Steven Borough

Steven Borough (September 25, 1525 – July 12, 1584) was English navigator. He was born at Northam, Devon.

Life

In 1553 he took part in the expedition which was dispatched from the Thames under Sir Hugh Willoughby to look for a northern passage to Cathay and India, serving as master of the Edward Bonaventure, on which Richard Chancellor sailed as pilot in chief.[1] Separated by a storm from the Bona Esperanza and the Bona Confidentia, the other two ships of the expedition, Borough proceeded on his voyage alone, and sailing into the White Sea, in the words of his epitaph, "discovered Moscouia by the Northerne sea passage to St. Nicholas (Archangel)".[2]

In a second expedition, made in the Serchthrift in 1556, he discovered Kara Strait, between Novaya Zemlya and Vaygach Island. Encumbered by ice, Borough sailed into the White Sea and wintered at Colomogro (Kholmogory).[3] During this expedition he also collected the earliest known documentation of Sami languages in 1557; the list of words was published by Richard Hakluyt.[4]

In 1560 Borough was in charge of another expedition to Russia.[1]

Around 1558, he visited the navigational school in Seville. Here he brought back to England a copy of Martín Cortés de Albacar's Breve Compendio. Borough had his copy translated by Richard Eden and published as the Art of Navigation in 1561.[5] As such it became the first English manual of navigation [6]

At the beginning of 1563, he was appointed chief pilot and one of the four masters of Elizabeth I of England's ships in the Medway, and in this office he spent the rest of his life.[1] He died on 12 July 1584, and was buried at Chatham.[2]

Family

His son, Christopher Borough, wrote a description of a trading expedition made in 1579-1581 from the White Sea to the Caspian Sea and back.[7]

His younger brother, William Borough, born in 1536, also at Northam, accompanied Sir Francis Drake in his Cadiz expedition of 1587.[8]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Coote 1886.
  2. 1 2 Chisholm 1911.
  3. ↑ Wright, Helen Saunders (1910). The great white North: the story of polar exploration from the earliest times to the discovery of the Pole. The Macmillan co. p. 7.
  4. ↑ Abercromby, John (1895). "The earliest list of Russian Lapp words". Suomalais-ugrilaisen Seuran Aikakauskirja. 13 (2): 1–8.
  5. ↑ Antonio Barrera, Colgate University, Navigational Manual of Cortés Archived 2008-12-02 at the Wayback Machine.
  6. ↑ Hadfield, Andrew. "Eden, Richard (c.1520–1576)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/8454. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  7. ↑  Coote, Charles Henry (1886). "Borough, Christopher". In Stephen, Leslie. Dictionary of National Biography. 5. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  8. ↑  Coote, Charles Henry (1886). "Borough, William". In Stephen, Leslie. Dictionary of National Biography. 5. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

References

  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Coote, Charles Henry (1886). "Borough, Stephen". In Stephen, Leslie. Dictionary of National Biography. 5. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Borough, Steven". Encyclopædia Britannica. 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.


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