Arctic Obsession
Page 9
Disappointing as the failed expeditions of Weymouth and Knight had been, those who had sponsored them continued in their determination to reach the East through the Arctic. By then a new element had crept into the equation: contact had been made with the Inuit, and from them furs could be had for easy trade — lots of them and of excellent quality. The northern road to the Orient now gave promise of being paved with furs — all the more reason to give the New World one more try. Enter Henry Hudson.
Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the service of the Dutch. A number of alleged portraits of the explorer such as this exist, but all were executed after the explorer’s death. Engraving based on John Collier’s painting The Last Voyage of Henry Hudson.
Library and Archives Canada/Illustrated books, albums and scrapbooks/C-002061.
Little is known of Hudson’s early life and nothing of his death. The pages of his remarkable history seem narrowly restricted to one four-year period — 1607–1611 — and they centre on his explorations of three different regions of the North Atlantic. Hudson was a driven man, obsessed by the mission of sailing from England to India and the Spice Islands through the Arctic. As noted before, conventional wisdom at the time had it that ice forms only in the proximity of land, and given an absence of land, there is no ice buildup in open waters. A wide channel over the top of the world would therefore be navigable, and it was precisely this conviction that propelled Hudson and others. It was an ideal partnership: the Muscovy Company sought someone to take charge and Hudson was anxious to lead an expedition over the pole.
Thus on May 1, 1607, this passionate navigator set sail from Gravesend in the Hopewell, the same ship used by Knight a year earlier. Accompanying him was the eldest of his three sons, fourteen year-old John, the youngest of the eleven-man crew. The vessel proceeded directly north, and with favorable winds they managed to clear the Shetland Islands in four days. Variable winds slowed further progress, but on June 11 they finally crossed the Arctic Circle, where they were greeted by a pod of six whales that frolicked about the ship, causing fear and wonder among the crew, but no damage. A couple of days later they were off the coast of Greenland, battling a fierce storm and doing everything to avoid being driven onto the brutal coastline. Having won that battle, they moved on, but their progress was impeded by fog, drizzle, and bitter cold, plus the occasional encounter with ice. With the heavens consistently overcast, accurate navigation was impossible since the astrolabe was useless without a clear sky.
On June 20, the skies opened briefly and Hudson was able to get an accurate positioning, which he reckoned to be 72°38' N. On that same day, land was sighted for a few moments, a high mountain jutting out from the sea, but then the fog set in once more and the land disappeared from view. The breaking of the waves ashore, however, was soon heard, but they didn’t attempt landfall because of the dangerous conditions; the Hopewell pressed on. Throughout the journey, Hudson made meticulous additions and corrections to the available charts and he painstakingly logged details on weather, sea conditions, and land formations, as well as on whatever flora and fauna he encountered. In attending this he was abiding to the long-standing tradition among scientists, seamen, and travellers of committing to paper anything that would enhance knowledge of the world. At one spot he notes, for example, that the seabed at sixty fathoms was found to be “black, oozy, sandy, with some yellow shells.” And on one island, “we saw many Birds with black backs and white bellies in form much like a Duck.”
One July day Hudson was able to confirm that they were at 81°N, the most northern latitude reached by any European. Pity that the crew was not to know that they were a mere 520 miles from the North Pole. Nor would they learn that their notable achievement was a record that would remain unbroken for two centuries. But the weather at this point was rapidly changing and the season drawing nigh; Hudson reckoned that they had come as far north as prudence allowed. Furthermore, leaks were developing in the Hopewell and her bilges were taking on more water than usual — battering ice floes had made life gruelling for the sturdy little ship. It was time to return home, and they turned south.
The Faroe Islands were reached on August 15, and a month later the vessel made its way up the Thames into Gravesend. Other than the notable record-setting and the wealth of practical information gathered on the Arctic, little had been achieved by the explorer. Though disappointed, his enthusiasm for continued exploration remained unshaken.
Within weeks of his return home, Hudson was again knocking on investors’ doors in search of fresh funding for a follow-up northern voyage. Try as he might, however, the London business community was in no mood to sink more money into such projects; investor fatigue had set in. Frustrated, but undaunted, Hudson took his case to Amsterdam where the Dutch East India Company received him warmly and raised the required capital. Despite disappointment over Barents’s inconclusive attempts, the Dutch continued in the conviction that the Northern Sea Route was there, perhaps via the pole, waiting only for the right person to knock at the right door. It seems that by that time Hudson had accepted the futility of another polar push and that he had became equally attracted to the possibility of a Northeast Passage. Returning home, he wasted little time in refitting and stocking the Hopewell. A crew of fourteen was gathered that included many of the same men who had accompanied him in the previous year, including young John.
