James Lancaster

James Lancaster was a prominent English merchant known as commander of the first English ship that reached East Indies and is credited for establishing the first English trading post in Southeast Asia.

He came from Basingstoke in Hampshire. In his early life, Lancaster gained experience serving under Sir Francis Drake as commander of the “Edward Bonaventure” against the Spanish Armada. In 1591 he was appointed a commander of the expedition that sailed from Plymouth to the East Indies. The expedition reached the island of Penang, west of the Malay Peninsula in the June 1592 where they engaged in plundering foreign ships. In May 1594 the expedition successfully reached the soil of England.

In spring 1601 Lancaster was named the commander of the “Red Dragon” and the first trading expedition of the English East India Company. The Queen Elizabeth appointed him a special envoy to various Eastern potentates. Expedition was successful, and at Bantam, Java, the first trading post of the Company was established. Due to his merits he was knighted after his return in England (1603) by the King James I.

In the period that followed, Lancaster remained one of the chief directors of the English East India Company. That post he held until his death in 1618. He was also interested in exploration voyages and sponsored several voyages in search of the Northwest Passage, the American Arctic waterway linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Lancaster was also a renowned philanthropist. In his will he left the funds for the benefit of officials and poor people in Basingstoke, and for poor divinity students at Oxford and Cambridge.