John Davis (ca. 1550-1605)

Abstract

... Davis was not typical of the seagoing adventurers of his age, whether Spanish or English. He indulged in none of their quarrelsome rivalries, and had none of their ravenous greed for wealth and glory. His writing is without the bombast to which some of his contemporaries were addicted. He made no startlingly original discovery: his work was to extend, clarify, and give shape to Frobisher's casual and incoherent observations. The well-informed Luke Foxe credits Davis, not Frobisher, with "lighting Hudson into his strait." His survey of the Labrador from the north nearly overlapped that of Jacques Cartier from the south; in truth, the two of them - oddly, both probably of Welsh descent - had roughly laid down the Canadian seaboard from the Arctic Circle to Gaspe Peninsula and furnished a recognizable outline of our eastern shore.