1619
THE ADVENTURES OF THE DANES ON HUDSON BAY—JENS MUNCK’S CREW
Though Admiral Sir Thomas Button came out the very next year after Hudson’s death to follow up his discoveries and search for the lost mariner—the sea gave up no message of its dead. Button wintered on the bay (1612-13) at Port Nelson, which he discovered and named after his mate who died there. With him had come Prickett and Bylot of Hudson’s crew. Hudson’s old ship, The Discovery, was used with a larger frigate called The Resolution. No sooner had the ships gone into winter quarters on the west coast at Port Nelson than scurvy infected the camp. The seaport which was destined to become the great emporium of the fur trade for three hundred years—became literally a camp of the dead. So many seamen died of scurvy and cold, that Button had not enough sailors to man both vessels home. The big one was abandoned, and for a second time Hudson’s ship, The Discovery, carried back disheartened survivors to England. Button’s long absence had raised hopes that he had found passage westward to the South Sea. These hopes were dashed, but English endeavor did not cease.
In 1614, a Captain Gibbon was dispatched to the bay. Ice caught him at Labrador. Here, he was held prisoner for the summer. Again hopes were dashed, but national greatness sometimes consists in sheer dogged persistence. The English adventurers, who had sent Button and Gibbon, now fitted out Bylot, Hudson’s former mate. With him went a young man named Baffin. These two spent two years, 1615-1616, on the bay. They found no trace of Hudson. They found no passage to the South Sea, but cruised those vast islands of ice and rock on the north to which Baffin’s name has been given.
The English treasure seekers and adventurers of the high seas took a breathing space. Where England left off, the trail of discovery was taken up by little Denmark. Norse sailors had been the first to belt the seas. Before Columbus was born, Norsemen had coasted the ice fields from Iceland to Greenland and Greenland to the Vinelands and Marklands farther south, supposed to be Nova Scotia and Rhode Island. The lost colonies of eastern Greenland had become the folk-lore of Danish fireside.
King Christian IV, himself, examined the charts and supervised the outfitting of two ships for discovery in America. The Unicorn, named after a species of whale, was a frigate with a crew of forty-eight including chaplain and surgeon. The Lamprey was a little sloop with sixteen of a crew. There remained the choice of a commander and that fell without question on the fittest man in the Danish navy—Jens Munck, such a soldier of fortune as the novelist might delight to portray.
Iberville’s Ship run aground off Nelson in a Hurricane—from La Potherie.
Munck’s father was a nobleman, who had suicided in prison, disgraced for misuse of public funds. Munck’s mother was left destitute. At twelve years of age Jens was thrown on the world. Like a true soldier of fortune, he took fate by the beard and shipped as a common sailor to seek his fortunes in the New World. When a mere boy, he chanced to be off Brazil on a Dutch merchant ship. Here, he had his first bout with fate. The Dutch vessel was attacked off Bahia by the French and totally destroyed. Of all the crew, seven only escaped by plunging into the water and swimming ashore in the dark. Of the seven survivors, the Danish boy was one. He had succeeded in reaching shore by clinging to bits of wreckage through the chopping seas. Half drowned, friendless, crawling ashore like a bedraggled water rat, here was the boy, utterly alone in a strange land among a strange people speaking a strange tongue.