Dampier, William

1652 - Born in East Coker, Somerset, England. English buccaneer, navigator and hydrographer.

1673 - Served in the Dutch War under Sir Edward Sprague, and was present at two engagements but then fell sick and was put ashore.

1674 - Became an under-manager of a Jamaica estate, but continued only a short time in this situation.

1678-1679 - Returned to England, again visiting Jamaica and joining a party of buccaneers, with whom he crossed the Isthmus of Darien.

1680 - After serving with another privateering expedition in the Spanish Main, he went to Virginia and engaged with a captain named Cook for a privateering voyage against the Spaniards in the South Seas.

1683 - Touched at the Guinea coast, and then proceeded around Cape Horn into the Pacific.

1688 - They were off Sumatra, and in May off the Nicobars, where Dampier was marooned (at his own request, as he declares, for the purpose of establishing a trade in ambergris) with two other Englishmen, a Portuguese and some Malays. He and his companions contrived to navigate a canoe to Achin in Sumatra; but the fatigues and distress of the voyage proved fatal to several and nearly carried off Dampier himself.

1691 - He contrived to return to England.

1699 - Was sent out by the English admiralty in command of the "Roebuck", especially designed for discovery in and around Australia. He sailed from the Downs, the 14th of January, with twenty months' provisions, touched at the Canaries, Cape Verdes and Bahia, and ran from Brazil around the Cape of Good Hope direct to Australia, whose West coast he reached on the 26th of July, in about 26° S. latitude.

1703-1707 - Dampier commanded two government privateers on an expedition to the South Seas with grievous failure.

1707 - He returned to England.

1709 - Published his book "A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland".

1715 - Dampier died on March in St. Stephen's parish, Coleman Street, London.