James Lancaster

Sir James Lancaster (c. 1554 – 6 June 1618) was an English privateer and trader of the Elizabethan era. Life and work Lancaster came from Basingstoke in Hampshire. In his early life, he was a soldier and a trader in Portugal. On 10 April 1591 Lancaster started from Torbay in Devon, with George Raymond and Samuel Foxcroft, on his major voyage to the East Indies; this fleet of three ships (Penelope, Marchant Royal and Edward Bonaventure) was the earliest of the English overseas Indian expeditions. They reached Table Bay on 1 August 1591. Losing one ship off Cape Correntes on 12 September, the squadron rested and refitted at Zanzibar (February 1592), rounded Cape Comorin the following May, and reached the Malay Peninsula having arrived at Penang in June. Here Lancaster remained on the island until September of the same year.