A pirate of exquisite mind: explorer, naturalist, and buccaneer: the life of William Dampier

Dampier's life reads like an adventure novel: he was a buccaneer who many times risked ending his life in sea battles among savage Caribbean natives or being hung as a common pirate. Yet even then his observant eye and lively curiosity caused him to record every new plant, bird, and animal he saw. In a lifetime (1651-1715) of adventure, Dampier sailed three times around the world, explored five continents, and saw what no other European ever witnessed. These adventures he recorded in best-selling books that made him a literary sensation--the "father of travel writers." If he had done nothing more than all this, Dampier would deserve remembrance, but his meticulously drawn maps and studies of winds and ocean currents made his work invaluable to others such as Charles Darwin, explorer James Cook, and British Admiral Lord Nelson. This makes it all the more remarkable that, until now, Dampier has been forgotten. The Prestons have thoroughly researched the life of this fascinating man and put it into an entertaining format to hold reader interest. Dampier's portrait in London's National Portrait Gallery is labeled simply "William Dampier: Pirate and Hydrographer"; it could have read "father of naturalism," as this highly readable, informative book makes clear. ^BSumming Up: Strongly recommended. General readers; lower-division undergraduates through faculty. C. G. Wood formerly, Eastern Maine Community College

William Dampier's name crops ups constantly in tales of adventure, exploration, and piracy (e.g., Diana Souhami's Selkirk's Island,0 2001). His ubiquity creates high expectations for Preston and her husband coauthor's full-scale biography. Dampier was well esteemed in the days of Charles Darwin, who consulted Dampier's New Voyage Round the World0 (1697) while at sea. Darwin was probably less interested in yarns of depredation upon the Spanish Main, however, than in Dampier's precise and sensitive observations of nature, peoples, and geography. We contemporary readers, however, demand dollops of buccaneering, boarding, and the occasional mutiny, narrative elements that Dampier's three circumnavigations of the globe permit the Prestons to deploy. Integrating them with the England-bound events of Dampier's life--which included a marriage, publication and fame, organization of voyages piratical and scientific, and a court-martial--the Prestons make the "self-conceited" Dampier, as an acquaintance described him, every bit as complex and interesting on paper as he was in life. Supported by dozens of contemporary maps and illustrations, the authors credibly contend that Dampier was a pioneer of the travelogue--not bad considering his day job. A superbly rendered popular history in a superpopular genre. --Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2004 Booklist

Dampier's adventures and observations ignited the imagination of a generation, but today his name is largely unknown. This exhaustive biography by Diana Preston (Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy; The Boxer Rebellion; etc.) and husband Michael won't make Dampier famous again, but it will give readers a clear understanding of one of the most well-traveled men in history. In the late 1600s, Dampier, an Englishman, circumnavigated the globe three separate times. The authors draw heavily on the books and articles Dampier published about his adventures, and they include the most mundane of details ("The buccaneers sailed on, pausing to bury at sea one of their number, who apparently expired of high fever exacerbated by hiccups brought on by a drinking bout at La Serena"). During his time as a buccaneer, Dampier launched dozens of raids on gold-laden Spanish ships, marched through Panama's jungles and mutinied many times. What distinguished him from an ordinary pirate, as the title indicates, was his sharp eye for observation. He was the first self-made naturalist to visit the Gal pagos; his sketches of the region's turtles set the stage for Darwin's future visit. He also drew detailed maps of nearly every place he visited, charts that defined Western Europe's knowledge of the Americas and the South Seas. His theories about how wind patterns affect ocean currents are still used today. Indeed, Dampier's scientific and historical legacy holds up better than his swashbuckling escapades, which, though exciting, hold slightly less novelty. 65 b&w illus., maps. Agent, Michael Carlisle. (Apr.) Forecast: This alternate selection of the Book-of-the-Month, History and Quality Paperback Book Clubs should appeal to historians and pirate buffs, as well as fans of Patrick O'Brian novels and those enthralled by Pirates of the Caribbean. Like Humboldt's Cosmos (Forecasts, Feb. 9), it illuminates a largely forgotten adventurer. Booksellers might position the books together. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Rich with incident and novelty, the life of a swashbuckler whose exploits and writings impressed generations of readers, including Darwin and Humboldt, though he's little remembered today. Thoroughly dazzled by their subject, the authors aim to redress that injustice. Nonfiction veteran Diana Preston (The Boxer Rebellion, 2000, etc.) and husband Michael convey Dampier's life in punchy, declarative sentences, strained only by the sheer plentitude of his doings. Most of the material comes from his published works; Dampier pretty much invented the modern travel narrative, fashioning bestsellers borne on "the accessibility of his writing and the exoticism of his experience." Much of the rest comes from records at the Court of Admiralty; he was also an active buccaneer and a lousy leader of men. Cut of standard English piratical cloth, this rumbustious plunderer of Spanish ships and towns always had an eye skinned for booty or opportunities for ransom. His pioneering qualities and inexhaustible curiosity made him a natural star in an age "when inquiry was fashionable and ingenuity admired." The Prestons present Dampier as an ambiguous figure, a man who would engage himself in daring and bloody raids, then turn around and write A Discourse of Trade-Winds, Breezes, Storms, Seasons of the Year, Tides, and Currents. He was hungry not just for filthy lucre, which often evaded his grasp, but also for appreciating and appraising the strange lands he visited as he circumnavigated the globe the times. (He visited Australia years before Cook.) No silver or gold? No problem for Dampier, who would take his payment in observations of flamingoes so numerous they looked like "a wall of new brick" (pink, 17th-century brick, that is), or in hunting with the raja of Mindanao, or in savoring the local oysters. Yeomanly treatment of a man who "wanted desperately to make his fortune but was seduced by the quest for knowledge." (65 b&w illustrations, 12 maps) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