Hudson sailed from Gravesend on April 22, 1608, one year to the day of quitting the place on his earlier exploration. In the four weeks that followed they ran into the all-too-familiar gamut of fog, drizzles, rains, contrary winds, and latterly, gusts of snow. By the time they rounded Nord Cap, at Norway’s northernmost tip, the crew began to suffer from the cold, which was frigid enough to form ice on the upper decks and masts. Battling obdurate ice floes, Hudson managed to reach Novaya Zemlya where Chancellor had been a half century earlier, but at this point he was halted by a barrier of insurmountable ice and could progress no farther. Nothing was to be done but to return home. “By now having spent more than half the time I had, and gone but the shortest part of the way [because of] contrary winds, I thought it my duty to save victual, wages and tackle, by my speedy return…”[2] The Hopewell turned about and made for the south, arriving at Gravesend on August 26.
In his journal entry of August 7, after the decision to abandon further exploration had been made, Hudson made a curious entry in his journal: “I gave my companie a certificate under my hand, of my free and willing return, without persuasion or force of any one or more of them …” The document was nothing more than exoneration from possible accusation that the bearer had been party to the use of force in the decision to return home. It was an irregular thing to have done and it shows that Hudson’s relationship with the men under his command was clumsy at best. He is seen as failing to establish a sympathetic and trusting rapport with his men; for all his prowess as a seaman and navigator, he lacked people skills. The journal entry is an ominous portent of things to come.
Among Hudson’s dreary daily reports on weather, position, and ice conditions, one colourful account stands out of a meeting with a “mermaid” spotted by two of the crew: “She was come close to the ship’s side,” he writes, “looking earnestly on the men. A little after, a sea came and overturned her: from the navel upward, her back 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 hair hanging down behind, of color black; in her going down they saw her tail, which was like the tail of a porpoise, and speckled like a mackerel.” (In all probability what Seamen Thomas Hilles and Robert Rayner saw was a seal, whose underwater appearance and movements in some people’s minds resemble those of a human).
Insofar as we are concerned, the account of Henry Hudson’s third attempt at finding a direct route to Cathay is of tangential interest since most of it passed well south of Arctic boundaries. We might nevertheless pause for a brief glimpse at it — it tells much of the man. On March 20, 1609, the forty-ton Halve Mae
n (Half Moon), sailed away, bound for Novaya Zemlya for a fresh try at the Kara Sea. This time Hudson was financed entirely by a determined clique of Amsterdam merchants and he went out in the name of Dutch King Maurice. Rounding Norway’s Nord Cap, he continued along the coast to the White Sea, passed it, and sailed on, only to be confounded by the same severe ice conditions that had halted his previous year’s attempt. A cul-de-sac it was, and one can only imagine Hudson’s chagrin at the disappointing development. At this point he appeared to have accepted the fact that a northern sea route through the east was not to be. Dispirited, but undaunted, he abandoned all hopes of finding such, and decided to redirect his efforts west to America.
Henry Hudson’s Half Moon (Halve Maen in Dutch), built in 1608 by the Dutch East India Company. The vessel met its end in the Dutch East Indies when it was attacked and sunk in 1618 by the English Navy.
The Half Moon about-turned and under favourable winds proceeded whence it had come. After a brief stop at the Faroe Islands, it made its way across the Atlantic and on July 8 it reached Newfoundland’s Grand Banks. It then quickly passed Nova Scotia, Maine — where the crew feasted on thirty-one lobsters and two jugs of Hudson’s personal stock of wine — and Cape Cod. By early August, the explorer was off the coast of Virginia not far from Jamestown, the colony founded three years earlier by his friend Captain John Smith. Hudson probably would not have aimed to reach those parts had Smith not informed him earlier that local Indians told of a great body of water opening to the west laying to the north of Jamestown. Near as he was to his friend’s colony, Hudson felt he could not spare the time for a visit; he turned north and moved on with the intention of examining all promising coastal waterways leading inward. Interesting details of the explorations are given by Robert Juet, Hudson’s second-in-command (who on the ensuing and final voyage fell out with his master and played a critical role in the infamous mutiny). His published account of 1625 is hardly a record of an illustrious expedition — quite the contrary. Not only did it fail to achieve its purpose, but it left behind a lamentable record of bloody encounters with the natives, of killings and kidnappings, and of drunkenness and looting. Inglorious, indeed.
In progressing up the coastline, Hudson explored Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, and every other likely-looking body of water. By early September he had reached Staten Island, where doubtless there must have been a rush of adrenalin as the vast mouth of the Hudson River burst into view — might this be the gateway of which the Virginia natives spoke? The Half Moon entered the river and embarked on a six-week exploration of the waterway. Travelling seventy-five miles upriver, it reached a point slightly north of Albany, where the waterway narrowed dramatically and became shallower, making further passage impossible. (At one point his ship found itself in seven feet of water.) Yet another dead end had been reached and another about-turn executed. After a series of adventures and encounters with the natives, they were back at the river’s mouth, where a stop was made at Manna-hata, an impressively lush, green island with massive oak trees facing “Hopoghan” (Hoboken). As he stepped ashore, Hudson was greeted by friendly natives who presented the Europeans with their first taste of corn, which the sailors called “Turkish wheat.” Here Hudson, the Englishman, laid claim to the area by ceremoniously posting on a tree the royal arms of the House of Orange — the Dutch, after all, sponsored him. Relationship with the natives soured and at one point a flotilla of canoes bearing a hundred natives attacked the Half Moon, but were repelled by volleys of gunfire.
