In this expedition for the purpose of trading there were three ships, and from these details we have a fair idea of the way the pick of the Mercantile Marine was being conducted on a grand scale, as contrasted with the usual small voyages around the British Isles, or across the North Sea, English Channel and the Bay of Biscay. Such an expedition as the one we are considering aimed at big things: the opening up of a new trade route and fresh markets. Thus there were three ships in this venture, the 120-ton _Bona Esperanza_, which was the flagship; the 160-ton _Edward Bonaventure_; and the 90-ton _Bona Confidentia_. In the first was Sir Hugh Willoughby, captain-general of the squadron, or, as they called it, the fleet. In that same ship were the master, his mate and six merchants, together with the master gunner, boatswain, boatswain’s mate, four quartermasters and their four mates, two carpenters, a purser, a cook and his mate, two surgeons and others. Two men were landed at Harwich for sickness, and one other was ducked at the yard-arm “for pickerie,” and then discharged. The _Edward Bonaventure_ carried Richard Chancellor as captain and pilot major of the fleet, a master, his mate, two merchants, a minister, officers and mariners. The little _Bona Confidentia_ carried only a master, his mate, three merchants, as well as the usual officers and mariners. Each of these three ships had a pinnace and a boat. We know that these ships could never lie nearer than seven points from the wind by the statement that “the wind veared to the West, so that we could lie but North and by West.” Not having charts of the strange unexplored harbours and havens, the ship, on approaching the land, used to send her pinnace ahead to find an anchorage, and then the big craft could follow in. They used their lead for sounding, and consulted the globe, which was the only knowledge of geography of distant countries possessed in many cases. But it was no unusual thing to find in these exploratory voyages that “the land lay not as the Globe made mention.” In this particular expedition, whereon, by the way, Sir Hugh Willoughby and the company of two of his ships perished in the bitter Lapland regions, there were all sorts of anxieties through gales of winds, leaky ships, shoals, unknown coasts, cold and general discomfort inseparable from crudely built vessels. We can but admire the courageous enterprise which sent them forth, and thus helped to lay the foundations of our Mercantile Marine and seek a north-east passage to China.