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
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.
The story was finally told in Willoughby’s journal, which was found a
year or more afterward with the ships and the frozen bodies of the
luckless Sir Hugh and his companions, seventy in all, at Lapland.
Hakluyt gives it under this caption:
“The Voyage of Sir Hugh Willoughbie knight, wherein he unfortunately
perished at Arzina Reca in Lapland, Anno 1553.” It is entitled: “The
true copie of a Note found written in one of the two ships, to wit, the
Speranza, which wintred in Lappia where Sir Willoughbie and all his
companie died, being frozen to death Anno 1553.”
This journal comprised a record of the expedition from the start to
Willoughby’s occupation of the Lapland haven. It opened with a statement
of the object of the voyage and its institution by Cabot and the London
Merchant Adventurers; a list of the ships and their burden, together
with the names of their companies; and the text of the oath administered
to the ships’ masters. Then followed the log of the voyage, beginning
with the departure from Ratcliffe. From this it appears that the morning
after the storm which had parted the ships, the “Esperanza,” with the
lifting of a fog, espied the “Confidentia,” and thereafter these two
ships managed to keep together. Seeing nothing of the “Bonaventure” they
started in company to reach the rendezvous at “Wardhouse.” But it was
not long before they lost their way. Through August and into September
they sailed and drifted in various directions, northeast,
south-southeast, northwest by west, west-southwest, north by east. On
the fourteenth of August they discovered land in seventy-two degrees
(which Hakluyt terms “Willoughbyie’s Land”), but could not reach it
because of shoal water and much ice. At length, in the middle of
September, they came upon land, rocky, high, and forbidding, apparently
uninhabited; and so to the desolate Lapland haven which ultimately
became their grave. Herein were found “very many seale fishes and other
great fishes,” and upon the main were seen “beares, great deere, foxes,
with divers strange beasts as guloines [or ellons, Hakluyt notes], and
such other which were to us unknowen and also wonderful.” Then the sad
record closes:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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