John Davis ( – 29 December 1605) was one of the chief navigators of Queen
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was List of English monarchs, Queen of England and List of Irish monarchs, Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is ...
. He led several voyages to discover the
Northwest Passage
The Northwest Passage (NWP) is the sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The eastern route along the Arct ...
and served as pilot and captain on both Dutch and English voyages to the
East Indies
The East Indies (or simply the Indies), is a term used in historical narratives of the Age of Discovery. The Indies refers to various lands in the East or the Eastern hemisphere, particularly the islands and mainlands found in and around t ...
. He discovered the
Falkland Islands
The Falkland Islands (; es, Islas Malvinas, link=no ) is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and about from Cape Dubouzet ...
in August 1592.
Life and career
Davis was born in the parish of
Stoke Gabriel
Stoke Gabriel is a village and parish in Devon, England, situated on a creek of the River Dart. The village is a popular tourist destination in the South Hams and is famous for its mill pond and crab fishing (known colloquially as ''crabbing'') ...
in
Devon
Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...
circa 1550, and spent his childhood in Sandridge Barton nearby. It has been suggested that he learned much of his seamanship as a child while playing boats along the river Dart, and went to sea at an early age. His childhood neighbours included Adrian Gilbert and
Humphrey Gilbert
Sir Humphrey Gilbert (c. 1539 – 9 September 1583) was an English adventurer, explorer, member of parliament and soldier who served during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and was a pioneer of the English colonial empire in North America ...
and their half-brother
Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh (; – 29 October 1618) was an English statesman, soldier, writer and explorer. One of the most notable figures of the Elizabethan era, he played a leading part in English colonisation of North America, suppressed rebellion ...
. From early on, he also became friends with
John Dee
John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, teacher, occultist, and alchemist. He was the court astronomer for, and advisor to, Elizabeth I, and spent much of his time on alchemy, divinatio ...
.
![Markham Davis Strait map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Markham_Davis_Strait_map.jpg)
He began pitching a voyage in search of the
Northwest Passage
The Northwest Passage (NWP) is the sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The eastern route along the Arct ...
to the queen's secretary
Francis Walsingham
Sir Francis Walsingham ( – 6 April 1590) was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 20 December 1573 until his death and is popularly remembered as her "spymaster".
Born to a well-connected family of gentry, Wals ...
in 1583.
Two years later, in 1585, the secretary relented and funded the expedition, which traced
Frobisher's route to
Greenland
Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is t ...
's east coast, around
Cape Farewell, and west towards
Baffin Island
Baffin Island (formerly Baffin Land), in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, is the largest island in Canada and the fifth-largest island in the world. Its area is , slightly larger than Spain; its population was 13,039 as of the 2021 Canadia ...
.
In 1586 he returned to the Arctic with four ships, two of which were sent to Greenland's iceberg-calving eastern shore; the other two penetrated
the strait which came to bear his name as far as
67°N before being blocked by the
Arctic ice cap
The Arctic ice pack is the sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean and its vicinity. The Arctic ice pack undergoes a regular seasonal cycle in which ice melts in spring and summer, reaches a minimum around mid-September, then increases during fall a ...
. ''Sunshine'' attempted (and failed) to circumnavigate the island from the east.
[Gosch, C.C.A. ]
Danish Arctic Expeditions, 1605 to 1620. Book I.—The Danish Expeditions to Greenland in 1605, 1606, and 1607; to which is added Captain James Hall's Voyage to Greenland in 1612.
' Hakluyt Society (London), 1897. The initially amiable approach Davis adopted to the
Inuit
Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...
bringing musicians and having the crew dance and play with them
changed after they stole one of his anchors; they were likely irate at having been interrupted during one of their religious ceremonies. Inuit also attacked his ships in
Hamilton Inlet
__NOTOC__
Hamilton Inlet is a fjord-like inlet of Groswater Bay on the Labrador coast of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Together with Lake Melville, it forms its province's largest estuary, extending over inland to Happy Va ...
(Labrador).
A third expedition in 1587 reached
72°12'N and
Disko Island
Disko Island ( kl, Qeqertarsuaq, da, Diskoøen) is a large island in Baffin Bay, off the west coast of Greenland. It has an area of ,[Davis Inlet
Davis Inlet was a Naskapi community in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, formerly inhabited by the Mushuau Innu First Nation. It was named for its adjacent fjord, itself named for English explorer, John Davis, who in 1587 cha ...](_blank ...<br></span></div> before unfavorable winds forced it back. On his return, Davis charted the <div class=)
in the coast of
Labrador
, nickname = "The Big Land"
, etymology =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Canada
, subdivision_type1 = Province
, subdivision_name1 ...
