sea without touching land. At length they arrived in the region of Cape
Breton. Shaping their course northwestward they came to the “island of
Penguin,” where they landed. This was found to be a place “full of rocks
and stones” and inhabited by flocks of “great foules white and gray, as
big as geese.” These strange fowls were the sea-birds known as Penguins
from their first discovery on this island, and afterward, when appearing
in other parts, called Great Auks or Gare-Fowls. The sailors drove large
numbers of them into the boats, and they made good eating. Quantities of
their eggs were also seen on the island. No natives were encountered by
the voyagers till they had lain anchored off Newfoundland for several
days. Then one morning while Oliver Dawbeny was walking on the hatches
he spied a boat full of savages rowing down the bay toward the ships. A
ship’s boat was quickly manned and sent out to meet and take them. But
at its approach the savages fled to a neighbouring island up the bay.
The English pursued them, but they got away. On the island a fire was
found, and by it the side of a bear on a wooden spit ready for roasting.
A boot of leather was picked up, “garnished on the outward side of the
calf with certain brave trails as it were of raw silke”; also a “great
warm mitten.” The voyagers tarried in the Newfoundland seas till famine
came upon them.
Now the tale becomes gruesome. Temporary relief was had from the stock
of a nest of an osprey “that brought hourly to her young great plentie
of divers sort of fish.” For a while they lived on raw herbs and roots
gathered on the main. Then, the relief from herbs becoming of “little
purpose,” some of the hardest pressed, when ashore in companies of two,
seeking food, fell to feeding upon their mates. “The fellow killed his
mate while he stooped to take up a root for his relief, and cutting out
pieces of his body whom he had murthered broyled the same on the coles
[fire] and greedily devoured them.” By this means, the chronicler grimly
adds, “the company decreased.” The officers on shipboard wondered at
this falling off till the fate of the missing was disclosed through the
admission of one well-fed sailor, under the goading taunts of a starving
mate who had come upon him in a field, drawn thither by the pungent
odour of broiled flesh, that the meat upon which he had feasted was a
piece of a man’s side.
When this report was brought to the captain he called the company
together and addressed them earnestly upon the awfulness of such
conduct. “If,” he piously argued, “it had not pleased God to have helpen
[helped] them in that distresse that it had been better to have perished
in body and to have lived everlastingly, than to have relieved for a
poore time their mortal bodyes and to bee condemned everlastingly both
body and soule to the unquenchable fire of hell.” He besought them all
to pray “that it might please God to look upon their miserable present
state and for his own mercy to relieve the same.” Still the famine
continued unrelieved. At last, in sheer desperation, “they agreed
amongst themselves rather than all should perish to cast lots who should
be killed.” But the very night of this agreement, “such was the mercie
of God” that a French ship well furnished with victuals hove into the
harbour where they lay. Their action was prompt. “Such was the policy of
the English,” as our chronicler ingenuously puts it, “that they became
masters” of the Frenchmen’s craft, “and changing ships and victualling
them they set sail to come into England.” In blunter words, they
despoiled the Frenchmen of their property and made off with it, leaving
them behind; not altogether desolate, however, for they were left with a
ship partly provisioned from their own store.
The expedition arrived back in England about the end of October, when
the gentlemen of the party enjoyed a succession of entertainments, first
at a “certain castle belonging to Sir John Luttrell,” afterward at Bath,
Bristol, and London. The voyagers told in their reports how they had
journeyed so far northward that they had seen “mighty islands of ice in
the summer season on which were hawkes and other fowles to rest
themselves being weary of flying over far from the main.” And how they
had also seen “certain great white fowles with red bills and red legs
somewhat bigger than herons which they supposed to be storkes.” Some
months later the despoiled Frenchmen had got back to their home port,
and they appeared in England with complaint to the king and demand for
redress. After an examination of the matter, however, the king was “so
moved to pity” by the tale of the distress of the Englishmen, which was
shown to be the occasion of their high-handed act, that “he punished not
his subjects, but of his own purse made full and royal recompense unto
the French.” Which was certainly generous as should become a king.
