On the 4th of June, 1594, William Barents sailed from the Texel, in command of the Mercurius, fitted out by the merchants of Amsterdam. On the 4th of the following month he sighted Nova Zembla, and, doubling Cape Nassau, pushed along the coast as far as the Orange Islands. Here, how ever, he was stopped by the ice-barrier, and spent several days in searching for an opening, during which he went over "no fewer than seventeen hundred miles of ground, and put his ship about one-and-eighty times." It was, however, all in vain, and Barents returned home. Two years later the merchants of Amsterdam sent out two other vessels, Barents being ostensibly engaged as pilot. Passing Bear Island, the coasts of Spitzbergen were sighted on the 19th of June. Retracing their way to Bear Island, the vessels separated— one returning to Holland, the other, with Barents on board, proceeding to Nova Zembla. After passing Cape Comfort, the vessel was so hemmed in by the ice that Barents was forced to winter in Ice Haven. For greater safety a hut was constructed on shore, and in this they lived until the 14th of June the year following, when the breaking up of the ice enabled them to set out for Lapland in two boats—their ship being too much damaged by the ice. In forty days the brave Hollanders threaded their way among and across the ice floes for eleven hundred miles, and eventually gained the port of Kola, in Lapland, but the gallant Barents had expired on the 19th of June. The hut in which Barents and his companions had passed the winter was discovered on the 9th of Septem ber, 1869, by Captain Carlsen, of the Norwegian sloop Solid 1 We then come to the important discoveries made by the English navigator, Henry Hudson, who, in 1607, coolly determined to sail right across the Polar seas to Japan in a mere "cock-boat "—the Hopewell, of 80 tons—with a crew of only twelve men and a boy ! Leaving Gravesend on the 1st of May, Hudson sighted Spitzbergen on the 27th of June. Having pushed north fully half a degree beyond the 80th parallel, he returned home, discovering on his way south the solitary islet of Jan Mayen. His second voyage to the north east in the following year was equally unsuccessful. His third and last voyage, in 1610, was made in a different direc tion. During a careful examin*tion of the seas between Labrador and South Greenland, Hudson discovered a wide channel, through which he sailed west, and thus entered the vast inland sea named after him, Hudson Bay. Here his crew mutinied, and the unfortunate navigator, his son, and seven "sicke and lame men," were sent adrift in an open boat, and were never heard of after.
Passing over the semi-commercial voyages on account of the Muscovy Company, made in 1611 by Captain Poole, and in 1613 by Captain Joseph, we have the remarkable voyage of Fotherby along the west coast of Spitzbergen in 1614, followed two years after by Baffin in the Discovery. Baffin left England on the 26th of March, and sailed north, eventually entering the vast expanse of water now known as Baffin Bay. After reaching the then high latitude of 78° at the entrance to Smith Sound, he turned south, and arrived safely in Dover Roads on the 20th of August. Although the " North Water" discovered by Baffin was found open and navigable during the summer months, no attempt was made to penetrate the Middle Pack that separates it from Davis Strait until 1818, when the English Government sent out an expedition (ostensibly to discover the North-West Passage) under Captain, afterwards Sir John, Ross, who only succeeded in reaching the entrance to Smith Sound. An expressly Polar voyage was also undertaken by Captain Phipps in 1773, with two vessels, the Racehorse and Carcass on board the latter of which Nelson served as midshipman. In April, 1818, Captain Buchan and Lieutenant Franklin were sent out in command of the Dorothea and Trent, but gained no positive results. In May the following year, the British Government equipped the Heck and the Griper, and de spatched them north, with Lieutenant Parry in command. An ice-barrier 80 miles in width, just north of the 73rd parallel, was forced, and Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, and Wellington Channel were successively explored. In 1821, Captain Parry again sailed north in the !Leda, now accompanied by the Fury, and discovered Duke of York Bay, Fury and Heels Strait, and numerous other channels between the islands west of Baffin Land. Parry's third voyage (1824-25) was unfortunate, but in his fourth voyage he reached the furthest northerly point yet attained, 45'. Meanwhile, in 1822-23, Scoresby and Graah had explored the coast of East Greenland.
