by Derek Wilson
The Chinese are very great gamesters, and they will never be tired with it, playing night and day, till they have lost all their estates. Then it is usual with them to hang themselves . . . The Spaniards, themselves, are much addicted to gaming and are very expert at it, but the Chinese are too subtle for them, being in general a very cunning people.19
Dampier’s book, published in 1697, was the first world-spanning travelogue in English. It was so packed with incident and observation that it is not surprising that it ran to four editions in two years.
Through the catalogue of rare knowledge ran the exciting narrative of Dampier’s own adventure and that adventure reached a high point on 5 May 1688. That was the day that the Cygnet, having coasted to the south of Sumatra, anchored off one of the Nicobar Islands to take on water. Dampier decided that this was the moment to break with the pirates. His, roughly formed, plans were to remain in the islands until he had collected a large amount of ambergris, the principal export; then to make his way to the English factory of Achin (modern Banda Atjeh), at the north-west corner of Sumatra. There he hoped to find a homeward passage, trade his precious ambergris for a large profit and return to his native land a wealthy man.
The scheme almost foundered before it had begun. The captain, at that time, John Read, agreed readily enough to set Dampier ashore and had him rowed to the island with his bedding, his gun and the sea chest carrying his few possessions. But while Dampier was still on the beach taking stock of his surroundings, the boat returned, full of armed men to carry the castaway back to the Cygnet by force. The reason for Read’s change of mind was the threat of further desertions. As soon as Dampier had gone, several other men had demanded to share his fate. When Dampier climbed back aboard he found a violent argument going on between the captain’s faction and the would-be castaways, the most vociferous of whom was the surgeon, Mr Coppinger. Read knew that his men would not sail without a doctor and so he refused to let anyone leave the ship. At that, Coppinger leaped down into the boat which was still alongside, grabbed up Dampier’s gun and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to stop him. But, before he could cast off, three of Read’s men jumped into the boat and overpowered him. With the surgeon under lock and key, Read was now ready and anxious to rid himself of other troublesome members of the crew. He allowed Dampier to return to the island along with two Englishmen, four Malays and a Portuguese.
It was not what Dampier had wanted. As he later reflected, ‘there are no people in the world so barbarous as to kill a single person that falls accidentally into their hands’,20 whereas a group of armed strangers automatically poses a potential threat. Although the people of Nicobar proved friendly, escape now became the castaways’ only concern and Dampier was obliged to abandon his mercantile plans. The eight men decided to row the two hundred miles to Sumatra. They bartered an axe for one of the local canoes, loaded aboard their possessions, together with enough fruit and water for the voyage, climbed in, and pushed away from the shallows. Within yards the unstable craft, not designed for such lading, turned turtle.
The voyagers now had to spend three days drying out their belongings and doing some rethinking. Dampier was especially concerned about his precious journal and carefully exposed it, page by page, to the warmth of one of the fires lit on the beach. Meanwhile the Malays were busy fitting outriggers to the canoe and hoisting a mast and sail. When all was ready, the voyagers made a fresh start. This time the boat proved more seaworthy and they were able to achieve steady progress towards the south-east corner of the island where they proposed to await favourable conditions for the hazardous crossing. But now, a fresh problem presented itself: they were followed by a fleet of native canoes. Dampier and his companions feared that this might mean trouble. If nothing else the locals might tell the other islanders all about them and make it hard to obtain supplies on favourable terms. To discourage their pursuers, one of the Englishmen raised his gun and fired a shot over their heads. It was a mistake. In an instant friendly curiosity turned to hostility. Word spread rapidly throughout the island and every time the mariners went ashore they had to contend with groups of spear-brandishing warriors.
However, they eventually reached the south end of Nicobar safely, replenished their provisions and, by 15 May, when the south-west monsoon began, they were ready for the perilous crossing. They had food and water for two or three days, some very rough sketch charts and a pocket compass. If they erred a few points to the north or south they would be carried into the wide western end of the Straits of Malacca or into the emptiness of the Indian Ocean. In either event, they would all be dead long before they reached land. Dampier was doing the navigating; constantly estimating the effects of wind and current. He knew he could not afford a mistake.
