Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Davys, John
DAVYS, JOHN (1550?–1605), navigator, was born at Sandridge, in the parish of Stoke Gabriel, near Dartmouth, about 1550. He describes himself as ‘of Sandridge, gentleman;’ and through his whole life he was on terms of some intimacy with the Gilberts and Raleghs, who belonged to the same neighbourhood. It appears also from the register of Stoke Gabriel that on 29 Sept. 1582 he married Faith Fulford, who is said (Prince, Worthies of Devon, p. 286) to have been the daughter of Sir John Fulford of Fulford, high sheriff of Devon in 1535, but this is very doubtful. From boyhood Davys followed the sea, and appears to have made several voyages in company with Adrian Gilbert, with whom he contracted a close friendship, which is spoken of by Dr. John Dee [q. v.] in 1579, and again in 1580. On 24 Jan. 1582–3 the two friends and Dee met Walsingham by appointment at the house of Robert Beale [q. v.], the acting secretary of state, ‘where,’ says Dee, ‘only we four were secret, and we made Mr. Secretary privy of the north-west passage, and all charts and rutters were agreed upon in general.’ Later conferences are mentioned in Dee's diary (published by the Camden Society), till on 17 March ‘Mr. John Davys went to Chelsea, together with Mr. Adrian Gilbert, to Mr. Radforth's, and so the 18th from thence towards Devonshire.’ The outcome of these consultations was a voyage towards the north-west in 1585, under the command of Davys, who was commended to the company by Mr. William Sanderson, one of the principal members of it, as a man ‘very well grounded in the principles of the art of navigation,’ though at that time he had no pretension to any Arctic experience (Markham, p. 205). Sailing to the north-west he sighted the east coast of Greenland, then, as ever since, protected by an impassable barrier of ice. This he searched to the southward, till, doubling what we now know as Cape Farewell, he turned again to the north, and ‘in thirty leagues sailing upon the west side of this coast, by me named Desolation, we were past all the ice and found many green and pleasant isles bordering upon the shore.’ There he rested for a short time, and then ‘finding the sea free from ice, supposing ourselves to be past all danger, we shaped our course west-north-west, thinking thereby to pass for China, but in the latitude of 66° we fell with another shore, and there found another passage of twenty leagues broad directly west (Cumberland Gulf) which we supposed to be our hoped strait. We entered into the same thirty or forty leagues, finding it neither to widen nor straiten. Then considering that the year was spent (for this was in the fine of August), not knowing the length of the strait and dangers thereof, we took it our best course to return with notice of our good success for this small time of search’ (ib. pp. 206–7). This voyage, the first (with the exception of those under Martin Frobisher [q. v.]) to look for the supposed passage in the far north, was but the precursor of others which Davys undertook in 1586 and in 1587. In the last of these he pushed to the north, through the strait since known by his name, into the long-fabled Baffin's Bay [see Baffin, William]. He left two ships to follow the codfishery, and adds: ‘In the bark I proceeded for the discovery … and followed my course in the free and open sea between north and north-west to the latitude of 67°, and there I might see America west from me and Desolation east; then when I saw the land of both sides, I began to distrust it would prove but a gulf; notwithstanding, desirous to know the full certainty, I proceeded, and in 68° the passage enlarged, so that I could not see the western shore: thus I continued to the latitude of 73° in a great sea free from ice, coasting the western shore of Desolation. Then, understanding by the signs of the people who came rowing out unto me in their canoes, that there was a great sea toward the north, I departed from that coast, thinking to discover the north parts of America. And after I had sailed towards the west forty leagues, I fell upon a great bank of ice; the wind being north and blew much, I was constrained to coast the same towards the south … and so I came to the place where I had left the ships to fish, but found them not. Then, being forsaken and left in this distress, referring myself to the merciful providence of God, I shaped my course for England, and unhoped for of any, God alone relieving me, I arrived at Dartmouth’ (ib. p. 209). And so Davys's Arctic explorations came to an end. The Arctic chart, showing such names as Gilbert Sound, Cumberland Sound, Exeter Sound, Mount Raleigh, Totness Road, Cape Dyer, Cape Walsingham, Sanderson his Hope, and others connected in England with Davys's career, still bears testimony to the comparative success of this father of Arctic discovery, who accomplished a very great deal considering the smallness of his means. The ‘bark’ was apparently of not more than twenty tons (ib. p. xxvii). The Spanish invasion of the Channel in 1588, and the death of Walsingham, put an end to his Arctic voyages, but not to his hopes or theories of a north-west passage. His arguments as to this were stated at length seven years later in the ‘World's Hydrographical Description’ (1595), in which he tries to prove that the sea is everywhere navigable and a north-west passage possible. The work is ingenious, and for the most part a fair deduction from such experience as he had at his command. He ‘proves from experience that the sea freezeth not;’ he shows ‘that the air in cold regions is tolerable;’ and in the section ‘Under the Pole is the place of greatest dignity’ he argues that the climate at the Pole must be delightful, and that the people dwelling there ‘have a wonderful excellency and an exceeding prerogative above all nations of the earth … for they are in perpetual light and never know what darkness meaneth, by the benefit of twilight and full moons.’ The argument was never put more sensibly, clearly, or succinctly until it was in the most practical way knocked on the head by Sir George Nares in 1875.
