John Davis

Davis led multiple expeditions hunting the elusive Northwest Passage, that frozen shortcut through the Arctic that obsessed every navigator with ambition and a backer. When those northern routes refused to yield, he pivoted: piloting for both English and Dutch ventures bound for the East Indies, the era's other high-stakes run. In August 1592, somewhere between planned routes, he came across the Falkland Islands—uninhabited, wind-battered, strategically meaningless at the time. He died in December 1605, likely at sea or shortly after landfall, his logbooks survival enough.