 
of chivalry and loyalty to one an- 
other. 
A privateer was a private sea cap- 
tain who had a Government com- 
mission (called a letter of marque) 
to make war upon the shipping of 
an enemy Power. Although per- 
mitted to act in this w’ay by the 
law of nations, privateers received 
scant mercy at the hands of their 
i enemies. During the 1703-1814 wars 
1 French privateers seized 11.000 
' British vessels, valued at £ 100 mil- 
lion. Privateering was made illegal 
in 1856. 
A pirate was a sea robber, liable 
to execution without trial. But in- 
evitably there was only a thin line 
at times between privateering and 
piracy, and in fact very little dis- 
tinction was made between them on 
the high seas. 
William Dampier joined a small 
privateering fleet in 1684, and 
rounded Cape Horn to attack the 
coastal shipping off Spanish 
America. Then he sailed in the 
Cygnet, under Captain Swan, who 
crossed the Pacific to the Philip- 
pines in order to raid Spanish ves- 
sels in the East Indies. 
Dampier kept a very careful diary, 
and in it he proves that he was 
more interested in .scientific dis- 
covery in the broadest sense than 
in the sordid business of privateering 
or piracy. He wrote page after page 
about indigo, cochineal, animals, 
plants, fish, and native peoples. In 
fact, he combined many of the best 
qualities of mind that we associate 
with Cook and Banks. 
In order to get a rest from the 
“furious Spaniards,” the men of the 
Cygnet sailed south to New Holland. 
They touched the coast of Western 
Australia at what is now called Buc- 
caneers’ Archipelago, and the ship 
was careened at Cygnet Bay. Dam- 
pier was "full of curiosity about this 
new land, previously known only 
vaguely through the Dutch. 
But the pirates made a stay of 
only nine weeks, and were glad to 
get away again. Dampier’s descrip- 
tion of the inhabitants is well 
known: “They arc the miserablest 
people in the world. The Hodmadods 
of Monomatapa (apparently this 
means the Hottentots of Natal), 
though a nasty people, yet foV 
wealth are gentlemen to these. Set- 
ting aside their human shape, they 
differ but little from brutes.” 
The land was just as bad. It was j 
“a dry and dusty soil, destitute of i 
water except you make wells.” It 
was devoid of food, the trees were 
unknown, and “none bore any fruit 
or berries.” And, of course, there 
SECTION 
FOR 
SCHOOLS 
were no spices, aromatic woods, 
precious metals. 
When Dampier finally reached 
England in 1697 he published his 
story (with the personal details per- 
haps justifiably garbled) in “A New 
Voyage Round the World.” The 
book stirred up a good deal of in- 
terest, and in 1699 Dampier. was 
given a captain’s commission and 
ordered to sail the Roebuck (200 
tons and 12 guns) on a further ex- 
ploration of New Holland. 
If he had kept to his intention 
of rounding Cape Horn and sailing 
due cast across the southern Pacific 
he might have left little for Cook 
to discover. Indeed, his cottage from 
East Coker might now be standing 
in the Fitzroy Gardens. But he 
feared the cold and storms of the 
Horn passage, so he went by way of 
the Cape of Good Hope. 
Once again he struck the west 
coast of Australia, and once again 
he sailed north, making for lands 
“mtrrc' dlrectTyTffider the ^un’ ” HhT 
excuse was that he intended to cir- 
cumnavigate New Holland in an 
anti-clockwise direction, reaching 
the south “when it should be sum- 
mer time there.” 
Dampier sailed for five weeks on 
the same barren coasts, landing only 
four times. As before, there was 
nothing worth discovering, little 
water, no food, and the same 
“blinking creatures” for inhabi- 
tants. It was “a very tedious thing 
to sail along the shore.” so he left 
Australia to make some interesting 
discoveries in New Guinea and New 
Britain. 
After another 10 years of adven- 
ture Dampier died in 1715, almost 
in obscurity. But he had published 
a second volume entitled “A Voyage 
to New Holland in the Year 1699,” 
and both his books stimulated a 
popular interest in the South Seas 
as a possible sphere of English dis- 
covery and trade, though not par- 
ticularly in New Holland. 
Dampier was a great man in some 
ways. He was full of adventure, 
a keen and accurate observer, a good 
writer, and a patriotic Englishman. 
But he was a poor captain and a bad 
disciplinarian, and so cheated him- 
self of greater fame. One cannot 
help feeling that he would have been 
ideally happy if he could have sailed 
with Cook in the Endeavour. 
Captain William Dampier meets the natives of North-West Australia. Dampier visited Aus- 
tralia for the second lime in 1699 in command of H.M.S. Roebuck. Although sent to thoroughly 
explore the continent, he spent only five weeks upon its most barren coast, and he reported 
that it was the most miserable country In the world. 
