Dampier in Aceh, Indonesia

It was now February, 1689.

Nothing of moment happened during the passage to the Straits of Malacca. The ship arrived at Acheen [Aceh] about the beginning of March, where Dampier took leave of Weldon and went ashore.

He gives in this volume of his travels a long and interesting account of Acheen, and in describing the soil of the country prints the following brief passage of recollection.

“The Champion Land, such as I have seen, is some black, some grey, some reddish, and all of a deep mold. But to be very particular in these things, especially in my Travels, is more than I can pretend to, tho’ it may be I took as much notice of the difference of Soil as I met with it as most Travellers have done, having been bred in my youth in Somersetshire, at a place called East Coker, near Yeovil or Evil: in which Parish there is a great variety of Soil as I have ordinarily met with anywhere, viz. black, red, yellow, sandy, stony, clay, morass, or swampy, etc.

I had the more reason to take notice of this, because this Village in a great measure is Let out in small Leases for Lives of 20, 30, 40 or 50 Pound per Ann., under Coll.

Helliar, the Lord of the Mannor: and most, if not all these Tenants, had their own Land scattered in small pieces up and down several sorts of Land in the Parish; so that every one had piece of every sort of Land, his Black ground, his Sandy, Clay, and some of 20, 30, or 40 Shillings an Acre. My Mother, being possest of one of these Leases, and having all these sorts of Land, I came acquainted with them all, and knew what each sort would produce (viz.) Wheat, Barley, Maslin, Rice, Beans, Peas, Oats, Fetches, Flax, or Hemp: in all which I had a more than useful knowledge for one so young, taking a particular delight in observing it.” Vague as is this reference to his shore-going life, it is the only passage of the kind that I have met in his books, and for this reason therefore I reproduce it at length.

Whilst he was at Acheen some of the people rebelled against the choice that had been made of a queen. Dampier, with others, hastened to take shelter in the ships in the road, fearing that if the rebels obtained the upper hand they would imprison him. He had indeed good cause to dread the effects of a prison upon his constitution, shaken and almost shattered as it was by long illness.

There were two vessels at anchor, one of them fresh from England and short of provisions. He in consequence boarded the other, whose stores were tolerably plentiful, but she was so crowded with cargo that he could not find space to swing his hammock in; and as repose was absolutely essential to him, he carried his bed into the boat that had brought him off and lay in her for three or four days, fed by the people of the ship. He could obtain no rest.

There happened a total eclipse of the moon, at which he gazed from the bottom of his boat, but he says: “I was so little curious that I remembered not so much as what Day of the Month it was, and I kept no journal of this Voyage as I did of my other; but only kept an account of several particular Remarks and Observations as they occurred to me.” When the disturbance ashore was quieted he returned to his lodging, and learning that the natives regarded the water of their river as charged with medicinal virtues, he determined to bathe in it, and after a few baths was so much benefited that he was able to get about again.

In May, 1689, he took charge of a sloop that had been purchased by one Captain Tyler; but when the craft was loaded, the owner changed his mind and gave the command to a man named Minchin, who offered Dampier the post of mate. “I was forced to submit,” he says bitterly, “and accepted a Mate’s employ under Captain Minchin.”

They sailed in the middle of September for Malacca, at which place some of the people left Minchin to join another vessel that had been in company, so that Dampier and the captain were the only two white sailors on board. Shortly after starting they carried away their foreyard and brought up off a small island owned by the Dutch. Dampier called upon the governor to request his permission to cut down a tree.

Our hero, as an old Campeché man, was not likely to be at a loss; and leaving the tree ready to be carried to the ship, he returned to the fort, dined with the governor, and then went aboard. Shortly afterwards his [Pg 81]captain, together with a passenger and his wife, came ashore.

The fare of the fort was exceedingly meagre, and the governor, to entertain his guests, sent a boat to catch a dish of fish. The fish, on being cooked, was served in dishes of solid silver, and eaten from plates of the same metal; whilst in the centre of the table was placed a great silver bowl full of punch.

It was to prove but little better than a Barmecide’s feast. The governor, his guests, and several officers attached to the fort seated themselves, but as they were about to begin a soldier outside roared, “The Malays!” The governor, starting from his chair, leapt out of one of the windows, the officers followed, and all was consternation and uproar.

