Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:
Hudson.—Baffin.—Deshneff.—Behring.—Schalaroff.—Tchitschagof.—Anjou
and Von Wrangell.—Phipps.
[Sidenote: _HUDSON_]
No century has produced a more daring or renowned mariner than Henry
Hudson, or one whose melancholy fate has provoked more pity. Down through
the decades the story of his adventures has been told and retold at the
fireside of the old to the eager ears and quickening imagination of the
young.
Talented, indefatigable, fearless, his achievements, in the infancy of
Arctic exploration, handicapped by the lack of all that invention and
science has secured to modern explorers, place him in the first rank,
with the greatest navigators the world has known. As early as 1607 he had
distinguished himself by pushing as far north as latitude 81½°, in his
effort to follow the instructions of the Muscovy Company to penetrate to
the Pole. Attempting the Northeast Passage in 1608, he saw North Cape
on the 3d of June; pushing to the eastward on parallels 74° and 75°, he
skirted Nova Zembla, but found it impossible to penetrate higher than 72°
25´.
The next year the Dutch sent him to try this passage again, though
the previous voyage had convinced him that the Northeast Passage was
impractical.
He passed Warhuys, returning past North Cape, pushing his way to the
American coast, where he searched for a passage, and, sailing into New
York harbour, discovered the magnificent river which bears his name.
This splendid achievement only stirred his ambitions further, and under
the patronage of Sir John Wolstenholme, Sir Dudley Digges, and other
distinguished men, a vessel of fifty-five tons was fitted out and
provisioned for six months.
Under the command of Hudson, the _Discovery_ set sail April 17, 1610.
Touching at Orkney and Faro islands, they sighted the southeastern part
of Iceland, May 11. Later they reached the Vestmanna Isles, and saw Mount
Hecla in eruption. On June 4, Hudson writes, “This day, we saw Greenland
perfectly over the ice; and this night the sun went down due north, and
rose north-north-east, so plying the fifth day we were in 65°.”
Taking their course northwest, they passed Cape Desolation. A school of
whales was sighted at this juncture, and later icebergs were encountered.
In June they saw Resolution Island; going to the south of this island,
they were carried by the current northwest, until they struck shore ice,
from which it was most difficult to extricate themselves.
At this time a growing discontent among the men first appeared on board;
some were for returning before the perils of the journey should become
greater, others were for continuing. Hudson showed them a chart showing
that they had sailed two hundred leagues farther than any Englishmen
had sailed before. The situation of the ship, at times embedded in ice,
at others pushing her way through leads of open water, was critical
and discouraging, but Henry Hudson continued his intricate navigation,
finally being rewarded by finding himself in a clear, open sea. Sighting
three headlands, he called them Prince Henry Cape, King James, and Queen
Anne, and, continuing, he saw a hill which he called Mount Charles,
and later sighted Cape Salisbury. While exploring the south shore,
he discovered an island, one point of which he named Deepe Cape, the
other, Wolstenholme. He entered a bay, which, from the date, he called
Michaelmas Bay.
The season was advancing; already the days were very short and the nights
long and cold. Realizing it was time to find shelter for the winter, he
cast about to discover a suitable location. By the first of November he
had the vessel hauled aground, and ten days later it was frozen in. The
stock of provisions was very low, but the men supplemented it by killing
or trapping anything that was serviceable for food, and after game left
them in the spring, they lived on such birds as they could secure; when
these, too, migrated, they ate moss, frogs, and buds.
With the breaking up of the ice in the spring, preparations were made for
returning home.
In Hudson’s own bay, in the cold embrace of the shores he had explored,
Henry Hudson divided the last remnants of food equally among his men.
They were a famished, despairing crew, maddened with suffering. The cry
for bread was in their vitals, and there was no bread. Hunger and misery
made their brains reel, robbed them of their godliness, and reduced them
to wild animals at bay. It took but the encouragement of one of their
number, Green by name, to incite them to mutiny.
[Illustration: THE DEATH OF HENRY HUDSON
_From the painting by Collier_]
On June 21, “The ship’s company, both sick and well, were in berths,
dispersed generally two and two about the ship. King, one of the crew
who was supposed to be friendly to Hudson, was up, and in the morning
they secured him in the hold by fastening down the hatches. Green then
went and held the carpenter in conversation to amuse him, while two of
the crew, keeping just before Hudson, and one, named Wilson, behind him,
bound his hands. He asked what they were about, and they told him he
should know when he was in the shallop. Another mutineer, Juet, went down
to King in the hold, who kept him at bay, being armed with his sword.
