William Dampier was born in the year of 1651 in East Coker England to a tenant farmer (Dampier “memoirs of a buccaneer” 15). At first, his parents put him in school to study Latin. His parents soon died and he was left with his guardians. His guardians put him in school for writing and arithmetic. From an early age, he had “very early inclinations to see the world” (Dampier “memoirs of a buccaneer” 16). He decided to apprentice a shipmaster and took a voyage to Jamaica. He came back to England a couple years later wanting more. After that moment, this is where William Dampier’s life takes off. He decides to go on his first circumnavigation and joins a ban of buccaneers under the command of Bartholomew sharp (Dampier “New Voyage” 22). He starts …show more content…
He used the journals that he had been writing over the years and put them together to form an interesting narrative that influenced many people in the literary world (Preston 89). Years after his books were published; the literary world looked up to him as an icon of travel writing (Preston 341). William Dampier influenced many imaginations of authors that read his books (Preston 345). Without William Dampier their might have been no Robinson Crusoe, Friday, and other books that were influenced by William Dampier. Daniel Defoe studied many of William Dampier’s accounts from his book. William Dampier was a great writer of his time. He became a bestselling travel writer in 1697 after his first book “A New Voyage Around the World.” This book was first account of circumnavigation that was done in first person by someone who was onboard a ship (Preston 140). This book made in him a celebrity in England. It was the first travelogue that included action and discovery. His book became very popular and was translated to many languages and sold globally (Dampier “memoirs” 6). His second book was titled “Voyages and Descriptions.” This book supplemented his first book, providing more details about his voyage. The book was published in 1699; another book that he wrote titled “A Voyage to New Holland” was published in 1703. This book mainly focused on the Roebuck expedition to Australia. William Dampier has several other books that he wrote in the years before he
During the height of the British Empire—a time of exploration, discovery and colonization—lower class citizens of Great Britain were suffering under the weight of upper-class oppression. Many of these farmers, braziers, blacksmiths and etcetera passed the long arduous hours of manual labor by daydreaming of freedom, adventure, excitement and most of all landownership in the New World. The class system of eighteenth century England was rigid and restrictive to upward mobility; whereas, the New World was rumored to be a place where a man of any stripe could establish himself. Amongst these tired and sweaty daydreamers, a handful of ambitious men were not content to simply dream. These few courageous young lads were willing to take the risks of sea travel to find out for themselves if the rumors were true. Thus, the men made their arrangements and braved the howling gales and icy waters of the North Atlantic in search of their destiny. Joseph Howse was amongst the men who chased their dreams through the rigorous demands of the inhospitable landscape of Prince Rupert’s Land. Howse may have shared their enthusiasm about what lay ahead in the New World, but he did not share their motives.
Norman J. W. Thrower, Sir Francis Drake and the Famous Voyage ; University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984.
Ambrose’s attraction to the west resulted in Undaunted Courage, a splendidly thorough, exciting description of a happening that has achieved infamous status. Very much like the expedition itself, the book is slow in the beginning, being worried with topics like family sayings and "begats" but after 40 to 50 pages o it takes off. The expedition started chiefly through the labors of President Thomas Jefferson. Amongst his chief objectives were to find an all-water route to the Pacific and to keep the West from seceding away under Aaron Burr. Being Jefferson, there was also the pure intellectual joy of discovery...
Smith and Bradford addressed different audiences for different purposes and for this reason captured their accounts employing dissimilar writing styles. Smith, being the “adventurer, the explorer, and perhaps a braggart” (p. 35) sought to pique the interest of his fellow English countrymen to make the trip across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World. He did this by eloquently and vividly describing the natural beauty, wonder, and ample
First of all, his personal life and origins. Not too much is known of his origins, but people say that he was born on February 23rd, 1689 in Hittisleigh, United Kingdom. He died in a shipwreck on April 26th, 1717 off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. His ship, which will be
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The reason for his travels was to establish British holdings in the southern seas. But while sailing he came across some of the most important findings of the eighteenth century. He set out first on the English ship the Endeavour in 1768, and traveled to Tahiti and observed the path of Venus across the sun. He did this to verify the calculations made earlier by Edmund Halley about planetary orbits. Next he sailed south and discovered and charted New Zealand. He then sailed North to Sydney, and the Endeavour suffered damage from crashing into the barrier reef. He then mapped the Great Barrier Reef during a two-month stay, while repairing the ships hull. He named this land New South Whales and claimed it in the name of England. When departing from Australia he sailed westward and proved that there was a new sea route in between New Guinea and Australia. Due to Cook being insistent on cleanliness and ventilation, as well a diet consisting of Vitamin C, the majority of his crew survived.
Nathaniel Hawthorne “was born on July 4, 1804” (Carton 2). When he lost his father, Nathaniel Hathorne, at age four, it was extremely devastating because he never had the privilege of knowing who his father was. When a child loses a parent at such a young age, the imagination creates pretend memories. When he was old enough, he began searching for facts to fill in the gaps of those memories. “He supplemented the images of his father’s nautical life that he gleamed from the logbooks by reading travel narratives, histories, and adventure stories about the exotic regions Nathaniel Hathorne had sailed” (Carton 147). Following his completion in college, Hawthorne spent “twelve years of self-imposed isolation” researching
The purpose of this paper is to describe the life and the contribution to the development of the British Empire of one of the most important English explorers. It was in the second half of the 18th century when James Cook, originally a poor farm boy, explored and mapped vast uncharted areas of the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean. However, James Cook was not ‘only’ an explorer. He can also be called a scientist – he managed to introduce new principles into seafaring and cartography.
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