Everything about John Davis English Explorer totally explained
John Davis (
1543—
December 29 1605), was one of the chief
English navigators and explorers under
Elizabeth I, especially in Polar regions.
Davis (Davys) was born at Sandridge near
Dartmouth 1543. From a boy he was a sailor, and early went on voyages with
Adrian Gilbert; both the Gilbert and
Raleigh families were Devonians of his own neighbourhood, and through life he seems to have profited by their friendship.
In January 1583 he appears to have broached his design of a
Northwest Passage to
Francis Walsingham and
John Dee; various consultations followed; and in 1585 he started on his first north-western expedition. On this he began by encountering the ice-bound east shore of
Greenland, which he followed south to Cape Farewell; thence he turned north once more and coasted the west Greenland
littoral some way, until, finding the sea free from ice, he shaped a course for
China going north-west. In 66° N, however, he encountered
Baffin Island, and though he pushed some way up
Cumberland Sound, and professed to recognize in this the hoped strait, he now turned back (end of August).
He tried again in 1586 and 1587; in the last voyage he pushed through the straits still named after him into
Baffin Bay, coasting west Greenland to 73° N., almost to
Upernavik, and thence making a last effort to find a passage westward along the north of America. Many points in Arctic latitudes (Cumberland Sound, Cape Walsingham, Exeter Sound, etc) retain names given them by Davis, who ranks with
William Baffin and
Henry Hudson as the greatest of early Arctic explorers and, like
Martin Frobisher, narrowly missed the discovery of
Hudson Bay via
Hudsons Straits (the Furious Overfall of Davis).
In 1588 he seems to have commanded the
Black Dog against the
Spanish Armada; in 1589 he joined the
earl of Cumberland off the
Azores; and in 1591 he accompanied
Thomas Cavendish on his last voyage, with the special purpose, as he tells us, of searching that north-west discovery upon the back parts of America. After the rest of Cavendish's expedition returned unsuccessful, he continued to attempt on his own account the passage of the
Strait of Magellan; though defeated here by foul weather, he discovered the
Falkland Islands in August 1592 aboard the vessel
Desire. His crew was forced to kill around 124,000 penguins, though in his biography it's said that they killed 125,510 penguins, for food while on the Falkland Islands. They stored the penguin meat as well as they could and sailed for home, but the meat spoiled once they reached the tropics. This made the passage home disastrous, and he brought back only fourteen of his seventy-six men.
After his return in 1593 he published a valuable treatise on practical navigation in
The Seaman's Secrets (1594), and a more theoretical work in
The World's Hydrographical Description (1595). His invention of
backstaff and double quadrant (called a Davis Quadrant after him) held the field among English seamen till long after
Hadley's reflecting quadrant had been introduced. In 1596-1597 Davis seems to have sailed with Raleigh (as master of Sir Walter's own ship) to
Cádiz and the Azores; and in 1598-1600 he accompanied a Dutch expedition to the
East Indies as pilot, sailing from Flushing, returning to Middleburg, and narrowly escaping destruction from treachery at Achin in
Sumatra.
In 1601-1603 he accompanied Sir
James Lancaster as first pilot on his voyage in the service of the
British East India Company; and in December 1604 he sailed again for the same destination as pilot to Sir Edward Michelborne (or Michelbourn). On this journey he was killed by Japanese pirates off
Bintang near
Sumatra.
Further Information
Get more info on 'John Davis English Explorer'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://john_davis__english_explorer.totallyexplained.com">John Davis (English explorer) Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
