Henry Hudson’s Voyages—Projected Passage over the Pole—Second
Expedition—A Mermaid Sighted—Third Voyage in the Dutch
Service—Discovery of the Hudson River—Last Voyage—Discovery of
Hudson’s Bay—Story of an Arctic Tragedy—Abacuk Pricket’s
Narrative—Their Winter Stay—Rise of a Mutiny—Hudson and Nine
Companions Set Adrift and left to Die—Retribution—Four of the
Mutineers Killed—Sufferings from Starvation—Death of a
Ringleader—Arrival in Ireland—Suspicious Circumstances—Baffin’s
Voyages—Danish Expeditions to Greenland—Jens Munk and his
Unfortunate Companions—Sixty-one Persons Starved to Death—Voyage
of three Survivors Across the Atlantic—An unkingly King—Death of
Munk—Moxon’s Dutch Beer-house Story—Wood and Flawes—Wreck of
Wood’s Vessel—Knight’s Fatal Expedition—Slow Starvation and Death
of the whole Company—The Middleton and Dobbs’ Agitation—£20,000
offered for the Discovery of the North-west Passage.
So many previous failures do not seem to have discouraged the London
merchants, who, in 1607, renewed the search for a northern route to China
and Japan. Hitherto neither the north-east nor north-west had held out
much hopes of success, and they now determined on a bold and novel attempt
at _sailing over the Pole itself_. For this expedition Henry
Hudson—already known as an experienced and intrepid seaman, and
well-skilled in nautical science—was chosen commander. This adventurous
navigator left Gravesend on May 1st, in a small barque, with only ten men
and a boy. The very name and tonnage of the vessel have been forgotten,
but it is known to have been of the tiniest description. In the second
week of June Hudson fell in with land—a headland of East Greenland—the
weather at the time being foggy, and the sails and shrouds frozen. He
examined other parts of this coast, feeling doubtful whether he might not
reach open water to the northward, and sail round Greenland, a voyage
never made up to this day. Later he reached Spitzbergen, where the ice to
the north utterly baffled all his efforts to force a passage, and being
short of supplies, he set sail for England. Next year we find him
attempting a north-east passage. He landed on Nova Zembla, and as he says
himself, his “purpose was by the Waygats (Strait) to passe by the mouth of
the river Ob (or Obi), and to double that way the north cape of Tartaria,
or to give reasons wherefore it will not be.” Finding quantities of morse
or walrus, he delayed somewhat, hoping to defray part of the expenses of
the voyage by obtaining ivory. Meantime he despatched a party up a large
river flowing from the north-eastward, fancying, apparently, that it was
an arm of the sea, which might lead them to the solution of the problem
they sought. On this voyage, “one of our company,” says Hudson, “looking
overboard, saw a mermaid, and calling up some of the companie to see her
once more come up, and by that time shee was come close to the ship’s
side, looking earnestly on the men; a little after a sea came and
overturned her; from the navill upwards her backe and breasts were like a
woman’s (as they say that saw her), her body as big as one of us; her skin
very white, and long haire hanging down behind, of colour blacke; in her
going downe they saw her tayle, which was like the tayle of a porposse,
and speeckled like a macrell. Their names that saw her were Thomas Hilles
and Robert Rayner.” All this is only another version of some walrus story.
On this as on the previous voyage, Hudson made some observations on the
inclination or “dip” of the magnetic needle, and he is probably the first
Englishman who had done so.
The following year (1609) we find Hudson on a third voyage of discovery,
in the service of the Dutch. His movements were very erratic, and the only
record left us does not explain them. He first doubled the North Cape, as
though again in quest of the north-east passage; then turned westward to
Newfoundland; thence again south as far as Charleston (South Carolina);
then north to Cape Cod, soon after which he discovered the beautiful
Hudson River, at the mouth of which New York is now situated. Hudson’s
fourth and last voyage is that most intimately associated with his name on
account of the cruel tragedy which terminated his life, and lost England
one of her bravest and most energetic explorers.