The account of this voyage was the one that Hakluyt travelled two
hundred miles on horseback to get from the sole survivor of the company
living at the time of his writing, or, in his own words, “to learn the
whole truth of this voyage from his own mouth as being the only man now
alive that was in this discovery.” He was Thomas Buts, a son of Sir
William Buts of Norfolk. Hakluyt relates that upon his return from the
voyage Buts was so changed in appearance through the hunger and misery
he had undergone that his parents did not recognize him as their son
till they found a secret mark on his person, “which was a wart upon one
of his knees.”
With the accession of Edward the sixth, the boy king, in 1547, new
projects began to develop for further discovery northward. Sebastian
Cabot was again in England and settled at Bristol. He was now an old
man, yet still stalwart in mind and red-blooded for action. His fame was
widespread and he had come to be called “The Great Seaman.” While pilot
major of Spain, he had, with other achievements, made important
discoveries in South America. Heading an expedition originally planned
to pursue discovery in the Pacific, through the Strait of Magellan
(discovered and passed by that brilliant Portuguese, Fernao de
Magalhães, in 1520, who the next year discovered the Philippines), he
had explored the River Plate, naming it Rio de la Plata, the Silver
River, because of the splendour of the silver ornaments worn by the
Indians of the region, and had anchored off the site of the present city
of Buenos Ayres; had built a fort at one of the mouths of the Parana and
begun a settlement there; had further ascended the Parana; penetrated
the Paraguay; and thence entered the Vermejo, where he and his party had
a fierce fight with the savages. In Edward’s second year, 1549, he was
appointed Grand Pilot of England, with an annual pension of £166 13_s._
and 6_d._ in consideration of the “good and acceptable service done and
to be done” by him for the English crown.
Not long after he is found turning from the Northwest Passage and
advising a new voyage for the discovery of a Northeast route to India.
From this a project of various London merchant adventurers developed
which resulted in an expedition in 1553 starting under Sir Hugh
Willoughby and continued by Richard Chancellor, which, although failing
to find Cathay, made notable discoveries with the opening to Europe of
the great empire of Russia.
X
THE OPENING OF RUSSIA
The Willoughby-Chancellor voyage was planned with much thoroughness,
specifically for the expansion of trade. It was the outcome of the
deliberations of “certaine grave Citizens of London and men of great
wisdome and carefull for the good of their Countrey” seeking means to
revive commercial affairs which had fallen into a dismal state. English
commodities had come to be in small request by neighbouring peoples.
“Merchandises” (as the term was) which foreigners in former times
eagerly sought were now neglected and their prices lowered, although the
goods were carried by the English traders to the foreign ports; while
all foreign products were “in great account and their prices wonderfully
raised.” Meanwhile English merchants had seen the wealth of Spaniards
and Portuguese marvellously increase through the repeated discoveries of
new countries and new trades for their nations. So these grave and wise
citizens came at last to realize the imperative need of a similar course
for England if she were to keep pace with her rivals: practically to
adopt the policy which Robert Thorne had so sagely pressed a quarter of
a century before.
Having resolved upon a “new and strange navigation” they first of all
brought Sebastian Cabot into their councils, and forming a company chose
him their head. “After much speech and conference together” it was
decided that three ships should be prepared for discovery in the
northern parts of the world to open the way for Englishmen to unknown
kingdoms northeastward. The three ships were duly obtained, for the most
part newly built craft of “very strong and well-seasoned planks.” One at
least of them was made especially staunch by “an excellent and ingenious
invention,” described as “the covering of a piece of keel with thin
sheets of lead.” This is supposed to have been the first instance in
England of the practice of sheathing. It had, however, been adopted in
Spain nearly forty years before. The ships were well furnished with
armours and artillery, and were victualled with supplies for eighteen
months. They were severally: the “Bona Esperanza,” of one hundred and
twenty tons, designated admiral (flag-ship) of the fleet, the “Edward
Bonaventure,” one hundred and sixty tons, and the “Bona Confidentia,”
ninety tons. Each was provided with a pinnace and a boat.
