The Three Voyages of William Barents to the Arctic Regions (1594, 1595, and 1596)Veer, Gerrit de
History
The Three Voyages of William Barents to the Arctic Regions (1594, 1595, and 1596)
Veer, Gerrit de
Barentsz, Willem, approximately 1550-1597; Northeast Passage
The three vessels thus fitted out sailed in company from Ratcliff on
the 10th of May, 1553. On their arrival at Harwich, they were detained
there some time; “yet at the last with a good winde they hoysed vp
saile, and committed themselues to the sea, giuing their last adieu to
their natiue country, which they knewe not whether they should euer
returne to see againe or not. Many of them looked oftentimes backe, and
could not refraine from teares, considering into what hazards they were
to fall, and what vncertainties of the sea they were to make triall
of.” [26]
These gloomy forebodings were not long in finding their realization. In
a violent tempest off the coast of Norway, two of the vessels, the Bona
Esperanza and Bona Confidentia, in the former of which was Sir Hugh
Willoughby, captain-general of the fleet, were driven far out to sea,
and at length put into a small haven on the coast of Lapland, near the
mouth of the river Warsina, [27] where the entire crews of both
vessels, amounting in all to seventy souls, miserably perished from
cold and hunger.
Before meeting with his untimely end, Willoughby, on the 14th of
August, “descried land, which land (he says, in a note found written in
one of the two ships) we bare with all, hoising out our boat to
discover what land it might be; but the boat could not come to land,
the water was so shoale, where was very much ice also, but there was no
similitude of habitation; and this land lyeth from Seynam [28] east and
by north 160 leagues, being in latitude 72 degrees. Then we plyed to
the northward”. [29] As the subject of Willoughby’s voyage has been
discussed by Mr. Rundall in a recent publication of the Hakluyt
Society, [30] it is here unnecessary to say more than that, whatever
may formerly have been the notions of geographers as to the coast
reached by our hapless countryman, and to which the name of
“Willoughby’s Land” was given, the almost universally received opinion
now is [31] that it was that portion of the western coast of Novaya
Zemlya, which is called by Lütke the Goose Coast (Gänseufer in Erman’s
Translation [32]),—doubtless from the numbers of water-fowl found
there,—and of which the North and South Goose Capes (Syevernuy Gusinuy
Muis and Yuzhnuy Gusinuy Muis) form the two extremities. Mr. Rundall is
therefore fully justified in claiming for Sir Hugh Willoughby, as he so
earnestly does in his work just cited, [33] “the credit of having been
the first Englishman by whom the coast of Novaya Zemlya was visited”;
and as, further, Willoughby was not only the first Englishman, but also
the first European, who had ever been there, the rule and usual
practice in regard to new discoveries fairly warrants the application
of the name of “Willoughby’s Land” to this “Goose Coast”, which our
countryman was thus the first to visit and make known to us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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