The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 3Whymper, Frederick
History
The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 3
Whymper, Frederick
Adventure and adventurers; Arctic regions; Ocean; Voyages around the world
And so it went on for forty-four days, until, in St. Laurence Bay, behind
a projecting point, they suddenly came on two Russian vessels with which
they had met the previous year, and the crews of which wondered to see
them in their present plight, “so leane and bare” and broken down. They
exchanged courtesies, and provided them with a trifling supply of rye
bread and smoked fowls, then sailing away on their own affairs. For
thirty-five days longer they sailed westward, repeating many of their
previous experiences, till at length, on September 2nd, they arrived at
Kola, in Russian Lapland, and their troubles were really over.
Cornelison’s ship happened to be in the port, and they rejoiced and made
merry with their old companions, who had long given them up for lost.
Thus ended this remarkable voyage of nearly eighty days in two small open
boats. It would seem nowadays utter madness to think of making a long
voyage in such frail and unsuitable craft, and our adventurers had had the
special perils of the Arctic seas superadded to the more ordinary dangers
of the ocean. Eight weeks later they were enjoying the calm pleasures of
their own firesides, after having been entertained at the Hague by the
Prince of Orange.
A further interest attaches to the voyage from the recent discovery made
by Captain Carlsen, while circumnavigating Nova Zembla, of the very house
erected at Ice Haven by these adventurers, with many interesting relics,
which had remained in tolerable preservation, and had been evidently
unvisited for this great length of time. “No man,” says Mr. Markham, “had
entered the lonely dwelling where the famous discoverer of Spitzbergen had
sojourned during the long winter of 1596 for nearly three centuries. There
stood the cooking-pans over the fireplace, the old clock against the wall,
the arms, the tools, the drinking-vessels, the instruments, and the books
that had beguiled the weary hours of that long night, 278 years ago....
Perhaps the most touching is the pair of small shoes. There was a little
cabin-boy among the crew, who died, as Gerrit de Veer tells us, during the
winter. This accounts for the shoes having been left behind. There is a
flute, too, once played by that poor boy, which will still give out a few
notes.”(24) The relics brought home by Carlsen were eventually taken to
the Hague, where they are now preserved with jealous care.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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