Dive team finds explorer's shipwreck

By GREG ANSLEY

CANBERRA - Australian divers have found the wreck of the ship commanded by the man who explored the continent's west coast 80 years before James Cook sailed south in the Endeavour.

William Dampier also rescued the man who inspired Daniel Defoe's castaway epic Robinson Crusoe.

The remains of Dampier's HMS Roebuck were discovered at Clarence Bay, near Georgetown, the capital of tiny Ascension Island in the remote South Atlantic where it sank in 1701.

The discovery, confirmed by the Roebuck's bronze bell, is both a find of historical significance and a postscript to a life of exploration, science and piracy largely lost in the wake of Cook's voyages more than half a century later.

Dive team leader Dr Mike McCarthy told the West Australian from Georgetown that the find would probably be claimed by Britain, which administers Ascension Island from its colony of St Helena, to the southeast. McCarthy, the West Australian Maritime Museum's archaeologist, also said the team had been lucky to find the wreck.

It had been broken up by turbulent waters, with its timbers gone and the ironwork sunk below the seabed.

He said the bell had been found in about 5m of water when WA abalone diver John Lashmar saw it wedged between rocks on the seabed.

The team also found a giant clam believed to have been collected by Dampier from Shark Bay north of Perth, plus grappling hooks and anchors.

Dampier first visited Australia's northwest coast near Cape L'Eveque in the Cygnet in 1688 during a circumnavigation in which his surveys, charts and logs forged his reputation as one of the greatest navigators of his time.

Despite earlier visits by Dutch traders and explorers, including Abel Tasman, little was known of the Australian continent and Dampier's reports persuaded the Admiralty to sponsor another voyage in 1699.

He reached and named Shark Bay on July 26 that year, sailing north along the western coast, producing maps and charts and collecting more than 20 specimens of Australian plants, preserved in the British Museum.

Dampier, who went to sea at 16, fought in Britain's war against the Dutch, wrote one of the earliest European accounts of a typhoon, was a successful buccaneer, and was trapped for months on Ascension after the Roebuck sank.

He commanded one of the five ships in the pirate fleet that marooned "Robinson Crusoe" Alexander Selkirk at his request on Juan Fernandez Island off Chile in 1703 and piloted the ship that rescued Selkirk six years later.

Dampier died in poverty in 1715.