Davis, JOHN

Davis, JOHN, an English navigator, was born at Sandridge, near Dartmouth, about 1550, and is principally distinguished for having undertaken in 1585 and the two following years three voyages to the Arctic Seas in search of a north-west passage. In the last voyage, he sailed with a bark of apparently not over twenty tons, as far north as the 73d degree of latitude, and discovered the strait which bears his name. He next made two ill-fated voyages towards the South Seas, and as pilot of a Dutch vessel bound to the East Indies. In his last voyage as pilot of an English ship of 240 tons he was killed in a brush with some Japanese pirates at Bintang, near Singapore, 30th December 1605. His writings, The World's Hydrographical Description (1595) and The Seaman's Secrets (1594), were edited for the Hakluyt Society in 1878 by Captain A. H. Markham, with a biographical introduction. Here it is pointed out that Davis is often confounded with John Davis of Limehouse, a navigator to the East Indies, who died at Batavia in 1622, and published in 1618 A Ruter or Briefe Direction for Readie Sailings into the East India, which will be found in Part I. of Purchas his Pilgrimes.