The Boy's Hakluyt: English Voyages of Adventure and DiscoveryHakluyt, Richard
History
The Boy's Hakluyt: English Voyages of Adventure and Discovery
Hakluyt, Richard
Discoveries in geography -- English -- Juvenile literature; Voyages and travels -- Juvenile literature
Now new perils were to beset them. The “Buss of Bridgewater” and the
barks “Gabriel” and “Michael,” not fully laden, put into Bear’s Sound to
take on a little more, the others meanwhile waiting for them farther
down the bay. Frobisher also went ashore in Bear’s Sound to superintend
the lading; and so did Best, the latter to take off his miners and their
trappings here, in his rickety “kneeless” pinnace. That night an
“outrageous tempest” fell upon them and created a general havoc. The
fleet down the bay were beaten with such vehement “vigor that anchor and
cable availed nought.” They were driven on “rockes and Ilands of yce”
and not one escaped damage. The “Judith” and the “Anne Francis” had now
joined them. Frobisher could not reach his ship and was compelled to
board the “Gabriel.” Best and his men had the roughest time of it. Their
crazy pinnace was taken in tow by the “Michael” and rushed through the
icy waters till the “Anne Francis” (which with the “Judith” had now
joined the fleet) was reached. They scrambled aboard the “Anne” in
panicky haste, and as the last man mounted her side the pinnace
“shivered and sank in pieces at the ship’s stern.” Thus fitly ended the
career of this astonishing craft. Unseaworthy from the start, she had
indeed performed wonders, and had miraculously held her own till her
full work was done.
Again the fleet was dispersed, not to come together through the
remainder of the voyage. The “boystrous blasts” continued so fierce and
constant that all were blown homeward “will we or nill we” (willy nilly)
at a clipping pace. “If by chance any one Shippe did overtake other by
swiftness of sayle, or mette [met] as they often did, yet was the rigour
of the wind so hideous that they could not continue company together the
space of one whole night.” The “Buss of Bridgewater” took her course
alone to the southeast of Greenland, and discovered on the way, in
latitude fifty-seven and a half degrees north, a phantom island,
“seeming to be fruitfull, full of woods, and a champagne country.” It
was named “Buss Island,” and got onto the maps; but it was never again
found. The other ships came limping home one by one, and by the first of
October all had arrived, “some in one place and some in another.” Of the
whole company that went out forty had perished during the expedition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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