Piracy and the production of knowledge in the travels of William Dampier, c.1679-1688

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 40-54

  Hasty, William ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

History of science; Mobilities; Piracy; Seventeenth century; Ship; William Dampier

Indexed keywords

EXPLORATION; KNOWLEDGE; MARITIME TRANSPORTATION; MOBILITY; SEVENTEENTH CENTURY;

EID: 78650934789     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: 10958614     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2010.08.017     Document Type: Article

References (168)

1. The Diary of John Evelyn, A. Dobson (Ed.), London, 1908, 445.
2. H. Collins and R. Evans, Rethinking Expertise, Chicago, 2007.
3. Earle, Sailors (note 84), 74-75.
4. Earle, Sailors (note 84), 7.
5. See note 101.
6. Earle, Sailors (note 84), 8.
7. The Devil's Mariner Cited in Gill, (note 3), 75.
8. Earle, Sailors (note 84), 196.
9. C. Lloyd, The British Seaman: 1200-1860: A Social Survey, London, 1968, 80-81.
10. The British Seaman Cited in Lloyd, (note 106), 114.
11. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 30.
12. Gill, The Devil's Mariner (note 3), 99.
13. D.N. Livingstone, Putting Science in its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge, Chicago and London, 2003, 1.
14. The British Seaman Figures for men to tonnage ratio taken from Lloyd, (note 106), 80.
15. Outlaws at sea, 1660-1720 Cited in Bromley, (note 94), 174.
16. Earle, Sailors (note 84), 79-81
17. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 371.
18. Linebaugh and Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra (note 80), 153.
19. Basil Ringrose produced two works of note, both stemming from the journey he shared with Dampier across the Isthmus of Darien. The first took the form of a 'Waggoner' (a sea atlas) which he is said to have copied from a 'derrotero' taken from the Rosario, a Spanish ship captured by the buccaneers off the coast of modern Ecuador on July 29th 1681. Ringrose's original manuscript is held in the National Maritime Museum - see B. Ringrose, 'The South Sea Waggoner Shewing the Making & Bearing of All the Coasts from California to the Streights of Le Maire Done from the Spanish Originall by Basil Ringrose', c.1682 P/32 - and a complete reproduction is also available: see D. Howse, N.J.W. Thrower (Eds), A Buccaneer's Atlas: Basil Ringrose's South Sea Waggoner, California, 1992. The second work, produced around 1683, is a 'journal' detailing his involvement with the buccaneers. The original is held in the British Library Manuscripts Collection - see B. Ringrose, 1680-81: Journal, c.1883, British Library Slone MS 3820. The content of this journal was also included in the second edition of A.O. Exquemelin's Bucaniers of America: see A.O. Exquemelin, Bucaniers of America: the Second Volume, Containing the Dangerous Voyage and Bold Attempts of Captain Bartholomew Sharp and Others, London, 1685. For Wafer see note 86. Original drafts and writings by Sharpe, Cowley and Cox are held in the British Library Manuscripts Collection, see Sloane MSS 46a and 46b, Sloane MSS 54 and Sloane MSS 49 respectively. Edited versions the journals of Sharpe and Cowley were also published by Hack - see Capt. W. Hack, A Collection of Voyages, London, 1699.
20. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 60.
21. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 224.
22. Dampier, Voyages and Descriptions (note 17), 342.
23. Baer, William Dampier at the crossroads (note 3), 116.
24. Neill, British Discovery Literature (note 3), 31.
25. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 85.
26. Offen has recently traced the connections between Dampier's, and others, interactions with the Mosquito Indians and European maps of Central America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
27. K.H. Offen, Creating Mosquitia: mapping Amerindian spatial practices in eastern Central America, 1629-1779, Journal of Historical Geography 33 (2007) 254-282.
28. See also D.N. Livingstone, The spaces of knowledge: contributions towards a historical geography of science, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13 (1995) 5-34; A. Ophir and S. Shapin, The place of knowledge: a methodological survey, Science in Context 4 (1991) 3-21; S. Shapin, Placing the view from nowhere: historical and sociological problems in the location of science, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 23 (1998) 5-12; C.W.J. Withers, Placing the Enlightenment: Thinking Geographically about the Age of Reason, Chicago and London, 2007; C.W.J. Withers, Where was the Atlantic Enlightenment? - questions of geography, in: S. Manning, F.D. Cogliano (Eds), The Atlantic Enlightenment, London, 2008; S. Naylor, Introduction: historical geographies of science - places, contexts, cartographies, British Journal for the History of Science 38 (2005) 1-12.
29. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 230.
30. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 381.
31. S.T. Coleridge, The Table Talk and Omniana of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with a Note of Coleridge by Coventry Patmore, London, 1917, 168.
32. R. Sorrenson, The ship as a scientific instrument in the eighteenth century, Osiris 2nd series 11 (1996) 221-236.
33. Notable exceptions within the geography literature can be found in essays by Driver, Martins, Livingstone and Ogborn.
34. F. Driver and L. Martins, John Septimus Roe and the art of navigation, c.1815-1830, History Workshop Journal 54 (2002) 144-161
35. Livingstone, Putting Science in its Place (note 11), 82
36. D.N. Livingstone, The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise, Oxford, 1992, 38-40
37. L. Martins, Mapping tropical waters: British views and visions of Rio de Janeiro, Mappings, D. Cosgrove (Ed.), London, 1999, 148-168
38. M. Ogborn, Writing travels: power, knowledge and ritual on the English East India Company's early voyages, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 27 (2002) 155-171
39. M. Ogborn, Indian Ink: Script and Print in the Making of the English East India Company, London, 2007.
40. Sorrenson, The ship as a scientific instrument (note 13).
41. While Galvin has considered Dampier's 'life of piracy' as being of significance to his scientific output through a geographical lens, his treatment is largely silent on the ship, focusing instead on the nature of his observations and their impact on 'science'
42. P.R. Galvin, Patterns of Pillage: a Geography of Caribbean-based Piracy in Spanish America, 1536-1718, New York, 1999.
43. Livingstone, Putting Science in its Place (note 11), (original emphasis). 3
44. W. Dampier, Voyages and Descriptions, London, 1699, 3, 123-124.
45. All quotes presented in this paper are taken from the fifth editions of New Voyage and Voyages and Descriptions, published in 1703 by James Knapton, London. Original spelling and grammar have been maintained where possible.
46. Bennett has noted Dampier's apparent dislike for authority
47. Bennett, William Dampier: buccaneer and planter (note 3).
48. Bennett, William Dampier: buccaneer and planter (note 3).
49. W. Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World, London, 1697.
50. Bennett, William Dampier: buccaneer and planter, 472 (note 3).
51. The links between the logwood trade and piracy during the latter half of the seventeenth century have been established by a number of historians
52. J. Baer, Pirates of the British Isles (note 3), 52-54.
53. M. Ogborn, Global Lives: Britain and the World, 1550-1800, Cambridge, 2009, 177.
54. L. Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900, Cambridge, 2010, 113.
55. J.L. Anderson, Piracy and world history: an economic perspective on maritime predation, Bandits at Sea: a Pirates Reader, New York and London, 2001, 83, C.R. Pennell (Ed.), original emphasis.
56. J.E. Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe, New Jersey, 1994, 22.
57. Benton, A Search for Sovereignty (note 23), 112-113.
58. For a full discussion of the origins and development of the 'Letter of Marque and Reprisal'
59. D.J. Starkey, The origins and regulation of eighteenth-century British privateering, Pennell, Bandits at Sea, 2001, 69-81.
60. E.H. Gould, Lines of plunder or crucible of modernity? The legal geography of the English-speaking Atlantic, 1660-1825, Seascapes: Maritime Histories, Littoral Cultures, and Transoceanic Exchanges, J.H. Bentley et al. (Eds), Honolulu, 2007, 108.
61. C.H. Haring, The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century, Connecticut, 1966 For a broader discussion of buccaneering see
