MAP OF YUCATAN DAMPIER'S VOYAGE

English explorer, pirate, privateer, navigator, and naturalist who became the first Englishman to explore parts of what is today Australia, and the first person to circumnavigate the world three times.

One of the most important British explorers of the period between Francis Drake (16th century) and James Cook (18th century); he "bridged those two eras" with a mix of piratical derring-do of the former and scientific inquiry of the latter. His expeditions were among the first to identify and name a number of plants, animals, foods, and cooking techniques for a European audience, being among the first English writers to use words such as avocado, barbecue, and chopsticks.

After impressing the Admiralty with his book A New Voyage Round the World, Dampier was given command of a Royal Navy ship and made important discoveries in western Australia, before being court-martialled for cruelty. On a later voyage he rescued Alexander Selkirk, a former crewmate who may have inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Others influenced by Dampier include James Cook, Horatio Nelson, Charles Darwin, and Alfred Russel Wallace.

Dampier was explorer adventurer and pirate the precurseor to Banks and Darwin and was the first English exploreor to record and collect natural history. He made an unprecedented three circumnanigations of the world and survived shipwreck, desertion and imprisonment.First English explorer to set foot on Austyralian land. It was his decscription of the aborigines at Kings sound which probably inspired Swifts 'yahoos' in Gullivers travels.