William Baffin

Timeline

1. 1612–1614West coast of Greenland · GreenlandBaffin first appears in the records in 1612 as pilot of James Hall's Greenland expedition. Over the next two years he navigated Spitsbergen waters for the Muscovy Company, demonstrating precise observation and charting skills, and made contact with the London merchant circles that funded Hudson.
2. 1615Hudson Strait · Hudson StraitIn 1615 Baffin served as pilot of the Discovery under Robert Bylot, dispatched by the London Company of the Discovery of the Northwest Passage to re-survey Hudson Strait and the west side of Southampton Island. Ice conditions forced them to turn back. On this voyage he calculated longitude at sea by lunar occultations, considered one of the earliest such records left by English mariners at sea, and his latitude and coastline records later proved quite accurate.
3. 1616Baffin Bay · Baffin BaySailing again from Gravesend on 26 March 1616, he went north through Davis Strait, past the northern limit reached by John Davis in 1587, penetrating some three hundred miles into what is now Baffin Bay, and named Smith, Jones, and Lancaster Sounds after his patrons. He concluded from this that India could not be reached this way, and Arctic route exploration temporarily shifted direction. Only when nineteenth-century explorers returned to Smith Sound did the accuracy of his charts become confirmed.
4. 1617–1622Qeshm Island · Qeshm IslandFrom 1617 Baffin transferred to the English East India Company, sailing to Surat and charting the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. In 1622 an Anglo-Persian force attacked Portuguese-held Qeshm and Hormuz; on 23 January he went ashore to measure the height and distance of the fortress walls to correct the ship's guns, and was killed by a bullet to the abdomen. His sea journals were later excerpted by Purchas, but the charts were omitted due to engraving costs.