Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage

by McGoogan, Ken

  After crossing Davis Strait, Davis revisited Cumberland Sound, but realized now that it provided no entrance to any northwest passage. Proceeding south, he noted the existence of Frobisher Bay without recognizing it as such, and then crossed the mouth of a “very great” inlet with a mighty tidal race—later, Hudson Strait.

  Here, according to Canadian historian Leslie H. Neatby, Davis saw what he described as “the sea falling down into the gulf with a mighty overfall, and roaring, and with divers circular motions like whirlpools, in such sort as forcible streams pass through the arches of bridges.” Such was the entrance to Hudson Strait at flood tide, when Atlantic waters poured westward into the massive bay, creating some of the highest tides in the world.

  Despite his “great admiration” for this “furious overfall,” Davis did not enter the strait. Probably this astute navigator had already decided, rightly, that any navigable passage would be found north of what would come to be called Baffin Island. He continued south along the coast of Labrador and then sailed home to England. In his journal, he wrote that, between Greenland and Baffin Island, “the Passage was free and without impediment toward the North.”

  After Davis, both English and Dutch explorers sought a route to the Orient through a northeast passage. This entailed venturing beyond Norway, through the Barents Sea, and then proceeding past the North Pole, where geographers posited the existence of the Open Polar Sea. Unfortunately, and despite these theories, voyagers kept finding their way blocked by pack ice.

  But now Henry Hudson enters our tale. Over the centuries, the quest for a navigable northwest passage spawned numerous catastrophes. Expeditions led by Jens Munk and James Knight would end famously in disaster, and John Franklin would contribute two well-known calamities. Apart from the final Franklin tragedy, however, no dreadful demise looms larger in the popular imagination than that of Henry Hudson. The image of Hudson set adrift in a small boat with seven men and a youth, victims of mutiny in a forbidding seascape, haunts anyone awake to the nightmare history of Arctic exploration.

  Caught up in the fever dream of discovering a Northwest Passage, Hudson feared nothing, took calculated risks, and regarded the merchants who financed his voyages as glorified clerks. In the early 1600s, he sought a northeast passage across the top of Russia and came within 1,070 kilometres of the North Pole before he was driven back by ice. Backed by the Dutch East India Company, the Englishman tried again in 1609, but encountered, as others had, impenetrable ice in the Barents Sea.

  Deciding unilaterally that a northwest passage held more promise, he set aside his orders. He turned his ship around, sailed south past Greenland and then along the coast of North America, looking for that elusive entranceway. He passed Nova Scotia, visited the mouth of the Delaware River and then explored the Hudson River from present-day New York City to Albany. In sum, whenever it suited him, as author Douglas Hunter observes in God’s Mercies: Rivalry, Betrayal and the Dream of Discovery, Hudson “egregiously defied his sailing directions” to venture where he thought best.

  Henry Hudson was a younger contemporary of Elizabethan scientist William Gilbert, who in 1600 published a book, De Magnete, seeking to explain why mariners’ compasses acted erratically when they sailed north—a phenomenon that would lead, two centuries later, to attempts to locate the ever-shifting north magnetic pole. Ten years after Gilbert’s book appeared, and having gleaned what he could from that volume, Hudson embarked on what would prove to be his final voyage. He departed from London, a city of 200,000 that was spilling beyond its medieval walls.

  British merchants, yearning to acquire spices from the Far East, were urging him to seek a passage through the “furious overfall” which had so impressed Frobisher and Davis. On April 17, 1610, Hudson sailed down the Thames in a small, seventy-ton wooden ship called Discovery. With him he brought twenty-one men and two boys, one of whom was his teenage son.

  Seventeen months later, in September 1611, the Discovery arrived back in England carrying seven men and one boy, sole survivors of this latest voyage to the new world. Hudson and his son were not among those who returned, and the deck of the ship was stained with blood.

  Like the later Franklin tragedy, the Hudson saga has inspired numerous interpretations. Only the eight survivors, obviously, could present a rendition of what had happened. They were all mutineers, or had at least gone along with a mutiny. They included the ship’s navigator, Abacuk Pricket, who had kept a journal of the voyage that would be recognized as the most reliable source. Pricket identified Henry Greene and Robert Juet, both now conveniently dead, as instigators of the mutiny.

  The trouble had begun less than one month out of port, off the coast of Iceland, when the volatile Greene, an early favourite of Hudson, got into a fight with the ship’s surgeon, Edward Wilson, a superior officer. When Hudson chose to pardon this act of rebellion, first mate Robert Juet voiced his outrage. Hudson ignored all protest and sailed on.

  Towards the end of June, having battled ice off the coast of Greenland, he guided the Discovery into the furious overfall. Here extraordinary tides, which can reach fifty or sixty feet, battered the ship with whirling chunks of ice. Despite dissension, and with some men clamouring to turn back, Hudson sailed on, hugging the coastline. Hudson Strait is 725 kilometres long, but eventually the ship emerged into a “great and whirling sea,” where, to the amazement of the sailors, polar bears swam among the ice floes.

  Robert Juet ridiculed the notion that a channel to the Orient might exist to the west, and Hudson responded with a lecture and charts that convinced nobody. After passing a towering cape he named Wolstenholme, Hudson sent a scouting party ashore. The men found abundant wildlife and an Inuit storehouse filled with food. They wanted to remain and clean the place out. But the strong-willed Hudson, believing he was nearing his geographical objective, insisted on departing immediately. He proceeded south into James Bay, but then sailed back and forth without finding any egress.

  The crew became increasingly disgruntled. Robert Juet again ridiculed the captain, and this time Hudson accused him of disloyalty. Juet demanded a trial before the ship’s company and got it. To his chagrin, several crewmen testified to his traitorous remarks. Hudson demoted Juet and several who had sided with him. He indicated that good behaviour could lead to reinstatement, but the lines were drawn. The new first mate was the superbly capable Robert Bylot.

  Hudson explored James Bay through October, despite encroaching ice. By November 10, 1610, the Discovery was frozen fast near Charlton Island. Hudson began rationing food, and some crewmen grumbled about not having taken more from the storehouse at Cape Wolstenholme. One man died and a silly dispute over who should inherit his cape caused a rift between Hudson and his former protegé, Henry Greene. The captain then had an altercation with the ship’s carpenter, Philip Staffe, over the building of a shelter in the freezing cold.

  The ensuing winter brought blizzards, hunger and scurvy. As the ice began to recede, a native appeared. Hudson communicated a desire to trade and gave him a few trinkets. The man returned with skins and meat. But the English response proved too miserly to encourage further dealings, and the man never returned.

  The warming spring weather opened the water to fishing. On the first day, the sailors netted more than five hundred fish. They rejoiced, but never did that well again, and food once more became scarce. Hoping to renew trade with the natives, Hudson took enough food for eight or nine days and, with a few men, went searching in the shallop—a risky decision that left an unruly crew in control of the Discovery. The local people wanted nothing to do with the interlopers, and at one point set the forest ablaze to discourage their approach.

  Back on the ship, without explanation, Hudson now demoted that capable navigator Robert Bylot and promoted an illiterate in his place—a man who knew nothing of navigation, and so could not question his calculations. By this action, he took sole control of the ship’s route. Having narrowly survived one horrendous winter locked in the ice of James Ba
y, he appeared bent on risking a second to continue seeking the Northwest Passage—and this, many of the men found unacceptable.

  With the ice melting and the ship set to sail, Hudson decided to divide the remaining food and give each man his share. Some men devoured their two-week allotment in a day. Many suspected the captain of hoarding and playing favourites, and in this they would be proven correct. Hudson had suspicions of his own. He launched a search that turned up three dozen hidden “cakes” of food.

  The situation exploded on June 23, 1611, a Saturday night, when Juet and Greene launched their mutiny. The journal-keeper, Abacuk Pricket, hedged and equivocated, telling them that even if they succeeded and reached home, then as mutineers they would hang. Greene said he would rather hang than starve. Juet swore that he would justify the mutiny to the authorities. Pricket claimed that he made the conspirators swear on a Bible that they would harm nobody.