. The log of this trip remained a textbook model for later captains for centuries.
In 1588 he seems to have commanded ''Black Dog'' against the
Spanish Armada
The Spanish Armada (a.k.a. the Enterprise of England, es, Grande y Felicísima Armada, links=no, lit=Great and Most Fortunate Navy) was a Spanish fleet that sailed from Lisbon in late May 1588, commanded by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, an aris ...
.
In 1589 he joined the
Earl of Cumberland
The title of Earl of Cumberland was created in the Peerage of Peerage of England, England in 1525 for the 11th Baron de Clifford.''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press'', 2004. It became extinct in 1643. The Duke of C ...
as part of the
Azores Voyage of 1589
The Azores Voyage of 1589, also known as Cumberland's Third Voyage, was a series of conflicts in the Azores islands between August and September 1589 by an English military joint stock expedition led by George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, du ...
. In 1591 he accompanied
Thomas Cavendish
Sir Thomas Cavendish (1560 – May 1592) was an English explorer and a privateer known as "The Navigator" because he was the first who deliberately tried to emulate Sir Francis Drake and raid the Spanish towns and ships in the Pacific and retu ...
on Cavendish's last voyage, which sought to discover the
Northwest Passage
The Northwest Passage (NWP) is the sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The eastern route along the Arct ...
"upon the back parts of America" (i.e., from the western entrance). After the rest of Cavendish's expedition returned unsuccessful, Davis continued to attempt on his own account the passage of the
Strait of Magellan
The Strait of Magellan (), also called the Straits of Magellan, is a navigable sea route in southern Chile separating mainland South America to the north and Tierra del Fuego to the south. The strait is considered the most important natural pass ...
; though defeated by foul weather, he apparently discovered the
Falkland Islands
The Falkland Islands (; es, Islas Malvinas, link=no ) is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and about from Cape Dubouzet ...
in August 1592 aboard ''
Desire
Desires are states of mind that are expressed by terms like "wanting", "wishing", "longing" or "craving". A great variety of features is commonly associated with desires. They are seen as propositional attitudes towards conceivable states of aff ...
''. His crew was forced to kill hundreds of penguins for food on the islands, but the stored meat spoiled in the tropics and only fourteen of his 76 men made it home alive.
From 1596 to 1597 Davis seems to have sailed with
Sir Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh (; – 29 October 1618) was an English statesman, soldier, writer and explorer. One of the most notable figures of the Elizabethan era, he played a leading part in English colonisation of North America, suppressed rebellion ...
to
Cádiz
Cádiz (, , ) is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the Province of Cádiz, one of eight that make up the autonomous community of Andalusia.
Cádiz, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe, ...
and the Azores as master of Raleigh's ship; from 1598 to 1600 he accompanied a
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
expedition to the
East Indies
The East Indies (or simply the Indies), is a term used in historical narratives of the Age of Discovery. The Indies refers to various lands in the East or the Eastern hemisphere, particularly the islands and mainlands found in and around t ...
as pilot, sailing from Flushing and returning to Middleburg, while carefully charting and recording geographical details. He narrowly escaped destruction from treachery at
Achin on
Sumatra
Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...
.
From 1601 to 1603 he accompanied Sir
James Lancaster
Sir James Lancaster (c. 1554 – 6 June 1618) was an English privateer and trader of the Elizabethan era.
Life and work
Lancaster came from Basingstoke in Hampshire. In his early life, he was a soldier and a trader in Portugal.
On 10 April 159 ...
as Pilot-Major on the first voyage of the English
East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
. For his part Davis was to receive £500 (around £1.5 million at 2015 values) if the voyage doubled its original investment, £1,000 if three times, £1,500 if four times and £2,000 if five times.
Before departure, Davis had told London merchants that pepper could be obtained in
Aceh
Aceh ( ), officially the Aceh Province ( ace, Nanggroë Acèh; id, Provinsi Aceh) is the westernmost province of Indonesia. It is located on the northernmost of Sumatra island, with Banda Aceh being its capital and largest city. Granted a s ...
at a price of four
reals of eight per
hundredweight
The hundredweight (abbreviation: cwt), formerly also known as the centum weight or quintal, is a British imperial and US customary unit of weight or mass. Its value differs between the US and British imperial systems. The two values are distingu ...
