BAFFIN FINDS HIS BAY
Two years only after the tragedy of Henry Hudson, another Arctic
explorer appears upon the scene. William Baffin was already an
experienced seaman in the prime of life; he had made four voyages to
the icy north, when he was called on by the new Company of Merchants
of London--"discoverers of the North-West Passage"--formed in 1612,
to prepare for another voyage of discovery. Distressed beyond measure
at the desertion of Henry Hudson, the Muscovy Company had dispatched
Sir Thomas Button with our old friend Abacuk Prickett to show him the
way. Button had reached the western side of Hudson's Bay, and after
wintering there returned fully convinced that a north-west passage
existed in this direction. Baffin returned from an expedition to
Greenland the same year. The fiords and islets of west Greenland, the
ice-floes and glaciers of Spitzbergen, the tidal phenomena of Hudson's
Strait, and the geographical secrets of the far-northern bay were all
familiar to him. "He was, therefore, chosen as mate and associate"
to Bylot, one of the men who had deserted Hudson, but who had sailed
three times with him previously and knew well the western seas. So
in "the good ship called the _Discovery_," of fifty-five tons, with
a crew of fourteen men and two boys, William Baffin sailed for the
northern seas. May found the expedition on the coast of Greenland,
with a gale of wind and great islands of ice. However, Baffin crossed
Davis Strait, and after a struggle with ice at the entrance to Hudson's
Strait he sailed along the northern side till he reached a group of
islands which he named Savage Islands. For here were Eskimos
again--very shy and fearful of the white strangers. "Among their
tents," relates Baffin, "all covered with seal skins, were running
up and down about forty dogs, most of them muzzled, about the bigness
of our mongrel mastiffs, being a brindled black colour, looking almost
like wolves. These dogs they used instead of horses, or rather as the
Lapps do their deer, to draw their sledges from place to place over
the ice, their sledges being shod or lined with bones of great fishes
to keep them from wearing out, and the dogs have furniture and collars
very fitting."
The explorers went on bravely till they were stopped by masses of ice.
They thought they must be at the mouth of a large bay, and, seeing
no prospect of a passage to the west, they turned back. When, two
hundred years later, Parry sailed in Baffin's track he named this place
Baffin Land "out of respect to the memory of that able and enterprising
navigator."
The _Discovery_ arrived in Plymouth Sound by September, _without the
loss of one man_--a great achievement in these days of salt junk and
scurvy.
"And now it may be," adds Baffin, "that some expect I should give my
opinion concerning the Passage. To these my answer must be that
doubtless there _is_ a Passage. But within this Strait, which is called
Hudson Strait, I am doubtful, supposing to the contrary."
Baffin further suggested that if there was a Passage it must now be
sought by Davis Strait.
Accordingly another expedition was fitted out and Baffin had his
instructions: "For your course, you must make all possible haste to
Cape Desolation; and from hence you, William Baffin, as pilot, keep
along the coast of Greenland and up Davis Strait, until you come toward
the height of 80 degrees, if the land will give you leave. Then shape
your course west and southerly, so far as you shall think it convenient,
till you come to the latitude of 60 degrees, then direct your course
to fall in with the land of _Yedzo_, leaving your further sailing
southward to your own discretion: although our desires be if your
voyage prove so prosperous that you may have the year before you that
you go far south as that you may touch the north part of Japan from
whence we would have you bring home one of the men of the country and
so, God blessing you, with all expedition to make your return home
again."
The _Discovery_ had proved a good little ship for exploration, so she
was again selected by Baffin for this new attempt in the far north.
Upon 26th March 1616 she sailed from Gravesend, arriving off the coast
of Greenland in the neighbourhood of Gilbert Sound about the middle
of May. Working against terrible winds, they plied to the northward,
the old ship making but slow progress, till at last they sighted
"Sanderson his Hope," the farthest point of Master Davis. Once more
English voices broke the silence of thirty years. The people who
appeared on the shore were wretchedly poor. They lived on seals' flesh,
which they ate raw, and clothed themselves in the skins. Still
northwards they sailed, cruising along the western coast. Though the
ice was beginning to disappear the weather kept bitterly cold, and
on Midsummer Day the sails and ropes were frozen too hard to be handled.
Stormy weather now forced them into a sound which they named Whale
Sound from the number of whales they discovered here. It was declared
by Baffin to be the "greatest and largest bay in these parts."
But beyond this they could not go; so they sailed across the end of
what we now know as Baffin's Bay and explored the opposite coast of
America, naming one of the greater openings Lancaster Sound, after
Sir James Lancaster of East India Company fame.
"Here," says Baffin pitifully, "our hope of Passage began to grow less
every day."
It was the old story of ice, advancing season, and hasty conclusions.
[Illustration: BAFFIN'S MAP OF HIS VOYAGES TO THE NORTH. From the
original MS., drawn by Baffin, in the British Museum.]
"There is no hope of Passage to the north of Davis' Straits," the
explorer further asserts; but he asserts wrongly, for Lancaster Sound
was to prove an open channel to the West.
So he returned home. He had not found the Passage, but he had discovered
the great northern sea that now bears his name. The size of it was
for long plunged in obscurity, and the wildest ideas centred round
the extent of this northern sea. A map of 1706 gives it an indefinite
amount of space, adding vaguely: "Some will have Baffin's Bay to run
as far as this faint Shadow," while a map of 1818 marks the bay, but
adds that "it is not now believed."
For the next two hundred years the icebound regions of the north were
practically left free from invasion, silent, inhospitable,
unapproachable.
But while these Arctic explorers were busy battling with the northern
seas to find a passage which should lead them to the wealth of the
East, others were exploring the New World and endeavouring by land
and river to attain the same end.