William Dampier, an English navigator, born at East Coker, Somersetshire, about 1652; the date of his death is unknown. In early life he went to sea, served in the war against the Dutch, and afterward became overseer of a plantation in Jamaica. He next spent three years with a party of logwood cutters on the bay of Campeachy, and wrote an account of his observations on that coast in "Voyages to the Bay of Campeachy" (London, 1729). In 1679 he crossed the isthmus of Darien with a party of buccaneers, who captured several Spanish vessels and pillaged the towns on the Peruvian coast. In 1684 he set out from Virginia with the expedition of Capt. John Cook, which cruised along the coasts of Chili, Peru, and Mexico, making depredations on the Spaniards. He then embarked for the East Indies, touched at Australia, and after cruising for some time in the Indian archipelago landed at Bencoolen. He arrived in England in 1691, and published his "Voyage around the World." In 1699, having been appointed to the command of a sloop of war, he was sent on a voyage of discovery to the South sea.

He explored the W. and N. W. coasts of Australia, the coasts of Papua, New Britain, and New Ireland, and gave his name to a small archipelago, and to the strait between Papua and New Britain. After numerous other discoveries, he returned by a new route to Ceram in the Moluccas. On his way to England his ship was wrecked off the island of Ascension. He reached England in 1701, and continued to go to sea till 1711, but the latter part of his life is obscure. He published a "Treatise on Winds and Tides," and a "Vindication of his Voyage to the South Sea in the Ship St. George" (1707). The best edition of his collected voyages appeared in London in 1729, in 4 vols. 8vo.