He came upon deck to Hudson, whom he found with his hands tied. Hudson
was heard to call to the carpenter, and tell him he was bound. Two of
the devoted party, who were sick, told the mutineers their knavery would
be punished. They paid no attention; the shallop was hauled up to the
side of the vessel, and the sick and lame were made to get into it. The
carpenter, whom they had agreed to retain in the vessel, asked them if
they would not be hanged when they reached England, and boldly refused
to remain with them, preferring to share the fate of Hudson and the sick
men.”
The crew then set sail, and the boat in which were Hudson and his
companions was never seen again. After many hardships and vicissitudes
and much loss of life through the onslaught of the natives, where they
landed to secure food, a remnant of the unfortunate crew found their
way past the Cape of God’s Mercies and thence to Cape Desolation in
Greenland. Pursuing their homeward course, they were reduced to the last
extremities by hunger, one-half a fowl fried in tallow per man being
their only sustenance each twenty-four hours.
Just before their last bird was devoured, they sighted the north of
Ireland, where they landed, and later made their way to Plymouth.
[Sidenote: _BAFFIN_]
Following the example of Hudson, and with the purpose of further
discovery, Baffin set sail in 1616 and explored the vast bay eight
hundred miles long and three hundred miles wide that bears his name. He
saw Lancaster Sound and brought home observations and reports of latitude
and longitude, the accuracy of which was doubted for many years, but has
since been verified and accredited to him.
Equally tragic with the fate of Henry Hudson was the last voyage of
that great Russian commander, Behring, whose life was one long record
of heroic achievement. He had seen many parts of the world while
serving under Peter the Great, by whom he was given the commission of
lieutenant in 1707, and captain-lieutenant in 1710. In a previous
voyage he had explored the straits which bear his name. These straits
had been navigated nearly a century before by Deshneff, one of the early
Russian explorers who made several voyages between 1646 and 1648. His
great object was to round to the mouth of the Anadry River, and there
form a traders’ settlement. Deshneff and his companions were the first
navigators to sail from the Arctic Sea to the Pacific, and proved, at a
much earlier period than is generally supposed, that the continents of
America and Asia are not united.
Behring set sail June 4, 1741, with two vessels from Kamtschatka in the
harbour of St. Peter and St. Paul. Steering eastward toward the American
continent, he sighted land the 18th of July, in latitude 58° 28´ and 50°
longitude, from Anatsda. Captain Tschirikov, who commanded this second
boat, had seen the land a few days previously and, having determined to
send some men ashore for investigation, the shallop and long-boat were
manned with seventeen of the crew for this purpose. They never returned
to the ship. Such a grave disaster determined Behring to send this vessel
back to Kamtschatka.
He proceeded on his voyage alone, hoping to reach as high latitude as
60°, but progress was slow, owing to the varied coast-line and the
labyrinth of islands which border this vicinity. They fell in with a few
natives, who had been on a fishing expedition, with whom they held some
friendly intercourse. Progress continued to be retarded by calms and
currents, and finally dirty weather set in early in September and raged
in a violent storm for seventeen days.
[Sidenote: _BEHRING_]
The scurvy now attacked the crew, and numerous deaths occurred. Behring
determined to return to Kamtschatka. Through an unfortunate blunder,
they erred in their course, and land remained invisible. The approach
of winter became alarming, the cold increased, and rain turned to
ice and snow. The unfortunate crew were in a pitiable condition from
the miserable disease that laid hold of them. The steersman had to be
supported at the wheel by two other sick men that he might continue
at his post of duty. Finally he was disabled, and men hardly more fit
took his place one by one. Almost daily some one died, and the ship, no
longer with enough hands to man her, was at the mercy of the elements.
The nights became long and dark, the water supply was running low, and
certain destruction and death awaited the remnant of human beings left on
board, unless a harbour of refuge could be found.
At last one morning land was sighted. The approach was difficult, the
ship so crippled as to be almost unmanageable, and the rocks threatened
instant destruction. Darkness came on before they could make a landing.
