1892 illustration by John Tenniel in Punch of Davy Jones sitting on his locker, wearing a pirate captain's uniform, while viewing a 1789 chart of Ferrol Harbor, Spain, that had belonged to HMS Howe. The ship had run aground at the mouth of the harbor on 2 November 1892, allegedly after using a poorly prepared naval chart to navigate its waters.
13 November 2023
Davy Jones (also David Jones) is a spirit of the sea, a nautical demon whose appearance is said to foretell storms and shipwrecks. His locker is the bottom of the sea, where he keeps sunken ships and which is the grave of drowned sailors.
The origin of the term is obscure. The name Davy Jones suggests a Welsh connection, referring to St. David, the patron saint of Wales, and Jones being a common Welsh surname. The Jones may also be an alteration of Jonah, of the biblical story. In the story, the prophet Jonah disobeys God and attempts a sea voyage. God sends a storm, and the sailors, who determine that Jonah is to blame, cast him overboard, and the storm suddenly abates. Jonah was sailor slang for a person who brought bad luck onboard a ship.
The earliest known reference to Davy Jones and his locker is in Daniel Defoe’s 1726 The Four Years Voyages of Capt. George Roberts. In the novel, the title character is taken prisoner by pirates who debate whether or not to give him provisions when they set him adrift:
Some of Loe’s Company said, They would look out some Things, and give me along with me when I was going away; but Russel told them, they should not, for he would toss them all into Davy Jones’s Locker if they did; for I was the Scooner’s Prize, and she had all my Cargo and Plunder on Board of her, and therefore what was given to me should be given to me out of her.
A more detailed description of Davy Jones appears in Tobias Smollet’s 1751 The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. This passage details an attempt to frighten a man by dressing up as the evil spirit:
“By the Lord! Jack, you may say what you wool; but I’ll be damn’d if it was not Davy Jones himself: I know him by his saucer-eyes, his three rows of teeth, his horn and tail, and the blue smoak that came out of his nostrils, What does the black guard hell‘s baby want with me? I’m sure I never committed murder, nor wronged any man whatsomever since I first went to sea.” This same Davy Jones, according to the mythology of sailors, is the fiend that presides over all the evil spirits of the deep, and is often seen in various shapes, perching among the rigging on the eve of hurricanes, shipwrecks, and other disasters to which the sea-faring life is exposed; warning the devoted wretch of death and woe.
That’s about all we know about the origin of Davy Jones and his locker: references to it appear in the early eighteenth century, and the myth and term may be older in sailor slang.
Claims that David Jones was the name of real pirate and that Davy is from the West Indian duppy, a spirit or ghost, are without evidence.
Sources:
Defoe, Daniel (pseud. George Roberts). The Four Years Voyages of Capt. George Roberts. London: A. Bettesworth and J. Osborn, 1726, 89. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. Davy Jones’s locker, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. Davy Jones, n.
Smollett, Tobias. The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, vol. 1 of 3. Dublin: Robert Main, 1751, 101–02. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
Image Credit: John Tenniel, 1892. Punch, 103, 10 December 1892, 271. Heidelberg University Library. Public domain image.