Thomas James (sea captain)
Captain Thomas James (1593–1635) was an English sea captain, notable as a navigator and explorer, who set out to discover the Northwest Passage, the hoped for ocean route around the top of North America to Asia.[1]
Capt. James set out from Bristol on his two-year voyage in 1631 with a single vessel, the Henrietta Maria. James explored Hudson Bay, of which the southern part of the bay, James Bay, is named for him, having first sighted it 1 September 1631.[2] He named the southern coast of Hudson Bay the "New Principality of South Wales", after his native land.[3] He wintered on Charlton Island in present day Nunavut, Canada, before continuing his voyage in the Arctic Ocean in the summer of 1632.
James' harrowing experiences during his voyage, in which he repeatedly came close to death in the ice of the Arctic Ocean, are recounted in his published account of the voyage, The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captaine Thomas James, published in 1633.
Some critics have opined that Samuel Taylor Coleridge's work The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was inspired by James' experience in the Arctic.[4]
[edit] Contemporary accounts
- James, T. (1633). The strange and dangerous voyage of Captaine Thomas James, in his intended discovery of the Northwest Passage into the South Sea wherein the miseries indured both going, wintering, returning, and the rarities observed, both philosophicall and mathematicall, are related in this journall of it, published by His Majesties command : to which are added a plat or card for the sayling in those seas, divers little tables of the author's, of the variation of the compasse, &c. : with an appendix concerning longitude, by Master Henry Geophy of these late discoveries by W.W.. London: Printed by John Legatt, for John Partridge. ISBN 0665353456
[edit] References
- ^ Christy, Miller (ed.), The Voyages of Captain Luke Foxe of Hull and Captain Thomas James of Bristol, in Search of a North-west Passage, in 1631-32, London, Hakluyt Society, 1894.
- ^ Mowat, Farley (1973). Ordeal by ice; the search for the Northwest Passage. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd. pp. 118. OCLC 1391959.
- ^ MacInnes, C. M. Captain Thomas James and the North West Passage, Bristol, Historical Association (Bristol Branch), 1967, p.4.
- ^ Cooke, Alan (2000). "Thomas James". Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=355. Retrieved 2007-03-05. "Some critics think that Coleridge drew upon James’s account of hardship and lamentation in writing The rime of the ancient mariner."
[edit] External links
- Internet Archive .pdf of The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captaine Thomas James, First Edition
- Google Books scan of The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captain Thomas James, in "The Voyages of Captain Luke Foxe and Captain Thomas James"
- "Thomas James". Dictionary of Canadian Biography (online ed.). University of Toronto Press. 1979–2005.