For the first two days there was little or no breeze to fill the sail. To make progress the little crew had to paddle continuously, taking their turns to work under the equatorial sun. The strain was intense. They were soon tired but dared not stop rowing. They were thirsty but had to ration their water strictly. At dawn on 17 May they saw land to the west-north-west. It was Nicobar, which they had left almost forty-eight muscle-tearing hours before. Their canoe, like a piece of helpless flotsam, had been carried westwards by a strong contrary current, despite all their endeavours. But the next day the perils of too little wind were replaced by the perils of too much. Soon after noon it built up to storm force, accompanied by rain, thunder and lightning. Dampier reduced sail but even under light canvas every gust thrust the canoe’s bow deep into the waves and threatened to snap her outriggers. There was nothing to be done but take in the sail and let the boat run before the wind, even though this carried them too far to the north. The men were cold, wet, hungry, thirsty and exhausted. To make matters worse some of them were suffering from dysentery. Self-preservation alone kept them working. Dampier and another Englishman took turns at the helm. Everyone else was constantly baling. The canoe was remarkably buoyant and pliable. It twisted with the pressure of the waves but did not split. Yet its passengers expected every moment to see it disintegrate:
The sea was already roaring in a white foam about us; a dark night coming on, and no land in sight to shelter us, and our little ark in danger to be swallowed by every wave; and, what was worst of all, none of us thought ourselves prepared for another world. The reader may better guess than I can express, the confusion that we were all in. I had been in many imminent dangers before now, some of which I have already related, but the worst of them all was but a play-game in comparison with this. I must confess that I was in great conflicts of mind at this time. Other dangers came not upon me with such a leisurely and dreadful solemnity. A sudden skirmish or engagement, or so, was nothing when one’s blood was up, and pushed forwards with eager expectations. But here I had a lingering view of approaching death, and little or no hopes of escaping it; and I must confess that my courage, which I had hitherto kept up, failed me here; and I made very sad reflections on my former life, and looked back with horror and detestation on actions which before I disliked, but now I trembled at the remembrance of. I had long before this repented me of that roving course of life, but never with such concern as now. I did also call to mind the many miraculous acts of God’s providence towards me in the whole course of my life, of which kind I believe few men have met with the like. For all these I returned thanks in a peculiar manner, and thus once more desired God’s assistance, and composed my mind as well as I could in the hopes of it, and as the event showed, I was not disappointed of my hopes.21
In fact, the storm may well have saved them. It provided them with fresh drinking water and it carried them fast in the general direction of their destination. As the wind abated Dampier adjusted the steering in the hope of bringing them back on course. On the morning of 19 May one of the Malays pointed excitedly across the starboard bow and shouted what Dampier at first thought was ‘Pull away!’. In fact, what he was saying was ‘Pulau We’, ‘We Island’, one of a group of islands lying off the wester
n end of Sumatra. He was mistaken, as became clear later in the day. What had appeared to be an isolated chunk of land in the midst of the sea was the tip of Peusangan Pasai, a mountain on the mainland. With salvation in sight it was cruel that the wind now suddenly dropped away again. The weary voyagers had to spend another thirty-six hours paddling before running their brave craft ashore at the mouth of the Peusangan river.
