With William Dampier we have the real life counterpart to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. He gets a stamp for charting the east coast of Australia when it was still New Holland. He should be remembered by children in the sense of what a wide word of possibilities are open to them in life. Instead his type are taught in the sense of bad people spreading evil wherever they go. An arguement for another day, anyway whats the deal with Tex Mex? Read on… So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This stamp visually is let down a little by it’s nature of being a small stamp meant for bulk postage. We do get a portrait of him and his then ship HMS Roebuck. Dampier at his most boring. A serving Royal Navy Captain whose mission it was to draw maps. This man was a pirate. This man taught his fellow Britons how to make guacamole. Perhaps thus stamp is most let down by being Australian as Australia’s only brush with Dampier is what is shown on this stamp. Dampier calls out for a new set of big colourfull stamps from his native UK showing his many inspiring sides. And one of Dampier at his end, convicted and penniless, to teach the kiddies and kiddies at heart that crime doesn’t pay.
Todays stamp is issue A145, a 50 cent stamp issued by Australia starting in 1968. It was part of a 26 stamp issue released for bulk postage after the decimalization and Americanization of the Australian currency. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. As a high denomination bulk stamp, if my copy were mint, the value would skyrocket to $15.
William Dampier was born in 1651 in England. Two merchant shipping expeditions one to Java and another to Newfoundland inspired him to join the Royal Navy. Soon however a sickness ended his service. He tried his hand at plantation management in Jamaica and logging on the mosquito coast but soon he was back to sea as a sometime pirate and sometime privateer. Unusually for a pirate, back in England after his adventures his good memory ample notes allowed him to write books about his exploits that contained both daring do and thorough academic level cataloging of what he had seen as the only man on earth to have circumnavigated the planet three times. Among what he brought back to England were guacamole, avocadoes, mango chutney and the cooking technique of barbeque.
Dampier also brought back with him a slave boy from what is now the Philippines named Joly. Joly had become despondent over the death of his mother and Dampier was chronically broke so even though they had been close, Joly was auctioned off. He was acquired by an inn that put Joly on display as captured Prince Giola of Mindanao. Joly soon died of small pox.
The Admiralty had seen Dampier’s books and commissioned him as a ship Captain of HMS Roebuck and told to sail to Australia, then still New Holland, and make charts of and an exploration of the east coast. This did not go well. Dampier discovered a species of giant clams near New Guinea and anchored the ship to do a thorough investigation of them and how best to eat them. At anchor in rough seas, HMS Roebuck’s condition deteriorated. Dampier decided to abandon the job at hand and try to make it back to England. He got as far as Accession Island but the the amount of water the ship was taking on was too much and Dampier was shipwrecked there until him and the crew were able to catch a ride on a merchant ship in the India trade.
Back in England Dampier was arrested. Not for losing his ship, not for cruelty to indigenous people he had come across, not for all the stomach issues his new spicy foods had caused at home. He was convicted of cruelty. Early in the journey he had a conflict with a young but connected and of a higher class Lieutenant. He solved his problem by dropping him off in Brazil where the young officer was arrested. He still beat Dampier back to England and filed charges against Dampier.
Dampier was back to being a pirate when he attempted a fourth circumnavigation of the Earth. By this time he was old with failing health and the mission was abandoned. He died deeply in debt back in England.
Well my drink is empty. This stamp opened up a story more complex than I could have imagined. What a stamp is for! Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.