CONCLUSION

As Dampier steps over the ship’s side the reader is prepared to learn that no more is heard of him. He is a shadow amongst a congregation of shades, and when he quits his comrades his first stride carries him into absolute obscurity, and he vanishes like a puff of tobacco smoke. One would be glad to be able to do more than give a mere handshake of farewell to such an English sailor as this. It would be pleasant to be able to follow him, to learn what sort of life he led, what new adventures, if any, he met with, what his health was, and what his means, the pleasures he took ashore, and the esteem in which he was held by those with whom he conversed before that dark old soldier Death quietly beckoned him out. I think we may take it that he never married whilst he pursued his sea-life; but when he came ashore for good he was tolerably advanced in years, and it would not be safe to conjecture what he did then. He had never known the comforts of a home, and the old seaman might find a kind of excuse for marrying in that reflection. Captain Cooke says that the net profits of Rogers’s voyage (see previous page) were fairly divided amongst the officers and [Pg 184]crew. This is to be doubted. Before the officers and crew touched a penny the Bristol merchants, of whom there was a great number in the venture, would take their share, and we may suppose that their dividend did not leave the balance a very big one for the many people who had claims upon it. A man named Hatley, who sailed in 1719 with Shelvocke and Clipperton, was wont to declare that “he knew by woeful experience how they were used on board the Duke and Dutchess; that they were never paid one-tenth of their due, and that it plainly appeared how a certain gentleman designed to treat them, by his bullying them, and endeavouring to force them from Gravesend before they had received their river pay and impress money.” [31] Dampier’s claims were no doubt ranked amongst those of the officers; but whatever his share might have been, it is not very conceivable that, invested, it yielded him an income sufficient for his plainest requirements.

He was fifty-nine years old when he returned from his last voyage. Even assuming that his health was good enough to suffer him to go on using the sea, it is more than probable that at the age of sixty he would exhibit no further taste for the hard, perilous, and unremunerative calling. Considering the eminence he had achieved, it is strange that there are no discoverable contemporary references to this portion of his life; none, at all events, that I have been able to meet with or hear of, though I have not spared inquiry. This silence might sanction the conjecture that on his return he went into the country, perhaps to his little Dorsetshire estate, if it be [Pg 185]reasonable to suppose that he had not parted with it in the time of his poverty, and died not long afterwards amid the obscurity of rural and provincial surroundings. But speculation is fruitless, and even unwise, in the face of the chance of the story of his ending being some of these days lighted upon; for the literary digger was never more active than he is now, and a spadeful of the old mould of time may yet be thrown up with information enough in it about this circumnavigator to answer all questions as to his closing years. Anyway I think we may be pretty sure that he never went to sea again. A sailor ages rapidly on the salt-beef, honeycombed biscuit, and stormy weather of his vocation, and at fifty is commonly as old in body and mind as the landsman at seventy. Dampier was a seaman when he was a boy, and no man, even in those strenuous ocean-going days, ever lived a harder and more wearing life. He had spent years in the most unhealthy and enfeebling climates in the world; he had starved on rotten food, lain unsheltered on deck through the damp and fever-breeding nights of the West Indian and Panama parallels; he had had more than most men’s share of worry and anxiety; he had drunk deep of the cup of disappointment, and he had sounded poverty to its depths. We may then fairly consider him as an old man at sixty, and assume with confidence that as he wanted both the taste and the opportunity for further seafaring, the last voyage he ever took in this world was as pilot to his friend Woodes Rogers. [32]

[Pg 186]

There is a tradition that he was known to Defoe, which Sir Walter Scott traces to a passage in the Review. Whether Defoe knew Dampier in the flesh or not, his literary obligations to him appear considerable. Captain Singleton, published in 1720; the nautical passages in Colonel Jack, published in 1722; A New Voyage Round the World, published in 1725; together with a variety of ocean incidents to be met with in Roxana, Moll Flanders, and in others of the voluminous publications of this master, seem to me directly inspired by Dampier’s writings. There were indeed Cowley, Wafer, Ringrose, Cooke, and the contemporary buccaneering authors to consult; but it is only necessary to contrast Defoe’s tales of the sea, the marine passages in his shore stories, and his accounts of foreign countries, with the descriptions of Dampier, and more particularly the reflections with which he interpolates his narratives, to perceive the true source of some of the finest of the imaginations of the author of Captain Singleton and Robinson Crusoe. Defoe exhibited his gratitude in an odd form. Here are some opening passages in his New Voyage Round the World:

