In 1570 Hakluyt became a student of Christ Church, Oxford. The study of geography had completely fascinated him. He did not neglect his regular work and took his degree in due course, but as soon as his time was his own he devoured every narrative of adventure that he could get hold of, and mastered six languages in order to be able to read them. He soon began to see two great failings of his country, and set himself to work with patriotic zeal to remedy them. The first was the ignorance of our seamen as regards the scientific part of their profession. The second was the absence of records, and the way in which important voyages and travels were allowed to fall into oblivion. He strove during a long life, with great ability and untiring perseverance, to remedy these defects.
Hakluyt’s first public service was the delivery of lectures on the construction and use of maps, spheres, and nautical instruments, “to the singular pleasure and general contentment of his auditory,” as he tells us. He constantly urged on the attention of those in authority the importance of establishing a permanent lectureship on navigation in the port of London. He looked upon the loss of journals, narratives, and similar documents as a great national calamity, and he devoted his life to the application of a remedy. His first book, published in 1582, was entitled Divers Voyages touching the Discoveries of America. It was the first impetus to colonisation. Virtually, Raleigh and Hakluyt were the founders of those colonies which eventually formed the United States.
Hakluyt entered holy orders, and went to Paris for five years 1583–1588, as chaplain to the English Embassy, during which time he worked assiduously at the object of his life. Returning to England he was made a Canon of Bristol Cathedral and rector of Wetheringsett in Suffolk. His Principall Navigations, a folio volume, was published in 1589, as soon as he returned from Paris. In 1598 the first volume of his more complete work appeared, the two others following in the two succeeding years, and later several other books were brought out under his auspices.
Memorial Tablet to Richard Hakluyt in Bristol Cathedral
The great work of Hakluyt, the Principall Navigations in three folio volumes, is a monument of useful labour. Nothing could stop or daunt him when there was a chance of obtaining new information. He rode 200 miles to have an interview with the last survivor of Hore’s expedition to America in 1536. He saved many journals and narratives from destruction, and the deeds they record from oblivion. His work gave a stimulus to colonial and maritime enterprise, and it even inspired our literature. Shakespeare and Milton owe much to Hakluyt. He supplied information and lists of commodities of various countries and commercial instructions to the East India Company and to others engaged in similar enterprises. As the years passed on, to quote his own quaint language, he “continued to wade still further and further in the sweet studie of the historie of cosmographie,” and he achieved his great task, which was, in his own words “to incorporate into one body the torn and scattered limbs of our ancient and late navigations by sea.” He declared geography and chronology to be the sun and moon, the right eye and the left, of all history.
When Hakluyt died, on the 23rd November, 1616, he was Archdeacon of Westminster and had reached his sixty-fourth year. He left a large collection of materials which came into the hands of the Rev. Samuel Purchas, who, in due course, published Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes, an invaluable work, though marred by injudicious curtailments and omissions. To the student of Arctic history the works of Hakluyt are indispensable. In them are to be found the journals and narratives, or all that could be saved of them, between the date of the earliest English voyages, and that of Hakluyt’s death.
CHAPTER XIII
GREENLAND VOYAGE OF HALL AND BAFFIN
The Norse colony in Greenland had been abandoned to its fate for more than two centuries. The annual knorr or ship had ceased to be sent, and during that long period the Norwegians had shown no sign of conscience, and remained careless and indifferent. At last a king of Denmark and Norway arose who was not so callous. Christian IV was the noblest and most patriotic Sovereign of the House of Oldenburg. He resolved to send an expedition to succour the lost colony or to ascertain its fate, the re-discovery of Greenland by Davis having become known to him.
Three ships were fitted out. The Trost[59] (Consolation) built by Davis Balfour, shipbuilder to the Danes from 1597 to 1634, was commanded by John Cunningham, a captain in the Danish navy, and the mate was James Hall of Hull, who is said to have been to Greenland before. The second ship, Den Röd Löve, parted company and returned. The third was the Katten, a pinnace, in charge of another Englishman named John Knight.