The Pirates' Who's Who Part 13

Little is known of him except that one day in the streets of London he recognized and denounced another pirate called Burgess.

c.u.mBERLAND, GEORGE, THIRD EARL OF, 1558-1605.

M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge.

After taking his degree at Cambridge he migrated to Oxford for the purpose of studying geography.

So many books have been written about this picturesque and daring adventurer that it is not necessary to do more than mention his name here, as being perhaps the finest example of a buccaneer that ever sacked a Spanish town.

He led twelve voyages to the Spanish Main, fitting them out at his own expense, and encountering the same dangers and hardships as his meanest seaman.

He married in 1577 at the age of nineteen, and sailed on his first voyage in 1586. c.u.mberland was greatly esteemed by Queen Elizabeth, and always wore in his hat a glove which she had given him.

There is sufficient evidence to show that the Earl was not prompted to spend his life and fortune on buccaneering voyages merely by greed of plunder, but was chiefly inspired by intense love of his country, loyalty to his Queen, and bitter hatred of the Spaniards.

CUNNINGHAM, CAPTAIN WILLIAM.

Had his headquarters at New Providence Island, in the Bahamas. Refused the royal offer of pardon to the pirates in 1717, and was later caught and hanged.

CUNNINGHAM, PATRICK.

Found guilty at Newport in 1723, but reprieved.

CURTICE, JOSEPH.

One of Captain Teach's crew in the _Queen Ann's Revenge_. Killed on November 22nd, 1718, off the coast of North Carolina.

DAMPIER, CAPTAIN WILLIAM. Buccaneer, explorer, and naturalist.

Born at East c.o.ker in the year 1652.

Brought up at first to be a shopkeeper, a life he detested, he was in 1669 apprenticed to a ship belonging to Weymouth, and his first voyage was to France. In the same year he sailed to Newfoundland, but finding the bitter cold unbearable, he returned to England. His next voyage, which he called "a warm one," was to the East Indies, in the _John and Martha_, and suited him better.

Many books have been written recounting the voyages of Dampier, but none of these are better reading than his own narrative, published by James and John Knapton in London. This popular book ran into many editions, the best being the fourth, published in 1729, in four volumes. These volumes are profusely ill.u.s.trated by maps and rough charts, and also with crude cuts, which are intended to portray the more interesting and strange animals, birds, fishes, and insects met with in his voyages round the globe.

In 1673 Dampier enlisted as a seaman in the _Royal Prince_, commanded by the famous Sir Edward Spragge, and fought in the Dutch war.

A year later he sailed to Jamaica in the _Content_, to take up a post as manager of a plantation belonging to a Colonel h.e.l.lier. His restless spirit soon revolted against this humdrum life on a plantation, and Dampier again went to sea, sailing in a small trading vessel amongst the islands.

Dampier's first step towards buccaneering was taken when he shipped himself on a small ketch which was sailing from Port Royal to load logwood at the Bay of Campeachy. This was an illegal business, as the Spanish Government claimed the ownership of all that coast, and did their best to prevent the trade. Dampier found some 250 Englishmen engaged in cutting the wood, which they exchanged for rum. Most of these men were buccaneers or privateers, who made a living in this way when out of a job afloat.

When a ship came into the coast, these men would think nothing of coming aboard and spending thirty and forty pounds on rum and punch at a single drinking bout.

Dampier returned afterwards to take up logwood cutting himself, but met with little success, and went off to Beef Island. He had by this time begun to take down notes of all that appeared to him of interest, particularly objects of natural history. For example, he described, in his own quaint style, an animal he found in this island.

"The Squash is a four-footed Beast, bigger than a Cat. Its Head is much like a Foxes, with short Ears and a long Nose. It has pretty short Legs and sharp Claws, by which it will run up trees like a Cat. The flesh is good, sweet, wholesome Meat. We commonly skin and roast it; and then we call it pig; and I think it eats as well. It feeds on nothing but good Fruit; therefore we find them most among the Sapadillo-Trees. This Creature never rambles very far, and being taken young, will become as tame as a Dog, and be as roguish as a Monkey."

