William Dampier

In spite of the fact that a court-martial in 1702 found Dampier guilty of cruelty to his subordinates, he was put in command of a two-vessel privateering expedition to the South Seas in 1703. A member of the crew on this voyage, the Scottish mariner Alexander Selkirk, who had quarreled with a superior officer, asked to be marooned in the Juan Fernández Islands; thus began the adventures that inspired the English novelist Daniel Defoe to write the classic tale of Robinson Crusoe (1719). Dampier's expedition, which lasted four years, was financially unsuccessful; upon their return to England, his crew charged Dampier with cowardice, brutality, and drunkenness. As a result of these charges, he made only one more privateering expedition, this time restricted to serving as a pilot, from 1708 to 1711; in the course of this voyage Selkirk was rescued. Dampier died penniless in March 1715 in London.