Letter by William Dampier up for Auction!

[Thagarr]

Bonhams, a privately owned British auction house, will be auctioning off a letter written and signed by William Dampier in January of 1674. Unlike a lot of his later writing, this letter was written to his employer of the time Colonel William Helyar while helping to manage Heylar's plantation in Jamaica. The letter will go on auction on March 18'th, 2015. This is not the first of Dampier's works to be auctioned by Bonham's. In 2013, they also auctioned a collection of 3 volumes of First Edition books written by Dampier which included “A New Voyage round the World” and “A Voyage to New Holland.”

For those of you who are not familiar with Dampier, he was an officer in the British navy, a privateer, pirate, buccaneer and also a naturalist and author of several books. He circumnavigated the globe 3 times, and during his voyages, he wrote down many of his observations about nature. Included in these observations were descriptions about prevailing tides, wind direction, flora and fauna of the various places he visited. These descriptions were so detailed and precise that they could be considered scientific

According to Wikipedia :

Dampier influenced several figures better known than he:

• He made important contributions to navigation, collecting for the first time data on currents, winds and tides across all the world’s oceans that was used by James Cook and Horatio Nelson.[37]
  
  
• His travel journals depicting Panama may have influenced the undertaking of the ill-fated Darien Scheme, leading to the Act of Union of 1707.[38]
  
  
• Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, was likely inspired by accounts of real-life castaway Alexander Selkirk, a crew member on Dampier's voyages.[39]
  
  
• Jonathan Swift explicitly mentions Dampier in his Gulliver's Travels as a mariner comparable to Lemuel Gulliver.[40]
  
  
• His notes on the fauna and flora of north-western Australia were studied by naturalist and scientist Joseph Banks,[37] who made further studies during the first voyage with James Cook. This helped lead to the naming of and colonisation of Botany Bay and the founding of modern Australia.
  
  
• His reports on breadfruit led to William Bligh's ill-fated voyage in HMS Bounty.[41]
  
  
• Another storied crew mate of Dampier's, Simon Hatley, who is best remembered for shooting an albatross while his ship battled storms off Cape Horn, influenced the writing of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.[42]
  
  
• His observations and analysis of natural history helped Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Darwin develop their scientific theories.[40]
  
  
• His observations (and those of Mr William Funnell) during his expeditions are mentioned several times by Alfred Russel Wallace in his book The Malay Archipelago, and compared to his own observations made on his 19th-century voyages.[43]
  
  
• He is cited over 80 times in the Oxford English Dictionary, notably on words such as "barbecue", "avocado", "chopsticks" and "sub-species".[44] That is not to say he coined the words, but his use of them in his writings is the first known example in English.

He was also the first Englishman to set foot in Australia, or New Holland as it was known at the time. Dampier started out his sea going career a century before James Cook's famous voyages. There is way to much for me to write about in this short srticle, if you would like to learn more about Dampier, you can read the full Wikipedia article HERE!

If your curious to know just what Dampier was up to on his voyage down under, you can download a copy of “A Voyage to New Holland, Etc. in the Year 1699” by William Dampier from Project Gutenberg HERE!

Also up for auction on March 18'th is a collection of thirty autograph letters, some containing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's signature. Also included in the same auction are several other fine books, manuscripts, atlases and historical photographs. Quite a collection indeed! You can read the full details HERE!

 

[Jack Rackham]

Oh yes he sounds familiar.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Some things in the description didn't make sense, so I checked and:


Lot 101
DAMPIER (WILLIAM)
Autograph letter signed ("Willi Dampyer"), to his employer Colonel William Helyar of East Coker ("Honrd Sir")
, written early in his career while helping to manage Helyar's plantation in Jamaica, Jamaica, 13 January 1674[/75]

 

[Thagarr]

Ooops, corrected, thanks mate!