Historical Dictionary of the Discovery and Exploration of the Northwest Passage (Historical Dictionaries of Discovery and Exploration)

Historical Dictionary of the Discovery and Exploration of the Northwest Passage

Alan Day

The Scarecrow Press

HISTORICAL DICTIONARIES OF DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION Series Editor: Jon Woronoff 1. Australia, by Alan Day, 2003. 2. Pacific Islands, by Max Quanchi and John Robson, 2005. 3. Northwest Passage, by Alan Day, 2006.

Historical Dictionary of the Discovery and Exploration of the Northwest Passage Alan Day

Historical Dictionaries of Discovery and Exploration, No. 3

The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham, Maryland • Toronto • Oxford 2006

SCARECROW PRESS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Scarecrow Press, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.scarecrowpress.com PO Box 317 Oxford OX2 9RU, UK Copyright  2006 by Alan Day All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Day, Alan Edwin. Historical dictionary of the discovery and exploration of the Northwest Passage / Alan Day. p. cm.—(Historical dictionaries of discovery and exploration ; no. 3) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0–8108–5486–4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Northwest Passage—Discovery and exploration—Dictionaries. 2. Northwest Passage—History—Dictionaries. I. Title. II. Series. G640.D35 2006 910⬘.9163⬘27—dc22 2005015424

 ⬁ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992. Manufactured in the United States of America.

For Alexander, John, Matthew, Joe, and Maegan

Contents

Editor’s Foreword (John Woronoff)

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Acronyms and Abbreviations

xiii

Maps

xiv

Chronology

xvii

Introduction

xxxiii

THE DICTIONARY

1

Bibliography

299

About the Author

417

vii

Editor’s Foreword

In the long history of discovery and exploration, no topic has been quite as elusive yet as compelling as the Northwest Passage. Its existence was first suggested in the late 15th century, not long after the Americas were discovered (in a rather inconvenient spot, blocking ready access to the much more coveted Asia and the riches that would presumably come with quicker access to what was then known as Cathay). Admittedly, no one knew for sure that it was there, let alone where it was located, but for four centuries, until Roald Amundsen’s famous voyage of 1903–1906, it was doggedly sought. In the meantime, much of the Canadian north and the Arctic were also encountered, but as a target for discovery nothing matched the Northwest Passage in prestige. Even now, a century after the route was found, there is lively interest punctuated by periodic visits to early sites and reenactments. This long tale of adventure and hardship (there was much of both, especially the latter) is recounted in this Historical Dictionary of the Discovery and Exploration of the Northwest Passage. First there is an extensive and in-depth chronology, followed by a general introduction. Next is the dictionary section, with nearly 500 entries on numerous voyages and expeditions, the amazing cast of characters from many different countries and backgrounds, the places they encountered on their way, and some of the problems they had. Finally, a bibliography includes resources, both general and specialized, to fill in the gaps and lead readers in whichever direction they choose. This book was written by Alan Day, who has already contributed the first volume in this series, about a country at the other side of the world: the Historical Dictionary of the Discovery and Exploration of Australia. Dr. Day has studied at the University of Cambridge, the University of Leeds, and the Victoria University of Manchester. His interest in the Northwest Passage goes back a long way indeed, to the early 1980s ix

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when he was preparing Search for the Northwest Passage: An Annotated Bibliography (1986). Soon afterward he wrote his Ph.D. thesis, ‘‘The British Search for the Northwest Passage.’’ The Historical Dictionary of the Discovery and Exploration of the Northwest Passage continues his research, providing a valuable resource for anyone intrigued by this incredible quest. Jon Woronoff Series Editor

Acknowledgments

Three spells at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, the world center of polar studies whose collections have attracted countless scholars and researchers since it opened its doors in 1926, greatly assisted my own research. My debt to the late William Mills, the institute’s former librarian and keeper of the collections, to Shirley Sawtell, and to other library staff is enormous. Other professional colleagues to whom I owe a debt of gratitude include Dorian Hayes of the Canada House Library, the Canadian High Commission in London, and the admissions staff of the London School of Economics Library, who allowed me access on a second visit to the library almost 50 years after my first. Nearer home, the inquiry desk and rare book room staff of the John Rylands University of Manchester Library and the social sciences library staff of Manchester City Council Libraries and Theatre Department were as always cordial and efficient. The two maps are printed by permission of the Royal Geographical Society and were made available by the society’s picture library. From overseas I much appreciated the help of Susan Buss, librarian of the W. B. and M. H. Chung Library at the Vancouver Maritime Museum, and the museum’s bookstore staff; the Distribution Division personnel of Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver; and employees of the University of Toronto Press, who all eased my path by expediting invaluable research material. From Germany, courtesy of Klaus Saur of K. G. Saur of Munich, I received a very useful brochure describing the Canadian Biographical Archive. Finally, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the skilled assistance of Jill Bridgman of the Faculty of Art & Design, Manchester Metropolitan University, who energetically seized a rough manuscript and ruthlessly tamed it into a presentable submission, our seventh and last major project together in the last 10 years. xi

Acronyms and Abbreviations

CCGS DGS fl.

HBC HMCS HMS MV RCMP RCN RN scuba SS USCGC USN USS

Canadian Coast Guard Ship Dominion Government Ship floruit (flourished)—indicates when a person, whose birth and death dates are not known, was prominently active Hudson’s Bay Company Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship His (Her) Majesty’s Ship Motor Vessel Royal Canadian Mounted Police Royal Canadian Navy Royal Navy Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus Steamship United States Coast Guard Cutter United States Navy United States Ship

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Chronology

1497 John Cabot makes a landfall on the Labrador coast, Newfoundland, or Cape Breton. 1498 Cabot disappears on a follow-up voyage. 1499 Gaspar Corte-Real sails south down the eastern seaboard of America from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. 1500 Corte-Real voyages to Davis Strait probably to confirm Cabot’s discoveries and to investigate whether Portuguese interests are threatened. 1501 Corte-Real examines the Labrador coast and proceeds southward but fails to return to Portugal. 1509? Sebastian Cabot sails to Davis Strait and Hudson Bay. 1524 Giovanni da Verrazzano explores along the eastern shores of America from Carolina to New England. 1524–1525 Esteva˜ o Gomes examines the eastern seaboard of America from Florida north to Cape Race, Newfoundland, in the hope of finding a quick sea route to the Pacific Ocean. 1527 John Rut sails down the east coast of America from Labrador to the West Indies. 1534 Jacques Cartier examines the Labrador coast, the western shores of Newfoundland, Gaspe´ Bay, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 1535 Cartier returns to the St. Lawrence River to continue his search for a passage and penetrates it as far as Mont Royal. 1537 Gemma Frisius’s and Gerard Mercator’s terrestrial globe shows northeastern Asia joined to Europe by a land bridge across Greenland, xvii

