William Dampier in Australia (1688 and 1699): Buccaneer Explorer

William Dampier (1651-1715) was an English buccaneer, navigator and writer who visited the north-west coast of Australia twice: in 1688 aboard a pirate ship, and in 1699 in command of a Royal Navy expedition in HMS Roebuck. He was the first Englishman known to land on the Australian mainland and describe it in print, and his books made him one of the most widely read travel writers of his age.

Background: New Holland before Dampier

By the late 17th century the western half of Australia was known to Europeans as New Holland. Dutch ships had charted much of its western and northern coast, beginning with the Duyfken voyage of 1606 and the landing commemorated by the Dirk Hartog plate of 1616. In 1642 and 1644 Abel Tasman sailed for the Dutch East India Company to explore it further. The English had no first-hand knowledge of the land.

Dampier was born in East Coker, Somerset, in 1651 and went to sea young. He worked in Jamaica and in the logwood trade in Central America before joining buccaneers who raided Spanish shipping and towns along the Pacific coast of the Americas in the 1680s.

The 1688 visit

In 1686 Dampier joined the crew of the Cygnet, a buccaneer ship commanded by Charles Swan, which crossed the Pacific to the Philippines. The crew later abandoned Swan and chose John Read as captain. Seeking a quiet place to clean and repair the hull, they sailed south and in early January 1688 reached the coast of New Holland near King Sound, in today’s Kimberley region of Western Australia.

The Cygnet stayed for about two months, until March 1688. Dampier observed the land, plants and animals and the Aboriginal people of the coast, almost certainly Bardi people. His description of them was harsh and dismissive, calling them “the miserablest people in the world”, a judgement that reflected his prejudices and his failure to understand how well they lived in a demanding environment.

Dampier left the Cygnet in the Nicobar Islands later in 1688 and, after years of wandering in Asia, returned to England in 1691.

A New Voyage Round the World

In 1697 Dampier published A New Voyage Round the World. The book combined adventure with careful observations of winds, currents, plants, animals and peoples, and it became a bestseller. It made Dampier famous and attracted the attention of the Admiralty and of scientists of the Royal Society.

The Roebuck expedition of 1699

The Admiralty gave Dampier command of HMS Roebuck, an old and poorly equipped ship, to explore New Holland and the lands beyond. He sailed from England in January 1699 and reached the west coast of Australia in August 1699, naming Shark Bay after the sharks his crew caught there.

He sailed north along the coast, past the islands now called the Dampier Archipelago, to Roebuck Bay near present-day Broome. He collected plant specimens, including the plant later known as Sturt’s desert pea, and some of his pressed plants still survive at the University of Oxford. Failing to find fresh water, he left the coast in September 1699 for Timor.

His published account included some of the first descriptions of Australian wildlife for English readers, among them a small hopping animal at Shark Bay, probably a banded hare-wallaby, and the stumpy-tailed lizards of the coast.

He then explored the coasts of New Guinea and found that New Britain was a separate island, naming the strait between them. On the voyage home the Roebuck sank at Ascension Island in February 1701. The crew survived and were rescued in April 1701. In 1702 a court martial found Dampier guilty of mistreating his lieutenant, George Fisher, and declared him unfit to command a royal ship.

Later life and legacy

Dampier published A Voyage to New Holland in two parts in 1703 and 1709. He led a privateering expedition in 1703-1704 and later served as pilot on Woodes Rogers’s round-the-world voyage of 1708-1711, which rescued the castaway Alexander Selkirk from the Juan Fernández Islands. He died in London in March 1715.

His writing influenced later navigators, including James Cook, whose first voyage reached eastern Australia in 1770, and writers such as Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe. His negative report on north-west Australia also discouraged British interest in that coast for decades.

Timeline

• 1651, September: Dampier is baptised at East Coker, Somerset.
• 1688, January: The buccaneer ship Cygnet reaches the north-west coast of New Holland.
• 1688, March: The Cygnet leaves the Australian coast.
• 1697: A New Voyage Round the World is published.
• 1699, January: HMS Roebuck sails from England under Dampier.
• 1699, August: Dampier reaches and names Shark Bay.
• 1701, February: The Roebuck sinks at Ascension Island.
• 1715, March: Dampier dies in London.

Why it matters

Dampier’s visits gave the English-speaking world its first eyewitness accounts of Australia. His books combined adventure with natural history and helped set the pattern for later scientific voyages, even as his views of Aboriginal people reflected the prejudices of his time.