A Pirate of Exquisite Mind

The Life of William Dampier: Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer

By Diana and Michael Preston

(Walker and Company, 384 pages, $27.00 hardcover)

reviewed by

Thornton Sully

Shiver me timbers! The culture of piracy has been pirated!

In these modern times a tattoo, once the dark and distinguishing emblem of rogues and sailors, is reduced to a fashion statement of conformity. A ring through the ear and a parrot on the shoulder have become merely accessories to a look-at-me wardrobe, and meaningless. But three hundred years ago, before image displaced substance, before Errol ever Flynned or Johnny Depp ever swashed a buckle, there was the Englishman William Dampier, who riveted landlubbers with authentic accounts of adventure gleaned from a life at sea, pistol and rapier(and quill) in hand.

A Pirate of Exquisite Mind is a treasure map of a book that dares its readers to ’way anchor, hoist the mains’l, and sail in the wake of the brilliant buccaneer who really did go boldly where no man had gone before, circumnavigating the world an unprecedented three times. Was it “that sacred hunger of gold” for which he endured tempest and treachery? Or was the voracious voyager inspired, even addicted, as the authors suggest, by an insatiable curiosity regarding just about everything on the planet? No matter the motives, he kept the London coffee shops abuzz with speculation, for he had the foresight and perseverance to log everything he encountered, and to publish his escapades and observations. There had been nothing like it. A literate privateer, sanctioned by The Crown to pursue, pillage, and plunder the enemies of the King. The genre of travel writing had been born on a rolling sea and made landfall on England’s shores.

“Chopsticks”. “Flamingos”. “Avocados”. Even, “tattoo”. He enthralled society with his bounty of over a thousand new words he captured for the English language, each word representing a new discovery. And when he felt that written English was too restrictive for him to articulate what he saw, he unshackled the language and linked words together in new ways. Never before Dampier had a “slope” been “gentle”.

He was the first ashore on five continents, and his drawings and comparison of plants helped the science of botany take root. He contributed to the evolution of Charles Darwin’s thinking by introducing the concept of “sub-species” after a stroll on the Galapagos Islands. He was a refined and patient observer who recorded not only the migrations of birds and sea turtles but how they tasted over an open fire. He described with detachment the attire of the Hottentots, and with relish how to make Thai fish sauce.

And he was lethal.

While plundering Panama he dispatched a letter to a Spaniard holding English prisoners and warned that if they were harmed, ‘”by the help of God we will color your land, rivers and sea with Spanish blood of men, women and children…we will bring our ships near your walls, that you may have the pleasure of seeing (Spanish prisoners) hanged at our yardarms…we will make you know that we are the Commanders of the whole South Seas!’” Take that, Russell Crow!

But Dampier’s exploits were not exclusively patriotic. He refers to “some troubles” in Virginia, a euphemism for run-ins with the law. As a privateer, his conduct was legitimized, but there is ample evidence to conclude that not all his victims were on England’s “to do” list, proving that he was, in fact, a pirate.

Nevertheless, he was the hero of the coffee shop crowd, which included Samuel Coleridge, who called him “a pirate of exquisite mind”, and Jonathon Swift, who fashioned the traveler Gulliver after him. Daniel Defoe found his Robinson Crusoe in the pages of Dampier’s books. Admiral Nelson made Dampier required reading for his mid-shipmen. It was Dampier, after all, who deduced that ocean currents were wind driven, and charted the Trade Winds with remarkable accuracy.

Not only do the authors of A Pirate of Exquisite Mind examine the frail parchment of archives for this salty biography, they admirably retrace his voyages and landfalls in person to conjure his ghost. Their efforts have made it easy to picture him at the helm, sextant in hand, rapier in his belt, parrot on his shoulder.

And his timbers never shivered.

Thorn Sully is a freelance writer living in Carlsbad