HMS Roebuck (1690) - The Roebuck Voyage

The Roebuck Voyage

Having been provided with his replacement ship too late in the season to take his preferred route via Cape Horn, Dampier departed England on 14 January 1699 for the Cape of Good Hope. Trouble, centring on acrimony between Dampier and his first Lieutenant George Fisher RN divided the ship. They were apparently ‘behaving equally as boors without a spark of dignity or self-respect… alternately drinking together, backbiting one another to their confidants, and breaking into personal abuse and even fisticuffs in presence of the crew’. An inevitable state of indiscipline ensued, and en route Fisher was caned by Dampier, clapped in irons and confined to his quarters. The crew were divided on the matter and, concerned at the possibility of mutiny, Dampier had Fisher sent ashore and imprisoned for a time at Bahia in Brazil, before he made his way home. At the Cape of Good Hope Dampier found that the variation there anomalous, stating in his journal 'These things, I confess, did puzzle me—indeed were most shocking to me'. Admiral W.H. Smyth, a recognized authority on the subject, subsequently made the comment that, ‘though the local magnetic attraction in ships had fallen under the notice of seamen, he was among the first to lead the way to its investigation, since the facts that ‘stumbled’ him at the Cape of Good Hope, respecting the variations of the compass, excited the mind of Flinders, his ardent admirer, to study the anomaly.’ In continuing on after leaving the Cape of Good Hope, Dampier first made landfall in August 1699 on the Australian continent at the place he subsequently named Sharks Bay. There and at places further north including La Grange Bay, just south of what is now known as Broome in Roebuck Bay he provided descriptions and collected many specimens, including shells, subsequently earning the title ‘Australian’s first natural historian’ After calling in to Timor in November, Dampier sailed to the north-west Cape of New Guinea (Irian Jaya) in the vicinity of what is now known as Selat Dampier. There he sent his men ashore at a ‘small woody island’ he called ‘Cockle Island’. His men brought back many giant clam shells. (Dampier Journal, reproduced in Callander, 1768, vol 3:113-115). They then sailed around the northern part of New Guinea, naming Nova Britannia (New Britain). Dampier Strait between the two was subsequently named after him.