Notable & Famous Explorers Posters and Prints, S-Y
for social studies teachers and home schoolers, theme decor in office.

Robert de LaSalle
b. 11-22-1643; Rouen, France
d. 3-19-1687; murdered by expedition mutineers in present day Texas

René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de LaSalle (Robert de LaSalle) was a French explorer of the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, the Mississippi River, and the Gulf of Mexico. La Salle was the first European to sail on the Great Lakes with a ship named Le Griffon and he claimed the entire Mississippi basin for France naming it La Louisiane in honour of Louis XIV and his wife Anne.

• The Wreck of the Belle, the Ruin of LaSalle

Robert F. Scott
b. 6-6-1868; Plymouth, England
d. 3-29-1912; Ross Ice Shelf, Anarctica

Robert Falcon Scott, a Royal Naval Officer, was the second to reach the South Pole after Roald Amundsen. Scott and his companions perished on the trip back to their base camp.

• Scott in Historic Headlines posters
• Journals: Scott's Last Expedition

Frederick Selous
b. 12-31-1851; London, England
d. 1-4-1917; East Africa, by German sniper

Frederick Selous, British explorer, hunter, and conservationist, was famous for his exploits in Southern Africa. His real-life adventures inspired Sir H. Rider Haggard to create the fictional Allan Quatermain character. Selous was also a good friend of Theodore Roosevelt and Frederick Russell Burnham.

• A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa: Being a Narrative of Nine Years Spent Amongst the Game of the Far Interior of South Africa

Ernest Shackleton
b. 2-15-1874; Kilkea, Ireland
d. 1-5-1922; aboard the "Quest"

Ernest Shackleton attempted to cross Antarctica from the Weddell Sea, south of the Atlantic, to the Ross Sea, south of the Pacific, by way of the South Pole.

• South: The Endurance Expedition

Joshua Slocum
b. 2-20-1844; Nova Scotia
d. 11-14-1909; aboard the "Spray" while sailing to the Orinoco River

Joshua Slocum, a Canadian-American adventurer and sea captain, was the first person to circumnavigate the Earth solo in a sailboat. His exploits and life are inspirational and he has been honored by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution by naming a autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Spray after his boat.

• Sailing Alone Around the World and The Voyage of the Libredade

John Smith
b. 1580; near Alford, Lincolnshire, England
d. 6-21-1631; London, England

Captain John Smith, in addition to his well known roll as a founder and leader of the first English settlement in North America at Jamestown, VA, and his association with Pocahontas, led exploration along the rivers of Virginia, the Chesapeake Bay, and the coastal areas of North America he called New England.

His adventureous life ended peacefully in his home country.

• Captain John Smith: A Select Edition of His Writings

Sir George Somers
b. 1554; Lyme Regis, Dorset, England
d. 11-9-1610; Bermuda

Sir George Somers, in charge of the relief for the struggling Jamestown settlement, was driven off course and wrecked in the Bermudas. The story of the wreck is considered the inspiration for Shakespeare's “The Tempest”.

• Sir George Somers: A Man and His Times

Hernando de Soto
b. c 1497; Spain
d. 5-21-1542; near present day McArthur, Arkansas

Spanish explorer and conquistador Hernando de Soto was the first European to discover the Mississippi River. He was known for his brutality as governor of “La Florida”.

• Hernando De Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas

John Hanning Speke
b. 5-4-1827; Bideford, Devon, England
d. 9-15-1864; Neston Park, Wiltshire, England

John Hanning Speke, a British Indian army officer, explored Africa with Burton. He found and named Lake Victoria as the source of the Nile River on an expedition through the Great Lakes region of eastern Africa.

• The Sad Story of Burton, Speke, and the Nile; or, Was John Hanning Speke a Cad?: Looking at the Evidence

Abel Janszoon Tasman
b. 1603; Lutjegast, Dutch Republic
d. 10-10-1659; Batavia (now Jakarta)

Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant. The island of Tasmania and the Tasman Sea are named after him, and he was the first European to see New Zealand.

• Voyages of Abel Janzoon Tasman

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier
b. c. 1605; Paris, France
d. c. July 1689; Moscow, Russia (attack wild dogs)

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, French traveller and pioneer of trade with India, was born in 1605 at Paris. His father Gabriel, and uncle Melchior, in pursuing the profession of geographers and engravers, exposed the young man to the adventure of travel and commerce.

• Travels in India by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier Baron of Aubonne

David Thompson
b. 4-30-1770; London, England
d. 2-10-1857; Montreal, Canada

Fur trader, surveyor, and map-maker, David Thompson mapped North America west of Hudson Bay and Lake Superior, across the Rocky Mountains to the source of the Columbia River, and followed the length of the Columbia to the Pacific Ocean. He has been described as the “greatest land geographer who ever lived” and known to some native peoples as “Koo-Koo-Sint” or “the Stargazer”.

FYI ~ Thompson apprenticed to the Hudson Bay Company at age 14, clerking in present day Manitoba; Thompson was the creator of maps used by Lewis and Clark.

Armin Vambery
b. 3-19-1832; Szentgyorgy, Kingdom of Hungary
d. 9-15-1913; Budapest

Armin Vambery, an Hungarian orientalist and traveler whose talent with languages allowed him to venture into Asia, gathered information not available to foreigners.

• The Life and Adventures of Arminius Vambéry: Written by Himself.

Giovanni da Verrazano
b. c. 1485; Tuscany
d. c. 1528; on third voyage to New World

The Italian navigator Giovanni Verrazano was the first European to explore the North American coast between present day South Carolina and Newfoundland (1524), more than eighty years before Henry Hudson's 1609 voyage into New York Harbor. The bridge crossing the “narrows”, a tidal strait connecting the upper and lower sections of the New York Bay, is named for Verrazzano. Verrazano also influences the name of Rhode Island by describing an island “in the form of a triangle, distant from the mainland ten leagues, about the bigness of the Island of Rhodes”, thus the first part of state's name.

Amerigo Vespucci
b. 3-9-1454; Florence, Italy
d. 2-22-1512; Seville, Spain (malaria)

Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian merchant, explorer and cartographer whose published letters describing his observations to his employers, the Medici, is how the European public learned about the newly discovered Americas for the first time.

• Letters from a New World: Amerigo Vespucci's Discovery of America

Samuel Wallis
b. April, 1728; Cornwall
d. 1-17-1795; London

Samuel Wallis circumnavigated the world 1766-68 with the HMS Dolphin, reaching Tahiti, which he called King George the Third's Island. His charts and records were useful information for Captain James Cook.

Charles Wilkes
b. 4-3-1798; NYC, NY
d. 2-8-1877; Washington, DC

Charles Wilkes was the naval officer in charge of the 1838-1842 United States Exploring Expedition (EX EX) to the Pacific. He was one of the first to explore around Antarctic.

In addition to the monumental contributions he made to science, it is noted that Wilkes was raised by his aunt, Elizabeth Ann Seton; it is also speculated that Wilkes was the model for the Captain Ahab character in Herman Melville's ‘Moby Dick’. Wilkes, despite his age, was also a naval officer during the Civil War.

• Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, during the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842: Volume 1

Yermak (Timofeyevich)
b. c. 1532-42; France
d. 8-6-1585; drown in Wagay River

Yermak was a Cossack who was hired by merchants to explore and secure Siberia for Russian expansion of trade.

• Yermak the Conqueror