- whereas it actually cost 20. When the voyage returned, Lancaster complained that Davis had been wrong about both the price and availability of pepper. Unhappy at being made a scapegoat for the situation, on 5 December 1604 Davis sailed again for the East Indies as pilot to Sir
Edward Michelborne
Sir Edward Michelborne (c. 1562 − 1609), sometimes written Michelbourn, was an English soldier, adventurer and explorer. After a military career in the 1590s he tried to be appointed 'principal commander' for the first voyage of the East India ...
, an "interloper" who had been granted a charter by
James I James I may refer to:
People
*James I of Aragon (1208–1276)
*James I of Sicily or James II of Aragon (1267–1327)
*James I, Count of La Marche (1319–1362), Count of Ponthieu
*James I, Count of Urgell (1321–1347)
*James I of Cyprus (1334–13 ...
despite the supposed East India Company monopoly on trade with the East. On this journey he was killed off
Bintan Island
Bintan Island or ''Negeri Segantang Lada'' is an island in the Riau archipelago of Indonesia. It is part of the Riau Islands province, the capital of which, Tanjung Pinang, lies in the island's south and is the island's main community.
Bintan's l ...
near
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
by one of his captive
"Japanese" pirates whose disabled vessel he had just seized. The pirates had taken the English in through several days of friendly discourse prior to the surprise attack in which the subject was 'dragged back, hacked and slashed, and thrust out again'. He died almost immediately after the attack.
In the centuries after his death, the importance of Dutch
whalers actually led the settlements along
Greenland
Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is t ...
's western coast to be called "Straat Davis" after their name for the Strait, while the name "Greenland" was used to refer to the eastern shore, erroneously presumed to be the site of the
Norse Eastern Settlement
The Eastern Settlement ( non, Eystribygð ) was the first and by far the larger of the two main areas of Norse Greenland, settled by Norsemen from Iceland. At its peak, it contained approximately 4,000 inhabitants. The last written record from t ...
.
Publications
Davis's explorations in the Arctic were published by
Richard Hakluyt
Richard Hakluyt (; 1553 – 23 November 1616) was an English writer. He is known for promoting the English colonization of North America through his works, notably ''Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America'' (1582) and ''The Pri ...
and appeared on his world map. Davis himself published a valuable treatise on practical navigation called ''The Seaman's Secrets''
in 1594 and a more theoretical work called ''The World's Hydrographical Description'' in 1595. The account of Davis's last voyage was written by Michelborne on his return to England in 1606.
Inventions
![John Davis - detail from The Coasting Pilot title page 1677-1690](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/John_Davis_-_detail_from_The_Coasting_Pilot_title_page_1677-1690.png)
His invention of the
backstaff
The backstaff is a navigational instrument that was used to measure the altitude of a celestial body, in particular the Sun or Moon. When observing the Sun, users kept the Sun to their back (hence the name) and observed the shadow cast by the u ...
and double quadrant (called the
Davis quadrant
The backstaff is a navigational instrument that was used to measure the altitude of a celestial body, in particular the Sun or Moon. When observing the Sun, users kept the Sun to their back (hence the name) and observed the shadow cast by the u ...
after him) remained popular among English seamen until long after
Hadley's reflecting quadrant had been introduced.
Personal life
![John Davis plaque in Dartmouth](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/John_Davis_plaque_in_Dartmouth.jpg)
On 29 September 1582, Davis married Mistress Faith Fulford, daughter of Sir John Fulford (the High Sheriff of Devon) and Dorothy Bourchier, the daughter of the Earl of Bath. They had four sons and a daughter. On his return from the 1592 voyage, Davis discovered his wife had taken up with a "sleek paramour"; conspiring with this man, a counterfeiter, Faith "brought false and unavailing charges" against Davis.
[Encyclopaedia of World Biography, second edition, vol. 4- Chippendale-Dickenson, Gale Research, 1998, p. 419]
References
External links
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, John
16th-century English people
17th-century English people
1550s births
1605 deaths
Baffin Bay
British scientific instrument makers
English explorers of North America
English murder victims
Explorers of Canada
Explorers of the Arctic
Male murder victims
People from Dartmouth, Devon
Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada)