Peter Dillon (15 June 1788 – 9 February 1847) was a sea captain engaged in the merchant trade, explorer and writer.

He left the Royal Navy and made his way to Calcutta as a young man, eventually becoming a trader in the South Seas.

There he found many of the inhabitants in possession of items of European manufacture such as sword guards, teacups, knives, and glass beads.

Dillon eventually made his way to France, where he met Barthélemy de Lesseps, the only living survivor of the La Pérouse expedition.

Although generally not recalled, he was one of the character witnesses called by Sir Fitzroy Kelly in the defence of John Tawell for the poison murder of Sarah Hart in March 1845.

[4] Gananath Obeyesekere, a Sri Lankan professor at Princeton, in 2005 attempted a "radical reexamination of the notion of cannibalism" and deconstruction, particularly as it pertains to "Western eyewitness accounts, carefully examining their origins and treating them as a species of fiction writing and seamen's yarns."