Eyewitness Accounts At Sea with Pirates - Softcover

William Dampier - buccaneer, journalist, naturalist and explorer - once shocked and delighted the literary world with the scarcely credible tales of his voyages. These were produced from his own meticulous journals, miraculously preserved through years of adventures on the high seas. When not detailing the exploits of the bickering band of pirates with whom he sailed he provided startlingly clear descriptions of the lands, people and wildlife he encountered, many of which had never been heard of by his seventeenth-century readers. This edition includes some of William Dampier's most memorable exploits, selected from his wildly popular A New Voyage Around the World. The resulting collection is a fascinating insight into both the Golden Age of Piracy and the Age of Discovery.

William Dampier was the first Englishman to explore parts of what is today Australia, and the first person to circumnavigate the world three times. He was one of the most important British explorers between Sir Walter Raleigh and James Cook. After impressing the British Admiralty with his book, A New Voyage Round the World, Dampier was given command of a Royal Navy ship. On a later voyage, he rescued Alexander Selkirk, a former crewmate who may have inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Others influenced by Dampier's travels include Lord Nelson and Charles Darwin.