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It's the guy who was the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, marooned on an island by a captain whose crew included one William Dampier. Coincidences abound for me right now (for so many reasons... probably not Convo ones, though)...
I just read a biography of William Dampier, who I'd NEVER heard of... he was ace. Proper pirate, but also a brilliant observer of his situation. Apparently Dampier was one of Darwin's heroes... he also invented the word "sub-species", and introduced the words avocado and barbecue to the English language. Strangely, the thing I'm most impressed by is that he was apparently the first Westerner to ever eat lime pickle.
Weird thing is, I told my mum she'd probably enjoy this book... she was horrified I'd never heard of Dampier before. "What do you mean, you've never heard of William Dampier? You went to school in East Coker, which is where he started out!!!" I was all like, "well, mum, they all seemed very impressed about Eliot. Who was ACE, it must be said. But trying to give eight-year-olds a sense of place with modernist poetry's a bit poo. If they'd told us there was a PIRATE from here... that would have worked SO much better."
Having said that, I now have a fantasy of Eliot as an incredibly conservative pirate captain... "I grow old, I grow old... I'll file me wooden leg down a bit, what d'ya think?" |
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