From the 19th till the 24th of July, Pet endeavoured to make his way eastwards in accordance with his instructions, by keeping “the maine land of Samoeda” always in sight on his starboard side, but was constantly impeded by the ice. At length he was “constrained to put into the ice, to seeke some way to get to the northwards of it, hoping to haue some cleare passage that way, but there was nothing but whole ice.”[37]
Meanwhile, Jackman and his crew of five men and a boy, in their frail bark of twenty tons, had gallantly followed after the George, and on the morning of the 25th July the two vessels again joined company, the William being, however, in so disabled a state when she reached her companion, as to require assistance from the latter. The two vessels now “set saile to the northwardes, to seeke if they could finde any way cleare to passe to the eastward; but the [[lxxix]]further they went that way, the more and thicker was the ice, so that they coulde goe no further.”[38]
At length, seeing the impossibility of advancing either to the east or to the north, on the 28th of July “Master Pet and Master Jackman did conferre together what was best to be done, considering that the windes were good for us, and we not able to passe for ice: they did agree to seeke to the land againe, and so to Vaygatz, and then to conferre further. At 3 in the afternoone, we did warpe from one piece of ice to another, to get from them if it were possible: here were pieces of ice so great that we could not see beyond them out of the toppe.”[39]
It was only with the greatest difficulty and peril that they occasionally made their way through the ice, in which for the most part they remained so enclosed “that they could not stirre, labouring onely to defend the yce as it came upon them”; but at length, on the 15th of August, “they entred into a cleare sea without yce, whereof they were most glad, and not without cause, and gave God the praise”.[40] On the day after, they say, “we were troubled againe with ice, but we made great shift with it: for we gotte betweene the shoare and it. This day, at twelue of the clocke, we were thwart of the south-east part of Vaigats, all along which part there was great store of yce, so that we stood in doubt of passage; yet by much adoe we got betwixt the shoare and it.”[41]
They now bore away to the west, passing by the island of Kolguev (Colgoyeue), on the sands to the south of which both vessels went aground, on August 20th, in latitude 68° 40′ N., according to their calculation. Getting off, they proceeded together on their return voyage; but, only two days afterwards, Pet’s vessel parted from the William, and saw her no more.[42] [[lxxx]]
Arthur Pet, in the George, reached home in safety, arriving at Ratcliff on the 26th December following; but “the William, with Charles Jackman, arrived at a port in Norway between Tronden and Rostock in October 1580, and there did winter. And from thence departed againe in Februarie following, and went in company of a ship of the King of Denmarke toward Island; and since that time he was never heard of.”[43]
This voyage of Pet and Jackman has been noticed more in detail than might otherwise have been necessary, for the purpose of defending those able seamen from the animadversions of a recent historian, who says: “From the meagre narrative of this voyage it is sufficiently evident that Pet and Jackman were but indifferent navigators, and that they never trusted themselves from the shore and out of shallow water, whenever the ice would suffer them to approach it; a situation of all others, where they might have made themselves certain of being hampered with ice.”[44] It will, however, in the first place, have been seen that their express instructions were that they should follow the line of the Siberian coast, keeping it always in sight on their starboard side, which instructions they appear to have obeyed to the utmost of their ability. And, secondly, it was not so much the fixed ice along the coast which impeded their progress, as the immense masses of floating ice from the Polar Basin which had drifted into the Sea of Kara; for, on more than one occasion, it was precisely by getting into the shallow water, “between the shore and the ice”, that they were enabled to effect a passage, which in deeper water, where the ice-masses could float, was denied to them. The fact is that it was from no want of either knowledge or skill that they were unsuccessful, but from the like unsurmountable natural causes which, fifteen years later, compelled the Dutch [[lxxxi]]fleet under Cornelius Nai to turn back from somewhere about the same spot;[45] and, as Captain Beechey justly observes, “to this day the hardy Russians have not been able to survey the eastern side of Nova Zembla; and the ships which passed through the Waigatz Strait have never been able to proceed far, owing to the quantity of ice driven into the Sea of Kara”.[46]
Further, when it is considered who these experienced seamen were, it will at once be manifest that under no circumstances ought they to be stigmatised as “indifferent navigators”. Arthur Pet was with Richard Chancellor and Stephen Burrough in the Edward Bonaventure, on their first voyage to the Bay of St. Nicholas in 1553, his name standing in the list of “mariners” sixth before that of William Burrough[47] (Stephen’s brother). Seven years afterwards, in 1560, he commanded the Jesus, of London, in the service of the Russia Company.[48] And now, twenty years later, in the year 1580, a convincing proof is afforded of the estimation in which he was held, by the interest taken in him and his expedition by several of the most distinguished navigators and cosmographers of his time. For, in addition to his Commission from his employers, in whose service he had been seven-and-twenty years,—whether constantly or not is immaterial,—he received “Instructions and Notes”[49] from “Master William Burrough”, Comptroller of the Navy, who had been his messmate seven-and-twenty years before, together with “Certaine briefe aduices giuen by Master Dee”,[50] as also “Notes in writing, besides more priuie by mouth, that were giuen by M. Richard Hakluyt, of Eiton, in the countie of Hereford, esquire”;[51] and, further, his voyage [[lxxxii]]was deemed of sufficient importance to form the subject of a letter to Hakluyt himself from the learned Gerard Mercator.[52]
Of Charles Jackman we do not know so much. Yet he, too, had clearly had experience in Arctic exploration, having been “the mate” on board the Ayde, one of the vessels of Frobisher’s second expedition, when he was of sufficient importance to give his name to “Jackman’s Sound”, on the south side of Frobisher’s Strait.[53] And it is not without significance that in all the documents above cited, except Mercator’s letter to Hakluyt, his name is coupled, without any distinction, with that of so old and experienced a navigator of the Russian Seas as Arthur Pet.
Notwithstanding the failure of Pet and Jackman’s undertaking, the Russia Company appear to have in no wise relaxed in their endeavours to effect a passage by sea along the northern coast of the Russian dominions. And that they were, to a considerable extent, successful in their exertions, is proved by the following two documents, which have been preserved to us by Purchas.[54]