Basil Ringrose

Basil Ringrose (about 1653–1683) was an English buccaneer, navigator, geographer and author.

Early life

Ringrose was christened at St. Martin in the Field in 1653.[1]

First voyage

Ringrose crossed the Isthmus of Darien in 1680 with a group of pirates.[2] On this trip he created extensive charts of the islands, soundings, exhaustive nautical instruction and symbols to mark rocks and shallow water.[3] Fluent in Latin and French, he quickly learned Spanish to act as an interpreter.[4][5]

Captain Bartholomew Sharp, Lionel Wafer, John Coxon, Edmund Cooke, William Dick and William Dampier were also crew members. Dampier refers to Ringrose as an apprentice to a planter in Jamaica. At the end of the voyage, Ringrose and several crewmates took the maps and charts to Dartmouth to sell.[6]

Second voyage

In October 1683, Ringrose sailed on the Cygnet with Captain Swan, as the Supercargo.[2] Damper writes "He had no mind for this voyage, but was necessitated to engage in it or starve."[4] On the Mexican coast in Santa Pecaque, the crew looted the village. Capt. Swan sent 54 men with laden horses back to the anchorage, Ringrose among them. They were set upon by Spanish soldiers and massacred.[7][8]

Ringrose's journal gives an account of the early part of this trip.[9] It is now in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich in England. His maps and charts have become "A Buccaneer’s Atlas" by William Hach, a noted cartographer in London of the time.[10]

References
  1. South Sea Waggonier Pg.
  2. Laughton, John Knox (1896). "Ringrose, Basil" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 48. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  3. http://sullacrestadellonda.it
  4. Preston, Diana & Michael. A Pirate of Exquisite Mind,1952. p. 60
  5. Preston, Diana (26 May 2009). A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-8027-1813-6.
  6. Lane. Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in The Americas 1500–1750. M.E. Sharpe. p. 142. ISBN 978-0-7656-3083-4.
  7. Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin; Basil Ringrose (1893). The Buccaneers of America. S. Sonnenschein & Company. pp. 28–.
  8. Cordingly, David (1996). Pirates: Terror on the High Seas, from the Caribbean to the South China Sea. Turner Pub. p. 73. ISBN 978-1-57036-285-9.
  9. Jennifer Speake, ed. (12 May 2014). Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp. 138–. ISBN 978-1-135-45663-4.
  10. Ringrose, Basil; Howse, Derek (1992). A Buccaneer's Atlas: Basil Ringrose's South Sea Waggoner : a Sea Atlas and Sailing Directions of the Pacific Coast of the Americas, 1682. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-05410-3.
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