“It has for some ages been thought so wonderful a thing to sail the tour or circle of the globe, that when a man has done this mighty feat he presently thinks it [Pg 187]deserves to be recorded, like Sir Francis Drake’s. So, as soon as men have acted the sailor, they come ashore and write books of their voyage, not only to make a great noise of what they have done themselves, but, pretending to show the way to others to come after them, they set up for teachers and chart-makers to posterity. Though most of them have had this misfortune, that whatever success they have had in the voyage they have had very little in the relation, except it be to tell us that a seaman, when he comes to the press, is pretty much out of his element, and that a very good sailor may make but a very indifferent author.”

Language of this sort does not sound very graciously in the mouth of a man whose best work is owing to the hints he obtains from the people whose labours and publications he ridicules. I hope I shall not be deemed heterodox if I say that, in my humble judgment, great as is my veneration for Defoe, in point of interest neither his New Voyage nor his Captain Singleton is to be compared with the narratives of Dampier, Cooke, Rogers, and Shelvocke; whilst there is a quaintness and freshness about their plain, manly, sailorly style which I instantly miss on turning to Defoe’s later books. It is quite true indeed that when the New Voyage Round the World was written the circumnavigation of the globe was no longer considered an extraordinary feat; but then forty-two years had elapsed since Dampier had sailed with the buccaneers from Virginia on his first tour, and in that interval the experiences of the journey—deemed remarkable at the time—had been often enough repeated by his own and the voyages of others, to rob the accomplishment of all its wonder. Dampier’s [Pg 188]best merits have been fairly expressed by Sir Walter Scott, whose reference to him in connection with the life of Defoe was inevitable. He speaks of him as a mariner “whose scientific skill in his profession and power of literary composition were at that time rarely found in that profession, especially amongst those rough sons of the ocean who acknowledged no peace beyond the Line, and had as natural an enmity to a South American Spaniard as a greyhound to a hare, and who, though distinguished by the somewhat mild term of buccaneer, were little better than absolute pirates.” This is true, but more may be said. Dampier was not only the finest sailor of his day—I mean in the strictly professional sense of the word—his travels are to this hour foremost among the best-written and most interesting in the language. Seafaring and literary qualifications are a rare combination even in our own age of stiff marine-examinations, of a race of naval officers distinguished for their culture and their breeding, and of a merchant navy whose masters and mates are, in the higher ranges at least, persons of education and intelligence. But in Dampier’s day the sailor, whether he fought for the throne or for merchant adventurers, or toiled for himself as a sea-carrier, was a coarse, unlettered man. The union in Dampier of the qualities which he exhibited must have rendered him something of a prodigy to his contemporaries, whilst it forms his claim upon the attention and esteem of posterity. No mariner ever observed more closely. In his Discourse of Winds he anticipates half the contents of the volumes of Piddington and Reid. [33] [Pg 189]One would say indeed that Dampier never passed an hour without pulling out his notebook. Piddington particularly calls attention to the accuracy of the old sailor’s touches in his picture of the banks of red clouds which herald the bursting of a typhoon in the China seas. He also refers to Dr. Franklin’s Letters, in which there is a paper of extracts from Dampier’s Voyages that was read at the Royal Society—he does not say when—and quotes at large, as substantiating a theory of his own, a passage in the extracts descriptive of the appearance, motion, and danger of the waterspout. So in a score of other directions. No bird of strange plumage meets Dampier’s eye but his pen, with microscopic fidelity, reproduces its hues, form, and tricks of flight and movement. He will pause in his narrative to describe a fish, and make you see it as clearly as though you leaned over the side with him watching it. All variety of products he carefully notes. He has also a quick eye for human nature, detects and dryly represents the characteristics of his shipmates, and sketches with humorous gravity the hideous New Guinea savage whose tatooings he enlarges upon, or the primrose-coloured Chinaman whose tail he measures. He is probably at his best in the Supplement he wrote to the Voyage Round the World. The mariner must have received with gratitude this remarkable description of the towns and coasts of the Dutch possessions in the East Indies and of [Pg 190]Tonquin. There was nothing in “Waggoner” at all resembling such writing as this, nothing so trustworthy, nothing indeed in any other existing sea-volume so helpful to the sailor. He was the best hydrographer and geographer of his age, and in truth in many respects I hardly know where to look for his equal when I reflect upon what he did, and consider the heroic obstinacy with which he persevered in his high resolution to observe and note down all that he saw in defiance of the distractions of a life of hardship, conflict, and brutal association, and despite the lack of the twenty scientific conveniences which now facilitate the labours of the navigator and explorer.

