Brewer's: Davy Jones's Locker

He's gone to Davy Jones's locker, i.e. he is dead. Jones is a corruption of Jonah, the prophet, who was thrown into the sea. Locker, in seaman's phrase, means any receptacle for private stores; and duffy is a ghost or spirit among the West Indian negroes. So the whole phrase is, “He is gone to the place of safe keeping, where duffy Jonah was sent to.”

“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 seen in various shapes ... warning the devoted wretch of death and woe.” —Smollett: Peregrine Pickle, xiii.

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