This is the story of the extraordinary impact of three privateering expeditions into the South Sea which set out from England in the first twenty years of the eighteenth century. They were privately funded, costly and ambitious long-distance voyages which carried great risk for their investors but promised great reward. The first expedition, which sailed in 1703, was led by William Dampier, and the second (and by far the most successful) by Woodes Rogers in 1708. The third, which set out from Plymouth in February 1719, is usually named after George Shelvocke, captain of the Speedwell, though this was not how it was described at the time.

The reports on these ventures would excite the imaginations of politicians, projectors, journalists and poets for much of the eighteenth century. They contributed greatly to the swelling enthusiasm for the South Sea Company and by extension to the subsequent catastrophic collapse of confidence in the practicability of its ambitious plans. They fascinated the major intellectual and literary figures, including Addison, Defoe and Swift (but excepting Doctor Johnson, who remarked on a newly published book of voyages to the South Sea: ‘a man had better work his way before the mast than read them through’), and became a source for some of the greatest literature of the period, including Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

More recently the importance of their contribution to British maritime and cultural history has been subject to question. It is customary now to dismiss these expeditions as having, at best, a marginal part to play in the history of the British navy in the eighteenth century. David J. Starkey has suggested that they were out of their time: