THE FIRST ARCTIC SEARCH EXPEDITION 7 



his meeting there with the Persian Ambassador came 

 about the mission, of Anthony Jenkinson to the Shah, 

 which opened up for us the Persian trade. Never was 

 a voyage more successful. With it began the foreign 

 commerce of this country, and from it dates the rise 

 of our mercantile marine. 



In 1556 Borough, in the Scarchthrift, persevered 

 further east, and, passing between Novaya Zemlya and 

 Waigatz Island, through the strait that bears his name 

 spelt differently, entered the Kara Sea. Next year in 

 the same ship he was given the command of the first 

 Arctic Search Expedition, its object being to discover 

 what had become of Willoughby. Of one ship, the 

 Confidentia, he obtained news in an interview with a 

 man who had bought her sails, but the full story of 

 the disastrous end of the voyage remained a mystery 

 until the Russians found the ships and bodies and 

 Willoughby 's journal, and took the ships round to the 

 Dwina. Then for the first time did people realise 

 what it meant to battle with an Arctic winter without 

 preparation, and many were those who withdrew their 

 interest in the frozen north, preferring tropical dangers 

 to the possibility of such accumulating miseries as the 

 journal records in due order in its matter-of-fact way, 

 its last entry being the terribly suggestive " Unknowen 

 and most wonderful wild beasts assembling in fearful 

 numbers about the ships." 



With Stephen Borough in the Chancellor voyage 

 was Arthur Pet or Pett, a name not unknown in the 

 navy who, after two centuries, has become notable 

 again through a strange discovery. In search of the 

 much-desired passage by the north-east he sailed from 



