Sir Thomas Cavendish, also spelled Candish, was an English explorer baptized on September 19, 1560 at Trimley St. Martin, Suffolk, England and died c. May 1592 in the North Atlantic. Cavendish was a privateer known as “The Navigator”. He accompanied Sir Richard Grenville’s voyage to America (1585) and, upon returning to England, undertook an elaborate imitation of Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation, raiding Spanish towns and ships in the Pacific and returned by circumnavigating the globe. He was the leader of the third circumnavigation of the Earth.

On July 21, 1586, he sailed from Plymouth with 123 men in three vessels. He reached the Patagonian coast of South America, where he discovered Port Desire, now Puerto Deseado, Arg., his only significant contribution to geographical knowledge. After passing through the Strait of Magellan, he attacked Spanish settlements and shipping from South America to Mexico. From a captured pilot, a Marseillais who hated…