1 Primary Source 5.5 RICHARD HAKLUYT, CHANCELLOR’S PASSAGE TO RUSSIA1 During the Middle Ages, merchants of Genoa and Venice dominated European maritime commerce. In the 1400s, the Portuguese, seeking trade routes to Asia bypassing Near Eastern middlemen, invented deep-water ocean navigation. The other great European powers eagerly adopted the new sailing methods. Thus began a race to explore and expand commercial relations throughout the globe. In the mid-1500s, England was far behind the other European seafaring countries. In 1553, three ships commanded by Sir Hugh Willoughby (d. 1554) and Richard Chancellor (d. 1556) departed England seeking unexplored lands in the far northeast. Willoughby’s ships, blown off course, settled on the Lapland coast where the men all froze to death. Chancellor’s team sailed into the White Sea and thence traveled overland to Moscow and negotiated a trading relationship with Tsar Ivan the Terrible. The following excerpt, by Edwin Monroe Bacon (1844–1916), an American writer, condenses a passage from The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation (1589–1600), the most important work by Richard Hakluyt (c. 1552– 1616), an English writer. In this three-volume work, Hakluyt recounts the voyages of English explorers, often quoting directly from primary sources. He hoped these stories would inspire his countrymen to develop colonies in North America. The full text can be found here. THE OPENING OF RUSSIA . The fleet started from Ratcliffe2 at the time appointed for the departure, the tenth of May (according to Willoughby’s journal, other accounts say the twentieth) and dropped down the Thames by easy stages. On the “Esperanza” with Sir Hugh were the larger number of merchants. The minister was on the “Edward Bonaventure”; and among the seamen of the latter was William Borough,3 the younger brother of the ship’s master, a lusty youth of sixteen, who afterward became comptroller of the queen’s navy. The spectacle of the passage by Greenwich, where the court was then seated at the ancient royal palace, is vividly portrayed by the historian of Chancellor’s exploits on this voyage, Clement Adams,4 the schoolmaster: “The greater shippes are towed downe with boates, and oares, and the mariners being all apparelled in Watchet, or skie coloured cloth, rowed amaine and made way with diligence. And being come neere Greenewich (where the court then lay) presently upon the newes thereof the Courtiers came running out, and the common people flockt together 1 Edwin M. Bacon, The Boy’s Hakluyt: English Voyages of Adventure and Discovery (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 108-22, 123. 2 A “sailor town” in England which near the north bank of the River Thames where many ships embarked on a voyage. 3 A British naval officer. 4 Clement Adams (c. 1519–87) produced an engraving of Sebastian Cabot’s map of the world. 2 standing very thicke upon the shoare: the privie Counsel, they lookt out at the windowes of the Court, and the rest ranne up to the toppes of the towers: the shippes hereupon discharge their Ordinance, and shoot off their pieces after the maner of warre, and of the sea, insomuch that the tops of the hilles sounded therewith, the valleys and the waters gave an Echo, and the Mariners, they shouted in such sort that the skie rang again with the noyse thereof. One stoode in the poope of the ship, and by his jesture bids farewell to his friends in the best maner he could. Another walks upon the hatches, another climbes the shrowdes, another stands upon the maine yarde, and another in the top of the shippe.” The boy king5 heard the parting salute but he did not see the show, for he lay in his chamber gravely ill of consumption. And a fortnight after the ships had taken the sea, he died. The fleet tarried some time off. Harwich and did not finally get away till the twenty- third of June. By the middle of July Heligoland, in the North Sea, was reached and visited. Next, Röst Island, where another short stay was made. Next, on the twenty-seventh of July, anchors were dropped at one of the Lofoden Islands,6 and there the voyagers remained for three days, finding the isle “plentifully inhabited” by “very gentle people.” Next they coasted along these islands north-northwest till the second of August, when they attempted to make another harbour, having arranged with a native, who came out to them in a skiff for a pilot to conduct them to “Wardhouse” (Vardohuus), an island haven off Finmark, with a “castle,” then a rendezvous of northern mariners. But violent whirlwinds prevented their entrance and they were constrained to take to the sea again. Thereupon the captain- general ran up the admiral’s flag signalling a conference of the chief officers of the fleet on board his ship. It was then agreed that in the event of a separation of the ships by a tempest or other