His life on that island is not of much interest. He lived with Whalley for about six months, and then agreed with one Captain Heming to manage his plantation on the north side of the island; but repenting his resolution, he took passage on board a sloop bound to Port Royal. He made several coasting voyages in this way, by which he tells us he became intimately acquainted with all the ports and bays of Jamaica, the products and manufactures of the island, and the like. In this sort of life he spent six or seven months, and then shipped himself aboard one Captain Hudsel, who was bound to the Bay of Campeché to load logwood. They sailed from Port Royal in August 1675; their cargo to purchase logwood was rum and sugar. There were about two hundred and fifty men engaged in cutting the wood, and these fellows gladly exchanged the timber for drink. They were nearly all Englishmen, and on the vessel dropping anchor, numbers of them flocked aboard clamorous for liquor. “We were but 6 Men and a Boy in the Ship,” says Dampier, “and all little enough to entertain them: for besides what Rum we sold by the Gallon or Ferkin, we sold it made into Punch, wherewith they grew Frolicksom.” It was customary in those times to shoot off guns when healths were drunk, but in Dampier's craft there was nothing but small-arms, “and therefore,” he says, “the noise was not very great at a distance, but on Board the Vessels we were loud enough till all our Liquor was spent.” Dampier was well entertained by these fellows ashore. They hospitably received him in their wretched huts, and regaled him with pork and peas and beef and dough-boys. He thought this logwood-cutting business so profitable, and the life so free and pleasant, that he secretly made up his mind to return to Campeché after his arrival at Jamaica. Having filled up with wood, they sailed in the latter end of September, and not very long afterwards narrowly escaped being wrecked on the Alacran Reef, a number of low, sandy islands situated about twenty-five leagues from the coast of Yucatan. The vessel was a ketch, the weather very dirty. Dampier was at the helm, or whipstaff as the tiller was called, and describes the vessel as plunging and labouring heavily: “Not going ahead,” he says, “but tumbling like an egg-shell in the sea.” In spite of their being in the midst of a dangerous navigation, the crew, finding the weather improving, lay down upon the deck and fell asleep. The stout build of the round-bowed craft saved her, otherwise it is highly improbable that anything more would ever have been heard of William Dampier.