The vessel stood to the north-west, and on June 21st, 1611, while entangled in the drift ice, Pricket says that Wilson the boatswain and Greene came to him and told him that they and the crew meant to turn the master and all the sick into the boat, and leave them to shift for themselves; that they had not eaten anything for three days, that there were not fourteen days’ provisions left for the whole crew, and that they were determined “either to mend or end; and what they had begun they would go through with it or die.” Pricket says that he attempted to dissuade them, but that they threatened him, and Greene bade him hold his tongue, for he himself would rather be hanged at home than starved abroad. A little later, five or six of the mutineers came to Pricket—he lying, as he says, lame in his cabin—and administered the following oath to him:—“You shall swear truth to God, your prince, and country; you shall do nothing but to the glory of God, and the good of the action in hand, and harm to no man.” The signification of all this soon appeared, for on Hudson coming out of the cabin they seized him, and bound his arms behind him. He demanded what they meant, when he was told that he would find out when he was in the boat. The boat was hauled alongside, and Hudson, his son, and seven “sicke and lame men” were hustled into it; a fowling-piece, some powder and shot, a few pikes, an iron pot, a little meal, and some other articles, were thrown in at the same time. Only one man, John King, the carpenter, had the courage to face these fiends in human shape, and remonstrate with them. He wasted his words and efforts, and, determining not to abandon his captain, jumped into the boat, and the mutineers cut it adrift among the ice. We know the horrors that have overtaken strong and hearty men when obliged to trust to the boats in mid-ocean; in this case, of ten persons seven at least were helpless and crippled; and sad as is the fact, we can hardly wonder to find that nothing was ever gleaned concerning their fate. One shudders to think of their hopeless and inevitable doom, and that among them was lost one of the bravest and most intrepid of England’s seamen.
But to this Arctic tragedy there was a sequel. As soon as the boat was out of sight Pricket says that Greene came to him and told him that he, Pricket, had been elected captain, and that he should take the master’s cabin, which he pretends that he did with great reluctance. The mutineers soon began to quarrel about their course, and were for a whole fortnight shut in the ice, at the end of which time their provisions were all gone. They had to subsist on cockle-grass, which they found on some neighbouring islands. They now began to fear that England would be no safe place for them, and blustering “Henry Greene swore the shippe should not come into any place but keep the sea still, till he had the king’s majesties hand and seale to shew for his safety.” Greene shortly after dispossessed Pricket, and became captain, a position he did not enjoy long. Going ashore on an island near Cape Digges to get some more grass and shoot some gulls, a quarrel ensued with a number of the natives, wherein Greene was killed, and three others died shortly afterwards from wounds received in the scuffle. Pricket, after fighting bravely, according to his own statement, was also severely wounded. The survivors were now in a fearful plight, and, except some sea-fowl which they managed to [pg 149]procure, were almost entirely without provisions. They, however, stood out to sea, shaping their course for Ireland. At length all their supplies were gone, and they were reduced to eating candles and fried skins and bones. Just before reaching Galloway Bay one of the chief mutineers died of sheer starvation.
IN SMITH’S SOUND.
Such are the main points of Pricket’s story, and possibly out of compassion for the sufferings they had undoubtedly endured, no inquiry or punishment followed their arrival. But a very suspicious circumstance has to be related: Hudson’s journal, instead of terminating at the date, June 21st, on which he was thrust into the boat, finished on August 3rd of the previous year. Pricket had charge of the master’s chest, and there can be little doubt but that all portions of the journal which might have implicated them had been destroyed. A subsequent navigator shrewdly remarks of these transactions: “Well, Pricket, I am in great doubt of thy fidelity to Master Hudson.” Nevertheless, his character seems not to have suffered in the eyes of the merchant adventurers; for we find him employed next year in a voyage under Captain (afterwards Sir) Thomas Button, one object of which seems to have been to follow Hudson’s track. They discovered and wintered in Hudson’s River, but found no traces of the great navigator or his unfortunate companions. James Hall, who in 1612 left England on a voyage of northern discovery, and was mortally wounded by the dart of a Greenland Esquimaux, was accompanied by William Baffin, one of the most scientific navigators of his time. This expedition is noteworthy for having been the first on record where longitudes were taken by observation of the heavenly bodies. Baffin accompanied Bylot in 1615 on a voyage to the north-west. After sighting and leaving Greenland, many enormous icebergs were met, some upwards of two hundred feet out of the water. Baffin records one two hundred and forty feet high above the sea, and says that on the usual computation,[25] it must have been “one thousand sixe hundred and eightie foote from [pg 150]the top to the bottome.” A voyage made by the same navigators in 1616 is principally interesting on account of the discovery of Sir Thomas Smythe’s (now-a-days abbreviated to “plain” Smith) Sound. About this period also the pursuit of the whale and walrus was creating great attention from the large profits accruing to the merchants and companies engaged in it. Baffin accompanied an expedition sent out by the Muscovy Company, consisting of six ships and a pinnace, and off Spitzbergen they encountered no less than eight Spanish, four French, two Dutch, and some Biscayan vessels. Nevertheless, “the English having taken possession of the whole country in the name of his Majesty, prohibited all the others from fishing, and sent them away, excepting such as they were pleased to grant leave to remain.” Baffin expected that the Spanish would, at all events, have objected to this rather high-handed course, and “fought with us, but they submitted themselves unto the generall.” About this period there was a very large number of more or less important voyages made, which may be termed of a mixed character. Although sent out for purely commercial purposes, they were the means of adding something to our knowledge of geography. Baffin made more than one voyage after this, accompanying one whaling expedition which consisted of ten ships and two pinnaces. The results of some of these voyages will be more particularly mentioned when we come to consider the inhabitants of the Sea.
