Dampier, WILLIAM, a celebrated English navigator and hydrographer, was born near Yeovil in Somersetshire in 1652. He went early to sea, saw much hard service, and gained a great knowledge of hydrography in voyages to Newfoundland, Bantam, Jamaica, and the Bay of Campeachy. After spending a few years among the lawless log-wood-cutters on the coast of Yucatan, where honest trade was pleasantly varied with private piracy, he joined in 1679 a regular party of buccaneers who crossed the Isthmus of Darien, sacked Santa Marta, and ravaged the coast as far south as the island of Juan Fernandez. In 1683 he engaged in another buccaneering expedition, in which he coasted along the shores of Chili, Peru, and Mexico, sailing thence across the Pacific, and touching at the Philippine Islands, China, and New Holland. Put ashore on Nicobar Islands, May 1688, after a dispute with his comrades, he made his way by sheer seamanship in a native canoe to Atcheen, and after two years' trading in the neighbouring seas, made his way to England (1691), where he published his vigorous and interesting Voyage round the World (1697). He was afterwards deputed by government to conduct a voyage of discovery to the South Seas, in which he explored the west and north-west coasts of Australia, also the coasts of New Guinea and New Britain, giving his name to the Dampier Archipelago and Strait. On the return voyage his vessel was wrecked off Ascension, and Dampier with his crew lived on turtles and goats on that island for over two months, until relieved. The old buccaneer was more skilful as a pilot than successful as a commander, and his overbearing cruelty to his lieutenant led to himself being court-martialled. Yet soon after he was again appointed to the command of two vessels in a privateering expedition to the South Seas. He was as unfortunate as before. According to an account published by Funnell, one of his sailors, Dampier was guilty not merely of drunkenness and brutality, but even of cowardice, which at least is hard to believe of an old buccaneer. The master of one of his two vessels was that Alexander Selkirk who was marooned at Juan Fernandez, and was yet to be made immortal as Robinson Crusoe. Dampier returned home at the close of 1707, poor and broken, nor did his angry Vindication re-establish his reputation. Next year he sailed again to the South Seas as pilot to a privateer, which rescued Selkirk, and returned in 1711 after a prosperous voyage. Dampier died in London early in March 1715. See Life by Clark Russell (1889).