William Dampier

9-1

OF THE “ROE

have seen, he treats of New Holland as a privateersman would,—glances, to use his own metaphor, at the fringe of the carpet without desire to examine the texture or the body of it, and quickly shares the disgust of his shipmates, whose dreams are wholly of plunder. But on coming home and reflecting, whilst setting about the writing of his Travels, on the land he had sighted in the distant southern ocean, it is conceivable that ambitious thoughts should begin slowly to fill his mind. The world at large at that time [Pg 86] barel

d patrons in Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax, President of the Royal Society, and one of the Lord Commissioners of the Treasury; in Edward, Earl of Oxford, one of the principal Lords of the Admiralty; and in Thomas Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, who filled the office of Lord High Admiral. His representations were successful, probably beyond his own expectations, and in the beginning of th

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eat matters from them.” The course he originally designed to take was to the westward by way of the Straits of Magellan, so as to strike the eastern coast of Australia; and there is very little doubt that had he pursued his first intention he would have anticipated nearly every discovery of importance in those waters subsequently made by his celebrated successor James Cook. Unhappily his judgment erred in one essential direction. He was of opinion that the lands lying nearest the equator would best repay the explorer. Nor perhaps could he guess how far he would have to penetrate the high latitudes if he stood south; and having passed the greater portion of his seafaring life in Mexican, Pacific, and Indian seas, his love of the sun, fortified by [Pg 88] recollection of the cold of the Horn and of the one bitter voyage he took to Newfoundland, might suffice to determine him on pinning his faith as an explorer and on limiting his curiosity as a sailor to the summer regions of the globe. Yet his grea

ey, dogs, monkeys, hogs, and the like, and then comes to the sea, from which he produces a list of twenty-three different kinds of fish. He sailed on April 3rd, and made a fair course for the coast of New Holland. The quality of the reckoning of even an expert mariner in those days may be gathered from his telling us that, seeing a large black bird flying near the ship, he suspected that he was much nearer the Cape of Good Hope than he had imagined, since it was well understood that this sort of bird is never to be met with farther than ninety miles from land. By his own account, he was two hundred and seventy miles from the Cape; but next day, meeting a vessel named the Antelope, bound to the East Indies from Table Bay, he found that L'Agulhas bore only twenty-five leagues distant. The inaccuracy of the computations of those times must needs excite the wonder of our own age of exact science. In Matthew Norwood's System of Navigation, “teaching the whole Art in a way more familiar, easie and practical than hath been hitherto done,” published in 1692,

it has ever since retained. [16] He makes this bay to lie in 25° S. latitude and 87° longitude E. from the Cape of Good Hope, “which is less,” he says, “by a hundred and ninety-five leagues than is laid down in the common draughts.” He paints a pretty picture of his first view of this place, telling us of sweet-scented trees, of shrubs gay as the rainbow with blossoms and berries, of a many-coloured vegetation, red, white, yellow, and blue, the last preponderating, and all the air round about very fragrant and delicious with the perfumes of the soil. The men caught sharks and devoured them with relish,—a hint not only of ver

n. The only sort of intercourse they succeeded in establishing was a conflict. One of the barbarians was shot dead and an English sailor wounded. Dampier says, speaking of these natives, that they had the most unpleasant looks and the worst features of any people he ever saw, “though,” says he, “I have seen a great variety of Savages.” He judges that these New Hollanders were of the same race as the people he had previously met with in his first voyage round the globe, “for,” he exclaims, “the Place I then touched at was not above forty or fifty Leagues to the N.E. of this, and these were much the same blinking Creatures; here being also abundance of the same kind of Flesh-flies teasing them, and with the same black Skins and Hair frizzled, tall, thin, etc., as these were; but we had not the Opportunity to see whether these, as the former, wanted two of their fore Teeth.” It seems to me that he blackened his portraits of these uncomely people for the same reason that we find hi

his original impulse, and that there was neither dignity nor profit to be got out of a toilsome survey of an obscure, remote, inhospitable coast. One sometimes likes to think of the return amongst us of such a man as this. If one could summon the dead from their sleep of centuries that they might behold the issue of the labours of the generations whose processions filled the time between their Then and our Now, it would be such old navigators as Dampier whom one would best like to arouse. Think of Cabot and Cartier going a tour through the United States, of Columbus taking ship by an ocean mail-steamer to the West Indies, of Bartholomew Diaz listening to the eloquence of South African legislators in the House of Assembly at Cape Town, of Mark de Niza at San Francisco, of Tasman at Hobart Town! As we watch Dampier digging for water amid the sand-hills of the Western Australian seaboard, the reality of the living present becomes a wonder even to us who are familiar with it. The shining cities, the flourishing towns, the rad

