The pirate with a noble cause.

(From Lloyds List)

BEFORE Cook, before Darwin there was William Dampier. If that name is unfamiliar to you, then you are in good company, writes Neville Smith.

A literary influence on Coleridge, Swift and Defoe and the first Englishman to properly study the oceanography, flora and fauna of South America, East Asia and Australia, Dampier was a 17th century phenomenon largely forgotten by posterity.

He was also a pirate, whose years of buccaneering on the Spanish main brought him plenty of adventure but little by the way of fortune. Indeed, he seems a relatively reluctant brigand, falling into the company of outlaw sailors when the realities of plantation life in Jamaica failed to deliver the adventure he craved.

Arrogant and somewhat diffident in his youth, Dampier was a natural outsider, with a taste for enquiry that always outstripped his appetite for plunder and pillage.

Circumnavigating the globe three times and visiting all five continents he diligently recorded everything he saw, ate and touched, preserving his notes by a succession of ingenious devices, preferring observation of the natural world to the company of his fellow travellers.

And in the current revisions to the history of Empire and trade, Dampier, despite his shady exploits, is perhaps the best example of the noble explorer, who sought to learn from the peoples he met. Set against the brute stupidity displayed by the East India Company's representatives, he was often a benign influence, seeking co-operation where others preferred to dominate.