In 1845, Sir John Franklin in the Erebus, and Captain Crozier in the Terror, were sent north, with instructions to sail through Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait to Behring Strait. The two vessels were last seen in June the same year, in Melville Bay. For two years nothing was heard of the expedition ; but, incited by the heroic wife of the gallant commander, who believed her husband's vessels were simply hemmed in by the ice, several ships were sent north. The search for the missing vessels was energetically prosecuted, but it was not until 1850 that a clue was found— viz., a cairn and three graves on Beechey Island. One of the
vessels—the Investigator—engaged in the search, commanded by Capt. M'Clure, entered the Arctic Ocean through Behring 's Strait in 1850, but was frozen up in Prince of Wales Strait, whence Melville Sound was seen. " Captain Sir R M'Clure, by this perilous voyage, prosecuted with undaunted perse verance, found a strait connecting the continental channel with Melville Sound, and thus discovered the North- West Passage" (Richardson). The generally ice-bound state of the channels by which the passage might, under unusually favourable conditions, be made, renders the undertaking a most perilous one. Commercially, indeed, the brilliant achieve ment of Captain M'Clure is unimportant, as the channels he passed through can never be utilised as a waterway be tween the two great oceans.
In 1854, Dr. Rae being informed by the Esquimaux that a party of about forty white men had died from starvation a few years previously, and additional relics of the ill-fated ex peditions being found, the search was recommenced. The following year Mr. Anderson, one of the Hudson Bay Com pany's officers, crossed overland to the mouth of the Great Fish River ; and in 1857, Captain, afterwards Sir Leopold, M'Clintock, went out in the Fox, and wintered in Bellot Strait, whence sledge-parties explored the adjoining land. On Point Victory a cairn, containing Sir John Franklin's papers, was found. It seems that the expedition, having wintered at Beechey Island, had pushed south towards King William Land, but the ships were beset in the ice, near Cape Felix, in September, 1846. Franklin had died on the 11th of June, 1847 ; and in April the year following the survivors abandoned the ships, and started overland for the Great Fish River. A few reached the mainland, but not one lived to tell the tale. It thus appears that the honour of discovering the North-West Passage is due to the unfortunate Franklin. Ninety miles more of open water would have enabled him to carry his vessels into the open Arctic Sea. But " it was not to be so. Let us bow in humility and awe to the inscrutable decrees of that Providence who ruled it otherwise. They were to discover the great highway between the Pacific and the Atlantic. It was given them to win for their country a discovery for which she had risked her sons' sons, and lavished her wealth through many centuries ; but they were to die in accomplishing their last great earthly task ; and, still more strange, but for the energy and devotion of the wife of their chief and leader, it would in all probability never have been known that they were indeed the first discoverers of the North,-West Passage? The American Expedition, under the brave Dr. Kane, sailed from Boston in 1853, and wintered in Rensslaer Bay, on the eastern side of Smith Sound, whence sledge-parties pushed to the north. Dr. Kane personally approached the Great Humboldt Glacier, and Dr. Hayes explored the oppo site coast of Grinnel Land as far as Cape Fraser. Morton, with another party, reached the shores of an open sea, per fectly free from ice. The Advance was abandoned on the 28th of May, and the explorers ultimately reached Uppernavik, whence they sailed for New York. In 1860, Dr. Hayes proceeded north in the United States, following the usual route through Smith Sound. The probability of reaching the Pole by the Spitzbergen route led to the despatch of the Germania and the Hansa from Bremerhaven, in June, 1869. Both vessels struck the ice a little north of the 74th parallel, and on the 20th of July, owing to the commander of the Hansa mistaking the signal (" come close ") from the Germania, the ships parted company. The Hansa stood west towards East Greenland, but being caught in an ice-floe, the pressure was so great that she sank on the 22nd October—the officers and crew taking refuge in a coal hut, which had been erected on the floe.' Thus situated, they drifted south for nearly 200 days, but ultimately managed to land on a small island off the Greenland coast, whence they set out for the mission station of Friethicbsthal, in South Greenland, which was reached with great difficulty. Meanwhile the Germania was frozen in on 16th September. A sledge-party reached the furthest northerly point, 77° 1'. On the 15th of April the following year, the Germania was freed from the ice, and steamed north for some distance; but, besides the partial exploration of the remarkable East Greenland fiord, in lat. 73° 13' N., nothing further was done, and the vessel returned to Bremen. The Polaris, with Captain Hall in command, was sent out by the American Government in 1871. Entering Smith Sound, Hall pushed across Kane Sea and Kennedy Channel, reaching, in Robeson Channel, the latitude of 82° 16' N. on the 30th of August. The expedition wintered in Thank God Harbour, whence the Polaris sailed south on the 12th of August, 1872, but was again caught in the ice, and driven ashore at Lyttle ton Island, where she was abandoned. Her crew managed to reach Melville Bay, where they were picked up by a whaler.