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and America as an island separated from the polar land bridge by the ‘‘Fretum Arcticum sive Fretum Trium Fratrum.’’ 1540 Sebastian Munster’s world map depicts an Arctic Strait leading to the East Indies. 1541 Roger Barlow recommends to Henry VIII an English voyage across the North Pole as a short sea route to the East Indies. Nothing comes of this. 1542–1543 Joa˜o Rodrigues Cabrilho and Bartolome Ferrelo sail up the Californian coast in search of a great river flowing into the Pacific. 1555 The Muscovy Company is incorporated. 1562 The Strait of Anian first appears on a world map in Giacomo Gastaldi’s pamphlet Universale Descrittione del Monde. 1566 Pedro de Coronas voyages up the eastern seaboard of America from Florida to Cape Hatteras in search of a waterway westward. 1570 A world map in Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theater of the Lands of the World) depicts an unnamed sea above the Arctic Circle leading westward to the Strait of Anian. 1574 Vasques Eanes Corte-Real sights the Hudson Strait. 1576 Humphrey Gilbert’s A Discourse of a Discoverie for a New Passage to Cataia is printed after circulating for 10 years in manuscript form. Martin Frobisher sails to Resolution Island, southeast of Baffin Island. 1577 The Company of Cathay is incorporated. Frobisher sails to Hall’s Island, at the entrance to Frobisher Bay, to mine for gold. Richard Willes publishes The History of Travayle in the Weste and East Indies . . . With a Discourse of the Northwest Passage. 1578 Frobisher sails to the northwest for a third time to systematically mine for gold ore on Countess of Warwick Island. Francis Drake repairs his ship, the Golden Hind, at New Albion. 1582–1583 Edward Fenton’s attempt to follow Drake’s circumnavigation ends in controversy and confusion.

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1583 Christopher Carleill issues A Breef and Summarie Discourse upon the Entended Voyage to the Hethermoste Partes of America. George Peckham issues A True Report of the Late Discoveries. 1585 John Davis sails into Davis Strait and explores Exeter and Cumberland sounds in the hope of finding a passage. 1586 Davis returns to Exeter Sound and then sails south to the islands at the entrance to Hudson Strait and to the Labrador coast. 1587 On his third voyage, Davis attains latitude 72 N before returning to Hudson Strait where he is caught in the furious overfall. 1588 Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado claims to have entered the South Sea from the north, through the Strait of Anian, as far south as latitude 55 N and to have sailed from the northwest coast of America to Cathay before turning about and retracing his way home to Spain by the same northern route. 1592 Sailing from Acapulco, Juan de Fuca claims to have sailed three weeks into a northward-trending channel before reaching the northern sea. 1598–1600 Richard Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations is published in three volumes. 1601 The East India Company is founded. 1602 Sebastia´ n Vizcaı´no commands an expedition northward from Acapulco with orders to explore the coastline from Cape San Lucas to Cape Mendocino. George Waymouth penetrates 300 miles into Hudson Strait. 1603 Martin Aguilar is blown by storm winds to Cape Blanco, at 43 N on America’s northwest coast. 1606 John Knight disappears while exploring the Labrador coast inland. 1610 Henry Hudson passes through Hudson Strait and enters Hudson Bay. He winters in James Bay, but it is now apparent that no passage to the South Sea lays in that direction. After a severe winter, his crew mutinies and Hudson is cast adrift in an open boat.

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1611 William Monson circulates his ‘‘Discourse Concerning the North-west Passage.’’ 1612 The Company of the Merchants of London, Discoverers of the North West Passage is granted a royal charter allowing it monopoly trading rights and privileges into and beyond the Northwest Passage. 1612–1613 Thomas Button explores the western shores of Hudson Bay, reaching Sir Thomas Roe’s Welcome Sound in latitude 65 N. 1613 Thomas Harriot publishes Three Reasons to Prove That There Is a Passage from the Northwest into the South Sea. 1615 William Baffin explores Foxe Basin and the northern shores of Hudson Bay. 1616 Baffin sails up Davis Strait, explores the west coast of Greenland, and discovers Baffin Bay and Baffin Island. 1619–1620 Jens Munk spends the winter on board his ship in the Churchill River estuary. Scurvy ravages his crews and by 4 July 1620 only he and two others are left alive to sail back to Denmark. 1622 Henry Briggs publishes ‘‘Treatise of the north-west passage to the South Sea through the Continent of Virginia’’ in A Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affairs in Virginia. His map, reprinted in Samuel Purchas’s Purchas his Pilgrimes, indicates a transcontinental passage running roughly along the 45th parallel from Button’s Baie (i.e., the eastern waters of Hudson Bay) to the Iaponicus Oceanus (Japanese Ocean). 1625 Samuel Purchas publishes Hakluytus Posthumus; or, Purchas his Pilgrimes in four volumes. 1631–1632 Thomas James explores the western shores of Hudson Bay, winters in James Bay, and in 1632 reaches latitude 65 N before being repulsed by ice. Luke Foxe encounters James in James Bay before sailing northward to land on Baffin Island. 1635 Foxe publishes North-west Foxe, which includes summaries of previous English explorations for a passage. 1668 Backed by a group of London merchants, Me´ dard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers, sails for Hudson Bay to survey the prospects of

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a profitable fur trade and, secondly, to assess the possibility of a channel through the continent to the Pacific. 1670 The Hudson’s Bay Company receives its royal charter and is given wide and extensive trading and commercial privileges over Rupert’s Land. 1714 James Knight arrives at York Factory for his second term as governor for the Hudson’s Bay Company. 1715–1716 On Knight’s instructions, and accompanied by Thanadelthur, William Stuart explores northwest of York Factory across the Barren Lands as far north as latitude 60 N. 1716 A group of Chipewyan Indians, at James Knight’s prompting, draw the ‘‘Seventeen Rivers from Churchill’’ map. 1717–1718 Richard Norton marches across the Barren Lands. 1719–1720 Knight attempts to voyage to the Coppermine River in a bid to discover the Strait of Anian but gets no further than Marble Island. His ships are lost to sight. 1722 John Scroggs find remnants of Knight’s expedition on Marble Island. 1742 Christopher Middleton explores Wager Inlet, sails to Roe’s Welcome Sound, and discovers the Frozen Strait. 1744 Arthur Dobbs publishes An Account of the Countries Adjoining to Hudson Bay. He includes Joseph La France’s ‘‘A New Map of Part of North America from the Latitudes of 40 to 60 Degrees.’’ 1745 The Northwest Committee is established. The British Parliament legislates for a prize of £20,000 to be awarded to any British subject completing a voyage to the Pacific Ocean through Hudson Strait. 1747 William Moor (Dobbs) and Francis Smith (California) seek a passage by way of Chesterfield and Wager Inlets and examine the entire west coast of Hudson Bay between latitudes 61 and 65 N. 1748 Publication of Henry Ellis’s A Voyage to Hudson’s Bay by the Dobbs Galley and California, In the Years 1746 and 1747, For Discovering a North West Passage.