Davys can hardly have been idle in such a critical year as 1588, and it seems not improbable that he may be identified with the John Davis who commanded the Black Dog of twenty tons, apparently a tender to the Lord High Admiral. In August 1589 he joined the Earl of Cumberland off the Azores ‘with ship, pinnace, and boat’ (Markham, p. 65). The expedition ended disastrously, but Davys had parted company on 5 Nov. [see Clifford, George, Earl of Cumberland]. The following year Davys commanded one of the squadron which captured a vessel, whose name is handed down to us as Uggera Salvagnia, probably about the middle of September 1590 (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 18 April 1593). In May 1591, or possibly at an earlier date, the question was raised whether the Uggera Salvagnia was a good prize or not (ib. passim). The case was still pending in May 1593. Davys had meantime (26 Aug. 1591) gone to sea in command of the Desire, one of the ships which accompanied Thomas Cavendish [q. v.] in his second voyage; being, he tells us, ‘only induced to go with Mr. Cavendish upon his constant promise unto me that when we came back to the California I should have his pinnace, with my own bark (the Delight)—which for that purpose went with me to my great charges—to search that north-west discovery upon the back parts of America’ (Markham, p. 232). Cavendish's voyage, however, resulted in failure. In the Straits of Magellan and after a succession of foul weather, the Desire was separated from the rest of the squadron, Cavendish giving up the adventure and returning to Brazil, while Davys, according to his own story, after refitting at Port Desire and ‘there staying four months in most lamentable distress, did again conclude with my company to give another attempt to pass the straits, as my best means to gain relief. And three times I was in the South Seas, but still by furious weather forced back again; yet notwithstanding all this my labour to perform the voyage to his profit and to save myself (for I did adventure, and my good friends for my sake, 1,100 pounds in the action), Mr. Cavendish was content to account me to be the author of his overthrow, and to write with his dying hand, that I ran from him; when that his own ship was returned many months before me’ (ib. p. 233). The perfect accuracy of Davys's statement is substantiated by the narrative of the voyage by Jane, the supercargo, first published by Hakluyt (ib. p. 93), and by the abstract journal up to 2 June 1592, signed by the bulk of the ship's company (ib. p. 106). Cavendish was a disappointed and embittered man, and we know that Davys was a thorough seaman and a capable navigator.
When all efforts to get fairly into the South Sea had proved vain, Davys returned to Port Desire on 27 Oct. 1592. Here nine of the ship's company deserted, and were presently slain by the natives; the rest provisioned the ship with dried penguins, to the number of fourteen thousand, and put to sea 22 Dec. Besides the penguins they had a scant allowance of meal or pease and but little water. On the coast of Brazil thirteen of their men were slain by the Portuguese, and the rest, not having been able to get any provisions, put to sea again. A pitiable remnant, fourteen out of seventy-six who had sailed from England, arrived in Berehaven on 11 June 1593. There Davys took passage in a fisher-boat to Padstow. In his absence his wife, Faith, had taken a paramour, one Milburne, ‘a fugitive and dissolute person’ accused of coining money, who now trumped up some charge against her husband, to protect himself against Davys's revenge and a probable prosecution for coining (Ralegh to Sir Robert Cecyll, 3 March 1593–4). Davys was arrested, though shortly afterwards set free at the instance of Ralegh, who begged that ‘he might have leave to depart, lest some other matters be laid to his charge which are only fit to be tried by course of law and not by authority.’ Whether this leave was given or not is not stated, but Davys appears to have spent the rest of that year, if not also the next, in England, engaged in preparing for publication his ‘Seaman's Secrets’ (1594), and the ‘World's Hydrographical Description’ (1595). The ‘Seaman's Secrets’ is virtually a treatise on practical navigation, and at once became popular among seamen. It ran through eight editions in a comparatively short time, the eighth being published in 1657, and though the methods are obsolete, the book contains much to interest and even instruct the navigator of our own time.
