History of Navigation Conference at the National Maritime Museum

After my visit for an update on progress on the Painted Hall restoration last week, I went to the main reason for my trip to Greenwich, which was a conference on the History of Navigation at the National Maritime Museum.

Jolly interesting it was too. Over the next one and half days heard 14 or so talks about subjects as varied as:

• How to become a Hero
• A Heroic Pirate? William Dampier’s contemporary reputation and historical legacy as a navigator
• Lady Franklin in the Victorian Canon of Naval Heroism
• The weather, failure and success on Cook´s third voyage
• “It’s all Fake News!”: James Cook and the making of an 18th century media hero
• The Validity of Replica Voyages
• Charisma and Routine in Nineteenth-century Hydrography
• A century of pain and gain: chartering and opening the Torres Strait in the nineteenth century 
• ‘Plane-tabling Mitcham Common is hardly sufficient’: Instruments in the Identity of Exploration 
• A History of Navigation in the Western Desert prior to the GPS age
• Hero or Villain? The conundrum for the military in using GNSS as an aid to navigation

The one I was most interested in was of course William Dampier, that being a favourite topic of mine, and had a great chat with the author, Katherine Parker, afterwards about whether his later failings were due to drink or some tropical disease.

The most fun was the one from Vanessa Collingridge about Fake News and James Cook's voyages in which learnt a lot about the cut-throat world of journalism in those early days of newspapers in the UK.

A special mention goes to the author of the Lady Franklin paper, Alexa Price, for managing to bring the Princess Bride into her talk (in context).

There were a bit too many old guard duffers and rather a shortage of fluent men, apart from Neil Dicken, who also, in his talk on GNSS, referenced Tristan and his natural navigation techniques (in the context of urban navigation without GPS).

Thanks to the National Maritime Museum for organising it and I will keep an eye out for future conferences they arrange.

William Dampier on Ascension Island

Recently SV Delos has been on Ascension Island.

Well I say recently: what I mean is that they recently published a set of videos about their time on the island, in practice they were there back in July 2017.

While I can't see myself ever getting to what looks like an amazing place, it appears an alleged relative of mine did, namely William Dampier. I've posted about him and his amazing life before and my go-to book on the subject is A Pirate of Exquisite Mind. So after watching the Delos video I picked up my copy, looked in the index under Ascension, and yes there it was.

Dampier was on his way back from exploring the waters between north Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea as captain of the Roebuck. Alas his command was rotten and worm-eaten and while passing Ascension in 1701 it sprung "a great leak". After frantic attempts to save the ship (not helped by a carpenter who felt the best idea was to cut an even bigger hole) he was forced to beach the Roebuck on the shores of the island.

At the time Ascension was uninhabited and described as a "desolate island" but the castaways found a spring, turtles, goats and land crabs on which they survived until rescue came from some passing Royal Navel vessels and an East Indiaman.

Three hundred years later relics of that Roebuck were unearthed by archaeologists on Long Beach, Ascension including the ship's bell and a giant clam-shell, one of the specimens Dampier was returning for the Royal Society.

The bell is now on display in the museum on Ascension and the incident was depicted in a set of stamps issued by the island government showing Dampier, the Roebuck, its grounding and then recovery of the bell by divers:

Is the "Pirate Captain" William Dampier?

On the Independent web site there's an interesting theory relating to fantastic new movie "The Pirates: an adventures with scientists" (pictured above) which I reviewed here.

This article notes that there was indeed a pirate interested in science, one who wrote books on meteorology and ocean currents, who dined with the likes of Samuel Pepys, visited the Galapagos islands and described many plants and animals in a best selling book.

This polymath was of course the famous buccaneer / pirate / slave trader / travelling / writer / scientist / alleged relative William Dampier.

The dates were very different, as Dampier sailed around the world in the late 17C / early 18th while the film overlaps with Queen Victoria and Charles Darwin, so must be roughly mid 19C - that is, very roughly. This film definitely lives in its own parallel universe.

But there is one thing would worry the Pirate Captain himself, which is the beard issue (or "beard-gate" as no doubt it would be called).

The Pirate Captain was most proud of his beard ("luxurious" he described it) but as can be seen by the picture below that was something that Dampier lacked:

But it doesn't matter: I'm happy to simply have an excuse to say hello again to an old friend.



Picture from: The Independent

Book Review: The Real Ancient Mariner

On the 17th February 1709, in the blue waters of the Pacific off the Chilean coast, one Simon Hatley transferred from the English privateer Duchess to its companion, the Duke. Already on-board were William Dampier and Alexander Selkirk, and together they completed a remarkable trio of literary inspiration.

It was Alexander Selkirk who had been marooned on the Juan Fernandez Islands and would later became the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe. Meanwhile William Dampier, navigator, explorer, buccaneer, writer and triple circumnavigator, was to become one of the inspirations for Gulliver's Travels.

The third, Simon Hatley, was the sailor that would go on to shoot an albatross and became immortalised by Coleridge as the Ancient Mariner.