62. P. Earle, The Pirate Wars, London, 2004, 87-108.
63. Gould, Lines of plunder or crucible of modernity? (note 28), 108
64. Benton, A Search for Sovereignty (note 23), 116.
65. The most comprehensive biographical studies of Dampier are A. Gill, The Devil's Mariner: William Dampier, Pirate and Explorer, London, 1997 and D. Preston and M. Preston, A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: The Life of William Dampier, Explorer, Naturalist and Buccaneer, London, 2004. Historians and literary scholars interested in piracy or seafaring during the seventeenth and eighteenth century often draw on Dampier, but studies wherein his life and work are central include: J.H. Bennett, William Dampier: buccaneer and planter, History Today 14 (1964) 469-477
66. P. Edwards, The Story of the Voyage: Sea-Narratives in Eighteenth-Century England, Cambridge, 1994
67. J.H. Baer, William Dampier at the crossroads: new light on the 'missing years', 1691-1697, International Journal of Maritime History 8 (1996) 97-117
68. A. Neill, British Discovery Literature and the Rise of Global Commerce, London, 2002
69. G. Barnes and A. Mitchell, Measuring the marvellous: science and the exotic in William Dampier, Eighteenth Century Life 26 (2002) 45-57
70. J.H. Baer, Pirates of the British Isles, Gloucestershire, 2005
71. A. Mitchell, William Dampier's unaccepted life, Early Modern Autobiography: Theories, Genres, Practices, R. Bedford, Lloyd Davis, Philippa Kelly (Eds), Ann Arbor, 2006
72. G. Barnes, Curiosity, wonder, and William Dampier's painted prince, The Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies 6 (2006) 31-50.
73. L. Benton, Legal spaces of empire: piracy and the origins of ocean regionalism, Comparative Studies in Society and History 47 (2005) 700-724, 700.
74. Dampier, New Voyage 192, (note 2), original emphasis.
75. Gould, Lines of plunder or crucible of modernity? (note 28), 105.
76. G.V. Scammell, Seafaring, Sailors and Trade, 1450-1750, Hampshire, 2003, 5: 341.
77. Dampier, The Adventures of William Dampier (note 6), 30.
78. Benton, A Search for Sovereignty (note 23), 113.
79. William Ambrosia Cowley, Journal of a Voyage Round the World, 1683-1686, Sloane 54, British Library Manuscripts Collection, London.
80. Dampier, The Adventures of William Dampier (note 6), 128.
81. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 364.
82. New Voyage received a favourable review in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and Dampier was also invited to the Society to address its members shortly after its publication; see VII. An Account of a BOOK, Philosophical Transactions (1683-1775), 1697, 426-433. For discussion of 'geographic privilege' see S. Shapin, The house of experiment in seventeenth century England, Isis 79 (1988) 373-404.
83. Neill, British Discovery Literature (note 3).
84. The frontispiece to Francis Bacon's Novum Organum (1620) shows a ship leaving the Mediterranean through the Pillars of Hercules, stripped of their Ne Plus Ultra insignia, and entering the Atlantic Ocean, passing by a ship on the return, presumably laden with knowledge as well as produce. At the bottom of the page reads a passage taken from the Book of Daniel (12:4), assuring the reader that 'many will travel and knowledge will be increased' - capturing the essence of Bacon's new, more empirically engaged philosophy of science.
85. The nature of Dampier's reinvention through the writing of his journal is more fully explored by Edwards, Neill and Mitchell - see Edwards, The Story of the Voyage (note 3); Neill, British Discovery Literature (note 3); and Mitchell, William Dampier's unacceptable self.
86. Dampier's editor was most likely his publisher James Knapton.
87. James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile vol. 1, Dublin, 1790-1791, ii: cited in Livingstone, The Geographical Tradition (note 13), 167.
88. Pirates of the British Isles Cited in Baer, (note 3), 71-72.
89. A.P. Thornton, For the File on Empire: Essays and Reviews, London, 1968, 81.
90. Mitchell, William Dampier's unaccepted self (note 41).
91. Dampier, New Voyage, Preface (note 2).
92. See Fig. 2 for example of Dampier's 'marginalia'. These writings are said to be of Dampier's hand, showing changes and alterations he wished the copy writer to make for the next, perhaps final, draft. The case for approaching texts in this way is made by R. Mayhew, Denaturalising print, historicizing text: historical geography and the history of the book, in: H. Lorimer et al. (Eds), Practising the Archive: Reflections on Method and Practice in Historical Geography, Historical Geography Research Series 40, 2007.
93. R. Drayton, Knowledge and Empire, The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume II: the Eighteenth Century, P.J. Marshall (Ed.), Oxford, 1998, 237.
94. Neill, British Discovery Literature (note 3), 183.
95. Withers, Placing the Enlightenment (note 12), 94.
96. The Story of the Voyage Dampier's role in pioneering Enlightenment 'voyage literature' as a genre is more fully explored in Edwards, (note 3).
