Davy Jones’ locker

In seamen’s mythology, Davy Jones’ locker is the bottom of the sea, the resting place of dead mariners but exactly who the original Davy Jones was is not known. The first source for the use of the name is Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle published in 1751, where he describes Davy Jones, according to sailors’ mythology, as “the fiend that presides over all the spirits of the deep”. The first specific citation for locker occurs later in the 1803 Naval Chronicle, “Seamen would have met a watery grave, or to use a seaman’s phrase, would have gone to Davy Jones’s locker.” The latter reference to a seaman’s phrase indicates that the expression was in verbal use long before it appeared in print in 1803.