William Borough

William Borough (* 1536 in Northam , Devonshire ; † 1599) was an English explorer , naval officer , cartographer and author of a work on compass deviation .

Life

He was the brother of the elder Stephen Borough . At the age of sixteen he went to sea and, as a simple seaman under his brother, took Richard Chancellor and Hugh Willoughby's expedition to the Arctic to search for the Northeast Passage to Asia. This was the first English trip to northern Russia. In 1556 he accompanied his brother to the Arctic again. They were the first Western Europeans to reach the entrance to Karastrasse . He drew part of a map of Russia that was first published in 1562.

Later he took part in the annual trade trip to Russia for the Muscovy Company . In 1570, as the commander of thirteen ships, he fought pirates on the Russian route. In 1574 and 1575 he traveled the Russia route as the company's representative. He also made trips to the interior of Russia, including Moscow .

In 1581 he wrote A Discourse of the Variation of the Compass, or Magnetical Needle, based on notes he had made on his trips to Russia . It criticized cartographic works that did not take the compass deviation into account. Other reports say he discovered the declination in the garden of his house in London.

William Borough map showing Francis Drake's actions in Cadiz in 1587

Around 1580 the brothers entered the service of the crown. Borough was initially active in the administration of the Navy. In 1583 he successfully fought some pirate ships. In 1586, during the Anglo-Spanish War , he took part with John Hawkins in an unsuccessful privateer operation on the Spanish coast.

In 1587 he was next to Francis Drake commander in the attack on Cádiz with the aim of disrupting the Spanish preparations for the invasion . His flagship was the Golden Lion, one of the fleet's newly built warships. Outside Cádiz, Drake attacked immediately, without holding a council of war with Borough. Borough later criticized this approach, even if Drake was successful.

After the destruction of the Spanish fleet, the English took Sagres to create a base there. These measures were not coordinated with the borough either. An argument broke out between the two commanders and Drake had Borough arrested on his ship. When the crew revolted, Drake had him sentenced to death by a court martial in absentia for mutiny and desertion.

After the return of the fleet to England, Admiral Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham overturned the sentence and put Borough back into command of his ship. To avoid further conflicts with Drake, he was transferred to the support fleet in the area of ​​the Thames . He was still stationed there during the attempted invasion by the Spanish Armada in 1588.

In 1589 he helped prepare Martin Frobisher's enterprise against the Azores and the English Armada against Portugal, without getting an independent command. In the last ten years of his life he did not excel.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Annina Cavelti: What maps tell about the past: Herberstein and Jerkinson map Russia. In: Jörn Happel, Christophe von Werdt (Ed.): Mapping Eastern Europe. Zurich / Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-80015-2 , p. 138.
2. ^ Samuel Warren Carey: Theories of the Earth and Universe: A History of Dogma in the Earth Sciences. Stanford University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-8047-1364-2 , p. 28.
3. ↑ John Hampden (Ed.): Sir Francis Drake. Pirate in the service of the Queen. Droemer Knaur, Munich / Zurich 1977, ISBN 3-426-03662-2 , p. 397f.

literature

• John A. Wagner, Susan Walters Schmid: Encyclopedia of Tudor England. Santa Barbara 2012, ISBN 978-1-59884-298-2 , pp. 150f.
• Charles Henry Coote: Borough, William. In: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900. Volume 5. (en-wikisource)