Several gentlemen of influence, among them Sir John Wolstenholme and Sir
Dudley Digges, were so satisfied of the feasibility of making the
north-west passage, that they fitted out a vessel at their own expense,
and gave the command to Henry Hudson. For reasons which will appear as we
proceed, the accounts of the voyage itself are meagre. We know, however,
that he discovered the Strait and “Mediterranean” Sea (the latter of which
has since been called a bay, although somewhat improperly), and both of
which still bear his name. The vessel appropriated for this service had
the same name as one of those on Captain Nares’ late expedition—_The
Discovery_—and was of fifty-five tons burden, victualled only, as it
seems, for six months. She left the Thames on April 17th, 1610, and on
June 9th was off the entrance of Frobisher’s Strait, where Hudson was
compelled to ply to the westward, on account of the ice and contrary
winds. During July and the early part of August several islands and
headlands were sighted and named, and at length they discovered a great
strait formed by the north-west point of Labrador and a cluster of
islands, which led them into an extensive sea. Here Hudson’s own testimony
ends, and we are dependent on the narrative of one Abacuk Pricket, which
is perfectly useless as regards any discoveries made, but which is
probably correct as regards the mutiny about to be described, and the
circumstances which preceded and followed it. The reader will, we imagine,
form his own conclusions very speedily in regard to Pricket’s own share in
this brutal transaction, in spite of his constant protestations. The story
in its sequel furnishes a significant example of the condition to which
mutiny and lawlessness on board ship may bring the perpetrators.
Abacuk Pricket says that Hudson, being closely beset in the ice, and
doubtful whether he should ever escape from it, brought out his chart, and
showed the company that he had entered the strait a hundred leagues
further than any Englishman before him, and, in spite of the dangers, very
naturally wished to follow up his discoveries. He, however, put it to them
whether they should sail forward or turn the ship’s head towards England.
No decision appears to have been obtained, some wishing themselves at
home, and others, sailor-like, saying they cared not where they were so
long as they were out of the ice. The narrator admits, however, that
“there were some who then spake words which were remembered a great while
after.”
The slumbering embers of mutiny appear to have been first fanned into a
flame when Hudson displaced the mate and boatswain “for words spoken when
in the ice,” and appointed others. Still sailing southward, they entered a
bay on Michaelmas day, and here the discontent was increased by Hudson
insisting on weighing the anchor, while the crew was desirous of remaining
there. Having voyaged for three months “in a labyrinth without end,” they
at length, on November 1st, found a suitable place to winter, and were
soon frozen in. Hudson had taken into his house in London, apparently from
sheer kindheartedness, a young man named Greene, of good and respectable
parentage, but of a very dissolute and abandoned life, and had brought him
to act as a kind of captain’s clerk on this voyage. Greene was most
undoubtedly an irreclaimable vagabond, as well as a most ungrateful
person. He quarrelled with the surgeon and others on board, and was the
leading conspirator in the mutinous proceedings against his benefactor,
which were now fast ripening to a conclusion. Pricket speaks well of his
“manhood”—which it is to be hoped he meant only as regarded his physical
qualifications—“but for religion, he would say he was cleane paper,
whereon he might write what he would.” Although the ship’s provisions were
nearly exhausted, they obtained, during the first three months, as many as
a hundred dozen white partridges, and, with more difficulty, in the early
spring, a few swans, geese, and ducks. A little later these failed them,
and they were reduced to eating moss and frogs. Later again, when the ice
broke up, seven men were sent out with the boat, and returned with five
hundred fish as big as good herrings. They were, however, unsuccessful
afterwards, and when the ship left the bay in which they had wintered, had
nothing left but short rations of bread for a fortnight, and five cheeses
which gave three pounds and a half to each man. These were carefully and
fairly divided by Hudson, and, as we are told in the narrative, “he wept
when he gave it unto them.”
