Book description
Dampier's (1651-1715) adventures and writing inspired both Robinson
Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels, but in his own right he was a remarkable,
observant and enjoyable writer - whether on a woefully mishandled pirate
raid in Spanish America or on a desperate journey to Sumatra in an open
boat or on the habits of manatees or bats. He also left the first
description in English of the Aborigines of Australia - thus initiating
a painful, now three centuries' long encounter between peoples on
opposite sides of the world. Great Journeys allows readers to travel
both around the planet and back through the centuries - but also back
into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways
from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of
engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations,
walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains,
multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is
to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were
quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as
facts and in which so much was still to be discovered. William Dampier
(1651-1715) was an English buccaneer, sea captain, author and scientific
observer. He had a long and unbelievably chaotic career, managing more
by accident than design to sail around the world three times and
participate in a wilderness of almost uniformly unsuccessful piratical
and semi-piratical ventures.