97. Dampier, Voyages and Descriptions (note 17), 301.
98. Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowledge, Cited in C. Lawrence and S. Shapin, Chicago and London, 1998, 7.
99. S. Greenblatt, Marvellous Possessions: the Wonder of the New World, Chicago, 1992
100. L. Daston and K. Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750, New York, 2001.
101. Of course, as Daston and Park show, the Royal Society was still very much in the business of 'wonderful' description at the close of the seventeenth century.
102. R.G. Peterson, L. Stramma and G. Kortum, Early concepts and charts of ocean circulation, Progress in Oceanography 33 (1996) 1-115, 38.
103. N.J.W. Thrower, Maps and Civilisation: Cartography in Culture and Society (third edition), Chicago, 2008, 100.
104. The Three Voyages of Edmond Halley in the Paramore 1698-1701, N.J.W. Thrower (Ed.), London, 1981, 73.
105. Alexander Von Humboldt, 1, Cited in H. Beck, Wiesbaden, 1959, 90.
106. J.C. Shipman, William Dampier: Seaman-Scientist, Cited in Lawrence, 1962, 60-61.
107. For Cuvier's attack on Humboldt see D. Outram, New spaces of natural history, in: N. Jardine, J. Secord, E. Spary (Eds), Cultures of Natural History, Cambridge, 1996, 249-265. Heffernan provides an excellent account of the broader debate in his discussion of the 'race' to reach Timbuktu - see M. Heffernan, "A dream as frail as those of ancient time": the in-credible geographies of Timbuktu, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19 (2001) 203-225.
108. C. Darwin, 'Red Notebook', Charles Darwin's Notebooks 1836-44, reproduced in P.H. Barrett et al. (Eds), Cambridge, 1987, 22.
109. In his diary of the Beagle voyage Darwin affectionately refers to him as 'old Dampier'
110. C. Darwin, Charles Darwin's Beagle Diary, 1988, New York and Cambridge, entry for 4th June 1836.
111. M. Schrope, The real sea change, Nature 443 (2006) 622-624. For more on Dampier's influence on Darwin
112. W. Dampier, The Adventures of William Dampier with Others who Left Capn. Sharpe in the South Seas and Travelled Back Over Land through the Country of Darien, Sloane 3236, British Library Manuscripts, London.
113. J. Burney, A Chronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean, London, 1816, 486.
114. D. Reinhartz, Shared vision: Herman Moll and his circle and the Great South Sea, Terrae Incognitae 19 (1987) 1-10.
115. J.C. Beaglehole, The Exploration of the Pacific, London, 1966, 166.
116. Withers, Placing the Enlightenment Cited in (note 12), 2.
117. Sorrenson, The ship as a scientific instrument (note 13), 221.
118. Sorrenson, The ship as a scientific instrument (note 13), 221
119. B. Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Milton Keynes, 1987, 224.
120. J. Law, On the methods of long distance control: vessels, navigation, and the Portuguese route to India, Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?, For 'ship as technology' see also, J. Law (Ed.), London and Boston, 1986
121. S.J. Harris, Long-distance corporations, big sciences, and the geography of knowledge, Configurations 6 (1998) 269-304.
122. Sorrenson, The ship as a scientific instrument (note 13), 222.
123. Drayton, Knowledge and Empire (note 49), 237.
124. Drayton, Knowledge and Empire (note 49), 239.
125. Royal Society, Directions for sea-men bound for far voyages, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, London, 1665-1678, 140-143.
126. S. Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth Century England, Chicago and London, 1994, 29.
127. Shapin questions the Royal Society's apparent openness to 'ordinary' men, highlighting the fact that it was very much a 'gentlemanly club' with 'gentlemanly codes for the making of empirical knowledge'
128. Shapin, Social History of Truth (note 7), 122-123.
129. Drayton, Knowledge and Empire (note 49), 237.
130. Dampier, New Voyage, Preface A3 (note 2).
131. See note 72.
132. See note 72.
133. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 68.
134. M. Rediker, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, London, 2004, 61.
135. It should be noted that Rediker uses this phrase to characterise the 'alternative' social order associated with Atlantic piracy at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a couple of decades after Dampier's 'era'. Though the 'set' of pirates to which Rediker dedicates his study were perhaps more pronounced in their communitarian ideals, Dampier's journals, and those of his contemporaries, reveal that this egalitarianism was also prevalent among pirates at the end of the seventeenth century. Among others, Earle highlights the prevalence of 'democracy and egalitarianism' among buccaneers of Dampier's generation
136. Earle, The Pirate Wars (note 28), 101-103.
137. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 12.
138. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 69.
139. On one such occasion, early in 1681, Dampier relates how 'consultations were held every day', yet 'It was 7 or 8 days before any resolution was taken'
140. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 28.
141. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 31.
142. A. Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680-1750, New Haven and London, 1995, 8.
143. P. Linebaugh and M. Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, For a discussion of indentured service and the press-gang see Boston, 2000.
144. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 223-224.
145. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 440.
146. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), A2.
147. P. Earle, Sailors: English Merchant Seamen, 1650-1775, London, 2007, 5-6.
148. Drayton, Knowledge and Empire (note 49), 234.
149. For a general discussion of the 'Darien Disaster', and more on Dampier and Wafer's role therein, see J. Prebble, The Darien Disaster, London, 1968 and D. Watt, The Price of Scotland: Darien, Union and the Wealth of Nations, Edinburgh, 2007.
150. Lionel Wafer consorted with Dampier at various stages during the period. In 1699 Wafer also successfully published an account of his travels under the title A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America; see L.E. Elliot Joyce (Ed.), A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America, Hakluyt Society, Oxford, 1934. A draft of this journal is part of the Sloane MSS 3236, which is also the holding for Dampier's draft manuscript.
151. Both Prebble and Watt argue that Wafer met with the DCS board; see Prebble, The Darien Disaster (note 86) and Watt, The Price of Scotland (note 86). The extent of Dampier's contact with the DCS is less well established, though in July 12th 1698 he appeared before the Council of Trade and refuted claims that he (or Wafer) had been assisting the 'Scotch East India Company'. This refusal tells us two things; that Dampier did not help the DCS (or at least that he did not want the fact that he had to be public knowledge), and that there had been grounds to suspect that he had: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies: 1697-1698, 16 (1905), 328-344.
152. Dampier's descriptions of Darien are included along with those of Wafer in the document which also serves to relate the 'late news' from the colony. Revealingly, the information provided by Dampier and Wafer is preferred to that which could be gleaned from 'some Old Map or Geographer': A Short Account from, and Description of the Isthmus of Darien, Where the Scots Collony are Settled. With a Particular Map of the Isthmus and Entrance to the River Darien. According to our late News and Mr. Dampier, and Mr. Wafer, Edinburgh, 1699.
153. Shapin, A Social History of Truth (note 7), 29.
154. C.W.J. Withers, Reporting, mapping, trusting: making geographical knowledge in the late seventeenth century, Isis 90 (1999) 497-521 The issue of trust in the production of scientific knowledge is also discussed in
155. S. Shapin and S. Shaffer, Leviathan and the Air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life, Princeton, chapter 2, 1985.
156. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies: 1697-1698, September 1698, 16 (1905), 455-468.
157. J. Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Comprising an Account of His Studies and Numerous Works, London, 1791, 86.
158. Haring, The Buccaneers in the West Indies (note 28), 71.
159. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 118.
160. Dampier, New Voyage (note 2), 80.
161. J.S. Bromley, Outlaws at sea, 1660-1720: liberty, equality and fraternity among the Caribbean freebooters, Bandits at Sea, Pennell (Ed.), 180.
162. Bromley, Outlaws at sea, 1660-1720 Cited in (note 94), 181.
163. Dampier, New Voyage Dampier's famous 'golden dreams' of settling the fecund land of the New World involved the exploitation of '1000 slaves' - (note 2), 158-159
164. Earle, The Pirate Wars for a critical account of the relationship between piracy and slavery in the seventeenth century see (note 28), 101-102.
165. Rediker, Villains of All Nations (note 76), 58.
166. This point is also made by Starkey when he writes that 'Piracy was essentially labor-intensive, with comparatively large crews required to overhaul and overwhelm prizes.' Starkey goes on to explain that that this over-manning of ships was common among pirates throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Caribbean, Atlantic and Mediterranean waters.
167. D.J. Starkey, Pirates and Markets, Bandits at Sea, Pennell (Ed.), 116.
168. Dampier notes that it is 'usual with seamen in those parts [the West-Indies] to sleep on the deck, especially for Privateers; among whom I made these observations', Dampier, Voyages and Descriptions (note 17), 303.