/*Starred Review*/ William Dampier's name crops ups constantly in tales of adventure, exploration, and piracy (e.g., Diana Souhami's Selkirk's Island, 2001). His ubiquity creates high expectations for Preston and her husband coauthor's full-scale biography. Dampier was well esteemed in the days of Charles Darwin, who consulted Dampier's New Voyage Round the World (1697) while at sea. Darwin was probably less interested in yarns of depredation upon the Spanish Main, however, than in Dampier's precise and sensitive observations of nature, peoples, and geography. We contemporary readers, however, demand dollops of buccaneering, boarding, and the occasional mutiny, narrative elements that Dampier's three circumnavigations of the globe permit the Prestons to deploy. Integrating them with the England-bound events of Dampier's life--which included a marriage, publication and fame, organization of voyages piratical and scientific, and a court-martial--the Prestons make the "self-conceited" Dampier, as an acquaintance described him, every bit as complex and interesting on paper as he was in life. Supported by dozens of contemporary maps and illustrations, the authors credibly contend that Dampier was a pioneer of the travelogue--not bad considering his day job. A superbly rendered popular history in a superpopular genre. ((Reviewed March 1, 2004)) Copyright 2004 Booklist Reviews.

Dampier's adventures and observations ignited the imagination of a generation, but today his name is largely unknown. This exhaustive biography by Diana Preston (Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy; The Boxer Rebellion; etc.) and husband Michael won't make Dampier famous again, but it will give readers a clear understanding of one of the most well-traveled men in history. In the late 1600s, Dampier, an Englishman, circumnavigated the globe three separate times. The authors draw heavily on the books and articles Dampier published about his adventures, and they include the most mundane of details ("The buccaneers sailed on, pausing to bury at sea one of their number, who apparently expired of high fever exacerbated by hiccups brought on by a drinking bout at La Serena"). During his time as a buccaneer, Dampier launched dozens of raids on gold-laden Spanish ships, marched through Panama's jungles and mutinied many times. What distinguished him from an ordinary pirate, as the title indicates, was his sharp eye for observation. He was the first self-made naturalist to visit the Galápagos; his sketches of the region's turtles set the stage for Darwin's future visit. He also drew detailed maps of nearly every place he visited, charts that defined Western Europe's knowledge of the Americas and the South Seas. His theories about how wind patterns affect ocean currents are still used today. Indeed, Dampier's scientific and historical legacy holds up better than his swashbuckling escapades, which, though exciting, hold slightly less novelty. 65 b&w illus., maps. Agent, Michael Carlisle. (Apr.) Forecast: This alternate selection of the Book-of-the-Month, History and Quality Paperback Book Clubs should appeal to historians and pirate buffs, as well as fans of Patrick O'Brian novels and those enthralled by Pirates of the Caribbean. Like Humboldt's Cosmos (Forecasts, Feb. 9), it illuminates a largely forgotten adventurer. Booksellers might position the books together. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.