t degree satisfactory to himself. He started afresh with the intention to steer north-east, keeping the land aboard, as sailors say. His chief and perhaps only desire at that time was to fill his casks with fresh water. They once again then lifted their anchor on December 5th, 1699, but had not measured many miles when they discovered that the numerous shoals along the coast would render an inshore voyage impracticable. Dampier thereupon bore away seawards and deepened his water from eleven to thirty-two fathoms. Next day but the merest film of land was [Pg 96] in sig

eupon a couple of canoes came off to within speaking distance of the ship. The savages called to them, but their language was as unintelligible as their gestures. Dampier invited [Pg 97] them by motions to step on board, but this they declined to do, though they approached so close that they were able to see the beads, knives, hatchets, and the like, which were held up with the idea of tempting them to enter the ship. Dampier then got into his pinnace and rowed shorewards. He hailed the people there in the Malay language, but they did not understand him. Numbers of the wild men lurked in ambush behind the bushes, but on Dampier throwing some knives and toys ashore they ran out, and, wading to the boat, poured water on to their heads as a sign of friendship. He describes these people as a sort of tawny Indians with long black hair, differing but slightly from the inhabitants of Mindanao. He also noticed amongst them a number of wool

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the intentions of the natives were misunderstood; a gun was fired and several savages killed. Dampier's narrative at this point deals for some pages chiefly with the natives of New Guinea, though he shortly describes the islands and the aspect of the mainland as he sails along. So far his tone is one of disappointment, but nevertheless he keeps a very steady, honest eye upon the object of his voyage to these unknown waters. “I could have wished,” he says, “for some more favourable opportunities than had hitherto offered themselves as well for penetrating into the heart of the New discovered country as for opening a Trade with its inhabitants, both of which [Pg 99] I very well knew, could they be brought about, must prove extremely beneficial to Great Britain.” Happily the conduct of his officers and men had improved, and they seemed as willing as he to explore the new land; but he writes with knowledge of the issue, and it is impossible to miss in this narrative of his the subdued and faltering language of a discouraged heart. On March 14th

ion in the world is within a very measurable distance of the most savage. It does not appear that the obligation of having occasionally to kill a few natives greatly interfered with the friendly relations between them and Dampier's men. The ship's company went ashore and slaughtered and salted a good load of hogs, whilst the savages peered at them from their houses. “None offered to hinder our Boats landing,” writes Dampier; “but, on the contrary, were so Amicable, that one man brought ten or twelve Cocoanuts, left them on the Shore, after he had shewed them to our Men, and went out of sight. Our People, finding nothing but nets and images, brought them away; these two of my men brought in a small Ca

then those were days when enchanted islands [17] were to be met with at sea, and this great flaming scene was at once a prodigy and a terror to the sun-tanned mariners, who stared at it over the rail with every superstitious instinct in them astir. Tasman had viewed it, but the honest old Batavian did not wield Dampier's pen. It was a grand sight indeed,—a large pillar of fire crimsoning the north-west blackness, rearing its blood-red blaze higher and higher for three or four minutes a

a Chinese junk laden with tea, porcelain, and other commodities, and bound for Amboyna. The Roebuck's progress was very slow; she was coated with weeds and barnacles, and in a sea-way her timbers worked like a basket. It was not until June 23rd that they arrived at the Straits of Sunda, and at the close of the month they dropped anchor off Batavia. Here Dampier stayed for three months whilst his ship was careened and repaired. Her condition was such that one can only wonder that he and his crew ventured to sail home in her. We might scarcely credit that Dampier's patrons honestly felt much faith in his representations, and in the hopes he held out of vast and important discoveries, when we find them putting him and his crew of boys into a ship which time had made rotten probably some years before she was equipped for this voyage, if it were not that the later experiences of Anson exhibit the same profound departmental indifference and neglect on an occasion which we may assume was regarded as far more significant than Dampier's expedition. Of all the wonderful accomplishments of the English sailor, nothing to my mind is so amazing as the triumphs with which he crowns the cause of his country in defiance of the miserable indifference of the British Admiralty to him and to his labours. The best that Dampier could do [Pg 104] with his ship was so to patch her up as to enable her to carry her people home with the pumps going day and night. They sailed from Batavia on October 17th, arrived at the Cape of Good Hope on December 30th, and brought up at the island of Ascension in a sinking condition on February 21st, 1701. Even whilst Ascension was in sight the Roebuck had sprung a fresh leak, and when she anchored both hand and chain pumps were going. There was still a long stretch of ocean for them to traverse, and a ship like a sieve to measure it with. The tinkering

to Barbadoes, but Dampier, with a keen sense of his misfortunes, and anxious to justify himself to his patrons, accepted an offer to return to England in the Canterbury. “The same earnest desire,” he says, “to clear up Mistakes, to do myself Justice in the opinion of the World, and to set the Discoveries made in this unfortunate voyage in their proper Light, that it may be of use to the World, how unluck