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1752 Mer de l’Ouest appears on Phillipe Buache’s map Carte des Nouvelles De´couvertes au Nord de la Mer du Sud. 1753 Phillipe Buache’s Considerations Ge´ographiques et Physiques sur les Nouvelles De´couvertes au Nord de la Grande Mer is published. Charles Swaine sails from New England to discover a passage through Hudson Bay. Dr. James Lind publishes A Treatise of the Scurvy. 1758 In A National and Civil History of California, Andre`s Marcos Burriel warns the Spanish authorities that should the English succeed in discovering a northwest passage it would threaten Spain’s Pacific commerce. 1761 Publication in English of Gerhard Friedrich Mu¨ller’s Voyages from Asia to America for Completing the Discoveries of the Northwest Coast of America confirms the existence of a narrow strait between Asia and America. 1761–1762 William Christopher twice explores Chesterfield Inlet in the hope that it leads to the South Sea. 1762–1767 Mattonabee explores the Barren Lands. He draws a deerskin map showing a river flowing from a large lake to the Pacific Ocean. 1766–1767 At the instigation of Robert Rogers, Jonathan Carver explores west of the upper reaches of the Mississippi River, but plans to search for a transcontinental passage fall through. 1767 Samuel Hearne goes ashore on Marble Island. 1769 Theodore Drage’s The Great Probability of a Northwest Passage and Alexander Cluny’s The American Traveller are published. 1769–1772 Accompanied by Mattonabee, Hearne crosses the Barren Lands to the Coppermine River. 1772 James Wilder in the Diligence, fitted out by Virginia merchants, reportedly sails to latitude 69 N on a northwest discovery voyage. This places him either in Foxe Basin or between Cumberland Sound and Lancaster Sound in Baffin Bay. 1775 Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra locates Bucareli Sound and reaches latitude 55 N in the Gulf of Alaska. The British Parliament

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amends the 1745 legislation for a prize of £20,000 to the first person to complete a passage to the Pacific north of latitude 52 N, not necessarily through Hudson Strait. For the first time, Royal Navy captains become eligible for the prize. 1777 Walter Young reaches latitude 7242⬘ N in Baffin Bay. 1778 James Cook sails up the northwest coast of America from New Albion into the Gulf of Alaska and through Bering Strait to latitude 70 N with orders to explore any great river or inlet offering a probable passage to Baffin Bay or Hudson Bay. 1779 Bodega y Quadra directs the last concerted Spanish attempt to find a passage eastward through North America. The Strait of Juan de Fuca is probed at length. Ignacio de Arteaga explores the northwest coast as far as Prince William Sound. 1785 Peter Pond draws the first comprehensive map of the Canadian northwest but is not well served by his surveying instruments. 1786 Jean-Franc¸ois de Galaup, Comte de La Pe´rouse, commands a French expedition to the northwest coast of America to follow up Cook’s discoveries. He examines the coastline between latitudes 45 and 55 N. James Strange discovers Queen Charlotte Sound. 1787 George Dixon discovers the Queen Charlotte Islands, whose appearance and location seem to conform with that of Bartolome de Fonte’s Archipelago of St. Lazarus. William Barkley discovers the southern entrance to Puget Sound, which is immediately identified as the strait found by Juan de Fuca. Peter Pond’s map of the Great Slave Lake region is printed. 1789 Alexander Mackenzie voyages from Fort Chipewyan down the Mackenzie River to the Frozen Ocean and returns within 102 days. 1790 Manuel Quimper charts the Juan de Fuca Strait. John Meares publishes Voyages Made in the Years 1788 and 1789 from China to the North-West Coast of America. 1791 Alejandro Malaspina examines the shoreline of the Gulf of Alaska westward to Yakutat Bay before turning south to Nootka Sound to search for an inland passage. Francisco de Eliza explores Haro Strait

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to latitude 50 N and reports that, if a transcontinental passage exists, this is it. 1792 Jacinto Caaman˜o explores Clarence Strait, between the mainland coast of Alaska and Prince of Wales Island. Dionisio Galiano explores the Strait of Georgia and emerges into the open sea via Queen Charlotte Strait to confirm the insularity of Vancouver Island. 1792–1794 George Vancouver minutely examines the northwest coast of America to establish whether a transcontinental passage leads eastward. 1803–1806 Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s Corps of Discovery Expedition finally banishes the notion of a transcontinental northwest passage. 1815–1818 Otto von Kotzebue explores the Bering Strait and Alaska in order to find an inlet that would lead to Baffin Bay. 1817 William Scoresby reports that the Arctic ice is receding. 1818 John Barrow publishes A Chronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Region. Parliament institutes a sliding-scale prize system according to longitudes reached in the search for a northwest passage. John Ross commands the Isabella and Alexander on a discovery voyage to Baffin Bay. He enters Lancaster Sound but turns about asserting that mountains barred his way. No other officer corroborates this. 1819–1820 William Parry takes the Hecla and Griper through Lancaster Sound and explores 100 miles south down Prince Regent Inlet. He proceeds through Barrow Strait into Melville Sound, reaching the 130th meridian and so qualifies for a parliamentary prize of £5,000. Spending the winter at Winter Harbor, in 1820 he travels overland to the north coast of Melville Island. 1821–1822 John Franklin’s First Arctic Land Expedition succeeds in reaching Point Turnagain, east of the Coppermine River, before struggling desperately across the Barren Lands to regain their base at Fort Enterprise. 1821–1823 William Parry explores the Frozen Strait, Repulse Bay, and the inlets on the east side of the Melville Peninsula. In 1822 his

