Background
William Baffin was probably born in 1584 in London and appears to have been of humble birth.
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William Baffin was probably born in 1584 in London and appears to have been of humble birth.
William Baffin was self-educated, but remarkably skilled in his profession.
William Baffin wrote several accounts of voyages which demonstrate some exposure to classical literature.
Baffin first appears in history in 1612, when he served as chief pilot aboard a vessel off the western coast of Greenland. In 1613 and 1614 he was with the Muscovy Company's whaling fleets off Svalbard (Spitsbergen), and in 1615 he explored the Hudson Strait.
In 1616 the Northwest Passage Company employed Baffin as pilot aboard the ship Discovery under the command of Robert Bylot. This company, which had previously dispatched several other expeditions under such men as Henry Hudson and Sir Thomas Button, sought to discover a westward route to Asia.
The Discovery left England in March 1616. It passed beyond the farthest point reached by earlier expeditions, and Baffin explored the coast and inlets of the large bay subsequently named in his honor. Though Baffin failed to realize that Lancaster Sound, which he named in honor of one of the sponsors of the expedition, constituted an opening into the strait for which he was searching, he did chart and name the main features of Baffin Bay.
The Discovery returned safely to England in August 1616. Baffin, apparently convinced that the Northwest Passage could not be discovered from the western approaches, sought employment with the East India Company. His last two voyages (1617-1619 and 1620 - 1622) were to the East.
In 1622 the fleet with which his ship sailed engaged in hostilities with a rival Portuguese fleet and besieged a Portuguese fortress in the Strait of Ormuz. During this siege Baffin "received a shot from the castle into his belly, wherewith he gave three leaps, and died immediately".
William Baffin discovered Baffin Bay and was active in the early exploration of the Arctic.
He made a significant contribution to early geography as a scientific navigator as well. Baffin was also an accomplished map maker.
Baffin Bay and Baffin Island were named in his honor and he is responsible for the names of several of their features. He is also the namesake of the William Baffin rose.
The North-West Passage Company
Besides his geographical discoveries, Baffin is celebrated for the scrupulous accuracy of his many scientific and magnetic observations. He may have been the first seaman to determine longitude by use of the angular distance of the moon from some other celestial body.
He was required to keep accurate logs, and in addition to astronomical observations he also recorded tidal movements and other phenomena. Some of the most important data collected by Baffin concerned magnetic variation in the Far North. His records of compass variations are permanently important in tracing the changes in the magnetic pole.
Little is known of his personal life, though Baffin's elderly widow appears in official documents as a somewhat quarrelsome petitioner of the East India Company. There is no evidence of any children surviving Baffin's death.