The vessel stood to the north-west, and on June 21st, 1611, while
entangled in the drift ice, Pricket says that Wilson the boatswain and
Greene came to him and told him that they and the crew meant to turn the
master and all the sick into the boat, and leave them to shift for
themselves; that they had not eaten anything for three days, that there
were not fourteen days’ provisions left for the whole crew, and that they
were determined “either to mend or end; and what they had begun they would
go through with it or die.” Pricket says that he attempted to dissuade
them, but that they threatened him, and Greene bade him hold his tongue,
for he himself would rather be hanged at home than starved abroad. A
little later, five or six of the mutineers came to Pricket—he lying, as he
says, lame in his cabin—and administered the following oath to him:—“You
shall swear truth to God, your prince, and country; you shall do nothing
but to the glory of God, and the good of the action in hand, and harm to
no man.” The signification of all this soon appeared, for on Hudson coming
out of the cabin they seized him, and bound his arms behind him. He
demanded what they meant, when he was told that he would find out when he
was in the boat. The boat was hauled alongside, and Hudson, his son, and
seven “sicke and lame men” were hustled into it; a fowling-piece, some
powder and shot, a few pikes, an iron pot, a little meal, and some other
articles, were thrown in at the same time. Only one man, John King, the
carpenter, had the courage to face these fiends in human shape, and
remonstrate with them. He wasted his words and efforts, and, determining
not to abandon his captain, jumped into the boat, and the mutineers cut it
adrift among the ice. We know the horrors that have overtaken strong and
hearty men when obliged to trust to the boats in mid-ocean; in this case,
of ten persons seven at least were helpless and crippled; and sad as is
the fact, we can hardly wonder to find that nothing was ever gleaned
concerning their fate. One shudders to think of their hopeless and
inevitable doom, and that among them was lost one of the bravest and most
intrepid of England’s seamen.
But to this Arctic tragedy there was a sequel. As soon as the boat was out
of sight Pricket says that Greene came to him and told him that he,
Pricket, had been elected captain, and that he should take the master’s
cabin, which he pretends that he did with great reluctance. The mutineers
soon began to quarrel about their course, and were for a whole fortnight
shut in the ice, at the end of which time their provisions were all gone.
They had to subsist on cockle-grass, which they found on some neighbouring
islands. They now began to fear that England would be no safe place for
them, and blustering “Henry Greene swore the shippe should not come into
any place but keep the sea still, till he had the king’s majesties hand
and seale to shew for his safety.” Greene shortly after dispossessed
Pricket, and became captain, a position he did not enjoy long. Going
ashore on an island near Cape Digges to get some more grass and shoot some
gulls, a quarrel ensued with a number of the natives, wherein Greene was
killed, and three others died shortly afterwards from wounds received in
the scuffle. Pricket, after fighting bravely, according to his own
statement, was also severely wounded. The survivors were now in a fearful
plight, and, except some sea-fowl which they managed to procure, were
almost entirely without provisions. They, however, stood out to sea,
shaping their course for Ireland. At length all their supplies were gone,
and they were reduced to eating candles and fried skins and bones. Just
before reaching Galloway Bay one of the chief mutineers died of sheer
starvation.
[Illustration: IN SMITH’S SOUND.]
