Foto william dampier biography

William Dampier (1651-1715), seafarer and writer, had spent a good deal of time at sea as a buccaneer and merchant sailor before he spent three months in 1688 around King Sound (northern Western Australia) on the Cygnet.

After further trading voyages in southeast Asia he returned to England, where he wrote accounts of his travels that became very popular. Regarding him as an authority on the region, the Admiralty made him captain of the Roebuck, dispatched to explore the South Seas in January 1699.

Foto william dampier biography wikipedia

In August, he reached the coast of what is now Western Australia and named Shark Bay, but he could not find fresh water and after four weeks he departed for Timor. His impression of the west coast landscape was unfavourable and he described the Indigenous inhabitants as ‘the miserablest People in the World’.

Although he named New Britain (separated from the island of New Guinea by the Dampier Strait) in the early months of 1700, his ship was not fit for much further explo