Voyages and Works of John Davis, the Navigator

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. John Davis (c.1543-1605) was an eminent explorer and navigator who published two highly influential guides to practical navigation in 1594 and 1595 and invented an improved version of a navigational instrument known as the Davis quadrant. This book, first published in 1880, includes these two guides, The Seaman’s Secret and The Worlds’ Hydrographical Description, together with accounts of the three voyages John Davis undertook in search of the North-West Passage between 1585 and 1587.