WILLIAM DAMPIER.* ASSUREDLY no roll of noteworthy Englishmen could omit
the name of Dampier ; but is he placed in the right category as a "man of action "? We doubt it. True, he fought gallantly in the Royal Prince,' as common sailor, against the Dutch at the age of twenty, and sailed the Spanish Main and well- nigh all other seas as buccaneer, Queen's officer, or explorer, for the nest forty years. But surely it is not for what he did.
Macmillan
• "Engliah Men of Action:" William Dampier. By W. Clark Ru-sell. London : but for what he wrote, that his memory will always remain green amongst us, and that in every generation of English- men he will number friends by the hundred,—or, let us hope, by the thousand, as leisure increases, and our masses begin to make acquaintance with and value the men of old, and, with the son of Sirach, to "praise famous men, and the fathers who begat us." For us, at least, he is the Herodotus of Englishmen,— the most open-eyed, open-minded, note-taking, delightful old gossip who ever.wandered over the great seas, the Englishman's inheritance, chronicling simply all that he saw and heard. Why, in perhaps the most daring and dangerous march ever performed even by buccaneers—after their seven months' raid on the coast of Peru in 1681, "in such canoes and periagos " (why does not Mr. Clark Russell keep to the old spelling ?) " as our Indian friends furnished us withal "—back across the Isthmus of Panama, a beaten but indomitable remnant, when "if any man faltered on the march, he must expect to be shot to death," lest he should fall alive into Spanish hands and betray his comrades' whereabouts, under torture —what is it that Dampier is really anxious about Before starting, he tells us, "I provided myself with a large joint of bambo, which I stopt at both ends, closing it with wax. In this I preserved my journals and writings from wet, though I was often forced to swim,"—for which good deed let reading Englishmen through all time be grateful to him. Saving this criticism, which, after all, affects the editor of the series more than the author, we have really nothing but praise for this book. The story of the early roving life of this born wanderer, and of his four celebrated voyages, are told within the two hundred pages, without the omission of any important point (so far as we are aware), and yet without losing the aroma of romantic daring and the poetic flavour of ocean adventure, so characteristic of the old sea-dogs of the seventeenth century, and of their simple, straightforward stories. It is a successful instance of compression, and, let us hope, may tempt many readers back to the original docu- ments, of which, of course, the first Voyage Round the World, which lasted for ten years (1681 to 1691), is by far the most original and entertaining, as well as the most important. It was dedicated on its first appearance to Charles Montague (Lord Halifax), then President of the Royal Society; and the dedication, in Mr. Russell's judgment, proves Dampier to have been an adept in the art of "literary congeeing." We cannot agree with him, and can find nothing in it either of cringing or fulsomeness, or of which a self- respecting and independent traveller need be ashamed. We quite agree with him, however, that the preface shows that Dampier had serious misgivings as to the actions of "the company among whom I made the greater part of this voyage." "As for the particular traverses I made amongst them, I would not prejudice the truth and sincerity of my relation though by omissions only. They make for the reader's advan- tage how little soever for mine." It is characteristic of the time that his narrative actually obtained for him the command of the Roebuck,' a King's ship of twelve guns, with a crew of fifty men and boys, victualled for a twenty months' cruise of discovery on the coasts of New Holland, though his rating was then only that of "able seaman;"—equally character- istic that the Roebuck' was utterly unseaworthy, and could only be kept afloat by constant pumping, till on their home- ward voyage, off Ascension, a fresh leak was sprung, and she sank. " The plank was so rotten that it broke away like dirt," he writes, " and now it was impossible to save the ship, for they could not come at the leak because the water in the run had got above it. I worked myself to encourage my men, who were very diligent, but the water still increased, and we now thought of nothing but saving our lives." This they did in the boat, and after camping out six weeks on the island, feeding on turtle and crabs, were fetched off by a man-of-war. That this voyage was not looked on as a failure at the time, may be inferred from the fact that he got another ship (this time a privateer, commissioned, however, by Prince George of Denmark, High Admiral) without difficulty; and on his return was commanded by Queen Anne to kiss her hand, and narrate some of his adventures.