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further progress is blocked by the ice of Fury and Hecla Strait. With no apparent break in the ice confronting him, Parry returns home in 1823. 1824 Ilighuik’s chart of the region around Winter Island is reproduced in Parry’s Journal of a Second Voyage. 1824–1825 Parry with two ships, the Hecla and Fury, attempts a passage through Prince Regent Inlet. In July 1825 his ships are forced ashore by high winds upon Fury Beach, on the east coast of Somerset Island, where he lands a large quantity of stores before heading home in the Hecla. 1826 On station in Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, in the Blossom, Frederick William Beechey sends a ship’s boat to meet John Franklin’s Second Arctic Land Expedition advancing west from the Mackenzie River delta. But 146 miles separates Beechey’s farthest east and Franklin’s farthest west. In the meantime John Richardson voyages east from the Mackenzie and surveys the coastline as far as the Coppermine River. 1829–1833 Largely financed by Felix Booth, John Ross seeks a passage through Prince Regent Inlet. After replenishing his stores at Fury Beach he continues south, passes the obscured entrance to Bellot Strait, and finds a winter anchorage at Felix Harbor. He spends four winters in the inlet before being able to launch his boats to reach Lancaster Sound where the expedition is picked up by the whaling fleet. 1830 Royal Geographical Society instituted. 1831 James Clark Ross arrives at the North Magnetic Pole on the west coast of Boothia at latitude 705⬘ N and longitude 9646⬘ W. 1833–1834 George Back leads a relief expedition down the Great Fish River in search of John Ross. When news arrives that Ross had returned to London, Back explores along the coastline as far as Point Ogle but fails to establish the insularity or otherwise of Boothia. 1836–1837 Back voyages down the Great Fish River to chart the western shoreline of the Melville Peninsula and to determine the continental shoreline from Prince Regent Islet to the Great Fish River and Point Turnagain. 1837–1839 In the course of three summer seasons, Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson map the northern coastline of Canada from

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Point Barrow eastward to the Boothia Peninsula, discovering Dease and Simpson Strait and opening up the southern shores of King William and Victoria islands. 1845–1848 At the entrance to Lancaster Sound, Franklin’s expedition disappears from sight. He voyages westward to Cape Walker before exploring Wellington Channel. Spending the 1845–1846 winter on Beechey Island, he then sails down Peel Sound to within 12 miles of King William Island. In May 1847 a land party confirms that a northwest passage has been found, but Franklin dies in July. In 1848 Francis Crozier abandons ship and sets out overland for Fort Resolution, but there are no survivors. 1846 The Hakluyt Society is formed. 1846–1847 In a crowded winter, John Rae crosses Rae Isthmus to Committee Bay, journeys across the Simpson Peninsula, confirms the peninsularity of Boothia, and explores the Fury and Hecla Strait region. 1848 John Richardson leads an expedition down the Mackenzie River to explore the southern and western coastline of the Wollaston Peninsula. 1849 William Pullen commands a boat expedition from Wainwright Inlet eastward to the mouth of the Mackenzie River. Rae journeys from Fort Confidence to the Coppermine River, traces the Rae River westward, and sails along the coast to Cape Krusenstern. 1850 Lt. Edwin de Haven, USN, sails up Wellington Channel to the northwestern extension of Devon Island while coordinating his search for Franklin with a British squadron. Erasmus Ommaney finds the first traces of Franklin’s missing expedition on Beechey Island. 1850–1851 Horatio Thomas Austin’s squadron searches Wellington Channel and the Cape Walker region for traces of Franklin’s missing ships. 1850–1853 Robert McClure in the Investigator explores the southern tip of Banks Island and, discerning open water to the north, sails up Prince of Wales Strait, aware that he was nearing Melville Sound, but the approach of winter prevents further progress. In the spring of 1851, sledge parties reconnoiter the coasts of Banks and Victoria Islands but

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winter again forbids exploration northward. McClure takes his ship round Banks Island and is locked in the ice in Mercy Bay on its northeastern coast. He sledges overland to Winter Harbor where he deposits details of the Investigator’s position. His crew’s health deteriorates as he prepares to abandon ship but Bedford Pim brings relief in the nick of time. McClure eventually returns to England, becoming the first man to complete the northwest passage. 1850–1854 Richard Collinson sails through Bering Strait into the Western Arctic in an attempt to locate Franklin’s missing expedition. 1851 William Penny explores Wellington Channel to latitude 70 N. Rae crosses Coronation Gulf and rightly suspects that Wollaston Land and Victoria Land form one island. He sails eastward along the southern shores of Coronation Gulf and Dease Strait to reach Cape Alexander on the Kent Peninsula. 1851–1852 William Kennedy commands Lady Jane Franklin’s private expedition to the Prince Regent Inlet region. Together with JosephRene´ Bellot, he explores south as far as Bellot Strait but fails to reach either the west coast of Boothia or the east side of King William Island. 1852 Leopold McClintock sledges 1,400 miles on a round trip from Dealy Island to Melville Island and the westernmost edge of the Arctic Archipelago. Also from Dealy Island, George Mecham sledges to Winter Harbor, where he finds McClure’s record of the Investigator’s location. He arrives back at Dealy Island having journeyed 184 miles in three days. 1853 Sir Edward Belcher explores the northern shore of Devon Island as far as Cardigan Strait and North Kent Island. Sherard Osborn crosses Penny Strait and explores the northern shore of Bathurst Island. 1853–1854 Rae travels from York Factory to Repulse Bay and Roe’s Welcome Sound. He marches across Boothia, hears Inuit reports of starving Kabloonas, and arrives at Rae Strait. He is convinced that he has discovered the final link of a navigable northwest passage. Further Inuit reports and the recovery of indisputable Franklin relics cause him to return to London. He is the first to suggest that, in extremis, the last survivors of the Franklin expedition resorted to cannibalism.

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1853–1855 Elisha Kent Kane, commanding the Second United States Grinnell Expedition, explores Smith Sound and the Kane Basin. 1855 James Anderson voyages down the Great Fish River to search for relics and records of Franklin’s lost expedition. 1857–1859 McClintock, commanding Lady Jane Franklin’s private search expedition, circumnavigates King William Island and closely examines its western shoreline. William Hobson finds documentation relating to Franklin’s lost 1845–1848 expedition. 1860–1862 Charles Francis Hall learns that no channel runs from Frobisher Strait to Foxe Basin. He finds traces of Frobisher’s mining operations on Kodlunarn Island. 1864–1869 Hall eventually arrives on King William Island after spending five years in the Arctic searching for survivors of Franklin’s 1845–1848 expedition. 1867 The British North America Act provides for the incorporation of Rupert’s Land into the Canadian Confederation. 1873 The North West Mounted Police (now Royal Canadian Mounted Police) is established. 1878–1879 Frederick S. Schwatka spends a winter on Chesterfield Inlet before traveling overland to Starvation Cove and King William Island, where he recovers a number of Franklin relics. 1903 Albert Low in the DGS Neptune patrols the waters of Hudson Bay and the Arctic Archipelago to show the flag and assert Canadian sovereignty. 1903–1906 Roald Amundsen spends three winters in the Arctic before making the first successful navigation of the Northwest Passage. 1904–1910 The Dominion Government of Canada dispatches JosephElzear Bernier on four voyages to assert Canadian sovereignty over the Arctic Archipelago. 1920 The Scott Polar Research Institute is founded. 1923–1924 Knud Rasmussen’s Fifth Thule Expedition traverses the entire length of the Canadian Arctic coastline.