The local people treated their strange visitors with a mixture of kindness and reserve. They supplied all the Europeans’ wants but, being Muslims, would not eat with them or keep close company with them (even their Malay fellow-travellers now separated themselves from the four white men). This meant that they had to prepare for themselves the food brought daily to their hut. Since they were now all suffering from dysentery this could only be disastrous. For twelve days they lay weak and feverish. Then their hosts took them by canoe to Achin. Here, two of Dampier’s colleagues died and Dampier, himself, had almost given up hope of life. He was placed in the hands of a Malay doctor and slowly recovered, though whether because of or in spite of his medication is not clear. The physician prescribed a strong purgative which:
. . . wrought so violently that I thought it would have ended my days. I struggled till I had been about twenty or thirty times at stool. But it working so quick with me, with little intermission, and my strength being almost spent, I even threw myself down once for all and had above sixty stools in all before it left off working. I thought my Malayan doctor, whom they so much commended, would have killed me outright . . .22
Dampier’s arrival at the East India Company’s Achin depot marked his return to respectability. He had, at last, turned his back on the buccaneering life. However, he did seek out information about his erstwhile companions during his subsequent voyaging. Gradually he was able to piece together the story of Captain Read and his men. It was a story of continuing squabbles and desertions. Some men left the ship to take service with the Great Mogul of India. Others, like himself, escaped to East India Company factories. A few linked up with various pirate bands. The Cygnet spent several months cruising back and forth across the Indian Ocean but the pickings were not good, probably because the region was dominated by Arab pirates operating out of Persian Gulf ports. At last Captain Swan’s ship was scuttled in a Madagascar harbour.
The officials at Achin asked few questions about Dampier’s previous nefarious activities. It was more important to them that they had in their midst an experienced mariner and navigator. On a station where climate and disease took a terrible toll of the men sent out from England that was important. Doubtless this was why they went to such lengths to try to nurse the new arrivals back to health. After recovering, Dampier received several offers from captains and merchants. Over the next couple of years he made three merchant voyages which took him as far afield as Madras in the west and the Gulf of Tonkin in the east.
In July 1690 he was appointed master gunner at Bengkulu, an English fort on the south-west coast of Sumatra. At the same time he acquired half shares in two people. These were a young man called Jeoly and his mother, and they came from an island to the south-east of Mindanao. Their story is a sad one. They had been taken prisoner in a raid by the sultan of Mindanao and subsequently sold to an English merchant named Moody. He had taken them to Madras, which was where Dampier first encountered them. Moody and his slaves travelled to Bengkulu on the same ship as Dampier and there the two men struck a deal by which Dampier acquired a stake in Jeoly and his mother. The understanding was that he would take them back to their own people, among whom Jeoly claimed to be a prince, and, using this as a means of ingratiating himself, establish trading relations with an island which (like so many unvisited eastern islands) was supposedly rich in gold and spices. But it had already occurred to Dampier that Jeoly might prove profitable in another way. It was eleven years since he had left home with his head full of money-making schemes. And he had nothing to show for those eleven years except a wealth of adventures, recorded in his journal – and Jeoly. For the young man was no ordinary Philippine islander. He was tattooed all over his body from his chest and shoulders to his ankles. Travellers in Malaysia and Indonesia were fairly familiar with the practice of tattooing but Jeoly obviously provided a remarkable example of the art and Dampier believed he could make a small fortune exhibiting in London the man he called his ‘painted prince’.*
For some months Dampier lived at Bengkulu but his stay was not a happy one. He found the governor despotic and unreasonable. Then his two slaves fell ill. The picture he paints of their life is a sad one. They had no skills or interests to occupy them in this alien environment. The woman filled her time sewing, at which she was very clumsy, while Jeoly ‘busied himself in making a chest with four boards and a few nails that he begged off me. It was but an ill-shaped, odd thing, yet he was as proud of it as if it had been the rarest piece in the world’.23 Then they went down with a fever and the mother died. Jeoly was so distraught that it seemed he had neither the strength nor the will to recover. Only ardent nursing by Dampier, for whom the young man was both a friend and an investment, restored him to health.
By the end of 1690 Dampier had had enough of Bengkulu. He asked to be released from his contract so that he could take passage on the next homeward-bound ship. The governor agreed and, early in January, Dampier conveyed Jeoly and his sea chest aboard the East-Indiaman Defence, commanded by a Captain Heath. But the governor then went back on his word. Several stormy interviews followed but the man proved quite intractable. Eventually the master gunner of Bengkulu was obliged to escape by night through one of his own gun ports. One of the Defence’s boats met him on the beach and he was hidden aboard the ship until she sailed on 25 January 1691.