In their attempt to anchor, two cables parted, and the anchors were lost;
they had no third anchor in readiness.
At this juncture it seemed as if the hand of Providence intervened, for a
huge wave lifted them across a sand bar, between a narrow opening of high
rocks, and they found themselves in calm water, where the next day they
made a successful landing. The land proved a barren and treeless island,
fortunately well supplied with game, but there was no hut or shelter of
any kind, showing it to be uninhabited. Such of the crew as were able
made shelters under projecting sand-banks, using sail-cloth to keep out
the wind and cold, and there they brought their sick and dying comrades.
But the shock to some of the sickest proved fatal, and, before their dead
bodies could be interred, foxes attacked and devoured portions of the
hands and feet.
A special shelter was made for the brave old captain, now reduced to the
last extremities of disease, his body emaciated, his mind enfeebled. He
was moved November 9, and there he lay dying, passing the weary hours
in the vagaries of delirium, by covering his shrunken form with sand,
making his own grave, as it were, until, on December 8, 1741, he passed
away. There he rests, Behring Island his sepulchre, and his name is upon
every map of the world, showing the straits dividing North America and
Asia, through which he sailed in the glory of his prime.
The command was now under Waxall, who rallied his men to superhuman
effort, that they might pass the weary winter and attempt making their
escape in the spring. A frightful blow to their hopes was the wrecking of
their vessel and a loss of valuable food supplies, which took place the
29th of December.
By March, 1742, the forty-five survivors (thirty of their number having
perished) were confronted by the problem of how to make their escape when
the ice should permit. Their boat was a total wreck, and their only hope
lay in constructing from the débris a craft that would be sufficiently
trustworthy to carry them to civilization. At Waxall’s suggestion, they
took the old vessel to pieces, and one Sawa Slaradoubzov, a native of
Siberia, who had worked in the shipyard at Okhotsk, offered to construct
the new craft.
Early in May the ship was started. It was forty feet long and thirteen
broad, one masted, a small cabin in the poop and a galley in the fore
part of the vessel. A second small boat was also made.
On the 10th of August it was launched and christened the _St. Peter_.
During a few days’ calm that followed, the rudder, sails, and ballast
were adjusted. Provisions and such furs as they had collected were put
aboard, and they set sail on the 16th. Although Slaradoubzov had never
been a carpenter, his craft proved seaworthy and breasted a gale in fine
shape.
They sighted Kamtschatka, August 25, entered the Bay of Awatska the next
day, and made port at Petropalovski, August 27. It is pleasant to note
that the Russian government conferred the lowest rank of nobility upon
Sawa Slaradoubzov, that of Sinboiarskoy.
The Russians have been untiring in their endeavour to discover a passage
eastward to the north of Cape Tainmer and Cape Chelagskoi. In 1760,
Schalaroff attempted to force the passage that had proved so disastrous
to Behring; in spite of mutiny and hardship, he renewed his attempt
three times, but was finally wrecked about seventy miles east of Cape
Chelagskoi, where he and his crew perished miserably from starvation.
Admiral Tchitschagof endeavoured to force a passage round Spitzbergen in
the year 1764, but in spite of courage and perseverance, his expedition
was unsuccessful. Later Captain Billings in 1787 made two attempts, both
of which were unsuccessful.
[Sidenote: _ANJOU AND VON WRANGELL_]
Many years later, 1820 to 1823, Lieutenant Anjou and Admiral Von Wrangell
made a series of remarkable sledge journeys starting from the mouth
of the Kolyma River. On the fourth journey, March, 1823, Von Wrangell
reached latitude 70° 51´, longitude 175° 27´ W., one hundred and five
versts in a direct line from the mainland over a frozen sea. Several
times the party came near losing their lives by breaking through the ice.
After reaching this high latitude and recognizing signs of open water to
the north, Von Wrangell writes:—
“Notwithstanding this sure token of the impossibility of proceeding much
further, we continued to go due north for about nine versts, when we
arrived at the edge of an immense break in the ice, extending east and
west further than the eye could reach, and which at the narrowest part
was more than a hundred fathoms across.... We climbed one of the loftiest
ice hills, where we obtained an extensive view towards the north, and
whence we beheld the wide, immeasurable ocean spread before our gaze.
It was a fearful and magnificent, but to us a melancholy, spectacle.
