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A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier

Diana Preston,

Michael Preston

Why we're reading this: Journeys of a buccaneer naturalist and author
[close] Journeys of a buccaneer naturalist and author

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Aug 06, 2007 Kay rated it liked it

Shelves: natural-histry, seafaring_tales, exploration-adventure, travelogues, nonfiction

Reasonably well written biography of the first man to circumnavigate the globe three times, as well as one of the unsung heroes of natural history, William Dampier (1651-1715). Dampier, as authors Diana & Michael Preston make clear, had a bad case of wanderlust. A complex man, he was torn between a buccaneer's lust for gold (particularly for ultimate of conquests, a Spanish "treasure ship" returning from the New World), and a desire to make a name for himself as a noted explorer and observer of Reasonably well written biography of the first man to circumnavigate the globe three times, as well as one of the unsung heroes of natural history, William Dampier (1651-1715). Dampier, as authors Diana & Michael Preston make clear, had a bad case of wanderlust. A complex man, he was torn between a buccaneer's lust for gold (particularly for ultimate of conquests, a Spanish "treasure ship" returning from the New World), and a desire to make a name for himself as a noted explorer and observer of uncharted lands.

After several of his voyages, he published groundbreaking books, A New Voyage to the New World (1697), Voyages and Descriptions (1699) A Voyage to New Holland (in two parts, 1703 and 1709) -- and these are the primary reason Dampier is still known today. These were to have a profound impact on figures as diverse as Charles Darwin of the Beagle to Captain Bligh of the Bounty. Dampier began the very tradition of travel writing itself, and he subsequently inspired hundreds of others to take up pen to describe their travels, as well as created a hunger for all accounts involving adventure and travel. Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe owe a direct debt to Dampier, as did subsequent explorers such as Alexander von Humboldt, James Cook, and Matthew Flinders, who charted the coast of Australia in the 19th century. He was England's "celebrated navigator," a man whose navigational observations were so accurate that generations of sea captains were able to use his maps.

Dampier was, above all things, a keen observer. Little escaped his notice, and he seemed happiest when setting out for some hitherto unexplored region or when, left to his own devices, he was exploring the jungles of equatorial South America or the arid coast of "New Holland" (present-day western Australia). At one point, he noted, he set off for a voyage to the South Seas "more to indulge my curiosity than to get wealth." During his voyages, he kept detailed journals and notebooks which, despite his continuous travels in often perilous conditions, he nearly always managed to preserve. They were filled with insights that were in many cases ahead of his time. He was the first to introduce (or even conceive of) such things as "sub-species" (a term later adopted by Darwin) and to draw accurate "wind maps" that charted the major currents and prevailing winds around the globe. He reached Australia a full eighty years before his better-known successor, Captain Cook, and he was ahead of his time, too, in his tolerant and open-minded approach to other cultures, races, and religions. Above all, Dampier was a curious man, open to new experiences and always ready for adventure.

But he was no paragon. Perhaps his greatest flaw was that he was a poor leader of men. Notably, his attempt to command a voyage of exploration was bedeviled with problems managing his crew (although he certainly wasn't alone in this respect), and he avoided responsibility, whenever possible. He had an air of superiority that did not sit well with his subordinates, and aspirations to grandeur that occasionally turned his peers against him. Basically a loner, he lived in a shipboard world that required, shall we say, a certain amount of "live and let live" forbearance that was simply not in him. His detachment that served him so well in scientific observation made him a poor commander of men.

Still, I felt more than sympathetic to Dampier, a man so clearly willing to seize the day and risk his very life rather than to settle (as he could easily have done) for a life of wealth and comfort. Time and again we see him setting off on some voyage when he'd just returned from a harrowing adventure. As a testimony and byproduct of his unstinting curiosity and restless wandering, some thousand words entered the English language through his books, words such as barbecue, tortilla, sea lion, posse, avocado, chopsticks, and cashew.

As for the biography itself, it was passably well written, as noted before, though I was slightly put off by an odd 'bracketing' technique of his life by a prologue and epilogue which were summaries of his character and influence and, in the case of the prologue, reflected on the travels the authors had undertaken on their quest to follow in his footsteps. Frankly, these two "book ends" didn't serve the book that well, and in particular I wished to have more assessment of Dampier interwoven into the text and less as a "summing up." But this is not a major flaw, more a personal preference, and I'd wholeheartedly recommend the book to anyone with an interest in exploration or natural history. ...more

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