336 



THE POLAR ^'ORLD. 



the history of Arctic discovery — the search for a north-eastern route to China. 

 Accordingly, in the year 1553, a squadron of three small vessels, under the 

 command of Sir Hugh Willoughby, Chancellor, and Durfoorth, set sail from 

 Ratcliffe, with the vain hope of reaching India by sailing round North Asia, 

 the formation and vast extent of which were at that time totally unknown. 



Off Senjan, an island on the Norwegian coast in lat. 69-|°, the ships parted 

 company in a stormy night, never to meet again. Willoughby and Durfoorth 

 reached the coast of Nova Zembla, and ultimately sought a harbor in Lap- 

 land on the west side of the entrance into the White Sea, where the captain- 

 general, officers, and crews of both ships were miserably frozen to death, as some 

 Russian fishermen ascertained in the following spring. How long they sus- 

 tained the severity of the weather is not known, but the journals and a will 

 found on board the " Admiral " proved that Sir Hugh Willoughby and most 

 of that ship's company were alive in January, 1554. They died the victims of 

 inexperience; for had they, as Sir John Richardson remarks, been skilled in 

 hunting and clothing themselves, and taken the precaution moreover of laying 

 in at the beginning of the winter a stock of mossy turf such as the country 

 produces for fuel, and above all had they secured a few of the very many seals 

 and belugae which abounded in the sea around them, they might have preserved 

 their lives and passed r.n endurable winter. 



Chancellor was either more fortunate or more skillful, for after having long 

 been buffeted about by stormy weather, he eventually reached St. Nicholas, in 

 the White Sea. From thence he proceeded overland to Moscow, and delivered 

 his credentials to the Czar, Ivan Vasilovitch, from whom he obtained many 

 pT'ivileges for the company of merchants who had fitted out the expedition. In 

 1554 he returned to England, and shortly afterwards was sent back to Russia 

 by Queen Mary for the purpose of negotiating a treaty of commerce between 

 the two nations. Having satisfactorily accomplished his mission, he once more 

 set sail from the White Sea, accompanied by a Muscovite ambassador. But 

 this time the return voyage was extremely unfortunate, for Chancellor, after 

 losing two of his vessels off the coast of Norway, was carried by a violent tem- 

 pest into the Bay of Pitsligo, in Scotland, where his ship was wrecked. He en- 

 deavored to save the ambassador and himself in a boat, but the small pinnace 

 was upset; and although the Russian safely reached the strand, the English- 

 man, after having escaped so many dangers in the Arctic Ocean, was drowned 

 within sight of his native shores. 



In 1556 the Muscovy Company fitted out the Serchthrift pinnace, under the 

 command of Stephen Burrough, for discovery towards the River Obi and farther 

 search for a north-east passage. This small vessel reached the strait between 

 Nova Zembla and Vaigats, called by the Russians the Kara Gate^ but the 

 enormous masses of ice that came floating through the channel compelled it to 

 return. 



In spite of these repeated disappointments, the desire to discover a northern 

 route to India was too great to allow an enterprising nation like the English to 

 abandon the scheme as hopeless. 



Thus in the days of Elizabeth the question of the north-west passage was 



