The wreck of the ship has since been located by a team from the Western Australian Maritime Museum at a site on the coast of Ascension Island where it foundered more than 300 years ago.

Roebuck was built by Snellgrove at Wapping, East London, and launched on 17 April 1690 during the reign of William III and Mary II as one of 12 purpose-built fireships.

This anomalous appointment of a former buccaneer to the command of one of King William's ships is explained by Dampier's growing reputation as he travelled widely and exhibited the famous tattooed Prince Jeoly and his mother.

[5] Roebuck, the naval ship referred to here, was a replacement for Jolly Prize which Dampier found totally unsuited for his plans to search for Terra Australis and to examine the then uncharted eastern coast of New Holland (Australia) via Cape Horn, a notoriously difficult and dangerous route.

They were apparently "behaving equally as boors without a spark of dignity or self-respect ... alternately drinking together, back-biting one another to their confidants, and breaking into personal abuse and even fisticuffs in presence of the crew".

The crew was divided on the matter and, concerned at the possibility of mutiny, Dampier had Fisher sent ashore at Bahia in Brazil, where he was imprisoned for a time before making his way home.

[8] At the Cape of Good Hope, Dampier found the variation in compass readings there anomalous, stating in his journal "These things, I confess, did puzzle me—indeed were most shocking to me."

"[9] Continuing on after leaving the Cape of Good Hope, Dampier first made landfall in August 1699 on the Australian continent at the place he subsequently named Shark Bay in Western Australia.

Though this further cemented his reputation as an explorer, at the court martial into the loss of his ship Dampier was roundly criticised for his treatment of Fisher, destroying any further attempt at official patronage.

[14] Though made famous by its association with Dampier, the position of the wreck became lost over time, in part because early documents provided conflicting evidence as to its whereabouts.

Dampier himself added to the confusion when he wrote to the Earl of Pembroke, Lord President of the Council, indicating that his ship may have drifted back out to sea: "The world is apt to judge of every thing by the success; and whoever has ill fortune will hardly be allowed a good name.

The many sources located and copied for the museum suggested that the wreck of Roebuck lay in the shallows of Clarence Bay on the north-west coast of Ascension Island.

[17] Arriving at the island, and anchoring over the approximate position in the bay where they believed the grounding site to be, they experienced the same unusually sustained sea breeze that Dampier had described some 300 years earlier.

When they examined the seabed, they discovered that a large and very recent movement of sand from the bay had exposed rock and other formations not seen by local divers in the 40 years since diving first began on the island.

[3] Based on that study, an experienced model-maker constructed a 1:24 scale model, which was donated to the Western Australian Museum and put on display in Fremantle with a backdrop of the vessel's sail-plan.