After securing the ships the next care was the selection of captains for
the expedition. Many men of standing offered themselves for the
headship. Among these most urgent for the appointment was Sir Hugh
Willoughby, “a most valiant gentleman and well born.” Sir Hugh was
chosen on account of his “goodly personage”—he appears to have been an
exceptionally tall man—and for his “singular skill in the service of
warre.” He had served under the Earl of Hertford, afterward the Duke of
Somerset, in the expedition of 1544 against Scotland, and had received
the honour of knighthood at Leith; and during the invasions of 1547–1549
he held a commission on the border, and was sometime captain of Lowther
Castle. Afterward his “thoughts turned to the sea” through his
association with naval men and his friendship with Sebastian Cabot. The
title given him was captain-general of the Fleet. For second in command,
also drawn from several candidates, Richard Chancellor was elected and
named pilot-general. He was given the charge of the “Edward Bonaventure”
as captain. Chancellor had been bred up in the household of Henry
Sidney, the father of Sir Philip Sidney. He was strongly endorsed as a
man of “great estimation for many good partes of wit in him.” In the
prime of life, he had the advantage of an excellent reputation for
knowledge of the sea with a genius for adventure. As masters of the
several ships, William Gefferson was appointed for the “Bona Esperanza,”
Stephen Borough (afterward chief pilot of England) for the “Edward
Bonaventure,” and Cornelius Durfoorth for the “Bona Confidentia.” The
captain-general, the pilot-general, the three ships’ masters, the
minister—Master Richard Stafford—two of the merchants and one of the
“gentlemen” joining the expedition, and the three masters’ mates, were
designated a board of twelve counsellors for the voyage.
An elaborate book of orders and instructions for the conduct of the
fleet was compiled by Cabot; while the king provided a letter, written
in Latin, Greek, and other languages, designed for presentation to any
potentate whom the voyagers might come across in journeying “toward the
mighty empire of Cathay,” but most liberally addressed “to all Kings,
Princes, Rulers, Judges, and Governours of the earth, and all others
having any excellent dignity on the same in all places under the
universall heaven.”
Hakluyt gives the text of both of these documents. Cabot’s book
comprised thirty-three items, as a whole well illustrating his ripe
judgment and good seamanship. Particularly wise were his instructions as
to the attitude of the voyagers toward new peoples whom they might
discover. “Every nation and region is to be considered advisedly.” The
natives were not to be provoked by “any disdaine, laughing, contempt, or
such like,” but were to be used with “prudent circumspection, with all
gentlenes and courtesie.” “For as much,” he shrewdly observed, “as our
people and shippes may appear unto them strange and wondrous, and
their’s also to ours: it is to be considered how they may be used,
learning much of their natures and dispositions by some one such person
[native] as you may first either allure or take to be brought aboord of
your ships, and there to learn as you may, without violence or force.”
The native so taken to be “well entertained, used and apparelled; to be
set on the land to the intent that he or she may allure other to draw
nigh to shew the commodities.” But the succeeding instruction was
vicious, though in accord with the brutality of the age: “and if the
person taken may be made drunke with your beere or wine you shall know
the secrets of his heart.”
The king’s letter-missive defined the voyage to be purely a commercial
affair. It was an expedition by sea “into farre Countreis to the intent
that betweene our people and them a way may be opened to bring in and
cary out merchandises.” It was to seek in the countries that might be
found heretofore unknown “as well such things as we lacke, as also to
cary unto them from our regions such things as they lacke.” So “not
onely commoditie may ensue both to them and to us, but also an
indissoluble and perpetuall league of friendship be established betweene
us both.” Free passage was asked for the voyagers through their
dominions, with the assurance that nothing of theirs should be touched
by the visitors unwillingly to them; and the same hospitality that they
would expect their subjects to receive should they at any time pass by
the regions of the English king.
The fleet started from Ratcliffe at the time appointed for the
departure, the tenth of May (according to Willoughby’s journal, other
accounts say the twentieth) and dropped down the Thames by easy stages.
On the “Esperanza” with Sir Hugh were the larger number of merchants.
