Wood, Benjamin (d. 1598): ; Benjamin Wood was an English navigator, sea-captain, and privateer of the Elizabethan era. Early in his career, Wood took part in the 1584 Roanoke Expedition under Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe. Quinn notes that he was “destined for later prominence at sea.” Indeed, he was noted for his skill in navigation and, only two years after the 1584 voyage, Wood took to sea again, voyaging to the Azore, and then sailing as far as the Strait of Magellan as a master of the White Lion on Chudleigh’s 1589 expedition. By 1592 Wood’s name was becoming established as a successful privateer, and he commanded four ships in that year on a privateering voyage sponsored by Lord Thomas Howard off the coast of Cuba. He also sailed with Dudley’s 1594-1595 West India expedition. His final voyage began in 1596, when he was charged by Robert Dudley to voyage to China via the Strait of Magellan and the Philippines. Instead of going through the strait as planned, Wood instead sailed around the horn of Africa, where he lost one of his three ships, and worked his way up the coast of East Africa, and across the Indian Ocean to Eastern India and eventually the Malay Peninsula, raiding and plundering Portuguese merchant ships along the way. By 1598, having reached the Malay Peninsula, Wood only had enough men remaining to operate one of his vessels, and so, removing the men and supplies to the Bear, Wood burned his other ship and set off to the North, towards China. Unfortunately, a storm wrecked and sunk the Bear off Martaban, and Wood perished. The few survivors secured a canoe and initially landed on the island of Mauritius, but they too were lost when they set out again to sea. The only survivor left to tell the tale was a French sailor who had remained on the island and was rescued by a Dutch ship in 1601.;
Works Cited: ; The Roanoke Voyages, 1584-1590: Volume I, ed. David Beers Quinn (London: Hakluyt Society, 1955), 79, 116.; Andrews, K.R. Elizabethan Privateering During the Spanish War: 1585-1603 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 68, 89, 167-168, 216.; Foster, Sir William. England’s Quest of Eastern Trade (New York: Macmillan, 1933), 138-141.;