And perhaps those who respect his memory most will be best pleased to think he was a failure as a buccaneer. I have already quoted a passage from his preface in which he does not dissemble the repugnance with which he recurs to his life of piracy. Nothing could be more intelligible than the disgust and loathing that possessed him when he sat in silence writing his book, and thinking of the character of the persons whom it was necessary he should refer to as his intimates. They were sailors indeed, but they were also brutes; no man knew that better than Dampier; no man was better acquainted than he with the vices, the profligacy, the horrors of the every-day speech of the men whose company he had kept for months and years. [34] That quality of sympathetic [Pg 191]adhesion which the French call esprit de corps was not likely to exist in a man who, when he had parted from his shipmates, found the recollection of them insupportable. Indeed he was but a poor buccaneer. He was as courageous as the best man he ever sailed with; plunder he loved as well as the rest; but he despised and detested his associates, and probably only held his own amongst them by the exaction of that sort of respect which such fellows would feel for a man of education, of wide experience, and the best navigator of his time. The reason of his failure as a commander his own narratives make clear. His books show that he understood human nature, but his actions prove that he could not control or direct it. Nor is it hard to see why he was unsuccessful as an explorer. He appeared to exhaust his energy in theories, so that by the time he addressed himself to action nearly all his enthusiasm was gone. The importunities which led to his being placed in command of the Roebuck and despatched to the Southern Ocean must have been eloquent. No doubt he was perfectly sincere in his representations. As a privateersman he had sighted the shores of the unknown land of the antipodes; how far south it extended he could not imagine, but vast portions of it lay under heights which by analogous reasoning he could prove fertile and beautiful, rich in promise to the coloniser, and assuring an enlargement of the dominions of the sovereign by the acquisition of a territory possibly [Pg 192]vaster than the whole of Europe. All this, we may take it, he fully believed, and eagerly, impetuously, and eloquently expressed. But the passage from England to Western Australia was a long one. His ardour had cooled before he was off the coast of Brazil. He was chagrined by the behaviour of his crew, and there were other causes to cloud and chill his excitable and impressionable nature. You can see that he had lost all heart, or at least all appetite, for the quest he had undertaken long before the coast of New Holland rose over his bows. Men of Dampier’s temperament may be able to write engaging narratives of their adventures, and exhibit all the solid virtues of the sober, as well as all the airy qualities of the poetic, observer; but they are not formed of the stuff of which explorers are made. Their pulse beats too hotly at the start and too languidly towards the end. Yet the world does well to hold the name of Dampier in memory as a skilful seaman, an acute observer, an agreeable writer, and a thorough Englishman.

THE END

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]Harris’s Collection, “Cowley’s Voyage,” vol. i. 1748.

[2]A Discourse of the First Invention of Ships, p. 7. Ed. 1700.

[3]Hackluyt, i. 243. There is also a reference to sheathing in Sir Richard Hawkins’s Observations in Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1387. In 1673 an order was issued by the Lord High Admiral to sheath some of the ships of war with lead; but on Sir John Narborough a few years afterwards objecting to it, the practice was discontinued.—See Schomberg’s Naval Chronology, vol. i. 75.

[4]Preserved in Churchill’s Collections of Voyages and Travels, 1704, vol. ii.

[5]The buccaneers had “Waggoners” of their own. One was compiled by Basil Ringrose, who called it the South Sea Waggoner (circa 1682). Another by Captain Hack, the author of a History of the Buccaneers, was published in or about 1690.

[6]Dampier calls him Spragg, others Sprague.

[7]Ringrose’s account will be found in The History of the Bucaniers of America, 2 vols., 4th edition, 1741, under the section entitled “The dangerous Voyage and bold Adventures of Captain Sharp, Watling, Sawkins, Coxon, and others in the South Sea.” It is proper I should state here that the editions of the books I name are those from which I quote.