The minister was on the “Edward Bonaventure”; and among the seamen of
the latter was William Borough, the younger brother of the ship’s
master, a lusty youth of sixteen, who afterward became comptroller of
the queen’s navy. The spectacle of the passage by Greenwich, where the
court was then seated at the ancient royal palace, is vividly portrayed
by the historian of Chancellor’s exploits on this voyage, Clement Adams,
the schoolmaster:
“The greater shippes are towed downe with boates, and oares, and the
mariners being all apparelled in Watchet, or skie coloured cloth, rowed
amaine and made way with diligence. And being come neere Greenewich
(where the court then lay) presently upon the newes thereof the
Courtiers came running out, and the common people flockt together
standing very thicke upon the shoare: the privie Counsel, they lookt out
at the windowes of the Court, and the rest ranne up to the toppes of the
towers: the shippes hereupon discharge their Ordinance, and shoot off
their pieces after the maner of warre, and of the sea, insomuch that the
tops of the hilles sounded therewith, the valleys and the waters gave an
Echo, and the Mariners, they shouted in such sort that the skie rang
again with the noyse thereof. One stoode in the poope of the ship, and
by his jesture bids farewell to his friends in the best maner he could.
Another walks upon the hatches, another climbes the shrowdes, another
stands upon the maine yarde, and another in the top of the shippe.”
The boy king heard the parting salute but he did not see the show, for
he lay in his chamber gravely ill of consumption. And a fortnight after
the ships had taken the sea, he died.
The fleet tarried some time off Harwich and did not finally get away
till the twenty-third of June. By the middle of July Heligoland, in the
North Sea, was reached and visited. Next, Röst Island, where another
short stay was made. Next, on the twenty-seventh of July, anchors were
dropped at one of the Lofoden Islands, and there the voyagers remained
for three days, finding the isle “plentifully inhabited” by “very gentle
people.” Next they coasted along these islands north-northwest till the
second of August, when they attempted to make another harbour, having
arranged with a native, who came out to them in a skiff for a pilot to
conduct them to “Wardhouse” (Vardohuus), an island haven off Finmark,
with a “castle,” then a rendezvous of northern mariners. But violent
whirlwinds prevented their entrance and they were constrained to take to
the sea again. Thereupon the captain-general ran up the admiral’s flag
signalling a conference of the chief officers of the fleet on board his
ship. It was then agreed that in the event of a separation of the ships
by a tempest or other mishap each should at once make for “Wardhouse,”
and the first arriving in safety should there await the coming of the
rest.
That very day the dreaded separation occurred. Late in the afternoon a
tempest suddenly arose which so lashed the sea that the ships were
tossed hither and thither from their intended course. Above the storm on
the “Edward Bonaventure” was heard the loud voice of Sir Hugh calling to
Captain Chancellor to keep by the admiral. But the “Esperanza,” bearing
all sails, sped onward with such swiftness that despite all of
Chancellor’s efforts to follow, she was soon out of his sight. That was
the last seen of her or of Sir Hugh and his companions. Nor was the
“Confidentia” again seen by the men of the “Bonaventure.” Both ships and
their companies had passed forever from their sight; and the miserable
fate of their mates was not known when they had completed their voyage
and returned to England.
The story was finally told in Willoughby’s journal, which was found a
year or more afterward with the ships and the frozen bodies of the
luckless Sir Hugh and his companions, seventy in all, at Lapland.
Hakluyt gives it under this caption:
“The Voyage of Sir Hugh Willoughbie knight, wherein he unfortunately
perished at Arzina Reca in Lapland, Anno 1553.” It is entitled: “The
true copie of a Note found written in one of the two ships, to wit, the
Speranza, which wintred in Lappia where Sir Willoughbie and all his
companie died, being frozen to death Anno 1553.”
This journal comprised a record of the expedition from the start to
Willoughby’s occupation of the Lapland haven. It opened with a statement
of the object of the voyage and its institution by Cabot and the London
Merchant Adventurers; a list of the ships and their burden, together
with the names of their companies; and the text of the oath administered
to the ships’ masters. Then followed the log of the voyage, beginning
with the departure from Ratcliffe. From this it appears that the morning
after the storm which had parted the ships, the “Esperanza,” with the
lifting of a fog, espied the “Confidentia,” and thereafter these two
ships managed to keep together. Seeing nothing of the “Bonaventure” they
started in company to reach the rendezvous at “Wardhouse.” But it was
not long before they lost their way. Through August and into September
they sailed and drifted in various directions, northeast,
south-southeast, northwest by west, west-southwest, north by east. On
the fourteenth of August they discovered land in seventy-two degrees
(which Hakluyt terms “Willoughbyie’s Land”), but could not reach it
because of shoal water and much ice. At length, in the middle of
September, they came upon land, rocky, high, and forbidding, apparently
uninhabited; and so to the desolate Lapland haven which ultimately
became their grave. Herein were found “very many seale fishes and other
great fishes,” and upon the main were seen “beares, great deere, foxes,
with divers strange beasts as guloines [or ellons, Hakluyt notes], and
such other which were to us unknowen and also wonderful.” Then the sad
record closes:
“Thus remaining in this haven the space of a weeke, seeing the yeere
farre spent, & also very evill wether, as frost, snow, and haile, as
though it had been the deepe of winter, we thought best to winter there.
