LANCASTER, SIR JAMES (fl. 1591-1618), English navi gator and statesman, one of the foremost pioneers of the British Indian trade and empire. In early life he fought and traded in Portugal. On April '0, 1591 he started from Plymouth, with Raymond and Foxcroft, on his first great voyage to the East Indies; this fleet of three ships is the earliest of English oversea Indian expeditions. Reaching Table Bay (Aug. 1, i591), and losing one ship off Cape Corrientes on Sept. 12, the squadron refitted at Zanzibar (February 1592), rounded Cape Comorin in May, and was off the Malay Peninsula in June. Crossing later to Ceylon, the crews insisted on returning home, but only 25 officers and men reached England in 1594. Lancaster himself reached Rye on May 1594; his Indian voyage was an im portant factor in the foundation of the East India Company. In i600 he was given command of the company's first fleet (which sailed from Torbay towards the end of April 1600.
Going by the Cape of Good Hope (Nov. 1, Lancaster visited the Nicobars (from April 9, 1602), Achin and other parts of Sumatra (from June 5, 1602), and Bantam in Java; an alliance was concluded with Achin, a factory established at Bantam and a commercial mission despatched to the Moluccas. The return
voyage (Feb. 20 to Sept. 11, 1603) was prosperous, and Lancaster was knighted (October, 1603). He was one of the chief directors of the East India Company till his death in May 1618 ; most of the voyages of the early Stuart time both to India and in search of the North-West passage were undertaken under his direction; Lancaster Sound, on the north-west of Baffin's Bay (in 74° 20' N.), was named by William Baffin after Sir James (July 1616).
See R. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, vol. ii. pt. ii. pp. 102-110, vol. iii. pp. 708-715 (1599) ; S. Purchas, Pilgrims, vol. i. pt. ii. pp. 164; also The Voyages of Sir James Lancaster . . . to the East Indies . . . , ed. Sir Clements Markham, Hakluyt Soc. (1877) Calendars of State Papers, East Indies. The original journals of Lancaster's voyage of 1601-03 have disappeared, and here we have only Purchas to go on.