James Evans | |
---|---|
Born | James Richard Evans 17 December 1975 Redhill, England |
Education | Modern History |
Alma mater | Oriel College, Oxford |
Occupation(s) | Historian, popular historian |
Spouse | Nicola Pitt (m. 2006) |
James Richard Evans (born 17 December 1975) is an English historian, author and television producer.
Evans grew up in Epsom and was educated at Whitgift School. Evans attended Oriel College, Oxford University. [1] and studied History graduating in 1998. He went on to do doctoral studies at Oriel College where he wrote a D.Phil on the national question in the new state of Yugoslavia after World War I. [2]
Since university he worked on producing multiple television historical documentaries as well as helping to write the accompanying books for the series.
His first major book, Merchant Adventurers: The Voyage of Discovery that Transformed Tudor England (2013) [3] [4] used the primary source of a story he came across during a television project. It tells the story of the failed 1553 voyage to reach China and the Spice Islands of the Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands and the principals, Richard Chancellor, Sebastian Cabot and Sir Hugh Willoughby. [5] It was published in the US as Tudor Adventurers: An Arctic Voyage of Discovery: The Hunt for the Northeast Passage. [6]
In July 2017 his second book Emigrants: Why the English Sailed to the New World, [7] [8] [9] was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
In July 2017 Evans was interviewed by Dan Snow for Dan Snow's History Hit Podcast.
He lives in North London with his wife and three children.
Sir Francis Drake was an English explorer and privateer best known for his circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition between 1577 and 1580. This was the first English circumnavigation, and third circumnavigation overall. He is also known for participating in the early English slaving voyages of his cousin, Sir John Hawkins, and John Lovell. Having started as a simple seaman, in 1588 he was part of the fight against the Spanish Armada as a vice-admiral.
The Northwest Passage (NWP) is the sea lane between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The eastern route along the Arctic coasts of Norway and Siberia is accordingly called the Northeast Passage (NEP). The various islands of the archipelago are separated from one another and from Mainland Canada by a series of Arctic waterways collectively known as the Northwest Passages, Northwestern Passages or the Canadian Internal Waters.
Henry Hudson was an English sea explorer and navigator during the early 17th century, best known for his explorations of present-day Canada and parts of the northeastern United States.
Willem Barentsz, anglicized as William Barents or Barentz, was a Dutch navigator, cartographer, and Arctic explorer.
Sir Martin Frobisher was an English sailor and privateer who made three voyages to the New World looking for the North-west Passage. He probably sighted Resolution Island near Labrador in north-eastern Canada, before entering Frobisher Bay and landing on present-day Baffin Island. On his second voyage, Frobisher found what he thought was gold ore and carried 200 tons of it home on three ships, where initial assaying determined it to be worth a profit of £5.20 per ton. Encouraged, Frobisher returned to Canada with an even larger fleet and dug several mines around Frobisher Bay. He carried 1,350 tons of the ore back to England, where, after years of smelting, it was realized that the ore was a worthless rock containing the mineral hornblende. As an English privateer, he plundered riches from French ships. He was later knighted for his service in repelling the Spanish Armada in 1588.
Sir John Ross was a Scottish Royal Navy officer and polar explorer. He was the uncle of Sir James Clark Ross, who explored the Arctic with him, and later led expeditions to Antarctica.
Sir John Franklin was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. After serving in wars against Napoleonic France and the United States, he led two expeditions into the Canadian Arctic and through the islands of the Arctic Archipelago, in 1819 and 1825, and served as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land from 1839 to 1843. During his third and final expedition, an attempt to traverse the Northwest Passage in 1845, Franklin's ships became icebound off King William Island in what is now Nunavut, where he died in June 1847. The icebound ships were abandoned ten months later and the entire crew died, from causes such as starvation, hypothermia, and scurvy.
