William Dampier

A New Voyage Round the World William Dampier

A New Voyage Round the World by William Dampier with an Introduction by Sir Albert Gray. William Dampier, baptised 5 September 1651; died March 1715, was an English explorer and navigator who became the first Englishman to explore parts of what is today Australia, and the first person to circumnavigate the world three times. He has also been described as Australia's first natural historian, as well as one of the most important British explorers of the period between Sir Walter Raleigh and James Cook. Dampier's New Voyage on its publication won immediate success, and has ever since maintained its place in the front rank among the most notable records of maritime adventure. It stands midway between the epic tales of Hakluyt and the official narratives of the world voyages of Anson and Cook. As a record of buccaneering it comes between the applauded filibustering of Hawkins and Drake and the condemned piracy of the eighteenth century. The stories of the buccaneers are on the verge of romance. On an episode in the life of one of them Defoe founded one of the great romances of all time--"a most circumstantial and elaborate lie," as Leslie Stephen calls it, "for which we are all grateful." No buccaneer's story has had anything like the popularity of Robinson Crusoe: but it may be noted that when Defoe essayed to tell lying tales of pirates such as Captain Avery, founded on Dampier and other writers of fact, the subsequent popularity has been with the true story.