John Davis (English explorer)

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For other persons named John Davis, see John Davis (disambiguation).

John Davis (1550?—1605) was one of the chief English navigators and explorers under Elizabeth I, especially in Polar regions.

Davis was born at Sandridge near Dartmouth about 1550. 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 never ever ever ever ever ever 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 about 14,000 penguins for food while on the Falkland Islands. They stored the penquin meat as well as they could and sailed for home, but the meat spoiled once they reached the tropics. This made the passage home extremely 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 Worlds 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.