They had a wretched crossing to the Cape. Contrary winds prolonged the voyage, and scurvy, thus, took its inevitable toll. Several of the crew died and the rest were too weak to work the ship whenever she was not running before the wind. At length the captain had to offer a month’s extra pay to any man who would be constantly on call. This incentive dragged the last ounces of energy from those who were still on their feet and the Defence reached the Cape in early April. This Dutch port had now become a thriving, pleasant town and a favourite stopping place with all sailors. Moreover, now that peace was restored with Holland, English ships were very welcome there. Much had happened in Europe since Dampier had left. He had been absent for the entire reign of James II. While the traveller had been lying sick at Achin, the Glorious Revolution had gathered momentum and, eventually driven the last Stuart king from his throne. That seat was now occupied by William of Orange, who ruled with his English-born wife, Mary.
Dampier found his Dutch hosts very hospitable. Although the charges for liquor were exorbitant, other commodities were reasonably priced and the officers of the Dutch East India Company went to some lengths to entertain their guests, even to the extent of providing a pleasant garden for them to walk in:
This garden is full of divers sorts of herbs, flowers, roots, and fruits, with curious spacious gravel walks and arbours; and is watered with a brook that descends out of the mountains: which being cut into many channels, is conveyed into all parts of the garden. The hedges which make the walks are very thick, and nine or ten foot high: they are kept exceeding neat and even by continual pruning. There are lower hedges within these again, which serve to separate the fruit trees from each other, but without shading them: and they keep each sort of fruit by themselves, as apples, pears, abundance of quinces, pomegranates, etc. These all prosper very well, and bear good fruit, especially the pomegranate. The roots and garden herbs have also their distinct places, hedged in apart by themselves; and all in such order, that it is exceeding pleasant and beautiful. There are a great number of negroslaves brought from other parts of the world; some of which are continually weeding, pruning, trimming and looking after it. All strangers are allowed the liberty to walk there; and by the servants’ leave, you may be admitted to taste of the fruit: but if you think to
do it clandestinely, you may be mistaken, as I knew one was when I was in the garden, who took five or six pomegranates, and was espied by one of the slaves, and threatened to be carried before the governor: I believe it cost him some money to make his peace, for I heard no more of it.24
During his six-week stay Dampier travelled widely in the Cape, employing his descriptive pen for the last time. It was his first visit to the African mainland and he found much to interest him, including:
. . . a very beautiful sort of wild ass . . . whose body is curiously striped with equal lists of white and black; the stripes coming from the ridge of his back, and ending under the belly, which is white. These stripes are two or three fingers broad, running parallel with each other and curiously intermixed, one white and one black, over from the shoulder to the rump. I saw two of the skins of these beasts, dried and preserved to be sent to Holland as a rarity. They seemed big enough to enclose the body of a beast as big as a large colt of a twelve month old.25
Zebras had been written of before in bestiaries, along with unicorns and griffins. Dampier was one of the first to essay a more scientific description.
The local people were equally fascinating though, in Dampier’s opinion, far less attractive:
The Hottentots do wear no covering on their heads, but deck their hair with small shells. Their garments are sheepskins wrapped about their shoulders like a mantle, with the woolly sides next their bodies. The men have beside this mantle a piece of skin like a small apron, hanging before them. The women have another skin tucked about their waists, which comes down to their knees like a petticoat; and their legs are wrapped round with sheeps-guts two or three inches thick, some up as high as to their calves, others even from their feet to their knees, which at a small distance seems to be a sort of boots. These are put on when they are green; and so they grow hard and stiff on their legs, for they never pull them off again, till they have occasion to eat them; which is when they journey from home, and have no other food; then these guts which have been worn, it may be, six, eight, ten or twelve months, make a good banquet: this I was informed of by the Dutch. They never pull off their sheepskin garments, but to louse themselves, for by continual wearing them they are full of vermin, which obliges them often to strip and sit in the sun two or three hours together in the heat of the day, to destroy them.26