Davis was born in the parish of
Stoke Gabriel in
Devon circa 1550, and spent his childhood in Sandridge Barton nearby. It has been suggested that he learned much of his seamanship as a child while playing boats along the river Dart, and went to sea at an early age. His childhood neighbours included Adrian Gilbert and
Humphrey Gilbert and their half-brother
Walter Raleigh. From early on, he also became friends with
John Dee. He began pitching a voyage in search of the
Northwest Passage to the queen's secretary
Francis Walsingham in 1583. The initially amiable approach Davis adopted to the
Inuit bringing musicians and having the crew dance and play with them In 1589 he joined the
Earl of Cumberland as part of the
Azores Voyage of 1589. In 1591 he accompanied
Thomas Cavendish on Cavendish's last voyage, which sought to discover the
Northwest Passage "upon the back parts of America" (i.e., from the western entrance). After the rest of Cavendish's expedition returned unsuccessful, Davis continued to attempt on his own account the passage of the
Strait of Magellan; though defeated by foul weather, he apparently discovered the
Falkland Islands in August 1592 aboard
Desire. His crew was forced to kill hundreds of penguins for food on the islands, but the stored meat spoiled in the tropics and only fourteen of his 76 men made it home alive. From 1596 to 1597 Davis seems to have sailed with
Sir Walter Raleigh to
Cádiz and the Azores as master of Raleigh's ship; from 1598 to 1600 he accompanied a
Dutch expedition to the
East Indies as pilot, sailing from flushing and returning to Middleburg, while carefully charting and recording geographical details. He narrowly escaped destruction from treachery at
Achin on
Sumatra.) if the voyage doubled its original investment, £1,000 if three times, £1,500 if four times and £2,000 if five times. Before departure, Davis had told London merchants that pepper could be obtained in
Aceh at a price of four
reals of eight per
hundredweight - whereas it actually cost 20. When the voyage returned, Lancaster complained that Davis had been wrong about both the price and availability of pepper. Unhappy at being made a scapegoat for the situation, on 5 December 1604 Davis sailed again for the East Indies as pilot to Sir
Edward Michelborne, an "interloper" who had been granted a charter by
James I despite the supposed East India Company monopoly on trade with the East. On this journey he was killed off
Bintan Island near
Singapore by one of his captive
"Japanese" pirates whose disabled vessel he had just seized. The pirates had taken the English in through several days of friendly discourse prior to the surprise attack in which the subject was 'dragged back, hacked and slashed, and thrust out again'. He died almost immediately after the attack. In the centuries after his death, the importance of Dutch
whalers actually led the settlements along
Greenland's western coast to be called "Straat Davis" after their name for the Strait, while the name "Greenland" was used to refer to the eastern shore, erroneously presumed to be the site of the
Norse Eastern Settlement. John Davis is recognised also for his valuable contribution to proto-ethnography of Inuit. ==Publications==