Davy Jones' Locker

Davy Jones' Locker is an idiom for the bottom of the sea — the resting place of drowned seamen.

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The phrase goes back at least two centuries, since the first clear reference comes from Tobias Smollett, who wrote in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle in 1751 that:

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: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, ship-wrecks, and other disasters to which sea-faring life is exposed, warning the devoted wretch of death and woe.

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So, his locker is the bottom of the sea, the ocean?s depths.http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-dav1.htm

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The phrase Davy Jones appears often in popular nautical literature. There is no reason not to assume the term was common among sailors for many years.

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