[8]“A New Voyage Round the World, describing particularly the Isthmus of America; several Coasts and Islands in the West Indies; the Isles of Cape Verd; the Passage by Terra del Fuego; the South Sea coasts of Chili, Peru, and Mexico; the Isle of Guam, one of the Ladrones, Mindanao, and other Philippine and East India Islands, near Cambodia, China, Formosa, Laconia, Celebes, etc.; New Holland, Sumatra, Nicobar Isles; the Cape of Good Hope, and Santa Hellena. Their Soil, Rivers, Harbours, Plants, Fruits, Animals, and Inhabitants. Their Customs, Religion, Government, Trade, etc.” By Captain William Dampier. Fourth Edition, 1699. This is vol. i. of the Travels.

[9]Wafer afterwards published an account of his adventures in “A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America; giving an account of the author’s abode there; the form and make of the Country, Coasts, Hills, Rivers, etc. Woods, Soil, Weather, etc. Trees, Fruit, Beasts, Birds, Fish, etc. The Indian Inhabitants, their Features, Complexions, etc.; their Manners, Customs, Employments, Marriages, Feasts, Hunting, Computation, Language, etc. With remarkable Occurrences in the South Sea and elsewhere.” It is a tedious book.

[10]Cowley’s Voyage: Harris’s Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. i., 1744. Also Cowley’s Voyage, in Captain William Hack’s Collection of Original Voyages. 1698.

[11]Cowley.

[12]Ravenau de Lussan, who was with Grognet in this action, gives us a French version of the business: “About two the Spaniards sent out a ship of eight and twenty guns to hinder Captain Grognet from joining us, as understanding by some Spaniards who had been our prisoners that he was the strongest in small arms of any in our fleet, and that they were so much the more fearful of him, when they came to know his crew consisted of Frenchmen!” This man calls Davis “David,” and says he was a Fleming, and he writes Swan’s name “Sammes.” His story is printed in The Bucaniers of America already referred to.

[13]The title runs thus:—“Voyages and Descriptions. Vol. ii. In Three Parts, viz. 1. A Supplement of the Voyage round the World, Describing the Countreys of Tonquin, Achin, Malacca, etc.: their Product, Inhabitants, Manners, Trade, Policy, etc. 2. Two Voyages to Campeachy; with a Description of the Coasts, Product, Inhabitants, Log-wood-Cutting Trade, etc., of Jucatan, Campeachy, New Spain, etc. 3. A Discourse of Trade-Winds, Breezes, Storms, Seasons of the Year, Tides and Currents of the Torrid Zone throughout the World; with an Account of Natal in Africk: its Product, Negro’s, etc. 1699.”

[14]A Voyage to New Holland, &c., in the Year 1699, by Captain William Dampier. 1709.

[15]It may spare the reader the trouble of referring to a map, to say that the longitude of the Cape is 18° 29´ E.; Frio (Brazil) 41° 57´ W.; Blanco (Peru) 81° 10´ W.

[16]It was hereabouts that Francis Pelsart was wrecked in the Batavia in 1629.

[17]For instance, Ringrose (Dampier’s companion in Sharp’s voyage) writes under date of January 9th, 1681: “There was now a great rippling sea, rising very high. It is reported there is an enchanted island hereabouts, which some positively say they have sailed over.“

[18]The statements of Harris, who may be claimed as a contemporaneous authority, are interesting on this account. He writes, of course, without the prejudices of Dampier’s sea-associates.

[19]“A Voyage Round the World, containing an account of Captain Dampier’s expedition into the South Seas, 1703-4, with the Author’s Voyage from Amapalla on the West Coast of Mexico to East India,” 1707.

[20]A Voyage Round the World by the way of the Great South Sea, by Captain George Shelvocke. Second Edition, 1757, p. 76. The whole description of his passage of the Horn, with his sketch of Staten Island, “covered with snow to the very wash of the sea,” is admirable.

[21]I should add, however, that on Selkirk repenting his rash decision, and requesting leave to return to his duty, Stradling refused to receive him on board.

[22]Norwood’s Navigation, already referred to.

[23]This term “bark” is used generically by the old writers. Rigs were few, and vessels, it would seem, took their names from their dimensions, as galleon, carrack, galley, and the like. In our own times—and it has been so for a century and a half, at least—a craft is defined by her rig. Thus a vessel rigged as a ship would be called a ship though she were only fifty tons.

