Lionel Wafer (c. 1640–1705) was aWelsh explorer,buccaneer andprivateer.
Aship's surgeon, Wafer made several voyages to theSouth Seas and visitedMaritime Southeast Asia in 1676. In 1679 he sailed again as a surgeon, soon after settling in Jamaica to practise his profession.
In 1680, Wafer was recruited by buccaneerEdmund Cooke to join a privateering venture under the leadership of CaptainBartholomew Sharp, where he metWilliam Dampier atCartagena.[1]
After being injured by a flash-ignition ofgunpowder during an overland journey, Wafer was left behind with four others in theIsthmus of Darien in Panama, where he stayed with theGuna people.[2] He gathered information about their culture, including theirshamanism and a short vocabulary oftheir language. He studied the natural history of the isthmus. The following year, Wafer left the Guna 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 a Guna, wearing body-paint and ornamented with a nose-ring. It took them some time to recognise him.[3]
Wafer reunited with Dampier, and after privateering with him on theSpanish Main until 1688, he settled inPhiladelphia.
By 1690 Wafer was back in England and in 1695 he publishedA New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America, which described his adventures. It was translated into French (1706), German (1759), Swedish (1789)[citation needed], and Spanish (1899) by the Vicente Resptrepo (aresident of New Granada) as "Viajes de Lionel Wafer al Istmo del Darién. (Cuatro meses entre los Indios)".
TheCompany of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies hired him as an adviser when it was planningits settlement on the isthmus in 1698, and passages from his account of Darien informed the company's promotional literature.[4]
He died in London in 1705.[5]
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