Book Review- Pirate of Exquisite Mind

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AGLY 101 18 November 2011 I am doing my book report on A Pirate of Exquisite Mind by Michael and Diana Preston, published by Walker Publishing Company in 2004. The book is a biography on the life of pirate and explorer William Dampier. He made many explorations and discoveries during his lifetime that would later have a large impact on the works and philosophies of people who have influenced literature and scientific theories and beliefs. Dampier, having made three successful circumnavigations around the globe, was the first to realize that winds cause currents and produce wind maps all around the world. He was also the first to lead a formal expedition of science and discovery in Australia. He wrote many widely successful books on his adventures and discoveries that future explorers used to help in their navigations and explorations around the world. Yet, despite the many contributions he made to scientific discoveries and theories, Dampier still managed to fall into obscurity, a wrong that the Prestons try to right in this biography. Dampier was born in East Coker, the second son of a tenant farmer, in 1651, and 22 years later served in the Royal Navy during the Dutch War. His stunt in the navy was cut short when he fell ill and he was made to return home to England for to get better. Once he had recovered, the landowner, Squire Helyar, recruited him to work on his sugar plantation in Jamaica. On the voyage over, Dampier had to avoid being tricked into becoming an indentured servant because “The colonies had a ferocious appetite for cheap labor for their burgeoning tobacco and sugar plantations…searching for people to cajole and bully into signing indentures, thereby selling themselves into periods of servitude” (21). After arriving in Jamaica, he worked a short time on the sugar plantations before making his own way in the “New World” by working with the

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