Such are the main points of Pricket’s story, and possibly out of
compassion for the sufferings they had undoubtedly endured, no inquiry or
punishment followed their arrival. But a very suspicious circumstance has
to be related: Hudson’s journal, instead of terminating at the date, June
21st, on which he was thrust into the boat, finished on August 3rd of the
previous year. Pricket had charge of the master’s chest, and there can be
little doubt but that all portions of the journal which might have
implicated them had been destroyed. A subsequent navigator shrewdly
remarks of these transactions: “Well, Pricket, I am in great doubt of thy
fidelity to Master Hudson.” Nevertheless, his character seems not to have
suffered in the eyes of the merchant adventurers; for we find him employed
next year in a voyage under Captain (afterwards Sir) Thomas Button, one
object of which seems to have been to follow Hudson’s track. They
discovered and wintered in Hudson’s River, but found no traces of the
great navigator or his unfortunate companions. James Hall, who in 1612
left England on a voyage of northern discovery, and was mortally wounded
by the dart of a Greenland Esquimaux, was accompanied by William Baffin,
one of the most scientific navigators of his time. This expedition is
noteworthy for having been the first on record where _longitudes_ were
taken by observation of the heavenly bodies. Baffin accompanied Bylot in
1615 on a voyage to the north-west. After sighting and leaving Greenland,
many enormous icebergs were met, some upwards of two hundred feet out of
the water. Baffin records one two hundred and forty feet high above the
sea, and says that on the usual computation,(25) it must have been “one
thousand sixe hundred and eightie foote from the top to the bottome.” A
voyage made by the same navigators in 1616 is principally interesting on
account of the discovery of Sir Thomas Smythe’s (now-a-days abbreviated to
“plain” Smith) Sound. About this period also the pursuit of the whale and
walrus was creating great attention from the large profits accruing to the
merchants and companies engaged in it. Baffin accompanied an expedition
sent out by the Muscovy Company, consisting of six ships and a pinnace,
and off Spitzbergen they encountered no less than eight Spanish, four
French, two Dutch, and some Biscayan vessels. Nevertheless, “the English
having taken possession of the whole country in the name of his Majesty,
prohibited all the others from fishing, and sent them away, excepting such
as they were pleased to grant leave to remain.” Baffin expected that the
Spanish would, at all events, have objected to this rather high-handed
course, and “fought with us, but they submitted themselves unto the
generall.” About this period there was a very large number of more or less
important voyages made, which may be termed of a mixed character. Although
sent out for purely commercial purposes, they were the means of adding
something to our knowledge of geography. Baffin made more than one voyage
after this, accompanying one whaling expedition which consisted of ten
ships and two pinnaces. The results of some of these voyages will be more
particularly mentioned when we come to consider the inhabitants of the
Sea.
In 1619 Christian IV. of Denmark sent out an expedition to Greenland, and
for northern discovery generally, under the command of Jens Munk, an
experienced seaman. The two vessels employed were mainly manned by English
sailors who had served on previous Arctic voyages. Munk left Elsinore on
May 18th, and a month afterwards made Cape Farewell. He endeavoured to
stand up Davis’s Strait, but the ice preventing he retraced his course,
eventually passing through Hudson’s Strait, to which, with the northern
part of Hudson’s Bay, he attached new names, in apparent ignorance of
previous discoveries. He made the coast of America in latitude 63° 20’,
where he was compelled to seek shelter in an opening of the land, which he
named Munk’s Winter Harbour. To the surrounding country he gave the name
of New Denmark. The year being advanced—it was now September 7th—huts were
immediately constructed, and his company were at first very successful in
obtaining game—partridges, hares, foxes, and white bears. Several mock
suns were observed, and on December 18th an eclipse of the moon occurred,
during which this luminary was surrounded by a transparent circle, within
which was a cross quartering the moon. This phenomenon was regarded with
alarm, and as a harbinger of the misfortunes which soon followed. The
weather was intensely cold; their wine, beer, and brandy, were frozen, and
the casks burst. The scurvy made its appearance in virulent form, and a
Danish authority states it was mostly occasioned by the too free use of
spirituous liquors. Their bread and provisions became exhausted, and none
of them had strength to hunt or seek other supplies. One by one they
succumbed, till out of sixty-four persons hardly one remained. When Munk,
who, reduced to a skeleton, had remained for some time alone in a little
hut in an utterly hopeless and broken-hearted condition, ventured to crawl
out, he found only two others alive. But the spring had come, and, making
one last effort, they went forth, and removing the snow found some roots
and plants, which they eagerly devoured. They succeeded in obtaining a few
fish, and, later, killed some birds. Their strength returning, they
equipped the smaller vessel as well as they were able, and set sail on an
apparently hopeless voyage, but in spite of storms and other perils
succeeded at length in reaching Norway, where they were received as men
risen from the grave. Munk must have possessed an undaunted spirit, for we
find him almost immediately proposing to make an attempt at the north-west
passage, in spite of all the sufferings he had just undergone. A
subscription was raised, and a vessel prepared. On taking leave of the
court, the king, in admonishing him to be more cautious, appeared to
ascribe the loss of his crew to some mismanagement. Munk replied hotly,
and the king, forgetting his own proper dignity, struck the brave
navigator with a cane. The old sailor left the presence of this unkingly
king, smarting under a sense of outrage which he could not forget; and we
are told that he took to his bed and died of a broken heart very shortly
afterwards. The story, however, is discredited by some authorities. Some
thirty years later Denmark again furnished an expedition, under the
command of Captain Danells, to explore East Greenland. He could rarely
approach the ice-girt coast nearer than eighteen or twenty miles, and
subsequent attempts have been little more successful.
