land which he called Queen Elizabeth’s Foreland. This was
the southern part of Baffin Land (Resolution Island) in about
62° N. lat He was stopped by ice, but nearly two weeks later
he reached the coast and entered an inlet which he considered
to be the strait of the north-west passage, and he gave it his own
name (it is now Frobisher Bay on Baffin Land). The land was
called “Meta Incognita.” Frobisher was not well prepared
for going much farther, and after his boat with ive men had
disappeared he returned home, where, unfortunately, some
“gold-finders” in London took it into their heads that a piece
of dark heavy stone brought back contained gold ore. This
caused great excitement, it was now considered much more
important to collect this precious ore than to find the north-west
passage, and much larger expeditions were sent out in the two
following years. As many as fifteen vessels formed the third
expedition of 1578, and it was the intention to form a colony
with a hundred men in the gold land, but this scheme was
given up. Frobisher came into Hudson Strait, which was at
first thought to be Frobisher Strait and therefore called Mistaken
Strait There was an open sea without any land or ice
towards the west, and Frobisher was certain that he could sail
through to the “Mare del Sur” (Pacific Ocean) and “Kathaya,”
but his first goal was the “gold mines,” and the vessels returned
home with full loads of the ore. One of them, a buss (small
ship) of Bridgwater, called the “Emmanuel,” reported that on
her voyage home she had first sighted Frisland on the 8th
(18th) of September, but four days later she had sighted another
land in the Atlantic and sailed along it till the following day; they
reckoned its southern end to be in about 5712° N. lat. This land
soon found its place on maps and charts south-west of Iceland
Land of Buss.under the name of Buss Island, and as it was never
seen again it was after 1745 called “the sunken land
of Buss” The explanation is that, misled by the
maps, Frobisher assumed Greenland to be Frisland of the Zeno
map and Baffin Land was afterwards assumed to be the east
coast of Greenland. When the buss on her way home sighted
Greenland in about 62° N., she therefore thought it to be
Frisland, but when she four days later again sighted land
near Cape Farewell and her dead reckoning probably had
carried her about two degrees too far south, she naturally
considered this to be a new land, which puzzled geographers
and navigators for centuries. Owing to a similar mistake, not
by Frobisher, but by later cartographers and especially by Davis,
it was afterwards assumed that Frobisher Strait (and also
Mistaken Strait) was not in Baffin Land but on the east coast
of Greenland, where they remained on the maps till the 18th
century.
John Davis, who made the next attempt to discover a north-west passage, was one of the most scientific seamen of that age. He made three voyages in three successive years aided and fitted out by William Sanderson and other merchants. Sailing from Dartmouth Davis.on the 7th (17th) of June 1585, with two ships, he sighted on the 20th (30th) of July “the most deformed, rocky and mountainous land, that ever we sawe” He named it the Land of Desolation, although he understood that he had rediscovered “the shore which in ancient time was called Groenland.” It was its east coast. He visited the west coast, where Frobisher had also landed mistaking it for Frisland. Davis anchored in a place called Gilbert’s Sound in 64° 10′ (near the present Danish settlement of Godthaab) and had much intercourse with the Eskimo. He then, crossing the strait which bears his name, traced a portion of its western shore southwards from about 66° 40′ N. lat. and came into Cumberland Sound, which he thought to be the strait of the north-west passage, but returned home on account of contrary winds In the second voyage (with four ships) Davis traced the western shore of Davis Strait still farther southwards, and sailed along the coast of Labrador. In the third voyage (With three ships) in 1587 he advanced far up his own strait along the west coast of Greenland in a small leaky pinnace, the “Ellin,” and reached a lofty granite island in 72° 41′ N. lat., which he named Hope Sanderson. He met with ice in the sea west of this place, but reported that there was not “any yce towards the north, but a great sea, free, large, very salt and blew, and of an unsearchable depth.” By contrary winds, however, he was prevented from sailing in that direction. He sailed into Cumberland Sound, but now found that there was no passage He also passed on his way southwards the entrance to Frobisher Strait, which he named Lumley Inlet, and Hudson Strait, without understanding the importance of the latter. When Davis came to Labrador, where his two larger ships were to have waited for him, they had sailed to England. The little “Ellin” now struck a sunken rock and sprung a leak, which was repaired, and he crossed the Atlantic in this small leaky craft. He still believed in the existence of a passage through Davids Strait, but could find no support for another Arctic voyage. Davis was not the first to discover this strait, it was well-known to the Norsemen. Gaspar Corte-Real had possibly also been there, and Frobisher had during his voyages crossed its southern part every year. The result of Davis’s discoveries are shown on the Molyneux globe, which is now in the library of the Middle Temple, they are also shown on the “New Map” in Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations (1598–1600). When Davis was trying to reconcile his discoveries with the previous ones, especially those of Frobisher, he made fatal mistakes as mentioned above.
As early as 1565, by the intervention of a certain Philip Winterkönig, an exile from Vardöhus in Norway, Dutch merchants formed a settlement in Kola, and in 1578 two Dutch ships anchored in the mouth of the river Dvina, and a Dutch settlement Brunel.was established where Archangel was built a few years later. The leading man in these undertakings was Olivier Brunel, who is thus the founder of the White Sea trade of the Dutch; he was also their first Arctic navigator. He had travelled both overland and along the coast to Siberia and reached the river Ob; he had also visited Kostin Shar on Novaya Zemlya. He propounded plans for the discovery of the north-east passage to China, and in 1581 he went from Russia to Antwerp to prepare an expedition. He probably started with one ship in 1582, on the first Arctic expedition which left the Netherlands. Little is known of its fate except that it ended unsuccessfully with the wreck of the ship in the shallow Pechora Bay, possibly after a vain attempt to penetrate through the Yugor Strait into the Kara Sea. In 1583 we find Olivier Brunel in Bergen trying to organize a Norwegian undertaking, evidently towards the north-east, but it is uncertain whether it led to anything.
The Dutch, however, had begun to see the importance of a
northern route to China and India, especially as the routes
through the southern seas were jealously guarded by the Spaniards
and Portuguese, and after 1584 all trade with Portugal,
where the Dutch got Indian goods, was forbidden. By Brunel’s
efforts their attention had been directed towards the north-east
passage, but it was not until 1594 that a new expedition was
sent out, one of the promoters being Peter Plancius, the
learned cosmographer of Amsterdam. Four ships sailed from
Huysdunen on the 5th (15th) of June 1594. Two of these
ships from Amsterdam were under the command of Willem
Barents, who sighted Novaya Zemlya, north of
Matochkin Shar, on the 4th (14th) of July; andBarents
and Nay.
from that date until the 1st (11th) of August
Barents continued perseveringly to seek a way through
the ice-floes, and discovered the whole western coast as far
as the Great Ice Cape, the latitude of which he, with his
admirable accuracy, determined to be 77° N . Having reached
the Orange Islands at the north-west extremity, he decided
to return. The two other ships under the command of Cornelis
Nay had discovered the Yugor Strait, through which they sailed
into the Kara Sea on the 1st (11th) of August. They reached
the west coast of Yalmal; being sure that they had passed the
mouth of the river Ob, and finding the sea open, they thought
they had found a free passage to Japan and China, and returned
home on the 11th (21st) of August A new expedition was
made the following year, 1595, with seven ships under the
command of Cornelis Nay, as admiral, and Willem Barents as
