Lancaster

Lancaster, SIR JAMES, an English navigator who commanded the first fleet of the East India Company that visited the East Indies in 1600-3, and on his return home was knighted. He had previously been a soldier and a merchant in Portugal, had visited the East Indies on his own account in 1591-94, and in 1595 had captured Pernambuco in Brazil. He was one of the original board of directors, and afterwards did much to promote the voyages of Waymouth, Hudson, and Baffin in search of the North-west Passage to India. The strait leading westwards from the north of Baffin Bay was in 1616 named Lancaster Sound by Baffin. Lancaster died in May 1618. See Sir Clements R. Markham's Voyages of Sir James Lancaster (Hakluyt Soc. 1877).