By May their impatience to leave this desolate spot prompted them to make preparations for departure, and without waiting to see if their ship would be navigable when once released from the ice, they repaired their two boats and awaited the first opportunity “to get out of that wilde, desart, irkesome, fearfull, and cold countrey.”
On the 13th of June, the twelve survivors left the miserable shelter that had been their home for ten months, and took to the open boats. Their sufferings and privations cannot be described; three of their number succumbed, and Barentz himself became too ill for service.
Davis’s Ships, the “Sunshine” and the “Moonshine”
As they passed Icy Cape, a headland of Alaska, latitude 70° 20´ N., longitude 161° 46´ W., Barentz asked to be lifted up to see it once more, and the dying man’s eyes rested with pleasure upon its cheerless coast.
On the twentieth day of June, Barentz was told that a man in the other boat named Claes Andriz was near death. He remarked he would not long survive his comrade. He was examining at the moment a chart of the countries and objects they had seen on their voyage. He turned to Gerard de Veer, who had made this chart, and asked him for something to drink. Hardly had he swallowed the liquid when he suddenly expired. Saddened and disheartened, the remnant of this unfortunate expedition struggled on until September, when they reached the coast of Lapland.
After a voyage of eleven hundred and forty-three miles, these heroes of the north left their boats in the “Merchant’s house” at Coola as “a sign and token of their deliverance.” A Dutch ship carried them to Holland, where they appeared before the curious crowds of Amsterdam in the costume they had worn in Nova Zembla. They were honoured by their countrymen and made to repeat their wonderful adventures before the ministers of the Hague.
To the early maps of the period at the close of the sixteenth century, Newfoundland and adjacent coast line had been added by the Cabots, who had reached as far as 67° north latitude, Frobisher Strait, an outline of the lands that he had visited, Davis Strait, and a portion of Greenland’s east coast. But, more important than the discovery of new territory was the stimulus to Arctic enterprise, which through Richard Chancellor had established valuable trading activities between England and far-distant Russia. The journeys of the Cotereals had opened a way to Spanish and Portuguese fisheries off the banks of Newfoundland, and Frobisher’s supposed discovery of gold in distant lands had given zest to discovery in the New World by the English, exemplified by Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s daring but unsuccessful attempt to colonize Newfoundland.