David Ingram

David Ingram, Davy Ingrams, or Davyd Ingram ( 1542 – after 1583) was a 16th-century English sailor and explorer who claimed to have walked across the interior of the North American continent from Mexico to Nova Scotia in 1568. Early life The precise date or year of Ingram's birth are unknown. However, Sir Francis Walsingham noted in 1582 that Ingram was then "abowt the age of fortye yeares". He was born and grew up in Barking, Essex. Exploration Ingram signed on with English privateer Sir John Hawkins on a slave trading mission in 1567 to raid and trade along the coasts of Portuguese Africa and Spanish Mexico. After a brief skirmish with the Spanish, around a hundred men from Hawkins' expedition were left at Tampico. Hawkins himself returned to Britain and he was expected to take two to three years to return for the men left behind. The men at Tampico faced immediate peril at the hands of the Spanish and Mexican Native Americans. The sailors were aware that English fishing ships frequented Newfoundland. Ingram and a few others from his party decided to march northwards into the interior to reach Newfoundland, ignorant of the fact that Newfoundland was around 3,000 miles away from Tampico. After eleven months, only three men survived the walk - Ingram, Richard Browne, and Richard Twide. In October 1568, they spotted a French vessel lying at anchor in Nova Scotia. They managed to reach Le Havre with that vessel and then crossed the English Channel on a separate fishing vessel.