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1925–1926 On the orders of the Canadian government, Maj. L. T. Burwash travels along the Arctic shoreline eastward to Hudson Bay. 1938 The Hudson’s Bay Record Society is formed. 1940–1942 Sgt. Henry Larsen, RCMP, navigates the Northwest Passage eastward, spending two winters in the Arctic. 1944 Larsen becomes the first man to navigate the passage in both directions when he sails the St. Roch from Halifax back to Vancouver. 1954 HMCS Labrador, under the command of Capt. Owen Robertson, RCN, becomes the first warship to complete the Northwest Passage. 1955–1956 The United States Hydrographic Service surveys the Canadian Arctic coastline. 1957 Operation Bellot, a joint Canadian/U.S. scientific study, undertakes hydrographic surveys in Shepherd Bay, James Ross Strait, Franklin Strait, Bellot Strait, and Prince Regent Inlet. 1958 Canada’s Polar Continental Shelf Project is inaugurated. 1960 George P. Steele takes the USS Seadragon under the ice of the McClure Strait en route to the North Pole. 1962 Robert Cundy leads the British Cape Britannia Expedition down the Back River to recover documents possibly deposited in a cairn by the last survivors of Franklin’s 1845–1848 voyage. Austin Hoyt’s canoe expedition runs down the river at the same time and reaches Chantrey Inlet ahead of Cundy. 1967 Capt. R. D. Gillan commands Project Franklin, which systematically searches King William Island for Franklin’s grave. Pierre Fournier completes the passage in the CCGS John A. Macdonald. 1969 The SS Manhattan under Roger A. Steward, accompanied by the CCGS John A. Macdonald under Fournier, crashes its way westward through the ice to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. 1970–1971 Ralph Smith locates James Knight’s house on Marble Island and discovers a sunken ship in the harbor nearby.

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1973 Colin Irwin retraces Rasmussen’s 1923 trek from Repulse Bay to Point Barrow. 1977 Willy de Roos completes the passage westward in his 42-foot steel-hulled ketch Williwaw. 1980 Joe MacInnis finds the British barque Breadalbane almost intact on the seabed, under the ice, half a mile south of Beechey Island where she sank in August 1853. 1981 Sir Ranulph Fiennes completes the Northwest Passage stage of his Transglobe Expedition. 1983 John W. Lentz leads an expedition down the Hood River and uncovers some Franklin expedition artifacts. 1983–1988 John Bockstoce battles the ice to sail through the passage west to east in his 60-foot yacht Belvedere. 1984 Forensic scientist Owen Beattie exhumes the body of John Torrington on Beechey Island. Samples of Torrington’s nails, hair, and bones are taken for laboratory analysis. The ‘‘Franklin Era in Canadian Arctic History, 1845–1859’’ symposium takes place in Victoria Memorial Museum, Ottawa. 1985 Sovereignty over the waters of the Arctic Archipelago is placed firmly on the diplomatic agenda by the voyage of the USCGC North Star from Thule, Greenland, to the Beaufort Sea without the United States requesting permission from Canada. 1986 Beattie exhumes the bodies of John Hartnell and William Braine on Beechey Island. Analysis shows evidence of high lead levels. 1986–1988 Over three summer seasons, Jeff MacInnis completes a voyage from Inuvik, on the Mackenzie River delta, to Pond Inlet, on Baffin Island in his 18-foot catamaran. 1986–1989 David Cowper completes the passage as part of a westward circumnavigation of the world. 1989 Stephen Trafton’s Franklin Search Expedition methodically explores King William Island and recovers a number of relics.

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1989–1992 Beattie spends four summers on Marble Island. He unearths 5,000 artifacts relating to James Knight’s 1719–1720 sojourn there. 1990 The Canadian Museum of Civilization initiates the Meta Incognita Project. Polar and Glaciological Abstracts begins publication. 1991 Don Palfrey discovers James Knight’s schooner, the Albany, at Marble Island. 1991–1994 Victoria Jason kayaks almost 4,720 miles from Churchill to Tuktoyatkuk in three stages. 1992 Ernest Coleman finds two man-made burial mounds on King William Island, prompting speculation that Sir John Franklin’s grave had been discovered, but the following year the mounds are proven to be natural formations. Barry Ranford retraces the Franklin expedition route down the island’s west coast. David C. Woodman’s Project Ootjoolik surveys the seabed in Queen Maud Gulf. 1993–1994 Pamela Flowers treks the 2,800-mile coastal route from Barrow, Alaska, to Repulse Bay by dogsled. 1994 Woodman leads a Royal Canadian Geographical Society expedition, Project Supunger, to King William Island. 1997 Tom Goss discovers a line of cairns on King William Island and surmises that it points toward Franklin’s grave, probably at Victory Point. 1999 Ken McGoogan leads a small party to King William Island in order to place a memorial plaque on the spot where John Rae discovered the final link of the Northwest Passage. Nunavut is established as a province of Canada. 2000 Sgt. Ken Burton, RCMP, retraces Henry Larsen’s 1940–1942 eastward voyage through the passage in an aluminum catamaran patrol boat. 2001–2003 Woodman makes a sonar survey of the seabed off the west coast of Adelaide Peninsula in search of Franklin’s lost ships. 2002–2004 Mike Horn travels across the Barren Lands of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, along the northern shores of Alaska, and

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across the Bering Strait while on his 780-day circumpolar journey from August 2002 through October 2004. 2003 Rebecca Harris retraces the route of Franklin’s crew from Victory Point down the west coast of King William Island and across Simpson Strait to Starvation Cove. Dom Mee embarks on a 450-mile land and sea journey to retrace John Ross’s footsteps on Boothia. Derek Hayes’s Historical Atlas of the Arctic is published.

Introduction The Northwest Passage Defined

Discovery voyages are rarely undertaken in a political, social, industrial, or economic vacuum. The prime purpose in seeking a northwest passage was to secure a trouble-free, relatively short sea route to the Far East in order to satisfy western European consumer demand for the salt and silks of Cathay (China) and the scented woods and spices of the East Indies (Indonesia). All overseas enterprises of this nature require capital, which is only forthcoming in times of social and political stability. At the end of the 15th century and in the early years of the following century, relatively stable governments in the emerging nation-states provided the necessary conditions and confidence to persuade monarchs, nobles, and merchant princes to invest their capital in far-distant projects that promised rich dividends. A modernization of the shipbuilding industry, new ship designs, improvements in sails and rigging, more efficient rudders and steering, and new navigation instruments allowed mariners to embark on oceangoing voyages for months on end. Ships’ captains were no longer obliged to sail within sight of land, although they still had no reliable means to fix their longitude. Also lacking was a sure supply of fresh food, so vital to counteract the general debilitation of life at sea and the hideous ravages of scurvy. This posed a constant deadly threat to seamen but, at the time and for long afterwards, human life was cheap at the lower end of society. It was in this context and against this background that the first voyages for discovering a northwest passage were launched. In today’s age of almost total geographical certainty, the location of the Northwest Passage brooks no argument. In Ann Savours’s words, the Northwest Passage is ‘‘the sea route linking the North Atlantic xxxiii