  In the morning, the mutineers seized Henry Hudson and his closest allies. They brought alongside the ship a small boat with oars and a sail. Into this, after some pushing and shoving, they forced Hudson and eight others, one of them his son, John Hudson. Two of those driven into the shallop were sick, and two pleaded unsuccessfully to remain with the Discovery. One man, Philip Staffe, the carpenter, refused to countenance the mutiny and was allowed to board the small boat with his chest, musket and an iron pot.

  The Last Voyage of Henry Hudson, painted by John Collier in 1881. In 1611, mutineers forced Hudson and eight allies—one of them his son, John—into a small boat and sailed away.

  Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

  The mutineers cut the shallop loose, and then, shockingly, sailed away northward. Hudson and his friends, Pricket writes, were “without food, drink, fire, clothing, or other necessaries” in one of the most forbidding seascapes in the world. Those abandoned to the small boat broke out oars and rowed after the sailing ship, desperate to negotiate a return. But on seeing their persistence, the mutineers added sails and, swinging northeast, left the shallop far behind.

  On the evening of June 26, thanks to the navigational skills of Robert Bylot, the Discovery reached Cape Wolstenholme at the western end of Hudson Strait. Nearby, during their inbound voyage, the men had raided that Inuit storehouse. This time, they encountered some apparently friendly hunters—doubtless those they had previously robbed. The next day, when they went ashore in a small boat to trade, they walked into an ambush. Two sailors were killed on shore. Others, wounded, made it back to the boat. But a hail of arrows killed Henry Greene, and three wounded sailors died back on board ship.

  Only eight men and a cabin boy remained alive. Sick and starving, reduced to eating small birds, they had to travel through Hudson Strait and then cross the rolling Atlantic. Again, despite his rudimentary instruments, Robert Bylot proved equal to the navigational challenge. In mid-September, having first reached western Ireland, the mutineers arrived in London (one more having died).

  Some citizens there, on learning what had transpired, demanded that the perpetrators be hanged. But both Bylot and Pricket claimed they had discovered a northwest passage. And Bylot, in particular, had gained crucial knowledge and demonstrated singular expertise. The mutineers went free. Eventually, merchants bent on locating that elusive Passage found a legal loophole. The survivors were charged not with mutiny but with murder, and then, of this, judged innocent.

  Meanwhile, Robert Bylot proved useful. The year after he arrived home, sailing with captain Thomas Button, he re-entered Hudson Bay. The voyagers survived the harsh winter and charted most of the west coast of the Bay, including the mouth of the Churchill River. On his next voyage, sailing as captain of the Discovery, and backed by the Muscovy Company, Bylot proceeded through Hudson Strait and swung north to probe those waters. He was halted by pack ice at the eastern end of “Frozen Strait.”

  In 1616, forty years after Martin Frobisher’s first voyage, Bylot sailed west yet once more. This time an accomplished pilot, William Baffin, came with him. Together, after voyaging north through Davis Strait, Bylot and Baffin mapped the contours of what came to be called Baffin Bay. They discovered the entrance to Smith Sound, the main gateway to the North Pole, and reached a northern latitude of almost 78°, which would stand as a record for 236 years. Finally, they discovered Lancaster Sound. This would prove to be the entrance to the Northwest Passage, though it failed to register with the navigators as such because of the icy conditions.

  Back in England, armchair voyagers remained committed to finding the Passage. They expressed doubts about the Bylot-Baffin maps, and indicated as much on the charts they published. Two centuries later, when in 1818 Sir John Ross “rediscovered” Baffin Bay, he and others were astonished by the accuracy of the Bylot-Baffin maps. Most of the credit went to Baffin, ostensibly because he was the first to use lunar observations to calculate longitude, but probably because Bylot’s reputation had been damaged by his involvement in the Hudson mutiny. Hudson himself, never seen again, became a first unhappy omen. Voyagers entered these northern waters at their peril.

  2.

  Catastrophe Engulfs Jens Munk

  Despite what happened to Henry Hudson, explorers continued to seek an eastern entrance to the Northwest Passage through Hudson Bay. In 1619, soon after Robert Bylot and Thomas Button searched the Bay and found no way through, the Danish-Norwegian explorer Jens Munk, unconvinced, sailed into the Bay with sixty-four men in two ships. The Unicorn, a frigate, carried forty-eight men, and the sloop Lamprey, sixteen.

