In 1610, therefore, Hudson took command of a new ship, the Discoverie, and sailing in her to Baffin’s Bay, found the great opening of Hudson Strait, and with high hope that his goal was now in view followed it westward into Hudson Bay. Here he coasted south to what we term James Bay, and, after a comfortable winter, resumed his examination of the west coast, whereupon the majority of his men mutinied, set Hudson and several sick men adrift in a rowboat, and turned back. Most of the mutineers died, but the vessel was finally taken back to London, where the murderers were promptly questioned and nearly as promptly hanged.
The story of another remarkable voyage closes the story of this early attempt at the problem which, two hundred and fifty years afterward, was to be solved only by proof of its uselessness. In 1616 another Discovery—a caravel of only fifty-five tons—went north from England in charge of William Baffin. “On the 30th of May he had reached Davis’ farthest point, Sanderson’s Hope, in 72° 41´ N., ... and reached, 1st July, an open sea, the ‘North Water’ of the whalers of to-day. Passing Capes York, Atholl and Parry, he yet pushed northward, and on 5th July attained his farthest point within sight of Cape Alexander.
His latitude, about 77° 45´ N., remained unequaled in that sea for two hundred and thirty-six years.” Arctic success depends on good luck.
FANTASTIC ICEBERGS IN HUDSON STRAIT.
The next century (1700 to 1800) was a period of active polar research in the Old World. The Russians completed their knowledge of their Arctic coasts, Popoff reaching East Cape in 1711, and bringing back an account not only of various islands, but also of a continental shore eastward. It was this report that caused Peter the Great to set on foot a costly scheme of research upon the northeastern coasts of Siberia, which was placed in the hands of Vitus Bering, a Dane, in his navy, but accomplished nothing of any value; and it was not until 1740 that Bering finally crossed over in a blundering sort of way and made a brief examination of the coast of Alaska, where his ship was finally wrecked, and he died of discouragement and chagrin. He saw neither the sea nor the strait that bears his name, was not the first to reach the American continent, and never learned whether or not it was connected with Siberia. Nevertheless his voyage had fruitful results, for it led to vast fisheries and fur-gatherings, and the writings of his naturalist, Steller, had and still have great scientific importance.
A WALRUS BREEDING-GROUND, BERING STRAIT.
By this time the whaling and allied marine industries, and the work of such excellent explorers as the Dutchman Martens, had made mariners thoroughly acquainted with the North Atlantic from Nova Zembla to Greenland, and a vast advance had been effected in the knowledge of navigation amid the ice, and in the building and equipment of ships and the proper methods of provisioning and clothing and treating crews in order to maintain health and comfort as well as mere safety. These well-fitted and daringly managed whalers had at the beginning of the nineteenth century begun to penetrate far into the waters west of Greenland, in spite of a very curious fact, which would make anybody but a British whaleman pause—namely, that there were no such waters. So their best maps and treatises said!
Two hundred years had now passed since Baffin’s return from his wonderful voyage of 1616, and during all that time not a white man’s keel had plowed the chilling solitudes he had left, except lately these venturesome whalers, who did not frequent libraries. Consequently Baffin’s work had first been forgotten and then disbelieved; so that at last first-class maps were published which omitted Baffin’s Bay altogether, and books were written, such as Barrows’ “Arctic Voyages” (London, 1818), that denied the authenticity of his narrative. As the nineteenth century opened, however, England began to turn her attention to the renewal of polar studies. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s men were reaching the coast of their Territories here and there; but otherwise the whole Arctic Ocean north of British America was unknown.