We will not follow him through his wanderings, but rather devote such space as remains to some proof of our position, that he is worthy to sit by the side of the Walicarnassian. Take the test of vivid portraiture in a few lines. At the taking and burning of Leon, twenty miles from the sea, several buccaneers fell out on the road. " Next morning the Spaniards killed one of our tired men. He was a stout old grey-headed man, about eighty-four, who had served under Oliver in the time of the Irish rebellion, after which he was in Jamaica, and had followed privateering ever since. He would not accept the offer our men made him to tarry ashoar, but said he would venture as far as the best of them ; and when surrounded by the Spaniards he refused to take quarter, so they shot him dead at a distance. He was a very merry, hearty, old man, and always used to declare he would never take quarter." The old sea-lion ! His name was Swan. Or the finding of the Mosquito Indian on the island of "John Fernando" (as Dampier calls it), who had been left there three years before by Captain Walling (p. 54). Or how the Revenge' was got to wear when she was lying broached to in the trough of the sea, in the worst storm he was ever in (p. 53) : —" I was at this time on deck with some others of our men, and among the rest one Mr. John Smallbone, who was the main instrument at this time of saving us. Come, said he to me, let us go a little way up the fore-shrouds, it may be that we may make the ship wear, for I have been doing it before now. He never tarried for an answer, but run forward presently, and I followed him. We went up the shrouds, half-mast up, and there we spread abroad the flaps of our coats, and presently the ship wore. I think we did not stay there above three minutes before we gained our point and came down again." Or his treatment for the dropsy, on Prince Edward's Island in 1685 :—" I had been a long time sick of dropsie, so here I was laid and covered all but my head in the hot sand. I indured it for half-an-hour, and then was taken out and laid to sweat in a tent. I did sweat exceedingly while I was in the sand, and I do believe it did me much good, for I grew well soon after." Or take his account of the Mosquito Indians, those marvellous harpooners, who loved the English and hated the Spaniard, and when on an expedi- tion, "never gave back while any of the party staid ;" and whose devil, "whom they call Wallasan, often appears to some among them whom our men call their priests, when they desire to speak with him on urgent business." But probably the present generation know the subject better from Charles
Kingsley's Westward Ho, and ballad of " The Last Buccaneer," than from any other source. Let us see, then, what the poet dreamed, and the old rover saw and heard of the pirate's paradise :— " Oh, sweet it was in Ares to hear the evening breeze,
Aswing with good tobacco on a net between the trees, With a Negro lass to fan you, and listen to the roar Of the breakers on the rocks outside, that never came ashore."
Ares, Dampier tells us, so called from its great plenty of birds—" men-of-war and boobies," he mentions : " Paroquets and humming-birds so gorgeous to behold" (Kingsley)—is four miles long and one and a half broad, with a great rocky
bank, " The Riff," thrown up by the sea on the south, and a good harbour on the north. Shortly before Dampier was there, the French Admiral Count D'Estree's ship had gone ashore on the back of " The Riff," and several of the fleet after him, mistaking his signals. Of the French who escaped to the island, most " died like rotten sheep, being unaccustomed to hardships. But the privateers, from whom I had this relation,
being used to such hardships, lived merrily. If they had gone to Jamaica with £30 a man, they could not have enjoyed them- selves more ; for they kept in a gang by themselves, and watched
when the ships broke to get the goods that came from them, and though much was stayed against the rocks, yet abundance of wine and brandy floated over ' The Riff,' where the priva- teers waited to take it up There were about forty Frenchmen on board one of the ships where there was good store of liquor, till the after-part of her broke away and floated over the Riff, and was carried away to sea with all the men drinking and singing, who being in drink did not mind the danger, but were never heard of afterwards."
"And now I'm old and going—I'm sure I can't tell where— One comfort is, this world's so hard I can't be worse off there— If I could but be a sea-dove, I'd fly back across the main To the pleasant isle of Ayes, to see it once again."
Let us hope that Dampier had not so hopeless an ending as the last of the buccaneers. Nothing is known of him after his return from his last voyage in 1711; but as the net profits of the
plunder came to £170,000, his share, though no longer a Captain, but only pilot to the expedition, kept him probably from having to beg. He has made his mark, at any rate, on the map of the world by the name, " New Britain " and others, which he gave to places in tropical seas ; and his own, in " Dampier's Straits," will probably go down to the end of time.
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