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Ocean with the North Pacific Ocean. It extends from Baffin Bay (between West Greenland and Baffin Island) to Bering Strait (between Alaska and Siberia), through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.’’1 Willy de Roos adds, ‘‘Strictly speaking, no-one should claim that he has completed the North-West Passage before he reaches the Pacific Ocean.’’2 Almost 370 years earlier, the charter granted to the Company of the Merchants of London, Discoverers of the Northwest Passage by King James I on July 26, 1612, first defined and delineated the passage in the light of the information then available: And, least aine question or doubt may hereafter arise as touching the nominacon, boundes, limits, and extent of the Northwest passage, WEE doe hereby signifie and declare that the same doth and shall beginne and hath it entrance between the headland of Groynland called the Cape of Desolation, and the cape or headland of America called Labrador, in or about the Northerley latitude of fifty-eight degrees, and so extendeth itself into the sea lying betweene those two Capes or lands of America and Groinelande, including not onely the sea or streight called Hudson’s streight, now newly discovered, but also that sea or streight called and knowne by the name of Fretum Davis, and all other seas whatsoever lying and being betweene the foresaid two Capes in and about the height of fiftie eight degrees Northerley latitude, and from thence extending through or betweene the said landes of American and Groineland, Northwards, Northwestwardes, or westwards, unto the verie territories of Tartaria, China, Japan, and Coray, and to all other coasts, countreys, or Islands, either knowne or unknowne, discovered or undiscovered, lying upon or in the sea of Sur, either upon the continent of America or Asia or any Islandes lying and being in or upon the said seas; And accordingly our will and pleasure is that the same shalbe so construed and understood in the Article last precedent and use in and throughe all parts of theis our L’ts Patents.3

This royal definition, essentially, accords with modern knowledge. Even the reference to a passage through Hudson Bay is correct since Labrador crashed through the ice of Hecla and Fury Strait in 1956. But, if we examine it closely, we soon notice a mention of the seas extending through America. If a degree of ambiguity exists here, it is true that European navigators sought a northwest passage through the North American continent long before and long after the year 1612. In fact, the areas of search encompassed the eastern seaboard of the continent from Carolina northward to Newfoundland and Labrador; through Hudson Strait into the promising, but ultimately disappointing, land-locked Hudson Bay; deep into Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, and the

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Arctic Archipelago; and halfway around the world to the backside of America to explore mythical straits, rivers, and inland seas and to rescue a long overdue expedition. For the nations of western Europe, a northern passage to the prodigious and fabled riches of Cathay and the East Indies increasingly became an economic necessity after the Ottoman Turks’ conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East at the end of the 15th century, when the traditional caravan routes to the East were closed to European merchants. Spanish and Portuguese discoveries of the warm-water southerly routes to the East were also denied to the merchant venturers of northern Europe. Politics and religion, inextricably entwined from the latter half of the 16th century onward, added further pressures to find a monopoly route that would not only damage the envied wealth of Spain but also threaten that Catholic country’s claimed suzerainty over the entire Pacific. The legacy of medieval geography, especially theories regarding the earth’s equilibrium and the distribution of land and water, positively encouraged belief in the existence of a northwest passage, especially after the first circumnavigation via the Strait of Magellan. Knowing that a southwest passage existed, contemporary geographical theory required a balancing passage to the north, which, it was clear to both mariners and armchair geographers, would offer a much shorter, and therefore a more commercially viable, route to the East. Additional support for this concept of geographical equilibrium was provided by the mythical Strait of Anian. Nevertheless, the constant search for a navigable passage to the Pacific Ocean that continued at intervals for 400 years, indisputably flew in the face of reason. In the graphic words of George Malcolm Thomson: This channel did not exist where men reasoned it must be—or, at least did not exist, in any form which could be of practicable use to seamen, in any age down to our own. The whole enterprise was founded on a misapprehension, a geographical fiction, a fairy-tale, springing out of the kind of stories sailors tell to amaze landsmen or delude other sailors, to which were soon added the inferences, speculations and downright inventions that scholars manufacture to amaze themselves. But the channel seemed real enough in the eyes of sixteenth-century merchants and mariners. There its gates were open, somewhere behind the Northern fogs and the barrier of ice which hid secrets untold.4

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Despite the failure of one voyage after another and the seemingly endless disappointments, the chimera of a northwest passage continued to engage the attention of cosmographers and amateur geographers, empire-builders, seamen and adventurers, merchants, scientists, politicians with vested interests, and naval strategists alike. All insisted, at difference times, that this illusory maritime highway would be found. It was always on the verge of being discovered; always one more determined effort would secure the prize. And, in 19th-century England, the search for this geographical grail came close to being translated into a national crusade. Viewed historically, the search for a northwest passage takes its place in the unfolding story of the European discovery of North America starting with the early Viking voyages to Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland and continuing with the rediscovery of the Atlantic islands by Portuguese navigators, the late 15th-century Bristol voyages into the North Atlantic, and the West Indian discoveries of Christopher Columbus. It is also linked to the Spanish, French, British, and Russian exploration of America’s northwest coast, the attainment of the North Pole, and, more tenuously, with the United States’ advance westward to California. Nevertheless, the search for a passage may validly be regarded as a discrete historical and geographical endeavor. It follows that if the search is recognized as an independent area of study and research it must have a beginning and an end. The voyages of John Cabot and his son Sebastian may conveniently be assumed to mark its beginning.

THE SEARCH BEGINS (1497–1553) By definition, the word passage implies that a geographical obstacle either has to be traversed by a waterway or else circumvented. It was John Cabot, a Venetian in the service of King Henry VII of England, who in this instance was responsible for indicating that the North American continent was the obstacle and that, in order to reach Cathay by sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean, it would be necessary to find a channel through the continent or discover a route around its northern shoreline. Not that Cabot was aware of this. Like Christopher Columbus five years earlier, he had no concept of an intervening barrier and, after

