Basil Ringrose (about 1653–1683) was an English
buccaneer
Buccaneers were a kind of privateers or free sailors particular to the Caribbean Sea during the 17th and 18th centuries. First established on northern Hispaniola as early as 1625, their heyday was from the Restoration in 1660 until about 1688, ...
,
navigator
A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation.Grierson, MikeAviation History—Demise of the Flight Navigator FrancoFlyers.org website, October 14, 2008. Retrieved August 31, 2014. The navigator's primar ...
,
geographer
A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...
and author.
Early life
Ringrose was christened at St. Martin in the Field in 1653.
Career
First voyage
Ringrose crossed the
Isthmus of Darien in 1680 with a group of pirates.
On this trip he created extensive charts of the islands, soundings, exhaustive nautical instruction and symbols to mark rocks and shallow water.
[http://sullacrestadellonda.it] Fluent in Latin and French, he quickly learned Spanish to act as an interpreter.
[Preston, Diana & Michael. ''A Pirate of Exquisite Mind'',1952. p. 60]
Captain
Bartholomew Sharp,
Lionel Wafer
Lionel Wafer (1640–1705) was a Welsh explorer, buccaneer and privateer.
A ship's surgeon, Wafer made several voyages to the South Seas and visited Maritime Southeast Asia in 1676. In 1679 he sailed again as a surgeon, soon after settlin ...
,
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.
Second voyage
In October 1683, Ringrose sailed on the Cygnet with Captain Swan, as the Supercargo.
Damper writes "He had no mind for this voyage, but was necessitated to engage in it or starve."
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.
Ringrose's journal gives an account of the early part of this trip.
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.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ringrose, Basil
1683 deaths
Year of birth uncertain
17th-century pirates