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
Of Rijp’s subsequent proceedings nothing is known except that he is
stated to have sailed back to Bird Cape, on the west side of
Spitzbergen, whence he returned with the intention of going after
Barents. [180] How far he carried his intention into effect is not
said; but nothing worthy of remark can have occurred to him, or
otherwise it could not have failed to be recorded. We may therefore
conclude that he soon gave up his search after Barents and returned to
Holland, and that, in the following year, he went from thence on a
trading voyage to the coasts of Norway or Russia, and was on the point
of sailing from Kola on his way home, when Heemskerck and the survivors
of his crew arrived there, as is related by De Veer. [181]
Meanwhile Barents, having cleared the ice, held on his course to the
east till he reached the western shore of Novaya Zemlya, in about
latitude 73° 20′, [182] whence he coasted along the land till he had
passed considerably beyond the furthest point reached by him on his
first voyage, and had rounded the north-eastern extremity of that
country. Here, being at length quite shut in by the ice, and unable to
make his way either forwards towards the north-east, or round by the
eastern side of the land, or even back again by the way he had come, he
and his adventurous companions, on the evening of the 26th of August,
“got to the west side of the Ice Haven, where they were forced, in
great cold, poverty, misery, and grief, to stay all that winter.” [183]
Before adverting to the subject of the memorable wintering of the Dutch
at this spot, it is necessary to make a few remarks with respect to the
identification of the several points along the coast, which were
reached and noted by them during the course of their first and third
voyages. This is the more needful, because widely different opinions
are entertained by two of the highest living authorities on the
subject, Admiral Lütke and Professor von Baer.
The former, as is well known, was engaged in surveying the Northern
Ocean between the years 1821 and 1825, during which period he visited
many parts of the western coast of Novaya Zemlya between its southern
extremity and Cape Nassau to the north, and identified most of the
points visited by the Dutch, which he laid down in the map accompanying
the published account of his four voyages, to the German translation of
which allusion has already been made. Professor von Baer, on the other
hand, who also made a scientific visit to Novaya Zemlya in the year
1837, read in the preceeding year, before the Imperial Academy of
Sciences of St. Petersburg, a “Report of the latest Discoveries on the
Coast of Novaya Zemlya”, an illustration of a map of that country
constructed by a pilot in the Russian navy, named Zivolka; of which
report a German translation is published in Berghaus’s “Annalen der
Erd-Vôlker- und Staatenkunde.” [184]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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