  A veteran seaman at thirty-nine, Munk had been sailing since boyhood, and had served with distinction during a war against Sweden. More recently, as a result of a failed High Arctic whaling initiative, he had lost a fortune and no small amount of prestige. Munk sought the Northwest Passage as a way of restoring his damaged reputation. In this he anticipated John Franklin who, with much the same motive, would embark more than two centuries later. As we shall see, the catastrophes that engulfed the two expeditions would resonate in other ways.

  Late in the summer of 1619, having sailed from Copenhagen and probed Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island, Munk beat his way through the treacherous Hudson Strait, which he called “Fretum Christian” after his sovereign, Christian IV. On the north shore of the strait, while hunting caribou on July 18, he had an ultimately friendly encounter with Inuit hunters.

  In The Journal of Jens Munk, 1619–1620, translated into modern English by Walter Kenyon, we read that, having spotted the hunters from the Unicorn, Munk jumped into a boat with a few sailors. “When they saw that I intended to land,” he writes, “they hid their weapons and other implements behind some rocks and just stood waiting.” After landing, though the Inuit tried to stop him, Munk strode over, picked up the weapons, and examined them. “While I was looking them over,” he notes, “the natives led me to believe that they would rather lose all their clothing and be forced to go naked than lose their weapons. Pointing to their mouths, they indicated that they used the weapons to procure their food.” When Munk laid the weapons aside, “they clapped their hands, looked up to heaven, and seemed overjoyed.”

  Munk presented the hunters with knives and other metal goods. He gave a looking-glass to one man, who did not know what it was. “When I took it from him and held it in front of his face so that he could see himself, he grabbed the glass and hid it under his clothing.” The hunters gave Munk numerous presents, including various kinds of birds and seal meat. “All the natives embraced one of my men,” he added, “who had a swarthy complexion and black hair—they thought, no doubt, that he was one of their countrymen.”

  A few days later, returning to this harbour, Munk hoped to see more of the Inuit but encountered none. In typical European style, he erected a marker bearing “the arms of His Royal Majesty King Christian IV” and, because of the excellent hunting, named the harbour Reindeer Sound. Near the Inuit fishing nets, he left a few knives and trinkets. And then he resumed his difficult voyage into unknown waters, drifting “wherever the
wind and the ice might carry us, with no open water visible anywhere.”

  With winter coming on, Munk managed to cross Hudson Bay, which he called “Novum Mare Christian.” On September 7, he entered the estuary of the Churchill River “with great difficulty, because there were high winds, with snow, hail, and fog.” Here, in “Jens Muncke’s Bay,” he sheltered his ships and settled in for winter. Some of the men had fallen ill, so he had them taken ashore. He built a fire to comfort the sick, but the party ended up huddling in tents through a terrible, two-day snowstorm.

  Now came a moment worth noting. “Early the next morning,” Munk writes, “a large white bear came down to the water’s edge, where it started to eat a beluga fish that I had caught the day before. I shot the bear and gave the meat to the crew with orders that it was to be just slightly boiled, then kept in vinegar overnight. I even had two or three pieces of the flesh roasted for the cabin. It was of good taste and quite agreeable.”

  Munk sent men to investigate the surrounding woods. On September 19, after consulting with his officers, he sailed the Unicorn and the sloop upriver as far as possible. By October 1, he had both vessels secured and well protected. He had all the men take their meals on the Unicorn so as not to keep two galleys going at once. Soon he was making scientific observations and recording opinions on bird migrations and the origins of icebergs. Having always intended to live off the land, Munk encouraged his men to hunt the flocks of ptarmigan and partridge.

  On November 21, Munk writes, “We buried a sailor who had been ill for a long time.” This would prove a harbinger of things to come. On December 12, one of the two surgeons died: “We had to keep his body on the ship for two days because the frost was so severe that no one could get ashore to bury him.” On Christmas Eve, as yet unconcerned, Munk gave the men “some wine and strong beer, which they had to boil as it was frozen.” Over the next few days, the men played games to amuse themselves. “At the time,” Munk writes, “the crew was in good health and brimming with excitement.”