Authorities.—Several biographies and memoirs of Davis have been published, of which the best are: Jefferson Davis, Ex-President of the Confederate States (2 vols., New York, 1890), by his widow; F. H. Alfriend’s Life of Jefferson Davis (Cincinnati, 1868), which defended him from the charges of incompetence and despotism brought against him; E. A. Pollard’s Life of Jefferson Davis, with a Secret History of the Southern Confederacy (Philadelphia, 1869), a somewhat partisan arraignment by a prominent Southern journalist; and W. E. Dodd’s Jefferson Davis (Philadelphia, 1907), which embodies the results of recent historical research. The Prison Life of Jefferson Davis (New York, 1866) by John J. Craven (d. 1893), a Federal army surgeon who was Davis’s physician at Fortress Monroe, was long popular; it gives a vivid and sympathetic picture of Mr Davis as a prisoner, but its authenticity and accuracy have been questioned.
(W. W. H.*; N. D. M.)
DAVIS (or Davys), JOHN (1550?-1605), one of the chief English navigators and explorers under Elizabeth, especially in Polar regions, was born at Sandridge near Dartmouth about 1550. From a boy he was a sailor, and early made several voyages with Adrian Gilbert; both the Gilbert and Raleigh families were Devonians of his own neighbourhood, and through life he seems to have profited by their friendship. In January 1583 he appears to have broached his design of a north-west passage to Walsingham and John Dee; various consultations followed; and in 1585 he started on his first north-western expedition. On this he began by striking the ice-bound east shore of Greenland, which he followed south to Cape Farewell; thence he turned north once more and coasted the west Greenland littoral some way, till, finding the sea free from ice, he shaped a “course for China” by the north-west. In 66° N., however, he fell in with Baffin Land, and though he pushed some way up Cumberland Sound, and professed to recognize in this the “hoped strait,” he now turned back (end of August). He tried again in 1586 and 1587; in the last voyage he pushed through the straits still named after him into Baffin’s Bay, coasting west Greenland to 73° N., almost to Upernavik, and thence making a last effort to find a passage westward along the north of America. Many points in Arctic latitudes (Cumberland Sound, Cape Walsingham, Exeter Sound, &c.) retain names given them by Davis, who ranks with Baffin and Hudson as the greatest of early Arctic explorers and, like Frobisher, narrowly missed the discovery of Hudson’s Bay via Hudson’s Straits (the “Furious Overfall” of Davis). In 1588 he seems to have commanded the “Black Dog” against the Spanish Armada; in 1589 he joined the earl of Cumberland off the Azores; and in 1591 he accompanied Thomas Cavendish on his last voyage, with the special purpose, as he tells us, of searching “that north-west discovery upon the back parts of America.” After the rest of Cavendish’s expedition returned unsuccessful, he continued to attempt on his own account the passage of the Strait of Magellan; though defeated here by foul weather, he discovered the Falkland Islands. The passage home was extremely disastrous, and he brought back only fourteen of his seventy-six men. After his return in 1593 he published a valuable treatise on practical navigation in The Seaman’s Secrets (1594), and a more theoretical work in The World’s Hydrographical Description (1595). His invention of back-staff and double quadrant (called a “Davis Quadrant” after him) held the field among English seamen till long after Hadley’s reflecting quadrant had been introduced. In 1596-1597 Davis seems to have sailed with Raleigh (as master of Sir Walter’s own ship) to Cadiz and the Azores; and in 1598-1600 he accompanied a Dutch expedition to the East Indies as pilot, sailing from Flushing, returning to Middleburg, and narrowly escaping destruction from treachery at Achin in Sumatra. In 1601-1603 he accompanied Sir James Lancaster as first pilot on his voyage in the service of the East India Company; and in December 1604 he sailed again for the same destination as pilot to Sir Edward Michelborne (or Michelbourn). On this journey he was killed by Japanese pirates off Bintang near Sumatra.
A Traverse Book made by John Davis in 1587, an Account of his Second Voyage in 1586, and a Report of Master John Davis of his three voyages made for the Discovery of the North West Passage were printed in Hakluyt’s collection. Davis himself published The Seaman’s Secrets, divided into two Parts (London, 1594), The World’s Hydrographical Description ... whereby appears that there is a short and speedy Passage into the South Seas, to China, Molucca, Philippina, and India, by Northerly Navigation (London, 1595). Various references to Davis are in the Calendars of State Papers, Domestic (1591-1594), and East Indies (1513-1616). See also Voyages and Works of John Davis, edited by A. H. Markham (London, Hakluyt Society, 1880), and the article “John Davys” by Sir J. K. Laughton in the Dictionary of National Biography.
(C. R. B.)
DAVIS, THOMAS OSBORNE (1814-1845), Irish poet and journalist, was born at Mallow, Co. Cork, on the 14th of October 1814. His father, James Thomas Davis, a surgeon in the royal artillery, who died in the month of his son’s birth, belonged to an English family of Welsh extraction, and his mother, Mary Atkins, belonged to a Protestant Anglo-Irish family. Davis graduated B.A. at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1836, and was called to the bar two years later. Brought up in an English and Tory circle, he was led to adopt nationalist views by the study of Irish history, a complicated subject in which text-books and the ordinary guides to knowledge were then lacking. In 1840 he made a speech appealing to Irish sentiment before the college historical society, which had been reorganized in 1839. With a view to indoctrinating the Irish people with the idea of nationality he joined John Blake Dillon in editing the Dublin Morning Register. The proprietor very soon dismissed him, and Davis saw that his propaganda would be ineffective if he continued to stand outside the national organization. He therefore announced himself a follower of Daniel O’Connell, and became an energetic worker (1841) on the committee of the repeal association. He helped Dillon and Charles Gavan Duffy to found the weekly newspaper, The Nation, the first number of which appeared on the 15th of October 1842. The paper was chiefly written by these three promoters, and its concentrated purpose and vigorous writing soon attracted attention. Davis, who had never written verse, was induced to attempt it for the new undertaking. The “Lament of Owen Roe O’Neill” was printed in the sixth number, and was followed by a series of lyrics that take a high place in Irish national poetry—“The Battle of Fontenoy,” “The Geraldines,” “Máire Bhán a Stoír” and many others. Davis contemplated a history of Ireland, an edition of the speeches of Irish orators, one volume of which appeared, and a life of Wolfe Tone. These projects remained incomplete, but Davis’s determination and continuous zeal made their mark on his party. Differences arose between O’Connell and the young writers of The Nation, and as time went on became more pronounced. Davis was accused of being anti-Catholic, and was systematically attacked by O’Connell’s followers. But he differed, said Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, from earlier and later Irish tribunes, “by a perfectly genuine desire to remain unknown, and reap neither recognition nor reward for his work.” His early death from scarlet fever (September 15th, 1845) deprived “Young Ireland” of its most striking personality.
His Poems and his Literary and Historical Essays were collected in 1846. There is an edition of his prose writings (1889) in the Camelot Classics. See the monograph on Thomas Davis by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (1890, abridged ed. 1896), and the same writer’s Young Ireland (revised edition, 1896).