[Illustration: MOCK SUNS.]
The establishment of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in 1669, appears to have
diverted the spirit of adventure and discovery from the far north, and we
hear of few voyages to the Arctic at this period, and for some time
afterwards, although the discovery of a northern passage to the Pacific is
really included in the objects for which the charter to that Corporation
was granted.
One attempt at a north-eastern passage in 1676 deserves to be mentioned,
principally on account of the circumstances which brought it about. There
was a considerable amount of rivalry in the East Indian, Chinese, and
Japanese trade at that time, between the Dutch and ourselves, and some
reports had reached England that a company of merchants in Holland was
agitating the subject of a north-eastern passage to the Orient once more.
Further, Mr. Joseph Moxon, a Fellow of the Royal Society, had just
published his “Brief Discourse,” wherein he records the following story,
from which he concluded “that there is a free and open sea under the very
pole.” “Being about twenty-two years ago in Amsterdam,” says he, “I went
into a drinking-house to drink a cup of beer for my thirst, and sitting by
the public fire among several people, there happened a seaman to come in,
who seeing a friend of his there whom he knew went in the Greenland
voyage, wondered to see him, because it was not yet time for the Greenland
fleet to come home, and asked him what accident brought him home so soon;
his friend (who was the steer-man aforesaid in a Greenland ship that
summer) told him that their ship went not out to fish that summer but only
to take in the lading of the whole fleet, and bring it to an early market.
But, said he, before the fleet had caught fish enough to lade us, we, by
order of the Greenland Company, sailed unto the north pole, and came back
again. Whereupon (his relation being novel to me) I entered into discourse
with him, and seemed to question the truth of what he said; but he did
ensure me it was true, and that the ship was then in Amsterdam, and many
of the seamen belonging to her to justify the truth of it; and told me,
moreover, that they had sailed two degrees beyond the Pole.” The Hollander
also stated that they had an open sea, free from ice, and that the weather
was warm. Whatever amount of truth there might be in this beerhouse story,
its publication had an influence at the time, and an expedition, partly
provided by the Government and partly by the Duke of York and several
other noblemen and gentlemen, was despatched at the end of May, 1676. The
_Speedwell_ and _Prosperous_, under the command respectively of Captains
Wood and Flawes, were the vessels employed. The first struck on a ledge of
rocks off Nova Zembla, and Wood had scarcely time to get the bread and
carpenter’s tools ashore before she went to pieces. Two of the crew were
lost, and the rest safely landed. They had almost concluded to attempt a
boat voyage, similar to that made by the brave Hollanders of Barents’
third expedition, when the _Prosperous_, attracted by a great fire which
they had made on the shore, hove in sight, and took them on board. The two
crews reached England safely, and the voyage, in the words of a
distinguished writer, “seems to have closed the long list of unfortunate
northern expeditions in that century; and the discovery, if not absolutely
despaired of, by being so often missed, ceased for many years to be sought
for.”
