Notable & Famous Explorers Posters “D...-”
for social studies teachers and home schoolers, theme decor in office.

William Dampier
b. 1651; England
d. March 1715; London

William Dampier was an English sea captain, privateer, observer of nature, and author. He was the first person to circumnavigate the world twice, and went on to circumnavigate a third time.

Dampier is an important name in Panama and Australian history. He crossed the isthmus at Darién in Panama to raid and capture Spanish shipping on the Pacific coast - it was his reports of the Darien region of Panama that prompted speculators in Scotland to invest 25% of Scottish wealth in colonizing the area and ending up bankrupting Scotland.

Dampier also wrote the first known descriptions of the flora and fauna of Australia; his careful observations of currents, coastlines and nature influenced Charles Darwin and Alexander von Humboldt.

Dampier marooned Alexander Selkirk who was the inspiration of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

• A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier

Alexandra David-Neel
b. 10-24-1868; Paris, France
d. 9-8-1969; Digne-les-Bains, France

Buddhist, anarchist, and writer Alexandra David-Neel is best remembered for her trip to Llasa, Tibet in 1924, which at that time forbid foreign visitors and as an explorer of the soul, and human personality geographer and anarchist Elisée Reclus

Bartholomeu Diaz
b. c. 1450; Lisbon, Portugal
d. c. 1500; off the Cape of Good Hope

In 1488 Portugese explorer Bartholomeu Diaz became the first European known to have sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, the southern tip of Africa, since ancient times; he also accompanied Pedro Álvares Cabral on the voyage that resulted in the discovery of Brazil in 1500.

• India & Portugal: Cultural Interactions

Sir Francis Drake
b. c 1540; Tavistock, Devon, England
d. 1-28-1596; Portobelo, Colon, Panama (dysentery)

Sir Francis Drake, English privateer, navigator, slave trader, and politician, circumnavigated the globe (1577-1580) on his ship the “Golden Hind”.

Drake sailed to the New World in 1585 sacking and looting Santo Domingo, Cartagena, and Saint Augustine in Spanish Florida on the Spanish Main. He also looted and burned Spanish shipping along the west coast of the Americas, going as far north possibly as Oregon.

Due to his exploits he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I and was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588. His last battle, attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico, ended in defeat, shortly before his death.

Jules Dumont d'Urville
b. 5-23-1790; France
d. 5-8-1842; France, train accident

French naval officer Jules Dumont d'Urville was an explorer of the south and western Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica where the current French research station is named Dumont d'Urville Station. He also was responsible for the French acquiring a newly unearthed “Venus de Milo” (displayed at the Louvre Museum in Paris) on an early sailing venture in 1819.