When Davis came home all England was talking of a Spanish invasion, and the Queen had no time to think of him and his discoveries. On reaching home he found a third little son awaiting him, named John, after his father.
Though London and Greenwich and Exeter neglected Davis for a time, yet he had done good work in discovering, or mapping afresh many coasts and seas; he examined rocks and fiords, made notes on the vegetation and fauna and on the habits and thoughts of the Eskimo tribes; he also explored the coast of Labrador and called attention to the lucrative trade in whales, seal, and fish which might be established.
When the Armada came, John Davis was appointed to the command of a vessel of 20 tons, the Black Dog, to act as a tender to the Lord Admiral, with a crew of ten men and an armament of three guns. Here Davis was of use to the flagship as a pilot, for no one had taken more intelligent interest in surveying the coast and marking shoals than he. We need not go again through the events of the long fight, but it was in the fight off the Isle of Wight that Davis saw the fiercest action, when Admiral Oquendo in his flagship, of 900 tons, rammed the stern of the English flagship, the Ark Royal, and unshipped her rudder.
After ten days of severe work Davis returned to Plymouth, and was at home when his fourth child was born, named Philip! Another memorial of the Armada times was a work on navigation, written by Davis and dedicated to Lord Howard of Effingham.
The next employment Davis found was to join the Earl of Cumberland's squadron in the Drake off the Azores, where he probably met Edward Wright, an eminent mathematician and cosmographer, who had gone to sea to observe the practical working of problems in nautical astronomy. Davis himself had invented an instrument for observing the stars, so these two had much to discuss in common.
It was on this voyage that the English crews suffered so much from want of water, which was very scarce on the islands. The natives on Graciosa, on being asked for water, replied that they would rather give two tons of wine than one of water. They came home with thirteen prizes, and the money Davis received as his share enabled him to go on an expedition more to his taste; for he loved peaceful knowledge better than fighting. His scheme was to go through Magellan's Straits, to navigate the South Sea, and discover the North-west Passage from the western side.
Magellan, a Portuguese navigator, had only discovered the strait called by his name seventy years before; it was in 1520 that Magellan first sailed in and found very deep water. As he passed along, winding to and fro, he saw so many fires at night lighting up the woods and rocks on the southern side of the strait, that he named the land "Tierra del Fuego." A snowy peak far to the south he named "Campana de Roldan," "Roldan's bell"; they were short of provisions, and the crew murmured and wished to return, but Magellan, a stern disciplinarian and feared by his men, swore they should eat the chafing-mats on the rigging rather than return. After thirty-seven days of sailing through winding reaches that seemed to lead nowhere, and that stretched a hundred leagues and more, they came out into the South Pacific; then boldly striking across the ocean to the islands of the far East, Magellan met his fate at the hands of ruthless savages.
In 1522 Sebastian del Cano, a Basque born on the shores of the Bay of Biscay, returned to Seville after having been the first to sail round the world. In 1525 he sailed again from Corunna and passed through the Straits of Magellan, but died at sea shortly after.
The Spanish Governor of Chili, de Mendoza, fitted out two vessels in 1557 and sent Ladrilleros to explore the straits; this he did under most appalling hardships; most of his crew died of hunger and cold, and he brought his ship back to Chili with only two survivors to help him. There were Spanish heroes in those days as now. Then came Drake, sailing from Plymouth in November 1577 in the Golden Hind, and finding Magellan's account of the straits true as to the good harbours, many islands, and plenty of fresh water, but meeting many violent gales and storms. He was only sixteen days in the straits, and then sailed far up the western coast of America up to the 48th degree, where the hills were covered with snow in June—he was the second to sail round the globe. From Drake's voyage it was, perhaps, that Davis believed in the possibility of going northwards till he found an opening on the north-west coast.
In 1586 Cavendish started with three vessels and passed through the Straits of Magellan and completed the third navigation of the globe.