Fragments of ice of enormous size floated on the surface of the agitated
ocean, and were thrown by the waves with awful violence against the
edge of the ice-field on the further side of the channel before us. The
collisions were so tremendous, that large masses were every instant
broken away, and it was evident that the portion of ice which still
divided the channel from the open ocean would soon be completely
destroyed. Had we attempted to have ferried ourselves across upon one of
the floating pieces of ice, we should not have found firm footing upon
our arrival. Even on our side, fresh lanes of water were continually
forming, and extending in every direction in the field of ice behind us.
With a painful feeling of the impossibility of overcoming the obstacles
which Nature opposed to us, our last hope vanished of discovering the
land which we yet believed to exist.”
Of the difficulties that confronted them upon their return, Admiral Von
Wrangell writes:—
“We had hardly proceeded one verst when we found ourselves in a fresh
labyrinth of lanes of water, which hemmed us in on every side. As all
the floating pieces around us were smaller than the one on which we
stood, which was seventy-five fathoms across, and as we saw many certain
indications of an approaching storm, I thought it better to remain on the
larger mass, which offered us somewhat more security, and thus we waited
quietly whatever Providence should decree. Dark clouds now rose from the
west, and the whole atmosphere became filled with a damp vapor. A strong
breeze suddenly sprang up from the west, and increased in less than half
an hour to a storm. Every moment huge masses of ice around us were dashed
against each other, and broken into a thousand fragments. Our little
party remained fast on our ice island, which was tossed to and fro by the
waves. We gazed in most painful inactivity on the wild conflict of the
elements, expecting every moment to be swallowed up. We had been three
long hours in this position, and still the mass of ice beneath us held
together, when suddenly it was caught by the storm, and hurled against a
large field of ice. The crash was terrific, and the mass beneath us was
shattered into fragments. At that dreadful moment, when escape seemed
impossible, the impulse of self-preservation implanted in every living
being saved us. Instinctively we all sprang at once on the sledges,
and urged the dogs to their full speed. They flew across the yielding
fragments to the field on which we had been stranded, and safely reached
a part of it of firmer character, on which were several hummocks, and
where the dogs immediately ceased running, conscious, apparently, that
the danger was past. We were saved: we joyfully embraced each other, and
united in thanks to God for our preservation from such imminent peril.”
[Sidenote: _PHIPPS_]
The primary object of the Phipps expedition sent out by the Royal
Society of England, under the solicitation of the government and all
scientific men of the time, was to reach the Magnetic Pole and solve, if
possible, the causes of the variation of the compass and other scientific
problems. With two vessels, the _Racehorse_ and the _Carcase_, Captain
Phipps set out in 1773 and skirted the eastern shore of Spitzbergen to
80° 48´ north latitude. Here he was beset with ice and could proceed no
farther. Accompanying this expedition was young Nelson, later the hero of
Trafalgar. An anecdote of Nelson showing his courage and daring on this
trip is told as follows:—
“While out in small boats one of the officers had wounded a walrus....
The wounded animal dived immediately, and brought up a number of its
companions; and they joined in an attack on the boat. They wrested an oar
from one of the men, and it was with the utmost difficulty that the crew
could prevent them from staving or upsetting her, till Nelson came up;
and the walruses, finding their enemies thus reënforced, dispersed. Young
Nelson exposed himself in a most daring manner.”
The unfortunate situation of his vessels forced Phipps to retrace his
course and return to England.
Under instructions to attempt the passage of Ice Sea, from Behring Strait
to Baffin Bay, the ill-fated Cook sailed in 1776, but failed to sail
beyond Icy Cape, where he found impenetrable ice; however, he reached as
far as North Cape on the coast of Asia.
Mackenzie, the last of the eighteenth-century explorers, left Fort
Chipewyan, and descended the Mackenzie River, a much larger stream than
the Coppermine previously discovered by Hearne. He followed the course
of the river until he reached an island “where the tide rose and fell,”
but there is no certainty that he reached the ocean. The land expeditions
were for geographical discovery and not for the discovery of the
Northwest Passage, that had occupied mariners for so many years.
[Illustration: PETER FEODOROVITSCH ANJOU]
[Illustration: FERDINAND VON WRANGELL
_From “The Voyage of the Vega,” Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London_]