Nor did the eighteenth century open much more auspiciously. Mr. Knight, an
old servant of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and for a long time governor of
their leading establishment on Nelson’s River, had learned from the
Indians that in the extreme north of their territory, and on the banks of
a navigable river, there was a rich mine of native copper. Knight was so
impressed with the value of this information, that, after much trouble, he
induced the Company to send out an expedition for the purpose of
investigating the matter. Knight himself, nearly eighty years of age, had
a general charge of the expedition, the vessels of which were commanded by
Captains Barlow and Vaughan. The expedition left in the spring of 1719,
and never returned; it was not till forty-eight years afterwards that any
information was gleaned concerning the melancholy fate of the whole party.
In the year 1767 some of the Company’s men employed in whaling near Marble
Island stood in close to the shore, where in a harbour they discovered the
remains of a house, the hulls of two ships under water, and guns, anchors,
cables, an anvil, and other heavy articles, which had not been removed by
the natives. The following, from a work by Samuel Hearne,(26) sufficiently
indicates the misery to which the party had been reduced, before death
terminated their sufferings. It was obtained through the medium of an
Esquimaux interpreter from the natives.
When the vessels arrived at Marble Island it was very late in the fall,
and in getting them into the harbour the largest received much damage, but
on being fairly in the English began to build the house; their number at
that time seeming to be about fifty. As soon as the ice permitted in the
following summer (1720), the Esquimaux paid them another visit, by which
time the number of the English was very greatly reduced, and those that
were living seemed very unhealthy. According to the account given by the
Esquimaux, they were then very busily employed, but about what they could
not easily describe, probably in lengthening the long boat, for at a
little distance from the house there was now lying a great quantity of oak
chips, which had been made most assuredly by carpenters.
A sickness and famine occasioned such havoc among the English that by the
setting in of the second winter their number was reduced to twenty. That
winter (1720) some of the Esquimaux took up their abode on the opposite
side of the harbour to that on which the English had built their houses,
and frequently supplied them with such provisions as they had, which
chiefly consisted of whale’s blubber, seal’s flesh, and train oil. When
the spring advanced the Esquimaux went to the continent, and on their
visiting Marble Island again, in the summer of 1721, they only found five
of the English alive, and those were in such distress for provisions that
they eagerly ate the seal’s flesh and whale’s blubber quite raw as they
purchased it from the natives. This disordered them so much that three of
them died in a few days, and the other two, though very weak, made a shift
to bury them. Those two survived many days after the rest, and frequently
went to the top of an adjacent rock and earnestly looked to the south and
east, as if in expectation of some vessels coming to their relief. After
continuing there a considerable time together, and nothing appearing in
sight, they sat down close together and wept bitterly. At length one of
the two died, and the other’s strength was so far exhausted that he fell
down and died also in attempting to dig a grave for his companion.
[Illustration: THE REMNANTS OF KNIGHT’S EXPEDITION.]
In 1741 Captain Middleton made a northern voyage of little importance, and
on his return was publicly accused by one Mr. Arthur Dobbs, of having
acted in bad faith to the Government, and of having taken a bribe of
£5,000 from the Hudson’s Bay Company, his old employers, not to make
discoveries. The captain denied having accepted any bribe, but almost
admitted that he had said no one should be much the wiser if he did make
the north-west passage. The agitation, however, stirred by Dobbs, led to
the passing of an Act of Parliament offering the large sum of £20,000 for
the discovery of a north-western route to the Indies. Two vessels—the
_Dobb’s Galley_ and _California_—were equipped by subscription, and left
in the spring of 1746. The expedition wintered near Fort York, but
although absent seventeen months, virtually accomplished nothing. The
result was that the ardour of the public as well as of explorers received
a decided check, and for nearly thirty years we hear of no Arctic voyage
being despatched for purposes of discovery.