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landing on Nova Scotia or Newfoundland in 1497, he followed the coastline far enough to reassure himself that he had reached the coast of Asia. When planning his 1498 voyage he devised a course that would bring him to his previous landfall and then turn south. Cabot and other voyagers to the new land had found ‘‘no great state or government, no cities, seaports, ships or trade, no spices and silks for barter—in a word, no Asia.’’5 Between 1498 and Sebastian Cabot’s 1508 voyage, it was realized that a previously unknown continent imposed a barrier to European mariners and that a way through or around the continent must be found. All talk of exploring the Asian coast ceased, and seamen and cartographers now referred to a newfound land. Contemporary documentation of Sebastian Cabot’s 1508–1509 voyage has not survived, so the story has had to be pieced together from various extracts from the writings of 16th-century historians. From these it appears that he sailed on a more northerly course than his father, up the Labrador coastline to reach Hudson Strait and south into Hudson Bay, which according to the geographical theory of the day, must be part of the Pacific Ocean. There was every chance that he had discovered the desired passage to Cathay. The influence of this geographical fallacy endured to inspire the early 17th-century voyages from England, and as late as the second half of the 18th century, politicians and seamen still believed that the bay offered a route to the Pacific. By virtue of its geographical position, England enjoyed a natural advantage in the race to find a viable northern route to Asia, although French, Dutch, and Danish enterprises were also launched. After disappointing northeastern ventures, Elizabethan and Stuart merchants and seamen directed their gaze northwestward, following a tradition that extended back at least as early as 1480 when Bristol merchants were fitting out voyages in search of the fabled isles of Brazil in the North Atlantic. The ensuing discoveries of John Cabot had founded a legitimate English claim to North America, while Robert Thorne, a rich Bristol merchant engaged in the Seville trade, had advocated a national effort in the late 1520s and early 1530s for northward expeditions either around the European-Asian landmass northwestward or due north across the pole. Eager to emulate the discovery voyages fitted out by his immediate neighbors Spain and England, King Franc¸ois I of France gave his approval to Giovanni da Verrazzano’s 1524 voyage to explore the eastern

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seaboard of North America—one of the few remaining stretches of coastline not yet investigated for a channel through the continent. Surely, it was reasoned, this was a more promising search area for a navigable passage than the icy, hazardous waters in higher latitudes. At various stages of Verrazzano’s coastal exploration, there seemed to be a strong possibility of a successful conclusion, notably when sailing northward along the narrow 200-mile-long isthmus between Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras, beyond which the waters of Pamlico Sound could be clearly discerned. It was small wonder that Verrazzano persuaded himself that this was the same sea that washed the shores of Cathaia. He returned to France convinced that the coasts he had explored belonged to a new world, although he never wavered in his belief that a transcontinental channel would be discovered. But other, more important affairs demanded the French king’s attention and it was not until 1534 that he could once more indulge his interest in the discovery of a sea route to the Orient. The purposes of Jacques Cartier’s 1534 and 1535–1536 voyages were to find a passage and to investigate Verrazzano’s unsubstantiated report that precious metals could be mined in more northern regions. He discovered the St. Lawrence River and laid the foundations of New France, but although the river at first appeared to be the passage he was searching for, his hopes were dimmed when the river narrowed and forced the use of longboats in order to proceed further and were dashed entirely at the impassable La Chine Rapids. Spain was not content to remain supine and allow other nations to discover and exploit a passage to the Pacific Ocean and so undermine its hegemony there. If a passage existed, it was clearly in Spain’s interests to discover and fortify it against foreign interlopers. To this end, Esteva˜o Gomes was commissioned in 1524 to sail the whole length of the east coast of North America to investigate all promising openings. The expectation was that one would be found. Forty years later Pedro de Coronas sailed in La Trinidad to establish a military base and mission at the Bahı´a de Santa Maria (St. Mary Bay), close to the 39th parallel, charged among many other duties with finding an inland waterway to present-day Newfoundland and perhaps from there a passage to the Pacific. Apart from acquiring more accurate geographical knowledge of the shape of the coastline and the lower stret-

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ches of a number of rivers, neither of these two voyages threw any light on a possible transcontinental passage.

THE STRAIT OF ANIAN (1542–1677) Attention switched dramatically to the western side of the continent, to what was named the Strait of Anian, in the middle years of the 16th century. This can only be described as an invention, based on a misinterpretation of the travels of Marco Polo (1254?–1324?), suggesting that a land of Anian was located on the northeastern extremity of Asia. Cartographers seized upon this fallacious concept to substantiate the hypothesis that the continents of Asia and America were, at one point, separated only by a narrow strait. This theory excited popular interest and attracted academic attention. A world map printed in the world’s first atlas, Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theater of the lands of the world, 1570) relocated Anian to the eastern side of the strait, at the western end of a clear seaway depicted as stretching from Greenland along the northern shoreline of America. This was highly significant in the context of the cartography of the search for a passage. It was apparent proof that a northwestern short sea route to the Orient existed; it now had an entrance, an open channel, and an exit. By coincidence, the Strait of Anian on Ortelius’s map was placed very close to where Bering Strait is, and it is tempting to suppose that this was based on a knowledge of the strait long before it was ‘‘discovered’’ in the 18th century. Peter Whitfield, for one, dismisses this out of hand: ‘‘Although it is situated where we know now the Bering Strait to be, it was not based on any discovery, for in 1560 no European had sailed within 2,000 miles of the Bering Strait.’’ Its origin was literary, and its appearance at this time must be taken as marking the recognition of the separate identity of America.6 The long arm of coincidence rarely stretches for 2,000 miles but it cannot be denied that the Strait of Anian and Bering Strait were more or less in the same place, just below the Arctic Circle. Fantasy or not, the Strait of Anian was given a renewed lease on life in lower latitudes in 1609, 1625, and 1708 with accounts of the alleged voyages of Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado, Juan de Fuca, and Bartolome de

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Fonte, which exerted a powerful influence on geographical thought and the search for a passage in the second half of the 18th century. The first significant Spanish voyage in higher latitudes was that of Joa˜o Cabrilho and Bartolome Ferrelo in 1542–1543. One of their objectives was the discovery of a great river in the hope it would prove to be a transcontinental channel. Although 800 miles of coastline were added to the map, their expedition was curiously neglected in subsequent accounts of early Californian voyages. ‘‘The explanation lies in deliberate Spanish policy. Place names bestowed by early explorers seldom endured and were supplanted by later expeditions, for Madrid considered it in her interests to keep geographic details as secret as possible, for protection from marauders.’’7 Once the Strait of Anian appeared on their maps, Spanish reconnaissance and discovery voyages northward were undertaken more to prevent English incursions into the Pacific than to advance into littleknown waters or to expand their empire. Their fears were by no means groundless—as early as 1545, Richard Grenville was proposing a descent upon Spanish America to wrest control of the northern and southern approaches to the Pacific. Francis Drake’s piratical 1578–1579 voyage did nothing to allay their strategic and commercial concerns. Thirty years later, Sebastia´n Vizcaı´no’s written instructions were to explore the coast as far as Cape Mendocino, to take soundings, and to prepare maps of the discoveries. But Father Antonio de la Ascensio´n, the official chronicler of the expedition, states that the real purpose was to search for a strait entering the Pacific to the north. If this is true, and there seems no reason to doubt it, a policy change was soon effected. ‘‘After Vizcaı´no’s time, those wishing to undertake explorations northwards could not obtain official backing or even permission. An influential segment of opinion thought Spain’s interests would be damaged by discovery of Anian.’’8

