Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
who wished to break their contracts. These would abscond, having
arranged a secret, night-time rendezvous with Heath, who then sent
his boat for them and concealed them aboard his ship.
The
Defence
left the Cape on 23 May in convoy with two other
English ships and reached the Downs on 16 September. Dampier's
plans to make a fortune as a travelling showman, like so many of
his commercial enterprises, soon collapsed. He had hardly landed in
London before financial necessity forced him to part with his share
in the painted prince. Alas, Jeoly did not long survive to enrich his
new owners. They paraded him before an amazed public in many
towns and issued handbills telling his colourful - and totally spuri-
ous - life history. But at Oxford he caught smallpox and died.
But Dampier did have his journal. He spent six years, inter-
spersed with mercantile voyages, preparing his manuscript. At last,
in 1697, it was published with this impressive and intriguing title
page:
