Cavendish, Thomas [1560-1592]

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Thomas Cavendish [or Candish] [1560-1592]

English navigator and third circumnavigator of the globe after Ferdinand Magellan [1519-22] and fellow English navigator, Sir Francis Drake [1577-79]. Born at Trimley St.Martin, Suffolk 1560, commanded one of the ships in the flotilla of Sir Richard Greville sent by Walter Raleigh to establish the first English colonial settlement at Roanoke in Virginia in 1585. In July 1586, he sailed from Plymouth on the second English circumnavigation of the globe, sailing from West Africa to Patagonia. Here he discovered a large harbour in the Straits of Magellan which he named Port Desire, a manuscript chart of which is still extant. He sailed through the Straits of Magellan & up the west coast of South America ravaging Spanish settlements before proceeding via the East Indies, Philippines & Cape of Good Hope to reach England in early September 1588, just after the defeat of the Spanish Armada & after more than two years at sea. A second circumnavigation was planned in 1591 but ended in disaster when his fleet of five ships was dispersed in storms and he died at sea in the north Atlantic in May 1592. Cavendish was related by marriage to the famous English cartographer & Italian exile, Sir Robert Dudley [1573-1649] famous for his maritime Atlas L'Arcano del Mare (Secrets of the Seas) first published in Florence in 1646.

cf : G Schilder : Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica Vol III, illustration 3.138 (Van der Passe portrait)

Thomas Candyssh Nobilis Anglicus Aet Suae XXVIII

Medium : Copperplate engraving

Size : 7 x 10 cms

Date of publication : c.1620-30

Engraver / Publisher : Unknown but a close mirror-image copy of the earlier Jodocus Hondius portrait c.1588-92

Source : This attractive portrait is a close, if somewhat inferior-quality, copy of the earlier copperplate-engraved portrait of Cavendish by the famous Dutch cartographer, Jodocus Hondius, produced in London during his short English exile between about 1588 and 1592. The details and underlying text of the Hondius original are replicated almost entirely though in mirror image. Here Cavendish looks to the left and holds the world map in his right hand, whilst in the original Hondius portrait he looks to the right and holds the world map in his left hand. Another contemporary portrait engraving of Cavendish c.1595-1600 by Crispin van der Passe is also recorded. Both this example, probably from around 1620-30, and the earlier Hondius portrait, show Cavendish aged 28, shortly after his return to England, following his circumnavigation of the globe, in 1588. Given the fact that this example is engraved in mirror image to the Hondius original, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that the double-hemisphere map of the World, which Cavendish holds in his hands, and on which his circumnavigation is picked out, has also been engraved in mirror image, that is with all of the geographical details within the hemispheres back to front and with the two hemispheres strangely inverted.

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