By then the expedition had been away from home for nearly a half year, virtually all of it under hard sail and without adequate rest stops. Hudson had knocked at a handful of possible gateways to Cathay, but all for naught; it was time to return to the Old World … and he did. The expedition reached Europe on November 7 and put into Dartmouth rather than Amsterdam. In three years Henry Hudson had made three consecutive thrusts into the Arctic, and although each one added to the body of knowledge of the remote region, none had justified his mission.
English authorities were sufficiently displeased with Hudson’s service to the Dutch that at first they imprisoned him. His incarceration was short-lived and once he was set free, he soon found himself heading a fresh expedition to the New World. On April 17, 1610, the Discovery put out from out of London, made its way down the Thames, and sailed on to what was to become one of the world’s most notorious voyages. The Henry Hudson who commanded the ship was no longer the same man who three years earlier had navigated the Hopewell to Novaya Zemlya. Now, heading toward America for a third time, he had developed into “an old hand” at dealing with the demanding conditions of Arctic sailing and navigation. The experience he had gained amid the ice floes and weather conditions of northern Greenland and the Russian Arctic were inestimable. Additionally, Hudson had prepared himself well by exhaustively studying every available diary and log offered by previous explorers, not only the likes of Drake, Raleigh, Frobisher, and Davis, but of Spanish, Portuguese, and French voyagers. If a way to the Indies through the Northwest Passage did exist, none was better qualified to search it out than the driven Hudson.
Experienced and sea-wise as he may have been, Hudson had a difficult personality that many found grating. He was stubborn and frequently unpredictable; one moment he would show consideration and generosity, and in the next, thoughtlessness and harshness. Before having even cleared the Thames, for example, he became angered for some unrecorded reason with a certain crewman named Coleburne. The poor fellow was summarily dismissed and ordered ashore, bearing a note to the expedition’s sponsors explaining the circumstances. Hudson, for all his attributes, was a weak judge of men and he brought onto himself much of the dissention and mutinous behaviour he encountered on his journeys. Simply put, he lacked leadership skills, a defect that lead to his death and that of others, including his son, John.
The account of Hudson’s fateful expedition into the western Arctic was best made by an enigmatic individual who accompanied the voyage as the representative of the sponsors, a defrocked priest. The title of his narrative is A large Discourse of the said Voyage, and the Success thereof, written by Abacuk Pricket, who lived to come Home. Hudson’s own record of the journey’s early weeks is sketchy, and at one point the record stops abruptly. (Might it be that at some point the log’s pages were deliberately removed?)
Henry Hudson’s route of 1610–11 in penetrating Hudson Bay and James Bay.
Map by Cameron McLeod Jones.
Within a month of quitting London, the Discovery had reached Iceland where “we saw the famous [volcanic] Mount Hecla, which cast out much fire, a sign of foul weather to come.” Off Greenland’s east coast “we saw great store of whales, some of which came about and under the ship, but did no harm.” As they rounded Cape Farewell at Greenland’s southern tip and entered Davis Strait, “proceeding betwixt ice and ice, we saw a great island of ice tumble over, which was a good warning to us not to come near them.” They then entered Hudson Strait, the 450-mile length of water separating Baffin Island and Labrador, at the time called “Frobisher’s Straite.” Even in summer the waters are not free of ice and great chunks are pushed to and fro by swift currents and turbulent tides, which make any passage hazardous. The Discovery once became “fast enclosed by ice and we began to despair, and (as the Master afterwards told me) he thought we should never have got out of this ice, but there have perished.” The ice eventually loosened its grip, allowing the vessel to move on, but the experience of being bound by the floes, albeit briefly, weighed heavily on all members of the crew. As the vessel neared the Magnetic North Pole, the compasses performed erratically and direction location became problematic. The appalling sight of the vast iceberg recently toppling over had been indelibly impressed on everyone and the waters in which they now found themselves were perilous. What further surprises lay ahead could only be guessed at. The restlessness and fear of the weak-hearted became infectious and before long a certain disquiet began to envelope the Discovery.
The unsatisfactory state of affairs was compounded by a critical error in judgment made by Hudson, one that he lived ultimately to regret. He demoted his second-in-command, Robert Juet, and in his stead promoted a certain Robert Bylot. As early as Iceland, Juet had been openly critical of Hudson’s leadership and had been passing remarks that bordered on mutiny. He had “threatened to turn the head of the ship home from action,” said one sailor. Another of the crew reported that Juet at one time had warned shipmates to keep loaded muskets in their cabins, which would be “charged with shot before the voyage was over.” What precipitated this disloyalty is a matter of conjecture — Juet and his captain had been long-time shipmates and presumably they were aware of one another’s foibles. Hudson’s action was highly irregular, exceptional for a ship at sea, and it sent a clear message of non-confidence in his long-time mate. Shunted aside in disgrace, Juet seemed never to have recovered from the galling insult. The sensational demotion only exacerbated the developing divisions among the Discovery’s crew.