Setting the Scene for the Search for the Northwest Passage Williams, Glyn, - the Quest for the Northwest Passage - Voyages of Delusion, Pp

Inuit Contact and Colonization Setting the Scene for the Search for the Northwest Passage Williams, Glyn, - The Quest for the Northwest Passage - Voyages of Delusion, pp. xv-xvii The European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century represented a determined attempt to dispel myth, superstition and ignorance. Those reminders of a darker age were replaced by a more rational and scientific approach, shown in the proliferation of learned societies, the systematic classifications of Linnaeus, the writings of the enryclopedistc in France, the economic theories of Adam Smith and his contemporaries. Across the oceans of the world European navigators used new techniques and instruments to explore, survey, and chart with a precision that would have amazed their predecessors. It is paradoxical then that the period since known as the Age of Reason witnessed a revival of hopes, often based on evidence that was little more than an expression of blind faith that a navigable Northwest Passage might yet exist. The quest for a sea route through or around America had begun in the sixteenth century when the successors of Columbus slowly realized the massive, continental dimensions of the new lands across the Atlantic. Seamen sailed along thousands of miles of coastline looking for a gap in the barrier through which they could reach the lands of the Orient and their fabulous riches, but they found only the tortuous Strait of Magellan far to the south. Whether there was a waterway through or round North America remained a matter for conjecture, although rumours about the little-known region north of Mexico hinted at golden cities and a strait linking the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. By the middle of the sixteenth century the strait had a name, Anian, but repeated Spanish efforts to find it failed. Nor did French expeditions probing along the eastern shores of North America have any more success, although they followed the St Lawrence River deep into the continent. For their part English seamen sailed even farther north, where they searched for the route they called the Northwest Passage, a name that in time would carry emotive implications, of men and ships battling against hopeless odds in a frozen wilderness. In the late Tudor and early Stuart period small vessels entered the eastern fringes of the Arctic archipelago in search of an open strait. The main 1 Williams, Glyn, - The Quest for the Northwest Passage - Voyages of Delusion, pp. xv-xvii Inuit Contact and Colonization Setting the Scene for the Search for the Northwest Passage Williams, Glyn, - The Quest for the Northwest Passage - Voyages of Delusion, pp. xv-xvii features of this vast region were named after these explorers: Davis Strait, Baffin Island and Baffin Bay, Frobisher Bay, Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay, Foxe Basin, James Bay. Once those names stood like hopeful signposts on the maps, pointing the way to the Pacific; but for all the endurance and bravery of the navigators there was no way through. In Hudson Bay they reached their farthest west, only to be blocked by icebound shores. After the expeditions of Luke Foxe and Thomas James in 1631 failed to find an opening no other ship entered Hudson Bay for almost forty years. The published narratives of the voyages were a reminder of what the crews had endured. Mountainous icebergs towered over the tiny vessels, and pack ice bore down to grip them as in a vice. The ice blurred the distinction between land and sea, and its shifts could he sudden and capricious. A clear channel one day might be solid with ice the next. Wooden hulls could he crushed, pierced, or overset as heavy floes smashed into them until, as William Baffin wrote of one moment, `unless the Lord himselfe had been on our side we had shurely perished'. Nor was ice the only danger, for the tides were so violent that they spun the ships around as in a whirlpool. Variation of the compass, little understood and unpredictable, added to the difficulties of navigation, while fog and snow often prevented for weeks at a time the taking of sun-sights to establish latitude. And always there was the cold, so extreme that even in the summer months sails and rigging froze solid. However, amid the hazards lessons were learned. Seamen became expert in spotting leads from the masthead, and in taking their ships through them. They cut channels through the ice with long saws, fended off floes with ice-poles and boat-hooks, and slowly winched or towed their vessels forward. They gained experience that would allow later adventurers to exploit the resources of a region where the first explorers had suffered hardship and death. (Voyages of Delusion:Quest for the Northwest Passage, pp. xv-xvii) 2 Williams, Glyn, - The Quest for the Northwest Passage - Voyages of Delusion, pp. xv-xvii .

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