mishap each should at once make for “Wardhouse,” and the first arriving in safety should there await the coming of the rest. That very day the dreaded separation occurred. Late in the afternoon a tempest suddenly arose which so lashed the sea that the ships were tossed hither and thither from their intended course. Above the storm on the “Edward Bonaventure” was heard the loud voice of Sir Hugh calling to Captain Chancellor to keep by the admiral. But the “Esperanza,” bearing all sails, sped onward with such swiftness that despite all of Chancellor’s efforts to follow, she was soon out of his sight. That was the last seen of her or of Sir Hugh and his companions. Nor was the “Confidentia” again seen by the men of the “Bonaventure.” Both ships and their companies had passed forever from their sight; and the miserable fate of their mates was not known when they had completed their voyage and returned to England. The story was finally told in Willoughby’s journal, which was found a year or more afterward with the ships and the frozen bodies of the luckless Sir Hugh and his companions, seventy in all, at Lapland. Hakluyt gives it under this caption: “The Voyage of Sir Hugh Willoughbie knight, wherein he unfortunately perished at Arzina Reca in Lapland, Anno 1553.” It is entitled: “The true copie of a Note found written in one of the two ships, to wit, the Speranza, which wintred in Lappia where Sir Willoughbie and all his companie died, being frozen to death Anno 1553.” This journal comprised a record of the expedition from the start to Willoughby’s occupation of the Lapland haven. It opened with a statement of the object of the voyage and 5 Edward VI (1537-1553), who reigned from 1547 and was fifteen as the ships set sail. 6 A cluster of islands located off the northwestern coast of Norway in the Artic Circle. 3 its institution by Cabot and the London Merchant Adventurers; a list of the ships and their burden, together with the names of their companies; and the text of the oath administered to the ships’ masters. Then followed the log of the voyage, beginning with the departure from Ratcliffe. From this it appears that the morning after the storm which had parted the ships, the “Esperanza,” with the lifting of a fog, espied the “Confidentia,” and thereafter these two ships managed to keep together. Seeing nothing of the “Bonaventure” they started in company to reach the rendezvous at “Wardhouse.” But it was not long before they lost their way. Through August and into September they sailed and drifted in various directions, northeast, south-southeast, northwest by west, west-southwest, north by east. On the fourteenth of August they discovered land in seventy-two degrees (which Hakluyt terms “Willoughbyie’s Land”), but could not reach it because of shoal water and much ice. At length, in the middle of September, they came upon land, rocky, high, and forbidding, apparently uninhabited; and so to the desolate Lapland haven which ultimately became their grave. Herein were found “very many seale fishes and other great fishes,” and upon the main were seen “beares, great deere, foxes, with divers strange beasts as guloines [or ellons, Hakluyt notes], and such other which were to us unknowen and also wonderful.” Then the sad record closes: “Thus remaining in this haven the space of a weeke, seeing the yeere farre spent, & also very evill wether, as frost, snow, and haile, as though it had been the deepe of winter, we thought best to winter there. Wherefore we sent out three men South-southwest, to search if they would find people, who went three dayes journey, but could finde none; after that, we sent other three Westward foure daies journey, which also returned without finding any people. Then sent we three men Southeast three dayes journey, who in like sorte returned without finding of people, or any similitude of habitation.” . Their subsequent fate is to be related farther on. Our present concern is with Richard Chancellor and the “Edward Bonaventure” after the dispersion of the fleet. “Pensive, heavie, and sorrowfull” at the disappearance of his fellows, Chancellor shaped his course for “Wardhouse,” according to the agreement, and in due time safely arrived there. When a week had passed with no sign of the other ships, he determined to proceed alone in the purposed voyage, in which decision all of his company acquiesced. Now follows the story of “The Voyage of Richard Chanceller Pilote major, the first discoverer by sea of the Kingdom of Muscovia, Anno 1553,” told in two documents reproduced by Hakluyt—Chancellor’s “rehearsal” of his adventures with an account of the wealth and barbaric splendour in the dominions of the “mighty Emperour7 of Russia and the Duke of Moscovia,” and Clement Adams’s narrative of the voyage as he received it “from the mouth of the said Richard Chanceler.” First of the voyage.