Basil Ringrose (about 1653–1686) was an English

buccaneer Buccaneers were a kind of privateer or free sailors, and pirates 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 u ...

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 prim ...

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 In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

Early life

Ringrose was christened at

St Martin-in-the-Fields St Martin-in-the-Fields is a Church of England parish church at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, London. Dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours, there has been a church on the site since at least the medieval pe ...

on Jan 28 1653 by his father, Richard, and mother, Mary. In 1677 he and his wife Goodith had a son, Jonathan.

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. 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 Bartholomew Sharp (c. 1650 – 29 October 1702) was an English buccaneer and privateer. His career of piracy lasted seven years (1675–1682). In the Caribbean he took several ships, and raided the Gulf of Honduras and Portobelo. He took comman ...

, Lionel Wafer, John Coxon, Edmund Cooke, William Dick and

William Dampier William Dampier (baptised 5 September 1651; died March 1715) was an English explorer, pirate, privateer, navigator, and naturalist who became the first Englishman to explore parts of what is today Australia, and the first person to circumnavig ...

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 Charles 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 Piracy in the Pacific Ocean Piracy in the Caribbean