HMS Resolute was a mid-19th-century barque-rigged ship of the British Royal Navy, specially outfitted for Arctic exploration. Resolute became trapped in the ice and was abandoned in 1854. Recovered by an American whaler, she was returned to Queen Victoria in 1856. Timbers from the ship were later used to construct the Resolute desk which was presented to the President of the United States and is located in the White House Oval Office.
The Muscovy Company was an English trading company chartered in 1555. It was the first major chartered joint-stock company, the precursor of the type of business that would soon flourish in England and finance its exploration of the world. The Muscovy Company had a monopoly on trade between England and Russia until 1698 and it survived as a trading company until the Russian Revolution. Since 1917, the company has operated as a charity, now working within Russia.
Discovery or Discoverie was a small 20-ton, 38-foot (12 m) long "fly-boat" of the British East India Company, launched before 1602. It was one of the three ships on the 1606–1607 voyage to the New World for the English Virginia Company of London. The journey resulted in the founding of Jamestown in the new Colony of Virginia.
Steven Borough was an English navigator and an early Arctic explorer. He was master of the first English ship to reach the White Sea in 1553 and open trade with Russia on behalf of the Muscovy Company. He became an expert on piloting in Arctic waters and was one of the earliest English practitioners of the new scientific methods of navigation. He was widely sought out for his knowledge by English and Spanish mariners.
Richard Chancellor was an English explorer and navigator; the first to penetrate to the White Sea and establish relations with the Tsardom of Russia.
Sir Hugh Willoughby was an English soldier and an early Arctic voyager. He served in the court of Henry VIII and fought in the Scottish campaign where he was knighted for his valour. In 1553, he was selected by a company of London merchants to lead a fleet of three vessels in search of a Northeast Passage.
Luke Foxe was an English explorer, born in Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire, who searched for the Northwest Passage across North America. In 1631, he sailed much of the western Hudson Bay before concluding no such passage was possible. Foxe Basin, Foxe Channel and Foxe Peninsula were named after him.
Jacob van Heemskerck was a Dutch explorer and naval admiral. He is generally know for his victory over the Spanish at the Battle of Gibraltar, where he ultimately lost his life.
Sir James Clark Ross was a British Royal Navy officer and polar explorer known for his explorations of the Arctic, participating in two expeditions led by his uncle John Ross, and four led by William Edward Parry, and, in particular, for his own Antarctic expedition from 1839 to 1843.
Franklin's lost expedition was a failed British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England, United Kingdom in 1845 aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and was assigned to traverse the last unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic and to record magnetic data to help determine whether a better understanding could aid navigation. The expedition met with disaster after both ships and their crews, a total of 129 officers and men, became icebound in Victoria Strait near King William Island in what is today the Canadian territory of Nunavut. After being icebound for more than a year Erebus and Terror were abandoned in April 1848, by which point two dozen men, including Franklin, had died. The survivors, now led by Franklin's second-in-command, Francis Crozier, and Erebus's captain, James Fitzjames, set out for the Canadian mainland and disappeared, presumably having perished.
HMS Investigator was a merchant ship purchased in 1848 to search for Sir John Franklin's ill-fated Northwest Passage expedition. She made two voyages to the Arctic and had to be abandoned in 1853, after becoming trapped in the pack ice.
Arctic exploration is the physical exploration of the Arctic region of the Earth. It refers to the historical period during which mankind has explored the region north of the Arctic Circle. Historical records suggest that humankind have explored the northern extremes since 325 BC, when the ancient Greek sailor Pytheas reached a frozen sea while attempting to find a source of the metal tin. Dangerous oceans and poor weather conditions often fetter explorers attempting to reach polar regions, and journeying through these perils by sight, boat, and foot has proven difficult.
Edward Bonaventure was an English ship under the command of Richard Chancellor that was forced to seek shelter in 1553 on the north coast of Russia near Nyonoksa due to weather conditions, leading to its crew coming into contact with the court of Ivan the Terrible, the forming of the Muscovy Company, and diplomatic contacts between Elizabeth I of England and Ivan of Russia.