The Discovery of Buss
The “Sunken Island of Buss” presents a suggestion of engulfment on a more extensive scale. The whole episode is of rather recent date, Buss being the latest born of mythical or illusory islands, unless we except Negra’s Rock and other alleged and unproven apparitions of land on a very small scale, which may not have wholly ceased even yet. Buss is, at any rate, the one moderately large phantom map island the time and occasion of whose origin are securely recorded. For, as narrated by Best and published in Hakluyt’s compilation, on Frobisher’s third voyage (1578), one of his vessels, a buss, or small strong fishing craft, of Bridgewater, named Emmanuel, made the discovery. In his words:
The Buss of Bridgewater, as she came homeward, to the southeastward of Frisland, discovered a great island in the latitude of 57 degrees and a half, which was never yet found before, and sailed three days along the coast, the land seeming to be fruitful, full of woods, and a champaign country.[290]
Best must have had his information at second or third hand, with liberal play of fancy in the final touches on the part of his informant or himself. His was the first account published, but not long afterward appeared that of an eyewitness, “Thomas Wiars, a passenger in the Emmanuel, otherwise called the Busse of Bridgewater,” repeated in Miller Christy’s admirable little treatise on the subject.[291] Wiars says they fell with Frisland (probably a part of Greenland) on September 8 and on September 12 reached this new island, coasted it for parts of two days, and considered it 25 leagues long. There was much ice near it. He gives no suggestion of fertility, woods, or fields.
Fig. 24—Map of Buss Island from John Seller’s “English Pilot,” probably 1673. (After Miller Christy’s photographic facsimile.)