[24]“A Cruising Voyage Round the World: first to the South Seas, thence to the East Indies, and homewards by the Cape of Good Hope. Begun in 1708 and finished in 1711. Containing a Journal of all the Remarkable Transactions; particularly of the taking of Puna and Guayaquil, of the Acapulco ship, and other Prizes. An Account of Alexander Selkirk’s living alone four years and four months on an Island; and a brief Description of several Countries in our Course noted for Trade, especially in the South Sea, etc.” By Captain Woodes Rogers, 1712.

[25]An Historical Account of all the Voyages Round the World, vol. i. 1773.

[26]But as a member of the committee he might also have claimed a right to participate in the dangers as well as in the commercial risks of the expedition.

[27]In A Voyage to the South Sea trade, and round the World. “Wherein an Account is given of Mr. Alexander Selkirk, his manner of Living, and taming some Wild Beasts, during the four years and four months he lived upon the uninhabited Island of Juan Fernandez,” 1712.

[28]The Englishman afterwards joined the privateersmen, and told them this story.

[29]In speaking of the English buccaneers it is necessary to distinguish them from the pirates pure and simple, such as Morgan, Teach, and the other beauties whose lives are given in Captain Charles Johnson’s delectable volumes.

[30]Moreover, there was a number of pirates on board with their booty, for the preservation of which, we may take it, they intended to fight hard.

[31]A Voyage Round the World, by Captain George Shelvocke, p. 38. The “certain gentleman” was probably Captain Dover.

[32]Since this was written I have been reminded of the discovery of Dampier’s will at Somerset House many years ago. This proves him to have died in Coleman Street, in the parish of St. Stephen, London, early in March 1714-15. The bulk of his property was left to his cousin Grace Mercer, spinster, of London, and the remainder to his brother George. His wife is not mentioned, nor the value of the property. See an article by Admiral Smyth in the United Service Journal, 1837, and The Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xiv. Art. “Dampier,” which, I may perhaps add, was not published till some time after my volume had passed through the press.

[33]The former writer observes with great justice: “We are perhaps too much accustomed to rely on our instruments nowadays, and we neglect those signs which must after all have been the barometers and simpiesometers of Drake, Cavendish, Dampier, and all our daring band of naval and commercial navigators up to the end of the last century, and still are so for our hardy fishermen and coasters.” The Sailor’s Horn Book, p. 240, 1851.

[34]Captain William Snelgrave, in his A New Account of Guinea and the Slave-Trade, 1754, paints a lively picture of the behaviour and conversation of privateersmen. “I took leave of the Captain and got into my Hammock, tho’ I could not sleep in my melancholy Circumstances. Moreover the execrable Oaths and Blasphemies I heard among the Ship’s Company shock’d me to such a degree, that in Hell itself I thought there could not be worse; for tho’ many seafaring men are given to swearing and taking God’s Name in vain, yet I could not have imagined human Nature could ever so far degenerate, as to talk in the manner those abandoned wretches did.” P. 217.

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BOSWELL’S LIFE OF JOHNSON. Introduction by Mowbray Morris. BURNS.—COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS AND LETTERS. Edited, with Life and Glossarial Index, by Alexander Smith. COWPER.—POETICAL WORKS. Edited by the Rev. W. Benham, B.D. DEFOE.—THE ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE. Introduction by H. Kingsley. DRYDEN.—POETICAL WORKS. A Revised Text and Notes. By W. D. Christie, M.A. GOLDSMITH.—MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. Edited by Prof. Masson. HORACE.—WORKS. Rendered into English Prose by James Lonsdale and S. Lee. MALORY.—LE MORTE D’ARTHUR. Sir Thomas Malory’s Book of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table. The Edition of Caxton. Revised for modern use by Sir E. Strachey, Bart. MILTON.—POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Introductions, by Prof. Masson. POPE.—POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir and Notes by Prof. Ward. SCOTT.—POETICAL WORKS. With Essay by Prof. Palgrave. SHAKESPEARE.—COMPLETE WORKS. Edited by W. G. Clarke and W. Aldis Wright. India Paper Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt edges, 10s. 6d. net. SPENSER.—COMPLETE WORKS. Edited by R. Morris. Memoir by J. W. Hales, M.A. VIRGIL.—WORKS. Rendered into English Prose by James Lonsdale and S. Lee. MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON.

Transcriber’s Note: Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant form was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. Footnotes were moved to the end of the book and numbered in one continuous sequence. Other correction: p. 20: 1776 changed to 1676. (… and sailed about the middle of February 1676.)