James Lancaster Sir James Lancaster ( died 6 June 1618 ) was a prominent Elizabethan trader and privateer . Lancaster came from Basingstoke in Hampshire . In his early life , he was a soldier and a trader in Portugal . On 10 April 1591 he started from Torbay in Devon , with Raymond and Foxcroft , on his first great voyage to the East Indies ; this fleet of three ships is the earliest of the English overseas Indian expeditions . Reaching Table Bay ( 1 August 1591 ) , and losing one ship off Cape Correntes on 12 September , the squadron rested and refitted at Zanzibar ( February 1592 ) , rounded Cape Comorin the following May , and reached the Malay Peninsula having arrived at Penang in June . Here he remained on the island until September of the same year and pillaged every vessel he encountered . After a later crossing to Ceylon , the crews insisted on returning home . The return voyage was disastrous with only twenty - five officers and men surviving to reach England in May 1594 . Lancaster himself reached Rye on 24 May 1594 . His Indian voyage , like Ralph Fitch ' s overland explorations and trading , was an important factor in the foundation of the East India Company . In the same year he led a privateering expedition against Pernambuco and Recife in Brazil , aimed at seizing the cargo of a storm - damaged Portuguese carrack which had put in there on its way back from India . Unlike the East Indies voyage , this was ( according to Hakluyt ' s account ) highly professional in its conduct and very successful ; after picking up a chance - met separate squadron under Captain Henry Middleton , he led an assault landing , seized the town and ( with the assistance of a flotilla of Dutch traders who also threw in their lot with him ) held it for several weeks and embarked the carrack ' s cargo along with local produce such as Brazil - wood ( the source of a valuable red dye used in the woolen textile industry ) . In 1600 he was given command of the East India Company ' s first fleet ( which sailed from Torbay on 22 April , 1601 ) ; his vessel was the " Red Dragon " . He was also accredited as Queen Elizabeth ' s special envoy to various Eastern potentates . Going by the Cape of Good Hope ( 1 November 1601 ) Lancaster visited the Nicobars ( from 9 April 1602 ) , Aceh and other parts of Sumatra ( from 5 June 1602 ) , and Bantam in Java . An alliance was established with Aceh , the first English East India Company factory established at Bantam and a commercial mission dispatched to the Moluccas . The return voyage from 20 February to 11 September 1603 was speedy and prosperous , and Lancaster ( whose success both in trade and diplomacy had been brilliant ) was rewarded with a knighthood from the newly crowned James I in October 1603 . Lancaster continued to be one of the chief directors of the East India Company until his death in May 1618 . Most of the voyages of the early Stuart period both to India and in search of the Northwest Passage were undertaken under his sponsorship and direction . In July 1616 , Lancaster Sound , the entrance to the Northwest Passage , on the north - west side of Baffin Bay ( 74° N . ) , was named by William Baffin after Sir James . His will ( dated 18 April 1618 ) established two charitable trusts administered by the Skinners ' Company . One was for the benefit of officials and poor people in Basingstoke , and was subsequently transferred by court order to Basingstoke Corporation in 1717 . The other was for poor divinity students at Oxford and Cambridge , to whom the Skinners ' Company still makes grants today .