William Endicott

William Endicott was an American sailor from Salem, Massachusetts, best known for the memoir Wrecked among Cannibals in the Fijis. In that account, he wrote about the voyage of the ship Glide and its wreck in Fiji in 1831, drawing on his firsthand experience as the vessel’s third mate.

Information published with later editions of his narrative says that the Fiji voyage was his last time at sea. After returning home, he worked in the morocco leather business, and in 1861 he was appointed an inspector in the Salem Custom House. He died on September 25, 1881, in Danvers, Massachusetts.

Endicott’s reputation rests on a single remarkable survival narrative, but that has been enough to keep his name alive for readers interested in maritime history, Pacific voyages, and firsthand accounts from the early nineteenth century.