In Hakluyt’s collection of voyages a very curious poem is reprinted, complaining of the neglect of the navy in the time of Henry VI., and praising highly “the policee of keeping the see in the time of the merveillous werriour and victorious prince, King Henry the Fift.” The fact is that for some little time the spirit of maritime adventure seems to have slumbered, subsequent to the voyages just recorded. It, however, broke out in full force in the reign of Henry VIII., and flourished still more particularly in that of Queen Elizabeth. In 1527, “King Henry VIII. sent two faire 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 19th yeere of his raigne.” This voyage was despatched at the instance of Master Robert Thorne, of Bristol, who, in his “exhortation” to the king, gave “very weighty and substantial reasons to set forth a discoverie, even to the North Pole.” One of the vessels was lost “about the great opening between the north parts of Newfoundland and Meta incognita, or Greenland,” and the other returned, having accomplished nought, about the beginning of October. Hakluyt tried hard to discover the names of the vessels, and of the “cunning men” aboard them. He could only learn that one of the ships was called the Dominus Vobiscum, and that a wealthy canon of St. Paul’s, a very scientific person, had accompanied the expedition. “This,” writes Hakluyt, evidently in no happy frame of mind, “is all that I can hitherto learne or finde out of this voyage, by reason of the great negligence of the writers of those times, who should have used more care in preserving of the memories of the worthy actes of our nation.” Master Thorne [pg 120]deserves, however, the credit of having been the first distinct advocate of Polar exploration in the full sense of the term, or, is at least, the first of whom we have any record.
The general interest felt in the subject of the North-west Passage about this period may be inferred from the relation of the next voyage, that of the Trinitie and Minion in 1536, where several gentlemen of the Inns of Court and Chancery, “and divers others in good worship, desirous to see the strange things of the world,” accompanied the expedition. Of “sixe-score persons” in the “two tall ships,” thirty were private gentlemen. The voyage was instigated by Master Hore, of London, “a man of goodly stature and of great courage, and given to the study of cosmographie,” and was directly encouraged by Henry VIII. After a tedious voyage of two months, they reached Cape Breton, and later Penguin Island and Newfoundland, where they encountered some of “the naturall people of the countrey,” who fled from them. The history of this voyage was given to Hakluyt by Mr. Oliver [pg 121]Dawbeney, a merchant, who was one of the adventurers on the Minion. Laying in a harbour of Newfoundland, their provisions began to get very scarce, and “they found small reliefe, more than that they had from the nest of an osprey, that brought hourely to her yong great plentie of divers sorts of fishes. But such was the famine that increased amongst them from day to day, that they were forced to seek to relieve themselves off raw herbes and rootes that they sought on the main; but the famine increasing, and the reliefe of herbes being to little purpose to satisfie their insatiable hunger, in the fieldes and deserts here and there, the fellow killed his mate while he stooped to take up a roote for his reliefe, and cutting out pieces of his bodie whom he had murthered, broyled the same on the coles and greedily devoured them.
“By this meane the company decreased, and the officers knew not what had become of them; and it fortuned that one of the company, driven with hunger to seeke abroade for reliefe, found out in the fieldes the savour of broyled flesh, and fell out with one for that he would suffer him and his fellowes to sterve, enjoying plentie as he thought; and this matter growing to cruell speaches, he that had the broyled meate burst out into these wordes:—‘If thou wouldest needes know, the broyled meat I had was a piece of such a man’s buttocke.’ The report of this brought to the ship, the captaine found what had become of those that were missing, and was perswaded that some of them were neither devoured with wilde beastes nor yet destroyed with savages; and hereupon he stood up and made a notable oration, containing howe much these dealings offended the Almightie, and vouched the Scriptures from first to last what God had, in cases of distresse, done for them that called upon Him, and told them that the power of the Almightie was then no lesse than in al former time it had bene. And added, that if it had not pleased God to have holpen them in that distresse, that it had been better to have perished in body, and to have lived everlastingly, than to have relieved for a poore time their mortal bodyes, and to be condemned everlastingly both body and soule to the unquenchable fire of hell. And thus having ended to that effect, he began to exhort to repentance, and besought all the company to pray, that it might please God to look upon their present miserable state, and for His owne mercie to relieve the same.” The famine increasing, it was agreed that they should cast lots who should be killed, but fortunately, that very night a French vessel arrived in that port, and the chronicler coolly and amusingly adds, “such was the policie of the English that they became masters of the same, and changing ships and vittailing them they set sayle to come into England.” It is but just to the king to add that he afterwards recompensed the Frenchmen.
