Having found one great river north of the Chesapeake, Hudson’s next thought was of that arm of the sea south of Greenland, which Cabot and Frobisher and Davis had all reported to be a passage as large as the Mediterranean, and to Greenland Hudson steered The Discovery in April, 1610. June saw the ship moored off Iceland under the shadow of Hekla’s volcanic fires. Smoke above Hekla was always deemed sign of foul weather. Twice The Discovery was driven back by storm, and the storm blew the smoldering fears of the unwilling seamen to raging discontent. Bathing in the hot springs, Juet, the old mate, grumbled at Hudson for sailing North instead of to that pleasant land they had found the previous year. The impressed sailors were only too ready to listen, and the wrong-headed foolish old mate waxed bolder. He advised the men “to keep muskets loaded in their cabins, for they would need firearms, and there would be bloodshed if the master persisted going by Greenland.” And all unconscious of the secret fires beginning to burn against him, was Hudson on the quarter-deck gazing westward, imagining that the ice bank seen through the mirage of the rosy North light was Greenland hiding the goal of his hopes. All you had to do was round Cape Farewell, south of Greenland, and you would be in the passage that led to the South Sea.
It was July when the boat reached the southern end of Greenland, and if the crew had been terrified by Juet’s tales of ice north of Asia, they were panic-stricken now, for the icebergs of America were as mountains are to mole-hills compared to the ice floes of Asia. Before, Hudson had cruised the east coast of Greenland. There, the ice continents of a polar world can disport themselves in an ocean’s spacious area, but west of Greenland, ice fields the area of Europe are crunched for four hundred miles into a passage narrower than the Mediterranean. To make matters worse, up these passages jammed with icebergs washed hard as adamant, the full force of the Atlantic tide flings against the southward flow of the Arctic waters. The result is the famous “furious overfall,” the nightmare of northern seamen—a cataract of waters thirty feet high flinging themselves against the natural flow of the ice. It is a battle of blind fury, ceaseless and tireless.
Hudson Straits may be described as a great arm of the ocean curving to an inland sea the size of the Mediterranean. At each end, the Straits are less than fifty miles wide, lined and interspread with rocky islands and dangerous reefs. Inside, the Straits widen to a breadth of from one hundred to two hundred miles. Ungava Bay on the east is a cup-like basin, which the wash of the iron ice has literally ground out of Labrador’s rocky shore. Half way up at Savage Point about two hundred miles from the ocean, Hudson Straits suddenly contract. This is known as the Second Narrows. The mountainous, snow-clad shores converge to a sharp funnel. Into this funnel pours the jammed, churning maelstrom of ice floes the size of a continent, and against this chaos flings the Atlantic tide.
Old fur-trade captains of a later era entered the Straits armed and accoutered as for war. It was a standing regulation among the fur-trade captains always to have one-fourth extra allowance of provisions for the delay in the straits. Six iron-shod ice hooks were carried for mooring to the ice floes. Special cables called “ice ropes” were used. Twelve great ice poles, twelve handspikes all steel-shod, and twelve chisels to drill holes in the ice for powder—were the regulation requirements of the fur traders bound through Hudson Straits. Special rules were issued for captains entering the Straits. A checker-board sky—deep blue reflecting the clear water of ocean, apple-green lights the sign of ice—was the invariable indication of distant ice. “Never go on either at night or in a fog when you have sighted such a sky”—was the rule. “Get your ice tackle ready at the straits.” “Stand away from the indraught between a big iceberg and the tide, for if once the indraught nails you, you are lost.” “To avoid a crush that will sink you in ten minutes, run twenty miles inside the soft ice; that will break the force of the tide.” “Be careful of your lead night and day.”
But these rules were learned only after centuries of navigating. All was new to the seamen in Hudson’s day. All that was known to the northern navigator was the trick of throwing out the hook, gripping to a floe, hauling up to it and worming a way through the ice with a small sail.
Carried with the current southward from Greenland, sometimes slipping into the long “tickles” of water open between the floes, again watching their chance to follow the calm sea to the rear of some giant iceberg, or else mooring to some ice raft honeycombed by the summer’s heat and therefore less likely to ram the hull—The Discovery came to Ungava Bay, Labrador, in July. This is the worst place on the Atlantic seaboard for ice. Old whalers and Moravian missionaries told me when I was in Labrador that the icebergs at Ungava are often by actual measurement nine miles long, and washed by the tide, they have been ground hard and sharp as steel. It is here they begin to break up on their long journey southward.
An island of ice turned turtle close to Hudson’s ship. There was an avalanche of falling seas. “Into the ice we put for safety,” says the record. “Some of our men fell sick. I will not say it was for fear, though I saw small sign of other grief.” Just westward lay a great open passage—now known as Hudson Strait, so the island in Ungava Bay was called Desire Provoked. Plainly, they could not remain anchored here, for between bergs they were in danger of a crush, and the drift might carry them on any of the rock reefs that rib the bay.
Juet, the old mate, raged against the madness of venturing such a sea. Henry Greene, a penniless blackguard, whom Hudson had picked off the streets of London to act as secretary—now played the tale-bearer, fomenting trouble between master and crew. “Our master,” says Prickett, one of Digges’ servants who was on board, “was in despair.” Taking out his chart, Hudson called the crew to the cabin and showed them how they had come farther than any explorer had yet dared. He put it plainly to them—would they go on, or turn back? Let them decide once and for all; no repinings! There, on the west, was the passage they had been seeking. It might lead to the South Sea. There, to the east, the way home. On both sides was equal danger—ice. To the west, was land. They could see that from the masthead. To the east, between them and home, the width of the ocean.