The storm pursued Munck clear across the bay. The ships parted. Through the hurricane of sleet, the man at the masthead discerned land. A small creek seemed to open on the long, low, sandy shore. Through the lashing breakers The Unicorn steered for the haven. A sunken rock protruded in midcurrent. Munck sheered off, entered, drove upstream and found himself in a land-locked lagoon such as he could not have discovered elsewhere on the bay if he had searched every foot of its shores. By chance, the storm had driven him into the finest port of Hudson Bay, called by the Indians, River-of-the-Strangers or Danish River, now known as Churchill.
Heaving out all anchors, the toil-worn Danes rested and thanked God for the deliverance. But the little Lamprey was still out, and the storm raged unabated for four days. Taking advantage of the ebb tide, the men waded ashore in the dark and kindled fires of driftwood to guide The Lamprey to the harbor. At Churchill, the land runs out in a long fine cape now known as Eskimo Point. Here signal fires were kept burning and Munck watched for the lost ship. Such a wind raged as blew the men off their legs, but the air cleared, and on the morning of September 9, the peak of a sail was seen rising over the tumbling billows. The sailors of The Unicorn ran up their ensign, hurrahed and heaped more driftwood. By night the little Lamprey came beating over the waves and shot into the harbor with flying colors.
The Danes were astonished at the fury of the elements so early in the season. Snow flew through the air in particles as fine as sand with the sting of bird-shot. When the east wind blew, ice drove up the harbor that tore strips in the ship’s hull the depth of a finger. Munck moved farther up stream to a point since known as Munck’s Cove.
To-day there are no forests within miles from the rocky wastes of Churchill, but at that time, the country was timbered to the water’s edge, and during the ebb tide the men constructed a log jam or ice-break around the ship. Bridge piles were driven in the freezing ooze. Timber and rocks were thrown inside these around the hulls. Six hawsers moored each ship to the rocks and trees of the main shore. Men were kept pumping the water out of the holds, while others mended the leaky keels.
It was October before this work was completed. Then Munck and his officers looked about them. Plainly, they must winter here. Ice was closing the harbor. Inland, the region seemed boundless—a second Russia; and the Danish officers dreamed of a vast trans-atlantic colony that would place Denmark among the great nations of the earth.
Churchill Harbor as drawn by Munck, the Dane, from the Hakluyt Society Proceedings, 1897. Note the woods close to the sea front, long since destroyed; drawn about 1620.
Three great fireplaces of rock were constructed on the decks. Then, every scrap of clothing in the cargoes was distributed to the crews. Used to the damp temperate climate of Denmark, the men were simply paralyzed by the hard, dry, tense cold of America and had no idea how to protect themselves against it. Later navigators compelled to winter in Churchill, have boarded up their decks completely, tar-papered the sealed boarding and outside of this packed three feet of solid snow. Had Munck’s men used furs instead of happing themselves up with clothing, that only impeded circulation, they might have wintered safely with their miserable make-shifts of outdoor fireplaces, but they had no furs, and as the cold increased could do nothing but huddle helpless and benumbed around the fires, plying more wood and heating shot red-hot to put in warming pans for their berths.
Beer bottles were splintered to shivers by the frost. Most of the phials in the surgeon’s medicine chests went to pieces in nightly pistol-shot explosions. Kegs of light wines were frozen solid and burst their hoops. The crews went to their beds for warmth and night after night lay listening to the whooping and crackling of the frost, the shrieking of the wind, the pounding of the ice—as if giants had been gamboling in the dark of the wild Northern storms. The rest of Munck’s adventures may be told in his own words:
October 15—Last night, ice drift lifted the ship out of the dock. At next low water I had the space filled with clay and sand.