“Every one of them,” says Dampier, “took the nearest way, some out of the Windows, others out of the Doors, leaving the three Guests by themselves, who soon followed with all the haste they could make, without knowing the meaning of this sudden consternation of the Governor and his people.” All being in the fort, the door was bolted, and several volleys fired to let the Malays know that the Dutch were in readiness for them. The alarm was real enough.

A large Malay canoe, filled with men armed to the teeth, had been noticed skulking under the island close to the shore. The captain and the passengers hastened on board, the vessel’s guns were loaded and primed for service, and a bright look-out kept all night. Dampier, however, was not very much frightened. It rained heavily, and he knew from experience that the Malays seldom or never made any attack in wet weather.

Next morning nothing was to be seen of the enemy, and having rigged up the foreyard, Dampier and his companions set sail for Acheen.

Here he was seized with a fever, which confined him to his bed for a fortnight. On regaining his health he returned to the vessel with orders to take charge of her, and on New Year’s Day, 1690, sailed for Fort St. George with a cargo of pepper and other produce. His description of Madras as it then showed, now two hundred years ago, is interesting. “I was much pleased,” he says, “with the beautiful prospect this Place makes off at Sea.

For it stands in a plain Sandy spot of Ground, close by the shore, the Sea sometimes washing its Walls; which are of Stone and high, with Half-Moons and Flankers and a great many Guns mounted on the Battlements: so that what with the Walls and fine buildings within the Fort, the large town of Maderas without it, the Pyramids of the English Tombs, Houses, and Gardens adjacent, and the variety of fine Trees scatter’d up and down, it makes as agreeable a Landskip as I have anywhere seen.”

He tells us that he stayed at this place for some months, where he met with a Mr. Moody, who had purchased what Dampier calls a painted prince named Jeoly. Then in July he sailed with a Captain Howel for Sumatra.

He arrived at Acheen in April, 1689, and afterwards obtained a berth as gunner at Bencoolen, then an English factory. After some further adventures of no importance, we find him again gunner of the fort at Bencoolen, at a salary of twenty-four dollars a month. But it was not long before he grew dissatisfied with the conduct of the governor, and asked to be released. He was also eager to return to England.

First of all he had been a long time absent from his native country, and next, he was in possession of the painted prince whom Mr. Moody had purchased at Mindanao for sixty dollars, and he expected on his return to England to make a good deal of money by exhibiting this unhappy black, of whose tatooings he gives a very minute account.

It seems strange that such a man as Dampier should have been unable to hit upon a better way of gaining a livelihood than by proposing to turn showman in his own country, with nothing better to exhibit than a poor, miserable black man, whose only wonder lay in having rings and bracelets, crosses, and a variety of unmeaning flourishes pricked into his skin.

The governor was, however, by no means willing to let him go, and Dampier at last was obliged to obtain by a stratagem what was denied him as a right.

On January 2, 1691, a ship named the Defence, bound for England, dropped anchor in Bencoolen Road.

Dampier made the acquaintance of her master, a man named Heath, who readily complied with his request to receive him on board. Jeoly was first carefully shipped, and then one midnight Dampier crept through a porthole of the fort and ran to the beach, where he found a boat waiting to convey him to the Defence.

Nothing that is noteworthy happened during the passage home. The ship entered the English Channel in September, 1691, and on the 16th of the same month “we lufft in,” says Dampier, “for the Downs, where we anchored.”

Thus terminated William Dampier’s first voyage round the world.

Dating from Virginia, August 22nd, 1683, his circumnavigation took 8 years.

But his previous seafaring experiences, counting from the period of his starting from England in the Loyal Merchant in 1679, enlarged his absence to the long space of 12 years.

Beyond greatly extending his knowledge, his travels had done nothing for him. He had started in quest of Fortune, and had found her as phantasmal as the St. Elmo’s fire at which he had gazed with wonder at the masthead. And all that he brought home in the shape of property was the unhappy Prince Jeoly, whom he sold after his arrival in the Thames, being in want of money—to such a pass had buccaneering and the circumnavigation of the globe brought him.