Dampier's first act of actual piracy was when he joined in an attack on the Spanish fort of Alvarado, but although the fort was taken, the townspeople had time to escape with all their valuables before the pirates could reach them. Returning to England in 1678, he did not remain long at home, for in the beginning of 1679 he sailed for Jamaica in a vessel named the _Loyal Merchant_. Shortly after reaching the West Indies, he chanced to meet with several well-known buccaneers, including Captains c.o.xon, Sawkins, and Sharp. Joining with these, he sailed on March 25th, 1679, for the Province of Darien, "to pillage and plunder these parts." Dampier says strangely little about his adventures for the next two years, but a full description of them is given by Ringrose in his "Dangerous Voyage and Bold Adventures of Captain Sharp and Others in the South Sea," published as an addition to the "History of the Buccaneers of America" in 1684.

This narrative tells how the buccaneers crossed the isthmus and attacked and defeated the Spanish Fleet off Panama City. After the death of their leader, Sawkins, the party split up, and Dampier followed Captain Sharp on his "dangerous and bold voyage" in May, 1680.

In April, 1681, after various adventures up and down the coast of Peru and Chile, further quarrels arose amongst the buccaneers, and a party of malcontents, of which number Dampier was one, went off on their own account in a launch and two canoes from the Island of Plate, made famous by Drake, and landed on the mainland near Cape San Lorenzo. The march across the Isthmus of Darien has been amusingly recounted by the surgeon of the party, Lionel Wafer, in his book ent.i.tled "A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America," published in London in 1699.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A PAGE FROM THE LOG-BOOK OF CAPTAIN DAMPIER.

To face p. 98.]

On reaching the Atlantic, Dampier found some buccaneer ships and joined them, arriving at Virginia in July, 1682. In this country he resided for a year, but tells little about it beyond hinting that great troubles befell him. In April, 1683, he joined a privateer vessel, the _Revenge_, but directly she was out of sight of land the crew turned pirates, which had been their intention all along. Two good narratives have been written of this voyage, one by Dampier, and the other by Cowley, the sailing-master.

This venture ended in the famous circ.u.mnavigation of the world, and Dampier described every object of interest he met with, including the country and natives of the north coast of Australia, which had never been visited before by Europeans. Dampier must have found it very difficult to keep his journal so carefully and regularly, particularly in his early voyages, when he was merely a seaman before the mast or a petty officer.

He tells us that he carried about with him a long piece of hollow bamboo, in which he placed his ma.n.u.script for safe keeping, waxing the ends to keep out the sea water.

After almost endless adventures and hardships, he arrived back in England in September, 1691, after a voyage of eight years, and an absence from England of twelve, without a penny piece in his pocket, nor any other property except his unfortunate friend Prince Jeoly, whom he sold on his arrival in the Thames, to supply his own immediate wants. Dampier's next voyage was in the year 1699, when he was appointed to command H.M.S.

_Roebuck_, of twelve guns and a crew of fifty men and boys, and victualled for twenty months' cruise. The object of this voyage was to explore and map the new continent to the south of the East Indies which Dampier had discovered on his previous voyage. Had he in this next voyage taken the westward course, as he originally intended, and sailed to Australia round the Horn, it is possible that Dampier would have made many of the discoveries for which James Cook afterwards became so famous, and by striking the east coast of Australia would very likely have antedated the civilisation of that continent by fifty years. But he was persuaded, partly by his timid crew, and perhaps in some measure by his own dislike of cold temperatures, to sail by the eastward route and to double the Cape of Good Hope. The story of this voyage is given by Dampier in his book, published in 1709, "A Voyage to New Holland, etc., in the Year 1699."

After spending some unprofitable weeks on the north coast of Australia, failing to find water or to make friends with the aboriginals, scurvy broke out amongst his somewhat mutinous crew, and he sailed to New Guinea, the coast of which he saw on New Year's Day, 1700.

By this time the _Roebuck_ was falling to pieces, her wood rotten, her hull covered with barnacles. Eventually, using the pumps day and night, they arrived, on February 21st, 1701, at Ascension Island, where the old ship sank at her anchors. Getting ash.o.r.e with their belongings, they waited on this desolate island until April 3rd, when four ships arrived, three of them English men-of-war.

I was told, only the other day, by a friend who lives in the Island of St.

Helena, and whose duties take him at least once each year to Ascension Island, that a story still survives amongst the inhabitants of these islands that there is hidden somewhere in the sandhills a treasure, which Dampier is believed to have put there for safe keeping, but for some reason never removed. But poor Dampier never came by a treasure in this or any other of his voyages, and though the legend is a pleasant one, it is a legend and nothing more. Dampier went on board one of the men-of-war, the _Anglesea_, with thirty-five of his crew. Taken to Barbadoes, he there procured a berth in another vessel, the _Canterbury_, in which he sailed to England.

