To Queen Elizabeth herself some credit must be given for the encouragement and stimulus her patronage afforded these hazardous enterprises; and if it was because of the reflected glory which would accrue to her, or even direct monetary profit, well, what matter? In Hakluyt one finds how “certain honourable personages and worthy gentlemen of the Court and Country, with divers worshipful merchants of London and the West Countrie, moved with desire to advance God’s glory, and to seek the good of their native country, consulting together of the likelihood of the discovery of the North-West Passage, which heretofore has been attempted, but unhappily given over by accidents unlooked for ... resolved, after good deliberation, to put down their adventures, to provide for necessary shipping, and a fit man to be chief conductor of this so hard an enterprise.” Then we are told how one Master William Sanderson, merchant, of London, became the greatest of the adventurers in respect of the money he provided, and how he commended to those who had the adventure in hand one Master John Davis, “a man very well grounded in the principales and art of navigation,” as captain and chief pilot of the expedition. One can imagine the meetings of the adventurers in London, and the zest with which the gentlemen of the Court, the Queen’s representatives, secret or open, and the worthy merchants, conned “sea-cards,” the charts of Master Martin Frobisher’s voyages of a few years before, and the learned and closely reasoned discourse of Sir Humphrey Gilbert himself regarding the existence of the Passage. It may be that among these was the chart of friar Andro Urdaneta, which Sir Humphrey Gilbert states was “made by his own (Urdaneta’s) experience and travel ... wherein was plainly set down and described this North-West Passage,” agreeing in all points with Ortelius’ map. And then there were the preparations at Dartmouth itself. The gathering together of a “company of goodlie seamen, not easily turned from any good purpose, and strong withal in their determination to serve the Queene’s Most Excellent Majestie and their countrie well and faithfully in this adventure”; the selection of ships and the fitting out of the same. They who adventured forth on long voyages in those days indeed needed stout hearts, for to the perils of the deep and the unknown were added those of possible starvation and drought. But at length everything was ready, and (again quoting Hakluyt’s vivid pages) “all things being put in readiness, we departed from Dartmouth the 7th of June towards the discovery of the aforesaid North-West Passage with two barques, the one being fifty tons, named the _Sunshine_ of London; and the other being of thirty-five tons, named the _Moonshine_, of Dartmouth. In the _Sunshine_ we had twenty-three persons, Master John Davis, captain.... The _Moonshine_ had nineteen persons, William Bruton, captain.”