This book is the story of Hatley's many voyages, including the one where he joined William Dampier and Alexander Selkirk on a raiding expedition that captured one of the Spanish Manilla Galleons, returning to London in triumph.

For me it was like meeting again an old friend, for I've read many a book about William Dampier and the sailors of late 17th Century, early 18th. It was period of wild adventures across all corners of the world by men (and it was mostly men) who you wouldn't like to meet down a dark alley after they've drunk one or two bottles of rum.

Of course there was many changes from hard fact to fictional character. In the famous poem the hardest trial is against the forces of nature while in reality Simon Hatley's nemesis was his senior, Captain George Shelvocke. Furthermore there was no taboo at the time in sailors shooting the albatross.

The book also tells the story of how Colleridge came to write the poem including his friendship with Wordsworth, whose idea it was to use the story of Hatley's deed as the turning point and moral heart. It was written some fifty years later, when the "golden age" of the buccaneer had already become history.

It was a great read which I enjoyed a lot, though must admit it did make me feeling slightly jealous. Again and again there were photos taken by the author Robert Fowke of ports and bays that Hatley had visited and read that he received a grant to fund his travels across South America. Now that must have been a lot of fun!

Above all it left me with that picture in my head: William Dampier, Alexander Selkirk and Simon Hatley on board a privateer sailing the southern seas, hunting for treasure, going on to inspire the literary gold that is Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe and The Ancient Mariner.

Discovering the trade winds

When were the trade winds discovered?

I always had this hope that it was my alleged relation, William Dampier, who documented his experiences in his book with the snappy title of "A discourse of trade winds, breezes, storms, seasons of the year and currents of the torrid zone throughout the world".

But it seems he was pipped by the much earlier and humbler Arctic Tern whose annual migration is shown in the figure above. What struck me straight away is how they follow the route of the round the world yacht races, but then of course the trade winds help both sailors and birds.

Setting aside the long distance and resilience required for an animal weighing around 100g to travel a round trip of 70,000km from pole to pole and back, there is a question of how does it navigate its route?

I can see how such a behaviour can come about: if in the depths of time the birds flew at random the ones that picked up the trade winds would get there quicker using less energy and hence be more effective in evolutionary sense. And once learnt the following generations could follow the lead of its parents.

But maybe we underestimate them as we do so often, overconfident in our superiority over mere birds. Rooks in particular have been shown to be tool using animals.

Anyhow more on this story here.

Book Review: Pirate Hunter

Another book read recently was Pirate Hunter by Graham Thomas. Not to be confused with Richard Zacks's The Pirate Hunter (which is worth a read and suggests that Captain Kidd was a misunderstood victim - honest!) this has the sub-title "The life of Captain Woodes Rogers".

Woodes Rogers came from a Dorset and Bristol based family with strong nautical traditions who led the successful round the world raiding expedition in 1708 - 1711 that captured a Spanish Galleon and later went on to become the Governor of the Bahamas.

One of my reasons for picking up this book was that the pilot of the circumnavigation was none other than the sailor, pirate, buccaneer, explorer, naturalist, writer, meteorologist etc, William Dampier who I've read and written about previously. It was the Woodes Rogers expedition that picked up Selkirk from what is now known as Robinson Crusoe Island.

Its an interesting and readable book which I enjoyed. It is basically in two parts - the journey around the world and the time in the Bahamas. One of the main reasons for this is also one of its limitations - it is heavily based upon just a handful of other books.

Firstly there is "A cruising voyage round the world" which sounds like it is something Liza Copeland would have written but was actually written by Woodes Rogers himself to describe his expedition and was the basis of the first half of the book.

Then there is Captain Charles Johnson's "A General History of the robberies & murders of the most notorious Pirates" (cracking title that one, note this book is sometimes attributed to Daniel Defoe) which describes how Woodes Rogers brought some of the Caribbean pirates to justice in the second half of the book.

If you want detail and authentic first hand accounts then it would be better to read these originals. However Woodes Rogers is not a natural writer and he tends to write long paragraphs like some early 18th Century stream of consciousness which is not easy to follow. If you just want an overview of his life this book is a good place to start.

It was an interesting period, when the wild buccaneers were giving way to govenors and merchants that would found colonies and create an empire from the Indies to the Americas. As Woodes Rogers was one of family of Woodes Rogers the author identifies him as "our hero" which begs the question was he?

He certainly did much to rid the seas of pirates and liberally spent his own money to build up the Bahamas to such an extent that at one point he was declared bankrupt. He successfully defended his colony not just against pirates but also against an attack from the Spanish in nearby Cuba. He introduced the rule of law and saw the first of many pirates to hang.

But what was most remarkable to me is he wasn't that remarkable, in the sense that at this time there were many English like Woodes Rogers heading out into the wilds to bring order out of chaos. There was much that was glossed over - like the slave trade - but it was a time of change of fortunes in Atlantic.

