Note 1 — DAMPIER IN THE PHILIPPINES

William Dampier, one of the most noted of English navigators and freebooters, was born of an old Somersetshire family in 1652. He received an education that would fit him for some trade, but, his parents dying while he was young, he was allowed to follow his roving bent; he was bound to the master of a ship in 1669, and made voyages to France and Newfoundland. In 1670 he sailed as a common sailor to Java, returning to England in 1672. The next year he served against the Dutch, and in 1674 went to Jamaica, where he lived for more than a year as a planter. In August of the following year (1675), he became a logwood-cutter at Campeachy, where he first met with the freebooters. The year 1678 found him in England, but in 1679 he was once more in Jamaica; and shortly after began his life as a privateer, part of his adventures being given in detail in the present text. After his return to England in 1691, not much is known of him until 1697, when he published his travels. Two years later he was deputed by the government to conduct a voyage of discovery to the South Seas, during which voyage he explored the west and northwest coasts of Australia, New Guinea, and New Britain, and named the Dampier Archipelago and Strait. He made two other circumnavigations (1703–07, and 1708–11), the last as pilot of the privateer “Duke.” His death occurred in London in 1715. Dampier also left various other writings. The seventh edition of his voyages, published in 1729, is a composite work, and contains much that is not Dampier’s own. Consequently, that edition is not used in the present instance, as we prefer to present Dampier’s own work. See Knox’s New Col. of Voyages (London, 1767), iii, pp. 28–121; and New International Encyclopædia. ↑