December 27, 2012
WHEN, 70 years before Captain Cook landed at Botany Bay, buccaneer-turned explorer William Dampier set foot on Western Australia's sandy shore in 1699 one of his first acts was – to collect plants.
That might sound an odd occupation for an ex-pirate but Dampier, from the landlocked village of East Coker, was also a pioneering naturalist, with an analytical eye and insatiable curiosity. More than 100 years after his death his precise observations won the admiration of Charles Darwin.
Flower power: A page from William Dampier's A Voyage to New Holland, with original plants collected by him in Australia. Three leather-bound volumes and plant specimens are held by the Fielding-Druce Herbarium, at Oxford University. Picture Steve Roberts
In 1699, Dampier was on an Admiralty mission, the first expedition specifically planned for scientific and geographic exploration. His brief was to explore New Holland (Australia) and the East Indies: "for the good of the nation". Bringing home specimens that might have an economic benefit was vital, and plants were high on the list.
New Holland was still a mystery, its coastline only partially charted. In 1688, Dampier had been among the first group of Britons to land there, during his 12-year circumnavigation of the world. His superb navigational skills and curiosity for all the wonders he met in his travels made him the obvious choice for the later Admiralty quest.
In August 1699, Dampier guided his ship, the Roebuck, through shark-infested waters to anchorage in Shark Bay. As he walked among the shining white sand dunes he bent to collect plant specimens, noting their beautiful and delicate flowers, some of which were a dazzling blue.
Amazingly 313 years later those fragile emissaries from another world can still be seen. They are preserved in the Fielding-Druce Herbarium, now part of Oxford University Herbaria. The Herbaria, established in 1621 is the fourth oldest in the world, and contains around one million specimens.
The Dampier specimens' survival is particularly remarkable because on the homeward voyage the Roebuck sprang a leak and sank off Ascension Island. After desperate attempts to plug the hole, and several hours spent baling and pumping out water Dampier realised that he could "think of nothing but saving our lives".
A breeze helped him coax the doomed ship a little nearer the shore, and men, stores and as many precious specimens as possible were ferried to safety by raft. Many of Dampier's books and papers were lost, but he was able to save his journals. Perhaps some of the plants were pressed between their pages.
Dampier did not arrive back in England until 1701. Two years later he published a two-volume book of the expedition, A Voyage to New Holland, which like his earlier best-seller, A New Voyage Round the World sparked the imaginations of writers as well as scientists. They influenced Jonathan Swift's fantasy Gulliver's Travels. 'Gulliver' even makes reference to his "cousin Dampier". The specimens found their way into the collection of the outstanding 18th century botanist William Sherard. Later Sherard's collection was acquired by the university where it is still studied today. Dampier's plants hold a special place in the minds, and hearts, of Australian botanists. The herbarium's visitors' book is sprinkled with the names of men and women who have travelled half way round the world to see them.
"Dampier did not just collect in Australia but in South East Asia and Brazil and we have separated the Dampier collection from the rest of the herbarium because so many people keep wanting to see them," explains Dr Stephen Harris curator of the Herbaria.
Just days before my visit, a Brazilian botanist had come to study Dampier's finds. Stephen shows me a delicate specimen which with its hard thin leaves reminds me, and reminded Dampier, of rosemary, although it is not related. "Dampier collected this from East Lewis Island in the Dampier Archipelago," says Stephen.
"He named East Lewis 'Rosemary Island' because of the similarity of the plant. Dampier was one of those curious people who was very aware of his surroundings and wanted to bring things back to show other people as evidence, because at this time there was the whole problem of travellers' tales sometimes being exaggerations or misunderstandings.
"Science was beginning to become more formalised so people were wanting evidence, and there was also the issue of economic potential.
"The East Indies was controlled at the time by the Dutch and the British were wanting to get into the area, and to discover whether the plants had medicinal or other values.
"You could liken the expedition to the Mars mission. You have Dampier in his little ship going somewhere and seeing what he can make of that world from just a little area that he can see.
"Now we have so much more experience. At his time there were perhaps 15,000 species known. Now there are 450,000."
A few years ago the specimens travelled back to the land of their birth for an exhibition in Perth marking the 300th anniversary of their collection. Herbarium manager Serena Marner accompanied them.
She recalls: "The plants required courier service to return them and I was very fortunate in having the enviable task.
"Impossible for Dampier himself to imagine but the plants took just less than 24 hours to return safely by 747 jumbo jet. There were strict quarantine regulations governing the arrival of specimens and they were taken immediately to the Western Australian Herbarium for freezing – also something not envisaged 300 years ago."
A few days later they were on display in the Western Australian Museum for its 'Voyage of Discovery. William Dampier Tricentenniel Exhibition'.
Shark Bay is now a World Heritage Site. Serena was invited to join a party from the Western Austalian Museum on a visit to Dampier's first landing site in the bay, at Dirk Hartog Island.
There, she and Australian botanist Alex George collected a duplicate set of 'Dampier species' and on August 17, exactly 300 years to the day after Dampier set foot on the spot the site was named 'Dampier's Landing'. The province in which it lies has one of the world's richest floras, boasting between 8,000 and 9,000 species.
Dampier is said to have been born at Hymerford House which still stands in East Coker. His father, a tenant farmer, died when he was young and some years later he was apprenticed to a Weymouth shipmaster and by the time he was 21 he had sailed to Newfoundland and the East Indies. He threw in his lot with buccaneers after East Coker's squire, sensing his potential, sent him to help manage his Jamaican sugar plantation. Plantation life was not for Dampier, and he tried life as a logwooder, cutting, hauling and trading timber in the Caribbean.
Sailing with the buccaneers he saw the wonders of the new world, while all the time learning more about winds and currents. His maps of the winds were still in use more than 100 years later and Nelson was among those who valued them.
Dampier was the first person to circumnavigate the world three times, gave a public hungry to read about new lands new words such as avocado, and chopsticks. His vivid descriptions of animals, plants, people and customs, inspired Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who paid tribute to Dampier's "exquisite mind", yet it is a sad truth that today the real Gulliver is overshadowed by his imaginary cousin.
Dampier himself would not worry. His eye would be on the horizon.
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