James Lancaster

Who was James Lancaster?

Sir James Lancaster VI was a prominent Elizabethan trader and privateer.

Lancaster came from Basingstoke in Hampshire. In his early life, he was a soldier and a trader in Portugal. On 10 April 1591 he started from Torbay in Devon, with Raymond and Foxcroft, on his first great voyage to the East Indies; this fleet of three ships is the earliest of the English overseas Indian expeditions. Reaching Table Bay, and losing one ship off Cape Correntes on 12 September, the squadron rested and refitted at Zanzibar, rounded Cape Comorin the following May, and reached the Malay Peninsula having arrived at Penang in June. Here he remained on the island until September of the same year and pillaged every vessel he encountered.

After a later crossing to Ceylon, the crews insisted on returning home. The return voyage was disastrous with only twenty-five officers and men surviving to reach England in May 1594. Lancaster himself reached Rye on 24 May 1594. His Indian voyage, like Ralph Fitch's overland explorations and trading, was an important factor in the foundation of the East India Company.