Wherefore we sent out three men South-southwest, to search if they would
find people, who went three dayes journey, but could finde none; after
that, we sent other three Westward foure daies journey, which also
returned without finding any people. Then sent we three men Southeast
three dayes journey, who in like sorte returned without finding of
people, or any similitude of habitation.”
The will of Sir Hugh was also found with his journal, from which it
appeared that he and most of his company were alive so late as January.
Their haven lay near to Kegor in Norwegian Lapland and was afterward
known as Arzina. They were first discovered, entombed in their ships, by
Russian fishermen cruising in their haven, the following summer.
Willoughby’s frozen body lay in his cabin. The next season, the summer
of 1555, the two ships were recovered, with much of their goods, and
restored for more service.
Their subsequent fate is to be related farther on. Our present concern
is with Richard Chancellor and the “Edward Bonaventure” after the
dispersion of the fleet.
“Pensive, heavie, and sorrowfull” at the disappearance of his fellows,
Chancellor shaped his course for “Wardhouse,” according to the
agreement, and in due time safely arrived there. When a week had passed
with no sign of the other ships, he determined to proceed alone in the
purposed voyage, in which decision all of his company acquiesced. Now
follows the story of “The Voyage of Richard Chanceller Pilote major, the
first discoverer by sea of the Kingdom of Muscovia, Anno 1553,” told in
two documents reproduced by Hakluyt—Chancellor’s “rehearsal” of his
adventures with an account of the wealth and barbaric splendour in the
dominions of the “mighty Emperour of Russia and the Duke of Moscovia,”
and Clement Adams’s narrative of the voyage as he received it “from the
mouth of the said Richard Chanceler.”
First of the voyage.
Sailing from Vardohuus, “Master Chanceler held on his course towards
that unknowen part of the world,” and came “at last to the place where
hee found no night at all, but a continuall light and brightnesse of the
Sunne shining clearley upon the huge and mightie Sea. And having the
benefite of this perpetuall light for certaine dayes, at the length it
pleased God to bring them into a certaine great Bay, which was of one
hundredth miles or thereabout over.” Thus they had entered the White Sea
and had reached the Bay of Saint Nicholas, in the neighbourhood of the
modern Archangel. Here, “somewhat farre within,” they cast anchor and
gazed about them. Presently in the distance a fisher boat was espied.
Thereupon Chancellor with a few of his men took the pinnace and went out
to meet it, hoping to learn of its crew what country they had come to,
and what manner of people. But the fishermen were so amazed at the
“strange greatnesse” of the “Bonaventure,” the like of which had never
before been seen in those waters, that they incontinently fled as the
strangers approached. Soon, however, they were overtaken. Then followed
this scene in which Chancellor’s cleverness was exhibited, and also,
perhaps, his remembrance of that item in Cabot’s book of ordinances as
to the handling of new peoples discovered.
“Being come to them they (being in great feare as men half dead)
prostrated themselves before him, offering to kisse his feete; but he
(according to his great and singular courtesie) looked pleasantly upon
them, comforting them by signes and gestures, refusing those dueties and
reverences of theirs, and taking them up in all loving sort from the
ground.”
Their confidence thus won they spread the report on shore of the arrival
of a “strange nation of a singular gentlenesse and courtesie”; and soon
the common people came forward with hospitable offerings. They would
also traffic with their “new-come ghests” (guests) had they not been
bound by a “certaine religious use and custome not to buy any forreine
[foreign] commodities without the knowledge and consent of their king.”
By this time the Englishmen had learned that the country was called
Russia, or Muscovy, and that “Ivan Vasiliwich (which was at that time
their King’s name) ruled and governed farre and wide in those places.”
This was Ivan the fourth, “the Terrible.”