Special Guest Blogger: William Dampier

The English language almost took off in America (they have a few problems with vowels) and the Australians almost have a basic grasp of it but seem to name things when they are drunk (billabong, dunny, chook) but while Shakespeare may take the plaudits for introducing many new words to the English language, i gave it over 1,000 and he wasn't raiding Spanish settlements and plundering other people's ships in South and Central America at the same time, but i was.
When it came to sacking, burning, robbing and ransoming Spanish towns, i was never really any good at all that stuff as i was busy drawing coastlines and the flora and fauna of the places we raided but while all pirates are depicted as toothless hobos who talk like idiots, my booty was the collection of over 1,000 words i introduced into the English language.
I sailed with several pirates and chopped and changed ships quite a lot because a gang of bloodthirsty salty sea dogs were not so keen to discuss the interesting plant life when there were treasure to plunder so i returned to England and joined the Royal Navy and was handed a commission to explore the Australian coastline which turned out to be quite eventful.
We never made it there as our ship sank but we did pick up a shipwrecked sailor living on a deserted island which Daniel Defoe based Robinson Crusoe upon and while tangling with a storm, one of the crew shot an albatross which became the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
I returned from that trip with a slave named Jeoly who i sold to a local inn, telling them he was a Prince but he died of smallpox within 3 months of landing in England but i had said no returns so i wrote a book instead and gave the language avocado, barbecue, breadfruit, cashew, chopsticks, posse, tortilla, banana, castaway, sea-breeze, subspecies, intelligence, free trade, maroon, soy sauce and kumquat.  
I was then handed a ship to go fight against the French and Spanish off the coast of Chile but was captured and thrown into prison as a pirate and released to go back to England if i promised not to attack another Spanish ship but i had my fingers crossed and ended up back in the South Pacific watching a Spanish galleon sink with its treasure stowed on our ship.
My share of the loot from that was £1351 14s 10d, which was enough to live out the remaining years of my life in luxury but i died before i received it.
I may not go into the annals of history as the greatest pirate but next time you are wondering what to call the curved yellow fruit thingy or using live fire and smoke to cook food and using grabby sticks to pick up green mushy thingies, not sounding like a complete moron is my legacy.