William Dampier: A pirate of 'exquisite mind'

1651 William Dampier (d. 1715) was christened in St Michael’s Church, East Coker, in South Somerset, England (his date of birth is unknown).

He was an explorer, sea captain, and scientific observer, and known as a buccaneer – although he used the word himself, some dispute this.
Dampier Archipelago off Western Australia is named after him.

He was a crewmember of the pirate ship, the Cygnet, which was beached on the northwest coast of Australia (somewhere near King Sound in Western Australia).

A pirate of 'exquisite mind': Dampier influences
Dampier is little known outside Britain and Australia (and, sadly, almost forgotten in those countries), but he had an unusual degree of influence on figures better known than he:

His observations and analysis of natural history helped Darwin’s and Alexander von Humboldt’s development of their theories. He made innovations in navigational technology that were studied by Captain James Cook and Admiral Horatio Nelson. His reports on breadfruit led to Captain William Bligh’s ill-fated voyage ...

Prolific wordsmith
Dampier was more than an influential writer, he enriched the English language to an extraordinary degree and is cited more than a thousand times in the Oxford English Dictionary.

According to Diana Preston and Michael Preston, A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier, among the many words and expressions William Dampier introduced into the English language: avocado; barbecue; breadfruit; caress (verb); cashew; chopsticks; excursion (trip); kumquat; Norwester (wind); posse (iguana); rambling; sea-breeze; sea-lion; serrated; settlement; snapper; soysauce; stilts (house supports); subsistence (farming); sub-species (pre-Charles Darwin); swampy; thunder-cloud; to make snug (as a phrase) tortilla (source).

Dampier and Robinson Crusoe
Dampier helped save the life of someone very important in English literature. On February 1, 1709 real-life castaway Alexander Selkirk (or Selcraig) (1676 - 1721), the model for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, was rescued by the ship Duke, after four years on a deserted island four hundred miles west of Valparaiso, Chile, by Captain Woodes Rogers and Dampier, who recognised him and vouched for his identity. Defoe was inspired by Dampier’s account ...

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