SEBASTIAN CABOT.
The return of Sebastian Cabot to England, after he had done good service to Spain in various maritime enterprises, was very much the cause of awakening the merchants of London to renewed efforts for discovery. This great navigator was introduced by the Duke of Somerset to Edward VI., soon after his succession to the throne, and the young king was so charmed by his conversation and intelligence that he created him, by patent, Pilot Major, and settled on him the large annual pension—for those days—of £166 13s. 4d., “in consideration of the good and acceptable services done and to be done.” He was also constituted “Governour of the mysterie and companie of the marchant adventurers for the discoverie of regions, dominions, islands and places unknowen.” By his suggestion a voyage was instituted [pg 122]in the year 1553, for the discovery of a north-east passage to Cathaia; and three vessels—the Bona Esperanza, the Edward Bonadventure, and the Bona Confidentia—under Sir Hugh Willoughby, as captain-general of the fleet, were made ready for their eventful voyage. So certain were the promoters of the expedition that the vessels would reach the Indian Seas, that they caused them to be sheathed with lead as a protection against the worms in those waters, which they understood were destructive of wooden bottoms, and this is believed to be the first instance of metal sheathing being used. On May 20th the ships were towed to Gravesend, “the mariners being all apparalled in watchet or skie-coloured cloth,” and the shores being thick with spectators. The expedition started with an amount of éclat which contrasts sadly with the events which followed. Sir Hugh Willoughby, with the whole of the merchants, officers, and companies of two of the ships, perished miserably on the coast of Lapland, from the effects of cold and starvation. Their dead bodies were found the following year by some Russian fishermen.
Master Richard Chancelor, the second in command, whose vessel had become separated from the others, was more fortunate. After waiting vainly at Wardhuys, in Norway, for the rest of the squadron, he held on his course till he reached a “very great bay,” where he learned from the fishermen that their country was Muscovy or Russia. He made a land journey of fifteen hundred miles to Moscow, where he was well received, and from an abortive attempt at making the north-east passage sprung that extensive commerce with Russia which has continued, almost uninterruptedly, ever since.
The events which immediately followed have little bearing on arctic history, excepting that while our merchants were fully alive to the importance of the new commerce opening to their vision they did not neglect exploration. Chancelor and his companions, on a second voyage to Russia, whither they went as commissioners to arrange the treaties and immunities which the Czar might be pleased to grant, were instructed “to use all wayes and meanes possible to learn howe men may passe from Russia, either by land or sea, to Cathaia.” They did not even wait the result of his voyage, but despatched a small vessel, the Serchthrift, in command of Steven Burrowe, for north-eastern discovery. On the 27th April, 1556, the vessel being ready at Gravesend, it was visited by many distinguished ladies and gentlemen, including old Cabot, then in his ninety-seventh year, who “gave to the poore most liberall almes; and then, at the sign of the Christopher, hee and his friends banketted,” and “entered into the dance himselfe amongst the rest of the young and lusty company.” The Serchthrift reached the Cola and Petchora rivers, Nova Zembla (the New Land), and the island of Weigats. In proceeding to the eastward they encountered much ice, in which they became entangled, and “which,” says the narrative, “was a fearful sight to see.” But on June 25th they met their first whale, which seems to have inspired more terror even than the ice. The account given of it is amusing. “On St. James his day, bolting to the windewardes, we had the latitude at noon in seventy degrees, twentie minutes. The same day, at a south-west sunne, there was a monstrous whale aboord of us, so neere to our side that we might have thrust a sworde or any other weapon in him, which we durst not doe for feare he should have overthrowen our shippe; and then I called my company together, and all of us shouted, and with the crie that we made he departed from us; there was as much above water of his backe as the bredth of our [pg 123]pinnesse, and at his falling downe he made such a terrible noise in the water, that a man would greatly have marvelled, except he had known the cause of it; but, God be thanked, we were quietly delivered of him.” Burrowe returned to England in the autumn, having reached in an eastward direction a further point than any of his predecessors. Meantime, Chancelor, returning to England in company with the newly-appointed Russian ambassador, was wrecked in Pitsligo Bay, Scotland, the former losing his life, and the latter being saved with difficulty.