Dampier had now made so great a name for himself by his two voyages round the globe that he was granted a commission by Prince George of Denmark to sail as a privateer in the _St. George_, to prey on French and Spanish ships, the terms being: "No purchase, no pay." Sailing as his consort was the _Cinque Ports_, whose master was Alexander Selkirk, the original of Robinson Crusoe. This voyage, fully recounted in Dampier's book, is a long tale of adventure, hardship, and disaster, and the explorer eventually returned to England a beggar. However, his travels made a great stir, and he was allowed to kiss the Queen's hand and to have the honour of relating his adventures to her.

Dampier's last voyage was in the capacity of pilot or navigating officer to Captain Woodes Rogers in the _Duke_, which sailed with another Bristol privateer, the _d.u.c.h.ess_, in 1708. The interesting narrative of this successful voyage is told by Rogers in his book, "A Cruising Voyage Round the World," etc., published in 1712. Another account was written by the captain of the _d.u.c.h.ess_, Edward Cooke, and published in the same year.

This last voyage round the world ended at Erith on October 14th, 1711, and was the only one in which Dampier returned with any profit other than to his reputation as an explorer and navigator.

Dampier was now fifty-nine years of age, and apparently never went to sea again. In fact, he henceforth disappears from the stage altogether, and is supposed to have died in Colman Street in London, in the year 1715. Of Dampier's early life in England little is known, except that he owned, at one time, a small estate in Somersetshire, and that in 1678 he married "a young woman out of the family of the d.u.c.h.ess of Grafton." There is an interesting picture of Dampier in the National Portrait Gallery, painted by T. Murray, and I take this opportunity to thank the directors for their kind permission to reproduce this portrait.

One other book Dampier wrote, called a "Discourse of Winds," an interesting work, and one which added to the author's reputation as a hydrographer. There is little doubt that Defoe was inspired by the experiences and writings of Dampier, not only in his greatest work, "Robinson Crusoe," but also in "Captain Singleton," "Colonel Jack," "A New Voyage Round the World," and many of the maritime incidents in "Roxana"

and "Moll Flanders."

DAN, JOSEPH.

One of Avery's crew. Turned King's witness at his trial in 1696, and was not hanged.

DANIEL, CAPTAIN. A French filibuster.

The name of this bloodthirsty pirate will go down to fame as well as notoriety by his habit of combining piracy with strict Church discipline.

Harling recounts an example of this as follows, the original account of the affair being written by a priest, M. Labat, who seems to have had rather a weak spot in his heart for the buccaneer fraternity:

"Captain Daniel, in need of provisions, anch.o.r.ed one night off one of the 'Saintes,' small islands near Dominica, and landing without opposition, took possession of the house of the cure and of some other inhabitants of the neighbourhood. He carried the cure and his people on board his ship without offering them the least violence, and told them that he merely wished to buy some wine, brandy and fowls. While these were being gathered, Daniel requested the cure to celebrate Ma.s.s, which the poor priest dared not refuse. So the necessary sacred vessels were sent for and an altar improvised on the deck for the service, which they chanted to the best of their ability. As at Martinique, the Ma.s.s was begun by a discharge of artillery, and after the Exaudiat and prayer for the King, was closed by a loud 'Vive la Roi!' from the throats of the buccaneers. A single incident, however, somewhat disturbed the devotions. One of the buccaneers, remaining in an indecent att.i.tude during the Elevation, was rebuked by the captain, and instead of heeding the correction, replied with an impertinence and a fearful oath. Quick as a flash Daniel whipped out his pistol and shot the buccaneer through the head, adjuring G.o.d that he would do as much to the first who failed in his respect to the Holy Sacrifice. The shot was fired close by the priest, who, as we can readily imagine, was considerably agitated. 'Do not be troubled, my father,' said Daniel; 'he is a rascal lacking in his duty and I have punished him to teach him better.'" A very efficacious means, remarks Labat, of preventing his falling into another like mistake. After the Ma.s.s the body of the dead man was thrown into the sea, and the cure was recompensed for his pains by some goods out of their stock and the present of a negro slave.