Borough was born on 25 September 1525 at
Northam, north
Devon, the son of Walter and Mary (Dough) Borough. After some basic education at the local parish school, he was apprenticed to his uncle, John Borough, an accomplished mariner who sailed regularly to Sicily, Crete, and the
Levant. In addition to learning navigational and pilotage skills from his uncle, Borough gained some ability with Spanish and Portuguese languages. With some help from his uncle's connections in London, Borough was selected to take part in an expedition that was chartered by the
Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands to look for a north-eastern passage to
Cathay. Three vessels left London in 1553 under the leadership of
Sir Hugh Willoughby. Borough served as master of the
Edward Bonaventure, on which
Richard Chancellor sailed as the expedition's chief pilot and second-in-command. Separated by a storm from the other two ships of the expedition (the
Bona Esperanza and the
Bona Confidentia), the
Edward proceeded alone to the
White Sea where they dropped anchor at the mouth of the Dvina River near present-day
Arkhangelsk. Chancellor traveled overland to Moscow where he negotiated a trade treaty with
Ivan the Terrible while Borough and most of the crew spent the winter with their ship. During this expedition he also collected a list of 95
Kildin Sami words and expressions in 1557, which is the earliest known documentation of
Sami languages; the document was published by
Richard Hakluyt in 1589. Upon his return to England in 1557, Borough learned that Chancellor had been killed in a shipwreck on the Scottish coast and he was promoted to chief navigator for the Muscovy Company. He made several more trips to Russia between 1560 and 1571. In 1558 he visited the navigational school in Seville where he shared his knowledge of the Arctic in exchange for insights into the training of Spanish pilots. He also brought back to England a copy of
Martín Cortés de Albacar's
Breve Compendio, a handbook on navigation. Borough had the book translated by
Richard Eden and published as the
Art of Navigation in 1561. As such it became the first English manual of navigation and was widely used for many years. In 1563 he was appointed chief pilot and one of the four masters of the royal ships on the
Medway in Kent. In 1574 he conferred with
Martin Frobisher and
Michael Lok about their expeditions in search of a
north-west passage to
Cathay. He died on 12 July 1584, and was buried at
Chatham. ==Family==