John King Davis
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John King Davis (19 February 1884 – 8 May 1967) was an English-born Australian explorer and navigator notable for his work captaining exploration ships in Antarctic waters as well as for establishing meteorological stations on Macquarie Island in the subantarctic and on Willis Island in the Coral Sea.
Davis served as Chief Officer of the Nimrod during Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expedition in 1908-1909. He was Captain of the Aurora and second in command of Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition in 1911-1914.[1] He also served as Captain of the Discovery in 1929-1930 in the course of the British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition.
Davis was Australia’s Commonwealth Director of Navigation from 1920 to 1949. It was at the beginning of this period that he volunteered to personally set up the remote Willis Island meteorological and cyclone warning station in 1921-22.[2]
Davis was President of the Royal Society of Victoria 1945-46, as well as being a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Davis Station in Antarctica, established in 1957, is named after him. He died in 1967 in Toorak, Melbourne.
[edit] Bibliography
Books authored by Davis include:
- 1919 – With the Aurora in the Antarctic. Andrew Melrose: London.
- 1921 – Willis Island: a storm-warning station in the Coral Sea. Critchley Parker: Melbourne.
- 1997 – Trial by Ice. The Antarctic Journals of John King Davis. (Edited by Louise Crossley). Bluntisham Books and Erskine Press: Bluntisham and Norwich. ISBN 1852970472
[edit] References
- ^ Bright Sparcs entry on John King Davis accessed 17 November 2007
- ^ Fletcher, P. (1996). Seventy-Five Years at Willis Island. Metarch Papers, No. 9, December 1996. Bureau of Meteorology: Australia [1]
