Gilbert

Gilbert, SIR HUMPHREY, English navigator, was born at Dartmouth, Devonshire, in 1539, and from Eton proceeded to Oxford. Then, abandoning law for a career of arms, he did such good service against the Irish rebels as earned him knighthood and the government of Munster (1570), after which he saw five years' campaigning in the Netherlands. In 1576 appeared his Discourse on a North-west Passage to India, which was published by George Gascoigne, without his knowledge; two years later he obtained a royal patent 'to discover and occupy remote heathen lands not actually possessed of any Christian prince or people.' With his younger half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, he sailed in quest of the 'Unknown Goal;' but this expedition (1578-79), which had cost all his own and his wife's estates, was frustrated by internal dissensions, tempests, and a smart brush with the Spaniards. Nothing daunted, he once more set sail from Plymouth in June 1583, and in August landed in Newfoundland, of which he took formal possession for Queen Elizabeth. But, sailing southwards, he lost off Cape Breton the largest of the three vessels left out of five, so was forced to steer homewards with the Golden Hind and the Squirrel, the latter a 'frigate' of only ten tons burden. 'On Monday the 9th September,' writes the Golden Hind's captain, 'the Squirrel was near east away, yet at that time recovered; and giving forth signs of joy, the general, sitting abaft with a book in his hand, cried out unto us in the Hind, "We are as near to heaven by sea as by land." The same Monday night the frigate's lights went suddenly out, and it was devoured and swallowed up by the sea.' So died Sir Humphrey Gilbert. See Hakluyt's Collection, vol. iii., and Lives of Raleigh by Tytler, St John, and Edwards.