The Arctic World

by Anonymous

In the reign of Henry VIII., Dr. Robert Thorne declared that “if he had facultie to his will, the first thing he would understande, even to attempt, would be if our seas northwarde be navigable to the Pole or no.” And it is said that the king, at his instigation, “sent two fair ships, well-manned and victualled, having in them divers cunning men, to seek strange regions; and so they set forth out of the Thames, the 20th day of May, in the nineteenth year of his reign, which was the year of our Lord 1527.” Of the details of this expedition, however, we have no record, except that one of the vessels was wrecked on the coast of Newfoundland.

In 1536, a second Arctic voyage was undertaken by a London gentleman, named Hore, accompanied by thirty members of the Inns of Law, and about the same number of adventurers of a lower estate. They reached Newfoundland, which, according to some authorities, was discovered by Sebastian Cabot in 1496, and here they suffered terrible distress; in the extremity of their need being reduced to cannibalism. After the deaths of a great portion of the crew, the survivors captured by surprise a French vessel which had arrived on the coast, and navigated her in safety to England.

But the true history of Arctic Discovery dates, as Mr. Markham observes, from the day when the veteran navigator, Sebastian Cabot, explained to young Edward VI. the phenomena of the variation of the needle. On the same day the aged sailor received a pension; and immediately afterwards three discovery-ships were fitted out by the Muscovy Company under his direction. Sir Hugh Willoughby was appointed to their command, with Richard Chancellor in the Edward Bonadventure as his second. The latter, soon after quitting England, was separated from the squadron, and sailing in a northerly direction, gained at last a spacious harbour on the Muscovy coast. Sir Hugh’s ship, and her companion, the Bona Confidentia, were cast away on a desolate part of the Lapland coast, at the mouth of the river Arzina. They entered the river on September 18, 1563, and remained there for a week; and “seeing the year far spent, and also very evil weather, as frost, snow, and hail, as though it had been the deep of winter, they thought it best to winter there.” But as day followed day, and week followed week, in those grim solitudes of ice and snow, the brave adventurers perished one by one; and many months afterwards their bleached bones were discovered by some Russian fishermen.

In the spring of 1556, Stephen Burrough, afterwards chief pilot of England, fitted out the “Search-thrift” pinnace, and sailed away for the remote north. He discovered the strait leading into the sea of Kara, between Novaia Zemlaia and the island Waigatz; but he made up his mind to return, because, first, of the north winds, which blew continually; second, “the great and terrible abundance of ice which we saw with our eyes;” and third, because the nights waxed dark. He arrived at Archangel on September 11, wintered there, and returned to England in the following year.

Twenty years later, on a bright May morning, Queen Elizabeth waved a farewell to Martin Frobisher and his gallant company, as they dropped down the Thames in two small barks, the Gabriel and the Michael, each of thirty tons, together with a pinnace of ten tons. They gained the shores of Friesland on the 11th of July; and sailing to the south-west, reached Labrador. Then, striking northward, they discovered “a great gut, bay, or passage,” which they named Frobisher Strait (lat. 63° 8’ N.), and fell into the error of supposing that it connected the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific. Here they came into contact with some Eskimos; and Frobisher describes them as “strange infidels, whose like was never seen, read, nor heard of before: with long black hair, broad faces and flat noses, and tawny in colour, wearing seal-skins, the women marked in the face with blue streaks down the cheeks, and round about the eyes.”

Frobisher’s discoveries produced so great an impression on the public mind, that in the following year he was placed at the head of a larger expedition, in the hope that he would throw open to English enterprise the wealth of “far Cathay.” About the end of May 1577, he sailed from Gravesend with the Ayde of one hundred tons, the Gabriel of thirty, and the Michael of thirty, carrying crews of ninety men in all, besides about thirty merchants, miners, refiners, and artisans. He returned in September with two hundred tons of what was supposed to be gold ore, and met with a warm reception. It was considered almost certain that he had fallen in with some portion of the Indian coast, and Queen Elizabeth, naming it Meta Incognita, resolved to establish there a colony. For this purpose, Frobisher was dispatched with fifteen well-equipped ships, three of which were to remain for a twelvemonth at the new settlement, while the others, taking on board a cargo of the precious ore, were to return to England.

In the third week of June Frobisher arrived at Friesland, of which he took possession in the queen’s name. Steering for Frobisher Strait, he found its entrance blocked up with colossal icebergs; and the bark Dennis, which carried the wooden houses and stores for the colony, coming in collision with one of these, unfortunately sank. Then, in a great storm, the fleet was scattered far and wide,—some of the vessels drifting out to sea, some being driven into the strait; and when most of them rejoined their admiral, it was found they had suffered so severely that no help remained but to abandon the project of a colony. They collected fresh supplies of ore, however, and then made their way back to England as best they could. Here they were met with the unwelcome intelligence that the supposed gold ore contained no gold at all, and was, in truth, mere dross and refuse.

The dream of a northern passage to Cathay was not to be dissipated, however, by an occasional misadventure. Even a man of the keen intellect of Sir Humphrey Gilbert felt persuaded that through the northern seas lay the shortest route to the treasures of the East; and having obtained from Queen Elizabeth a patent authorizing him to undertake north-western discoveries, and to acquire possession of any lands not inhabited or colonized by Christian princes or their subjects, he equipped, in 1583, with the help of his friends, a squadron of five small ships, and sailed from England full of bright visions and sanguine anticipations. On board his fleet were smiths, and carpenters, and shipwrights, and masons, and refiners, and “mineral men;” not to speak of one Stephen Parmenio, a learned Hungarian, who was bound to chronicle in sonorous Latin all “gests and things worthy of remembrance.”

Sir Humphrey formed a settlement at Newfoundland; and then, embarking on board the Squirrel, a little pinnace of ten tons burden, and taking with him the Golden Hind and the Delight, he proceeded on a voyage of exploration. Unhappily, the Delight ran ashore on the shoals near Sable Land, and all her crew except twelve men, and all her stores, were lost. The disaster determined Sir Humphrey to return to England; and his companions implored him to embark on board the Golden Hind, representing that the Squirrel was unfit for so long a voyage. “I will not forsake,” replied the chivalrous adventurer, “the brave and free companions with whom I have undergone so many storms and perils.” Soon after passing the Azores, they were overtaken by a terrible tempest, in which the tiny pinnace was tossed about by the waves like a straw. The Golden Hind kept as near her as the rolling billows permitted; and her captain has left on record that he could see Sir Humphrey sitting calmly in the stern reading a book. He was heard to exclaim—“Courage, my lads; we are as near heaven by sea as by land!” Then night came on, with its shadows and its silence, and next morning it was perceived that the pinnace and her gallant freight had gone to swell the sum of the irrecoverable treasures of the deep.