In 1619 Christian IV. of Denmark sent out an expedition to Greenland, and for northern discovery generally, under the command of Jens Munk, an experienced seaman. The two vessels employed were mainly manned by English sailors who had served on previous Arctic voyages. Munk left Elsinore on May 18th, and a month afterwards made Cape Farewell. He endeavoured to stand up Davis’s Strait, but the ice preventing he retraced his course, eventually passing through Hudson’s Strait, to which, with the northern part of Hudson’s Bay, he attached new names, in apparent ignorance of previous discoveries. He made the coast of America in latitude 63° 20′, where he was compelled to seek shelter in an opening of the land, which he named Munk’s Winter Harbour. To the surrounding country he gave the name of New Denmark. The year being advanced—it was now September 7th—huts were immediately constructed, and his company were at first very successful in obtaining game—partridges, hares, foxes, and white bears. Several mock suns were observed, and on December 18th an eclipse of the moon occurred, during which this luminary was surrounded by a transparent circle, within which was a cross quartering the moon. This phenomenon was regarded with alarm, and as a harbinger of the misfortunes which soon followed. The weather was intensely cold; their wine, beer, and brandy, were frozen, and the casks burst. The scurvy made its appearance in virulent form, and a Danish authority states it was mostly occasioned by the too free use of spirituous liquors. Their bread and provisions became exhausted, and none of them had strength to hunt or seek other supplies. One by one they succumbed, till out of sixty-four persons hardly one remained. When Munk, who, reduced to a skeleton, had remained for some time alone in a little hut in an utterly hopeless and broken-hearted condition, ventured to crawl out, he found only two others alive. But the spring had come, and, making one last effort, they went forth, and removing the snow found some roots and plants, which they eagerly devoured. They succeeded in obtaining a few fish, [pg 151]and, later, killed some birds. Their strength returning, they equipped the smaller vessel as well as they were able, and set sail on an apparently hopeless voyage, but in spite of storms and other perils succeeded at length in reaching Norway, where they were received as men risen from the grave. Munk must have possessed an undaunted spirit, for we find him almost immediately proposing to make an attempt at the north-west passage, in spite of all the sufferings he had just undergone. A subscription was raised, and a vessel prepared. On taking leave of the court, the king, in admonishing him to be more cautious, appeared to ascribe the loss of his crew to some mismanagement. Munk replied hotly, and the king, forgetting his own proper dignity, struck the brave navigator with a cane. The old sailor left the presence of this unkingly king, smarting under a sense of outrage which he could not forget; and we are told that he took to his bed and died of a broken heart very shortly afterwards. The story, however, is discredited by some authorities. Some thirty years later Denmark again furnished an expedition, under the command of Captain Danells, to explore East Greenland. He could rarely approach the ice-girt coast nearer than eighteen or twenty miles, and subsequent attempts have been little more successful.
MOCK SUNS.
The establishment of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in 1669, appears to have diverted the spirit of adventure and discovery from the far north, and we hear of few voyages to the Arctic at this period, and for some time afterwards, although the discovery of a northern passage to the Pacific is really included in the objects for which the charter to that Corporation was granted.
One attempt at a north-eastern passage in 1676 deserves to be mentioned, principally on account of the circumstances which brought it about. There was a considerable amount of rivalry in the East Indian, Chinese, and Japanese trade at that time, between the Dutch and ourselves, and some reports had reached England that a company of merchants in Holland was agitating the subject of a north-eastern passage to the Orient once more. Further, Mr. Joseph Moxon, a Fellow of the Royal Society, had just published his “Brief Discourse,” wherein he records the following story, from which he concluded “that there is a free and open sea under the very pole.” “Being about twenty-two years ago in Amsterdam,” says he, “I went into a drinking-house to drink a cup of beer for my thirst, and sitting by the public fire among several people, there happened a seaman to come in, who seeing a friend of his there whom he knew went in the Greenland voyage, wondered to see him, because it was not yet time for the Greenland fleet to come home, and asked him what accident brought him home so soon; his friend (who was the steer-man aforesaid in a Greenland ship that summer) told him that their ship went not out to fish that summer but only to take in the lading of the whole fleet, and bring it to an early market. But, said he, before the fleet had caught fish enough to lade us, we, by order of the Greenland Company, sailed unto the north pole, and came back again. Whereupon (his relation being novel to me) I entered into discourse with him, and seemed to question the truth of what he said; but he did ensure me it was true, and that the ship was then in Amsterdam, and many of the seamen belonging to her to justify the truth of it; and told me, moreover, that they had sailed two degrees beyond the Pole.” The Hollander also stated that they had an open sea, free from ice, [pg 152]and that the weather was warm. Whatever amount of truth there might be in this beerhouse story, its publication had an influence at the time, and an expedition, partly provided by the Government and partly by the Duke of York and several other noblemen and gentlemen, was despatched at the end of May, 1676. The Speedwell and Prosperous, under the command respectively of Captains Wood and Flawes, were the vessels employed. The first struck on a ledge of rocks off Nova Zembla, and Wood had scarcely time to get the bread and carpenter’s tools ashore before she went to pieces. Two of the crew were lost, and the rest safely landed. They had almost concluded to attempt a boat voyage, similar to that made by the brave Hollanders of Barents’ third expedition, when the Prosperous, attracted by a great fire which they had made on the shore, hove in sight, and took them on board. The two crews reached England safely, and the voyage, in the words of a distinguished writer, “seems to have closed the long list of unfortunate northern expeditions in that century; and the discovery, if not absolutely despaired of, by being so often missed, ceased for many years to be sought for.”