Lionel Wafer

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Map of the Darien Scheme, drawn in part with information from 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 the Malay archipelago in 1676. The following year he settled in Jamaica to practise his profession. In 1679, however, two noted buccaneers named Cook and Linen convinced him to become a surgeon for their fleet.

In 1680, Wafer met William Dampier at Cartagena and joined in a privateering venture under the leadership of Bartholomew Sharp.

After a quarrel during an arduous overland journey, Wafer was marooned with four others in the Isthmus of Darien, where he stayed with the Cuna Indians. He spent his time gathering information about their culture, including their shamanism and a short vocabulary of their language. He also studied the natural history of the isthmus. The following year later, Wafer left the Indians, promising to return and marry the chief's sister and bring back dogs from England. He fooled the buccaneers at first as he was dressed as an Indian, wearing body-paint and ornamented with a nose-ring. It took them some time to recognise him.

Wafer reunited with Dampier, and after privateering with him on the Spanish Main until 1688, he settled in Philadelphia.

By 1690 Wafer was back in England. In 1695 he published A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America, describing his adventures. It was translated into French (1706), German (1759), and Swedish (1789).

The Darien Company hired him as an adviser when it was planning its settlement on the isthmus in 1698.

He died in London in 1705.

[edit] References

A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America, Lionel Wafer. Edited by L.E. Elliott Joyce (Oxford: Hakluyt Society, 1933). Excerpt from the 1729 Knapton edition.