A Pirate of Exquisite Mind

It’s hard to imagine a world that doesn't change and even harder to imagine a world where we don't know that many countries exist.

Recently I read this biography of William Dampier, discovering Dampier was a buccaneer and some say pirate as well as an extraordinary navigator. He circumnavigated the world three times in the mid to late1600s sailing to new worlds like the West Coast of Australia, Timor, Indonesia, Vietnam, and to the South Americas, observing, recording and writing about new plants and animals, returning to England with new words from as far as Vietnam: words like "avocado", and "barbeque" which came from a method of cooking above the ground on bamboo stilts. On his return to England, he wrote many books about his travels becoming a celebrated author and one of the world's first travel writers. Many well know authors took their inspiration from his writings, including Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, some say based on Dampier himself, and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

It’s well written, thorough if sometimes a little too detailed.