Woodes Rogers actions in the Pacific would no doubt allow the Spanish to accuse him of being a pirate himself. But this buccaneer turned pirate hunter helped clean up the Caribbean and end the so-called golden age of piracy.

Dinner is served

When Tillerman announced this month's group writing project was "Guess who's coming for dinner", to select the one sailing-related guest you would invite to a dinner party, for me there was only one choice.

It wasn't that it was allegedly my great-to-the-n-th uncle, he is also a real legend, but a legend about whom as an individual there would be so much more to learn.

We know he was the first person to sail twice round the world, and then topped that by doing it a third time. And that was in late 17th and early 18th century, the days of real sailing - square rigged, oak and tar, scurvy and rats.

There were no grib files to forecast the weather - it was unknown all the way round. But he was a pioneer that helped change that. He wrote the book on oceanic weather systems - literally in this case, the "Discourse on Trade Winds" that was used by the British Navy for two hundred years and read by Captain Cook on his explorations years later.

He wrote many other books, including his "A New Voyage around the World" which was again literally a best seller, making him a celebrity of London. He dinned with Samual Pepys and knew the world of restoration England, again a time I'd love to hear about.

I'd like to hear more about his life - how he met his little mentioned wife, why he left her for so long, of the friendships and romances he had on his journeys.

And also he must be a source of endless stories. Of his piracy days and the pirates he knew. Of sailing adventures across the Atlantic to Africa, around the Horn, across the Pacific, the far East, landing on Australia (the first Englishman to do so), to India (where he was in charge of the guns at a fort) and on to Cape Town. Of how he was part of the expedition that marooned Selkirk on the one of the Juan Fernandez islands and also on the one that picked him up, and how that led to the story of Robinson Crusoe.

Pirate, buccaneer, slave trader, Naval Captain, navigator, writer, explorer, scientist, hydrographer, husband, friend, and much much more.

I'd like to hear about all of those, and fill in the gaps he left out in his published books.

I'd open my door and welcome him in, that old sailor, William Dampier.

Walkabout with Dampier

Amiable bush craft and survival in the wild expert Ray Mears has been going walkabout down under in a series of programs for the BBC recently. It was wonderful to discover how you could survive on bugs and fight off swarms of mosquito's without actually having to.

In the last episode he was in the far North West of the Northern Territories partially looking into Aborigine art but also following the footsteps of that alleged ancestor of mine, William Dampier.

Dampier was one of the early circumnavigators, part time pirate, botanist and writer, and is oft considered to be the first Englishman to land on Australia back in 1688. The program noted his mistakes (confusing termite mounds for rock) and skipped over his descriptions of the locals (which were not complementary).

But the two themes of early explorers and Aborigine rock art had an intriguing connection - the early European voyages were recorded, and deep within caves of a remote part of the Australian Northern Territories Mears found paintings clearly showing a two masted ship.

Was it one of Dampier's ships? We'll never know.

I've often wanted to follow in Dampier's footsteps and the images of some of the places he visited along Australia's long north coast looked incredible tempting: unspoilt deserted islands with turquoise waters and sandy beaches.

And as Mears noted, the land in that far off corner of Australia looks untouched since that far off day that Dampier first walked there and wrote about what he saw in his diary.



If you have access to the BBC's iPlayer you can watch again by clicking here.

Dampier's true love

The explorer and traveling William Dampier was in no sense a traditional romantic. He married in 1678 but only a few months later left his wife, Judith, to go seeking adventure - a buccaneer voyaging all the way around the world. He didn't return for 12 years.

He certainly didn't seem to rush back, and only mentioned his wife once in his journals. He must have had several opportunities to return but chose to keep going, forever onwards.

Or maybe he didn't want to - maybe he was fleeing from the strength of her character. He is known to communicate difficult decisions to her by letter.

Did he find solace on the way? In Mindanaon, in the Philippines, having crossed the long expenses of the Pacific, he, like the rest of the crew, made friendships with local women, a so-called pagally. Did he remain just friends with his pagally?

The chapters of his book that describe their time in Mindanaon are the most vibrant, the most alive of any of his book. So maybe far away from his home in England he did find some romance.

But his true love was to travel. His mind and heart was lost to the horizon and wondering what was beyond it.

The Founding of Australia

Today is Australia Day - the 26th of January is the anniversary of the foundation by the British of the penal colony in Sydney, NSW.

But it was not the first connection between Britain and Australia. That wasn't Captain Cook either - it was the less well known William Dampier.

Pirate, Buccaneer, Explorer, Scientist, and Writer, William Dampier was the first Brit to land on Australia and describe what he saw to the world.

You'd think the date of that landing would be celebrated too - 7th August 1699. But no, and you'd have too look hard in the Maritime Museum in Sydney to find his name mentioned. For his descriptions of what he found were not complimentary and so his contribution to Australian history is often overlooked.

There is a family story of a distant connection, and one day I'd like to sail off to follow in his footsteps.

And so Ozzies everywhere remember to raise your glasses on the 7th August to one of your other founders!