Henry Hudson. Edward Butts
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and Portugal jealously guarding the sea lanes of the South Atlantic, the French and the English began to search for a more northerly route through or around America — a Northwest Passage. They concluded that because the circumference of the Earth is smaller at the higher latitudes, the Northwest Passage would be the major link in a short, commercially viable trade route to the Far East. Moreover, the country that found and controlled the passage would not only profit from trade, but would have a major card to play in political dealings with other European countries.
French and English expeditions probed the east coasts of what are now Canada and the United States, looking for a way through a land mass whose size they did not know. The French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River, hoping it would lead him to the Pacific Ocean. He was disappointed, though his discoveries marked the beginning of a French empire in North America. John Cabot, an Italian sailing for England, was the first to add Newfoundland to English charts. Explorers who came after him, like Martin Frobisher and John Davis, made the initial attempts to unravel the riddles of the Arctic Ocean.
Sir Martin Frobisher followed in Hudson’s footsteps, discovering Frobisher Bay in Baffin Island, as well as a large amount of pyrite (fool’s gold).
Frobisher’s story illustrates how little Europeans knew of the Far North. When he sailed into an inlet of Baffin Island (Frobisher Bay), he thought he was in a channel that separated the continents of Asia and America. Frobisher’s exploration was sidetracked when he returned to England with a rock that assayers were convinced contained gold. The result was Canada’s first gold rush. Investors, including Queen Elizabeth I, sent Frobisher back as the leader of a major expedition to mine gold. It turned out that Frobisher had found worthless fool’s gold. The Queen of England lost a lot of money in the venture — an example of why monarchs were hesitant to invest in voyages — and Martin Frobisher’s career as an explorer was over.
However, Frobisher saw the Furious Overfall. He wanted to explore it, but could not because he had been ordered to mine gold. Years later John Davis, and maybe a youthful Henry Hudson, also saw that turbulent strait. Pans of ice that came barrelling down the Overfall like battering rams forced Davis to turn back. For a man like Hudson, the Furious Overfall was a challenge to be taken up with daring. If only he could get a chance at it!
One January day in 1607, the gentlemen of the Muscovy Company held a meeting in their office on a street called Budge Row. It was a short, unimpressive looking street, but it was the centre of London’s wholesale marketplace. The merchants of Budge Row did business with the world. For the Muscovy Company, as indeed for all of the company’s merchant rivals, the world presented some complex geographical problems.
Ever since the English defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, England had grown from a second-rate, backwater country to a major military power and trading nation. Skeptics said that it was the weather more than anything else that had destroyed the Armada, but every good Englishman knew it had been the skill of English captains and the accuracy of the English gunners that had saved the country from the mightiest invasion fleet ever assembled. The humbling of Spain, the most powerful nation in Europe, had brought the English respect, prestige, and confidence. English commerce grew as merchants aggressively sought new markets. Every year saw more and more ships in the Pool, London’s main anchorage in the River Thames. Across the sea the Dutch, whose country had long lain under Spanish domination, had been encouraged to rebel. With English help, they had thrown off the Spanish yoke. Now Dutch merchants were rivals of the English and had even managed to establish their own trade route around Africa, sending Dutch ships into waters that had once been the private highways of the Portuguese.
The men of the Muscovy Company knew that in the ever-shifting world of commerce two things were essential to the survival of an enterprise: growth and adaptability. Their company was so-named because it traded with Russia, and had factors (agents) in Moscow. From Russia the company imported furs, tallow (used to make soap and candles), wax, hemp, flax, and timber. The Muscovy Company’s main export to Russia was cloth. English cloth was considered the best in the world, and the Russians used it to make coats and other clothing that could stand up to the brutal Russian winter.
Muscovy Company ships sailed north from England, around the top of Norway, then down to the White Sea and the Russian port of Arkhangel’sk. For years the English had had this trade route to themselves, but now the Dutch were also sending merchant vessels to Arkhangel’sk. That worried the men of the Muscovy Company. What’s more, their spies in Amsterdam had told them that the Dutch were planning to search for a Northeast Passage.
The idea of a Northeast Passage, as opposed to a Northwest Passage, was nothing new. About eighty years earlier an Englishman named Robert Thorne had tried to convince King Henry VII to finance a voyage to the Far East by way of the North Pole. People of that day thought that all of the ice floating in the northern ocean came from rivers that flowed into the sea at high latitudes. They held this belief because the water from a piece of melted sea ice was always fresh. They did not realize that when seawater freezes, the salt leeches out of the ice and back into the sea. They knew that some ice could form along coastlines in the winter, but they did not believe it was possible for ice to form in large bodies of salt water.
Thorne reasoned that in the summer, when there were weeks of constant daylight in the high Arctic, the sun’s rays would melt the ice and leave the sea open for navigation. He proposed a northern voyage to prove it. King Henry would not sponsor such a voyage, so Thorne had his theory published in a pamphlet called “Thorne’s Plan”. In it he said, “There is no land uninhabitable or sea innavigable.” Then he went on to explain his Plan. “Now then, if from Newfoundland the sea be navigable, there is no doubt, but sailing Northward and passing the Pole, descending to the Equinoctical line, we shall arrive at the islands of Cathay, and it should be a much shorter way than any other.”
Over the years Thorne’s theory had been discussed and enhanced by some of the religious thought peculiar to the time. Christians believed that the North Pole was located on an island. Because of its geographic importance, they reasoned, God would make the North Pole’s location a place of great beauty and dignity. To many people it just seemed to make sense that God, in his wisdom, would protect the North Pole from Arctic ice.
The men of the Muscovy Company did not place much belief in such far-fetched tales as God planting a little paradise in the midst of the Arctic waste. However, nobody had ever put Robert Thorne’s seemingly rational theory to the test. Now they wanted to do just that.
If there was indeed an ocean at the top of the world that was ice free during the summer, all that was needed was for someone to find a way through the pack ice that apparently surrounded it. The explorer could then sail past the North Pole on temperate waters, breach the icefields again at a more easterly location, and then continue south to China and Japan. But who was the man to lead such an expedition? That was what the men of the Muscovy Company had gathered to discuss.
Money was of principal importance to these men. They did not want to spend any more than was absolutely necessary. They had already approached King James I for financial support. The king had given their endeavour his royal blessing, but he would not contribute a penny. The Muscovy merchants therefore wanted a competent leader, but one who would not charge too much for his services.
Captain John Smith’s name came up during the meeting. But it was pointed out that the famous adventurer had already been engaged to take colonists to Virginia. Then someone suggested Henry Hudson. According to the minutes of that meeting, one of the Muscovy merchants said of Hudson, “He is an experienced sea pilot, and he has in his possession secret information that will enable him to find the north-east passage.”
That sounded like a good recommendation, but these hard-nosed businessmen wanted solid references. The Muscovy Company sent a deputation