Robert Bylot and William Baffin undertook a voyage in 1615. The latter had had some previous experience of Arctic navigation, which he turned to advantage in 1616, when he accompanied Bylot on a second expedition. Their ship, the Discovery, of fifty-five tons, reached Cape Hope Sanderson, the furthest point attained by Davis, on the 30th of May; and after meeting with some obstruction from the ice, proceeded northwards to 72° 45’, where she dropped anchor for awhile among the Women’s Islands. Baffin kept to the north until he found ice in 74° 15’ N., and he then ascended Melville Bay, touching the head of the great basin now known by his name, and sailing down its western coast. He arrived in Dover Roads on the 30th of August, after a brilliantly successful voyage, which had opened up the principal north-west channels into the Arctic Sea.
It is necessary here to interpolate a few remarks in explanation of the difficulties which beset the Baffin Bay route of Arctic exploration. Geographers assert, and the assertion seems confirmed by the experience of navigators, that a surface-current is constantly flowing down this bay, and carrying great fleets of icebergs and shoals of ice-floes into the Atlantic from its southern channels—Lancaster, Jones, and Smith Sounds. Hence, at the head of the bay there exists a considerable open and navigable expanse, which extends for some distance up Lancaster and Smith Sounds during the summer and early winter, and is known as the “North Water.” But between this open expanse and Davis Strait lies an immense mass of ice, averaging from one hundred and seventy to two hundred miles in width, and blocking up the centre of Baffin Bay, so as to interrupt the approach to the north-west end. This is known as the “middle pack,” and consists of some ancient floe-pieces of great thickness, which may have been brought down from a distant part of the Arctic seas; of a wide extent of ice accumulated during each winter, about six or eight feet in thickness; and of the grand and gigantic icebergs which are so characteristic a feature of the Melville Bay scenery. A very large quantity of this pack is destroyed in each succeeding summer by the thaws, or by the swell and warm temperature of the Atlantic as the ice drifts southward.
It is remarked of the Baffin Bay ice, that it is much lighter than that found in the Spitzbergen seas. The latter often occurs in single sheets, solid, transparent, and from twenty to thirty, and even forty, feet in thickness. In Baffin Bay the average thickness of the floes does not exceed five or six feet, and eight or ten feet is of very rare occurrence.
From Baffin’s voyage, in 1616, until 1817, no attempt was made to force this “middle pack” and enter the North Water; but now the voyage is made every year, and three routes have been opened up. The first is called the “North-about Passage,” and lies along the Greenland coast; the second, or “Middle Passage,” only possible late in the season, is by entering the drift-ice in the centre of the bay; and the third, or “Southern Passage,” also only possible late in the season, along the west side of Baffin Bay. Once in the North Water, whichever route be attempted, all obstacles to an exploration of the unknown region may be considered at an end. From Cape York to Smith Sound the sea is always navigable in the summer months.
It will thus be seen that the great highways to the Pole were discovered by William Baffin.
Our limits compel us to pass over the voyages of Stephen Bennet (1603–1610), Jonas Poole (1610–1613), and Captain Luke Fox (1631). In 1631 the merchants of Bristol despatched Captain Thomas James, but he made no additions to the discoveries of his predecessors. And then for nearly two centuries England abandoned her efforts to open up a communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
In 1818, however, the question of the existence of a North-West Passage once more occupied the public mind; and the British Government accordingly fitted out an exploring expedition, the Isabella and the Alexander, under the command of Captain Ross and Lieutenant Parry.
They sailed from England on the 18th of April, reached the southern edge of the Baffin Bay ice on the 2nd of July, and, after a detention of thirty-eight days, reached the North Water on August 8th. The capes on each side of the mouth of Smith Sound, Ross named after his two ships; and having accomplished this much, he affirmed that he saw land against the horizon at a distance of eight leagues, and then retraced his course, and sailed for England.
The British Government, however, refused to be discouraged by the failure of an expedition which had obviously been conducted with an entire absence of vigour and enterprise. They therefore equipped the Hecla and the Griper, and gave the command to Lieutenant Parry; who sailed from the Thames on the 5th of May 1819, and on the 15th of June sighted Cape Farewell. Striking northward, up Davis Strait and Baffin Bay, he found himself checked by the ice-barrier in lat. 73° N. A man of dauntless resolution, he came to the determination of forcing a passage at all hazards; and in seven days, by the exercise of a strong will, great sagacity, and first-rate seamanship, he succeeded in carrying his ships through the pack of ice, which measured eighty miles in breadth.