by William Dampier
Between the years 1679 to 1691, William Dampier made a complete circumnavigation of the world. He rounded both of the capes, and returned safely to England with much information and lore which would stand other sailors in good stead for many a year to come.. A reader might assume from such a title some intention of circumnavigation at the start, and some continuous prosecution of the aim. Dampier, however, left England without any purpose of rounding the globe, and apparently had no mind to do so until, after many years of devotion to other pursuits, he found himself already halfway home. His was no single voyage, rather the haphazard resultant of episodical voyages, some only of which were in the line of circumnavigation; in the course of these voyages he must have sailed in a dozen ships, apart from canoes and other boats. He accomplished the grand tour, however, a feat which in his time could with luck have been achieved in two years;--it took him twelve and a half. Most of the voyages were largely spent in bucanneering; a euphemism for piracy at the time, though some of the buccaneers did have letters of marque from their sovereigns. After his return from his haphazard circumnavigation, Dampier undertook several other voyages, one of the most notable being that in which he participated in the rescue of Alexander Selkirk from his isolated marooning on the island of Juan Fernandez. Dampier was in addition to all this a first-rate scientiest, especially in botany and zoology and his observations of the flor and fauna of the places he visited were heavily used by subsequent explorers and adventures such as Lord Anson, whose Voyage Round the World relied quite heavily on Dampier's astronomical observations and mapmaking. First published in 1697. Illustrated with line drawings, three colour portraits of Dampier and four pocketed maps showing his meanderings in colour.
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