a gentleman merchant of London and one of the earliest English travellers and traders to visit Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, India and Southeast Asia. At first he was no chronicler but he did eventually write descriptions of the south-east Asia he saw in 1583–1591, and upon his return to England, in 1591, became a valuable consultant for the British East India Company. Fitch ranks among the most remarkable of Elizabethan adventurers. There is no evidence he ever married and the main beneficiaries of his final will in 1611 were eight nieces and two nephews.
