William Dampier. William Clark Russell
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he was happy if he could confirm with his lead and log-line the reckonings he arrived at with his forestaff.
It is proper to remember all these conditions of the sea-vocation in reviewing the life of William Dampier. The habit of self-reliance makes the character of the sea-worthies of his age admirable, and it qualified them for their great undertakings and achievements. They were helped with nothing from science that can be mentioned with gravity. The ocean was to them as blank as it looks to the landsman's eye, and it was their business to find out the roads to the wonders and mysteries which lay hidden leagues down behind its familiar shining line. If a sailor nowadays is at fault he can seek and find the hints and assurances he desires in twenty directions. He has Admiralty charts of incomparable accuracy. He has a deep-sea lead with which he can feel the ground whilst his ship moves through the water at fourteen knots an hour. He has instruments for indicating the angle to which his vessel rolls, and for showing him instantly her trim as she sits upon the water. He has a dial that registers on deck, under his eye, the number of miles his ship has made since any hour he chooses to time her from. His chronometer may be accepted as among the most perfect examples of human skill. Dampier and such as he wanted all these adjuncts to their calling. But it cannot be disputed that they were the better sailors for the very poverty of their equipment in this way. It forced upon them faith in nothing but their own observation, so that there never was a race of sailors who kept their eyes wider open and examined more closely those points which have long since slided into the dull prosaics of the deep. No one can follow them without wonder and admiration. We find them in crafts of forty, twenty, even ten tons—boats half-decked and undecked—exploring the frozen silence of the North Pole, beating to the westward against the fierce surge of the Horn, seeking land amidst the vast desolation of the southern ocean, and making new history for their country upon the coast of North America and in the waters of the Mozambique. Their lion-hearts carry them all over the world, and they have nothing to help them but the lead-line over the side and a quadrant big enough to serve as a gallows. Nor was the ocean quite as it is now. In Dampier's time it was still gloomy with mysteries, and there lingered many a dark and terrifying superstition, whose origin was to be traced to those early Portuguese and Spanish sailors who chanted a litany when they saw St. Elmo's Fire glittering at the masthead, and exorcised the demon of the waterspout by elevating their swords in the form of crosses. The mermaid still rose in the tranquil blue waters alongside, and with impassioned eyes and white and wooing arms courted the startled seaman to share her coral pavilion at the bottom of the sea. The enchanted island, steeped in the purple splendour of a radiance that owed nothing of its glory to the heavens, was yet to be discovered by seeking. The darkness of the storm was thronged with gigantic shadowy shapes of fleeting spirits. Amid the tranquillity of the midnight calm, dim fiery figures of undeterminable proportions floated in the black profound, and voices as of human creatures could be heard out of the hush on the deep syllabling the names of the listening and affrighted crew. It is true that the Jack of Dampier's time was not so amazingly superstitious as we find him in the pages of Purchas and Hackluyt. He was not quite so young-eyed as the ancient mariner of the Elizabethan and preceding ages. Nevertheless he was still exceedingly credulous, and he never embarked on a voyage into distant parts without a mind prepared for marvels of many sorts. Also let us remember the shadowiness of the globe whose oceans he was to navigate, the vagueness of countries now as well known to us as our own island home. Australia was rising upon the gaze of the world like a new moon, the greater part of whose disk lies in black shadow. Islands which now have their newspapers and their hotels were uncharted, were less real than the white shoulders of clouds dipping upon the sea-line. Of countries whose coast had been sighted, but whose interiors were unknown, wild guesses at the wonders within resulted in hair-stirring imaginations. These and more than there is room to name are conditions of the early mariner's vocational life, which we must take care to bear in mind as we accompany him in his adventures, or certainly we shall fail to compass the full significance of his magnificent resolution, his incomparable spirit, and his admirable intrepidity.
CHAPTER II
1652–1681
DAMPIER'S EARLY LIFE—CAMPECHÉ—HE JOINS THE BUCCANEERS
There is an account of Dampier's early life written by himself in the second volume of his Travels. I do not know that anything is to be added to what he there tells us. A man should be accepted as an authority on his own career when it comes to a question of dates and adventures. The interest of this sailor's life really begins with his own account of his first voyage round the world; and though he is a very conspicuous figure in English maritime history, the position he occupies scarcely demands the curious and minute inquiry into those parts of his career on which he is silent that we should bestow on the life of a great genius.
William Dampier was born at East Coker in the year 1652. His parents intended him for a commercial life, but the idea of shopkeeping was little likely to suit the genius of a lad who was a rover in heart whilst he was still in petticoats; and on the death of his father and mother his friends, finding him bent upon an ocean life, bound him apprentice to the master of a ship belonging to Weymouth. This was in or about the year 1669. With this captain he made a short voyage to France, and afterwards proceeded to Newfoundland in the same ship, being then, as he tells us, about eighteen years of age. The bitter cold of Newfoundland proved too much for his seafaring resolutions, and, procuring the cancellation of his indentures, he went home to his friends. But the old instinct was not to be curbed. Being in London some time after his return from the Newfoundland voyage, he heard of an outward-bound East Indiaman named the John and Martha, the master of which was one Earning. The idea of what he calls a “warm voyage” suited him. He offered himself as a foremast hand and was accepted. The voyage was to Bantam, and he was away rather longer than a year, during which time he says he kept no journal, though he enlarged his knowledge of navigation. The outbreak of the Dutch war seems to have determined him to stay at home, and he spent the summer of the year 1672 at his brother's house in Somersetshire. He soon grew weary of the shore, and enlisted on board the Royal Prince, commanded by the famous Sir Edward Spragge, [6] under whom he served during a part of the year 1673. He fought in two engagements, and then falling sick a day or two before the action in which Sir Edward lost his life (August 11th), he was sent on board the hospital ship, whence he was removed to Harwich. Here he lingered for a great while in suffering, and at last, to recover his health, went to his brother's house. As he gained strength so did his longing for the sea increase upon him. His inclination was soon to be humoured, for there lived near his brother one Colonel Hellier, who, taking a fancy to Dampier, offered him the management of a plantation of his in Jamaica under a person named Whalley; for which place he started in the Content of London, Captain Kent master, he being then twenty-two years old. Lest he should be kidnapped and sold as a servant on his arrival, he agreed with Captain Kent to work his passage out as a seaman. They sailed in the beginning of the year 1674, but the date of their arrival at Jamaica is not given.
His life on that island is not of much interest. He lived with Whalley for about six months, and then agreed with one Captain Heming to manage his plantation on the north side of the island; but repenting his resolution, he took passage on board a sloop bound to Port Royal. He made several coasting voyages in this way, by which he tells us he became intimately acquainted with all the ports and bays of Jamaica, the products and manufactures of the island, and the like. In this sort of life he spent six or seven months, and then shipped himself aboard one Captain Hudsel, who was bound to the Bay of Campeché to load logwood. They sailed from Port Royal in August 1675; their cargo to purchase logwood was rum and sugar. There were about two hundred and fifty men engaged in cutting the wood, and these fellows gladly exchanged the timber for drink. They were nearly all Englishmen, and on the vessel dropping anchor, numbers of them flocked aboard clamorous for liquor. “We were but 6 Men and a Boy in the Ship,” says Dampier, “and all little enough to entertain them: for besides what Rum we sold by the Gallon or Ferkin, we sold it made into Punch, wherewith they grew Frolicksom.” It was customary in those times to shoot off guns when healths were drunk, but in Dampier's craft there was nothing but small-arms, “and therefore,” he says, “the noise was not very great