Contains extracts from the writing of Captain William Dampier (1651-1715) who circumnavigated the globe three times, spent much of his life as a buccaneer, privateer or pirate and wrote the first major English travel book A New Voyage Round the World. This was followed by Voyages and Descriptions, including a Discourse of Winds and A Voyage to New Holland detailing the peoples and places he had found or visited. As a result Dampier was acknowledged to be a skilled navigator as well as an explorer and scientific observer and a source of inspiration for Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe and Samuel Coleridge.