Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/William Baffin

BAFFIN, William, an able and enterprising English seaman, born in 1584. Nothing is known of his early life, and his fame rests entirely on the voyages undertaken by him during the years 1612 to 161 6. In 1612 he accom panied Captain James Hall on his fourth voyage in search of the north-west passage, and in 1613 he commanded one of the English vessels engaged in the Greenland fisheries. In 1615 and 1616 Baffin made two voyages in the "Discovery" under Bylot, and on the second of them explored the large / inlet, afterwards called Baffin s Bay. The only accounts of these expeditions were given by Baffin himself, and later investigators have thoroughly confirmed his descriptions. In 1618 he is said to have been mate in a voyage to Surat and Mocha; and in 1621 he was killed while attempting, in conjunction with a Persian force, to expel the Portuguese from Ormuz. (See Purchas s Pilgrims and the publica tions of the Hakluyt Society for 1849.)