In 1596–7 Davys was again at sea, probably as master of Ralegh's ship at Cadiz and the Azores, and certainly in some capacity that brought him directly under the notice of the Earl of Essex, at whose suggestion he afterwards engaged himself as pilot of the Dutch ship Leeuw or Lion, commanded by Cornelius Houtman and bound to the East Indies. The account of the voyage, written by Davys himself to the Earl of Essex and dated ‘Middelburg, 1 Aug. 1600,’ was published by Purchas (part i. book 2). By this it appears that the Lion and Lioness sailed from Flushing on 15 March 1598 (N.S.); rested for a while in Saldanha Bay, where they lost thirteen men in a fray with the natives; were some time in Madagascar and among the Maldives, and on 21 June 1599 anchored at Acheen. There the king received them at first in a friendly manner, but three months later, on some quarrel which does not appear, he made a treacherous attempt to seize the ships. On board the Lion, Houtman and several men were slain, others jumped overboard. Davys with another Englishman named Tomkins, and a Frenchman, defended the poop, and by advantage of position and arms beat off the assailants and recovered the ship. Meantime the Lioness had been taken and many of her officers and men killed, but Davys and his companions, cutting the Lion's cable and drifting towards the Lioness, opened on her so warm a fire that the ‘Indians’ took to the water. ‘They swam away by hundreds,’ and great numbers were killed or drowned; the king, furious at the failure, put to death all the Dutchmen who were ashore with the exception of eight whom he kept for slaves. ‘We lost in this misfortune,’ says Davys, ‘three score and eight persons, of which we are not certain how many are captured, only of eight we have knowledge.’ After a further fight with a fleet of Portuguese galleys, they got to Pulo-Botum, on the coast of Quedah, where they watered and refreshed. All the pepper and other merchandise that had been collected was left ashore and lost. ‘Many young adventurers,’ says the pilot, ‘were utterly ruinated; among which I do most grieve at the loss of poor John Davys, who did not only lose my friendly factor, but also all my Europe commodities, with those things which I had provided to show my duty and love to my best friends.’ The narrative carries with it a conviction of its substantial truth, and though Davys might be suspected of overrating the part he took in the defence and recovery of the ships, there is nothing boastful in his way of stating it, nor was his conduct, as described, more than was to be expected from one whose whole life had been a continued struggle against storm, ice, and man. Their further adventures were cut short by the determination of the ship's company to return to Europe, and they arrived at Middelburg 29 July 1600. Within a few weeks Davys returned to England, and was almost immediately engaged to go as pilot-major of the fleet fitting out under Captain James Lancaster [q. v.] in the Malice Scourge, a ship just bought from the Earl of Cumberland and renamed the Red Dragon. This expedition sailed from Woolwich on 13 Feb. 1600–1, and returned on 11 Sept. 1603. In the following year Davys engaged for another voyage to the East Indies as pilot of the Tiger of 240 tons, commanded by Sir Edward Michelborne. The Tiger sailed from Cowes on 5 Dec. 1604, made a prosperous voyage to the west coast of Sumatra, arrived at Bantam in October 1605, and on 2 Nov. sailed for Patany. The passage was tedious, and in two months they had advanced no further than Bintang, a little to the east of Singapore. Off this island they met a junk, small, scarcely seaworthy and disabled, but crowded with Japanese who had been pillaging on the coast of China, had been wrecked on the coast of Borneo, and had made themselves masters of this vessel. After a couple of days of friendly intercourse while lying at anchor near Bintang, these pirates resolved to take the Tiger and made a murderous attack on the English. They at once killed or drove overboard twenty who had gone on board the junk. At the same moment some five and twenty of them who were on board the Tiger rushed out of the cabin. They met Davys, whom they dragged back, hacked and slashed, and thrust out again. He staggered into the waist, and died almost immediately. And meantime under the half-deck there was a desperate struggle for life. The pirates were at length driven back into the cabin. There they still defended themselves, till the master training aft two demiculverins (32-pounders), and loading them with cross-bars, bullets, and case shot, fired them through the bulkhead, blowing the Japanese all to pieces. This was on 29 or 30 Dec. 1605. The narrow escape and the loss of his pilot seem to have sickened Michelborne of the adventure, and he shortly afterwards shaped his course for home, arriving at Portsmouth 9 July 1606.
By Davys's will, executed 12 Oct. 1604, we learn that he had three sons then living, Gilbert, Arthur, and Philip. His faithless wife would seem to have been dead, for he leaves one-fourth of his ‘worldly goods’ to Judith Havard, ‘unto whom I have given my faith in matrimony to be solemnised at my return;’ the goods to be ‘equally divided between my three sons and Judith Havard, my espoused love.’ Mention is also made of a brother, Edward Davys, and his children.
The spelling of Davys's name is here given from his own signature (Lansdowne MS. 46, No. 21), but it has been very commonly misspelt Daves, Davies, or Davis. This last form remains in our maps in the name of Davis Straits. His repute as a hydrographer and navigator has faded away, but even long after the introduction of the reflecting quadrant, known as Hadley's, the back staff and double quadrant, which Davys invented and described, continued in use. A Davys's quadrant, recovered from the wreck of the Royal George (1782), is now in the Museum of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich.
[There are several notices of Davys in the Calendars of State Papers, Domestic, 1591–4, and East Indies, 1513–1616, among which care must be taken to distinguish between him and John Davis of Limehouse [q. v.] The writings of Davys and the original accounts of his voyages have been carefully gathered and edited for the Hakluyt Soc. (1880) by Capt. A. H. Markham, R.N., with an exhaustive critical biographical and bibliographical introduction.]