Part 7

“In the yeere 1517 an English Rover under the colour of travelling to discover, came with a great shippe unto the parts of Brasill on the coast of the firme land, and from thence he crossed over unto this Iland of Hispaneola, and arrived neere unto the mouth of the haven of this citie of S. Domingo, and sent his shipboate full of men on shoare and demaunded leave to enter into this haven, saying that hee came with marchandise to traffique. But at that very instant the governour of the castle, Francis de Tapia, caused a tire of ordinance to be shot from the castle at the ship, for she bare in directly with the haven. When the Englishmen sawe this, they withdrew themselves out, and those that were in the shipboate got themselves with all speede on shipboord. And in trueth the warden of the castle committed an oversight: for if the shippe had entred into the haven the men thereof could not have come on lande without leave both of the citie and of the castle. Therefore the people of the ship seeing how they were received sayled toward the Iland of S. John, and entring into the port of S. Germaine, the English men parled [parleyed] with those of the towne, requiring victuals and things needefull to furnish their ship, and complained of the inhabitants of the city of S. Domingo saying that they came not to doe any harme but to trade and traffique for their money and merchandise. In this place they had certaine victuals and for recompense they gave and paid them with certaine vessell of wrought tinne and other things. And afterward they departed toward Europe....”

[Illustration:

KING HENRY VIII. From a photograph, copyrighted by Walker and Boutall, of a painting. ]

Hakluyt resents Oviedo’s use of the term “Rover” in this account and his assumption that the object of the expedition was other than discovery and traffic, remarking tartly that Spanish and Portuguese writers “account all other nations for Pirates, rovers, and thieves who visit any heathen coast that they have once sailed by or looked on.”

With the failure of this enterprise Cabot again left England and reëntered the service of Spain, taking the post of “pilot major.”

IX THE NORTHEAST PASSAGE

Later in Henry the eighth’s reign, in 1527, a larger expedition, composed of “divers cunning men,” set out for Northern discovery, but with no more satisfactory results. Their enterprise was impelled by the weighty reasoning of Robert Thorne, the observant Bristol merchant, then in Seville (whom Hakluyt terms a “notable member and ornament of his country”), in his “large discourse” of that year to Dr. Ley, the English ambassador in Spain, urging the immediate need of English discovery in the north parts, “even to the North pole,” to overcome the advantages gained by Spain and Portugal in their discoveries of “all the Indies and seas Occidental and Oriental,” so “by this part of the Orient and Occident” compassing the world. Who were the “divers cunning men” composing this expedition Hakluyt endeavoured to ascertain through much enquiry among “such as by their years and delight in Navigation” might inform him. He learned, however, of one only, and his name he could not get—a certain canon of St. Paul’s in London, a “great mathematician, and indued with wealth,” apparently the leader. Two “fair ships” formed the squadron, one of them called “The Dominus Vobiscum.” They set forth out of the Thames on a mid-May day. When sailing “far northwestward” one of the ships was cast away as it entered into “a dangerous gulph about the great opening between the North parts of Newfoundland and the country lately called by her Majestie Meta Incognita.” Thereupon the other ship, “shaping her course toward Cape Briton and the coaste of Arambec, and oftentimes putting their men on land to search the state of those regions, returned home about the beginning of October.” So this story lamely ends.

Six years later an enterprise for discovery in the same parts was projected by certain London men, with the king’s “favour and good countenance,” under the leadership of one “Master Hore,” a “man of goodly stature and of great courage, and given to the studie of Cosmographie.” Master Hore’s “persuasions” were so effective that he soon drew into the scheme “many gentlemen of the Inns of court and of the Chancerie, and divers others of good worship, desirous to see the strange things of the world.” Two “tall ships” were obtained for the venture, the “Trinitie,” of one hundred and forty tons, which was designated the “admiral” (flag-ship) of the fleet, and the “Minion.” The company numbered about sixscore persons, of whom thirty were gentlemen. Among the latter were enrolled one Armigil Wade, “a very learned and vertuous gentleman,” afterward clerk of the councils of Henry the eighth and his successor, Edward the sixth; one Joy, subsequently gentleman of the king’s chapel; and Oliver Dawbeny, a merchant of London. All were “mustered in warlike manner” at Gravesend. After receiving the Sacrament they embarked and sailed away at the end of April, 1536. The adventures of these gentlemen-explorers were rare and tragic.

From the time that they left Gravesend they were more than two months at 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.