Baffin, William 1584-1622. English explorer
and navigator. In 1616, he and Robert Bylot
explored Baffin Bay, NE Canada, and reached
latitude 77 degrees 45' N, which for 236
years remained the `furthest north'. In 1612,
Baffin was chief pilot of an expedition in
search of the Northwest Passage, and in
1613-14 commanded a whaling fleet near
Spitsbergen, Norway. He piloted the Discovery
on an expedition to Hudson Bay lead by Bylot
in 1615. After 1617, Baffin worked for the
East India Company and made surveys of the
Red Sea and Persian Gulf. In 1622 he was
killed in an Anglo-Persian attack on Hormuz.