John Davis
Famous Sons and Daughters No.15: John Davis (1543 - 1605)
One of Dartmouth’s coterie of intrepid Elizabethan explorers, John Davis was born at Sandridge, and records show he was baptised at Stoke Gabriel in October 1543.
He grew up sailing on the Dart, taking charge of his own boats from a very young age. His closest friend was his neighbour Adrian Gilbert. The Gilberts and the Raleighs all lived alongside the river and the families interlinked, drawn to the ocean by their desire for exploration by sea, part of a national thirst for travel and discovery.
The friendship was profitable and provided opportunities for gaining experience and adventure. Dartmouth merchants supported his voyages, which began in January 1583, when Davis broached his design of a Northwest Passage to Francis Walsingham and John Dee. His first north western expedition began in 1585, taking Davis along the ice-bound east shore of Greenland, which he followed south to Cape Farewell. Turning north once more, and finding the sea free from ice, he shaped a course for China, going north-west. On encountering Baffin Island he pushed some way up Cumberland Sound, believing it to be the strait he sought, returning home at the end of August and vowing to return. Davis Strait was named after him.
And return he did in 1586 and 1587, pushing through the strait into Baffin Bay, and coasting along west Greenland in a last effort to find a passage westward along the north of America. Many Arctic landmarks, including Cumberland Sound, Cape Walsingham, and Exeter Sound, retain names given to them by Davis. Historians rank Davis alongside William Baffin and Henry Hudson as the greatest of the early Arctic explorers.
In 1582, Davis married Faith Fulford, the daughter of Sir John Fulford, but it was not a happy marriage. Although the couple had a daughter and four sons, Faith famously took a lover by the name of Milborne during one of her husband’s long absences at sea. Milborne, a counterfeiter, made false charges against Davis when he returned home to England after a voyage in 1593. The navigator was arrested and imprisoned, although eventually cleared and released. It is believed that Faith died before her husband because Davis was planning to remarry in 1604. Divorce would have been possible though unlikely, and usually did not permit remarriage.
By the end of the 1580s England was more concerned with the Spaniards than exploration. In 1588 Davis commanded Black Dog against the Spanish Armada, before joining the Earl of Cumberland off the Azores in 1589.
In 1591 he accompanied Thomas Cavendish on his last voyage. After the rest of Cavendish’s expedition returned unsuccessful, Davis continued to attempt on his own account the passage of the Strait of Magellan. Bad weather forced him to abandon his plan, but not before he had discovered the Falkland Islands. In August 1592, the crew of his ship Desire was forced to kill around 125,000 penguins for food while in the Falklands. They stored the penguin meat in salt and rum to feed them on the voyage home, but in the hot weather of the tropics the meat rotted. Dozens of the sailors were fatally poisoned. Davis brought back only fourteen of his seventy-six men.
From 1596 to 1597 Davis was the master of Sir Walter Raleigh’s ship, sailing with him to Cadiz and the Azores, and between 1598 and 1600 he accompanied a Dutch expedition to the East Indies as pilot, sailing from Flushing, returning to Middleburg, and carefully charting and recording geographical details. He also sailed to Sumatra.
Davis was keen to share his expertise and published works on practical navigation, namely The Seaman’s Secrets (1594), and The World’s Hydrographical Description (1595). He invented the backstaff and double quadrant, called the Davis Quadrant after him.
Between 1601 and 1603 Davis accompanied Sir James Lancaster as chief pilot on the first voyage of the British East India Company. He travelled the same way in December 1604 as pilot to Sir Edward Michelborne, but it was to be his final voyage. He was killed by Japanese pirates off the Malay peninsula.
Further reading online:
www.athropolis.com/arctic-facts/fact-davis.htm
www.answers.com/topic/john-davis
www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/elizabethan-explorers.htm
In print:
John Davis the Navigator 1550— 1605, Discoverer of Davis Straits, by Clements R. Markham CB rRS, published by Dodd, Mead and Company, New York.
The Voyages and Works of John Davis, published by the Hakluyt Society 1880.
A History of Geographical Discovery in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Edward Heawood, 1912.
Age of Drake James A. Williamson, (1938; 5th ed. 1965).
The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, Samuel Eliot Morison (1971).
First published September 2010 By the Dart