ENGLISH MERCANTILE ENDEAVORS (1576–1632) Commercial rather than strategic considerations were uppermost in the minds of English adventurers in the 60-year period of almost incessant efforts to find a passage either through Hudson Bay or via Davis Strait, from 1576 through 1632. Once it became clear that attempts to find a

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northeast passage around the northern shores of the Eurasian landmass had very little chance of success English attention reverted to the search for a passage by the northwest that was to last for the next 300 years. Despite the need to safeguard the homeland against Spanish invasion, Queen Elizabeth I allowed northwest discovery voyages to continue in the 1570s and 1580s, although the political and diplomatic situation forbade any follow-up to Drake’s descent on the coastal towns of South and Central America. It was no time for the queen’s ships, or her most renowned seaman, to be halfway around the world. If, however, Drake had returned with a positive location of the western exit to a passage, as is sometimes argued, then no doubt the knowledge acquired would have encouraged others to renew the search for its eastern entrance. After Martin Frobisher’s three discovery voyages in 1576–1578 had declined into North America’s first gold rush, subsequent progress was made by John Davis when he discovered the entrance to Lancaster Sound in 1587. But significant though this was, it was not until 1819 that another English ship ventured this way again to sail westward on the most direct route of all to the Pacific. For all their efforts, the English merchants at the turn of the 16th century and into the 17th century were no nearer to finding a northwest passage to the Orient than their predecessors had been. Quite apart from the continuing probes into the Arctic, the quest for a northwest passage from the 1580s onward became identified with various schemes for colonial expansion put forward by Christopher Carleill, Humphrey Gilbert, Richard Hakluyt, Walter Raleigh (1554–1618), and others. Many prospectuses for these American plantations claimed that their establishment and settlement would advance the chances of discovering a passage, but this was not by the Arctic—the lessons of the Frobisher voyages had long been taken to heart—but by a search to be directed along the rivers of inhabitable America to its far (or back) side on the South Sea generally assumed not to be so very distant. But the time was not yet ripe for colonial plantations. The renewed Arctic voyages commanded by George Waymouth and John Knight in the early years of the 17th century were equally unsuccessful. Not until Henry Hudson sailed into the inland sea that is now named Hudson Bay were hopes raised once more. Despite the disappointing results of the follow-up voyages of Thomas Button (1612– 1613), William Gibbon (1614), Robert Bylot and William Baffin

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(1615–1616), William Hawkridge (1625), Luke Foxe (1631–1632), and Thomas James (1631–1632) and the disquiet expressed by Sir William Monson, Hudson’s discovery of the bay set the pattern of the search for the next 150 years.

THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY AND ITS DETRACTORS (1668–1791) French participation in the search for a northwest passage was slight after the voyages of Giovanni da Verrazzano and Jacques Cartier, whose St. Lawrence discoveries had momentarily promised a navigable route westward, but his hopes had vanished just south of Montreal in the narrow rapids that a century later were given the ironic name La Chine—China. From then on, French discoveries were strongly influenced by Indian stories of a great inland sea linked to the Pacific by various waterways and, apart from the travels of a few Jesuit missionaries north to Hudson Bay, exploration was directed west and southwest of New France. But if French zeal for knowledge of the Arctic lagged far behind English preoccupation with a northern passage to China, they were able to build up a predominant position in the fur trade. The relative accessibility by New France to the fur country of the north gave them a supremacy that could not conveniently be challenged. Not, that is, until the arrival in England of Groseilliers and Radisson in 1665. Me´dard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers, and his brother-in-law Pierre Esprit Radisson, two adventuresome coureurs de bois, had been heavily penalized by the colonial authorities in New France for flouting the bureaucratic system of licenses imposed on traders venturing into the interior in search of valuable beaver pelts and other furs. Frustrated and angry at their inability to obtain redress in France, they contracted with Boston shipowners to convey them to Hudson Bay, in their eyes a more advantageous loading point for merchantmen to the fur country. Were their plan to succeed, the French hegemony of the profitable European fur trade would be gravely imperiled, dependent as it was on the long circuitous route by canoe via the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River. Although their New England venture came to naught, Groseilliers and Radisson’s plans came to the attention of George Cartwright, a

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royal commissioner in Boston in 1664. He subsequently made a report to Lord Arlington, one of King Charles’s inner circle of ministers. Hearing also some Frenchmen discourse in New England of a passage from the West Sea to the South Sea, and of a great trade of beaver in that passage, and afterwards meeting with sufficient proof of the truth of what they said, and knowing of what great endeavours have been made for the finding out of a north-west passage, he thought them the best present he could possibly make His Majesty, and persuaded them to come to England.9

The two Frenchmen arrived at an opportune moment. After twenty years of political strife and civil war, courtiers, financiers, merchants, and investors were now able to devote their energies to overseas enterprises. The plan now laid before them enjoyed, in the words of the official historian of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the tradition of the North-west passage to Cathay, a tradition as inherent and as important in the British approach as the tradition of the Inland Sea was in the French. Despite a century and a half of disasters the idea still ruled men’s minds; it has never become a mere convention to which lip-service must be paid before more practicable projects were broached. It was a seriously held and warmly supported concept, and any project which embodied a further attempt to discover the North-West passage was certain of influential support in Restoration England. It would be backed by the scientists, the Admiralty, and the vast financial and political interests. It would claim support from all who were filling the debates in Parliament, the pamphleteering press and the coffee-house gossip, with discussions of the best methods of organizing our trade on a balanced imperial basis.10

On Groseilliers’ exploratory voyage of 1668–1669, before the company was formally chartered, trade was given priority over discovery, but a passage to the South Sea was to be sought if the opportunity should arise. It is also clear that Groseilliers and Radisson had embroidered the story of their wanderings to intrigue their English audience. Their instructions read: You are to have in your thoughts the discovery of the Passage into the South sea and to attempt it as occasion shall offer with the advice and direction of Mr. Gooseberry and Mr. Radisson, or one of them they having told us that it is but 7 daies paddling or sailing from the River where they intend to trade and Harbour unto the stinking Lake and not above 7 daies more to the Streight which leads into that sea they call the South sea from thence but forty or fifty leagues to the sea it selfe in all which Streight it Ebbs and flows by means whereof the passage up and downe will be quicke and if it be possible you

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are to gette so much light in this matter before the returne of the Nonsuch Ketch as may encourage us the next Spring to send a vessel on purpose for that discovery.11

For 30 years the company’s attention was fixed firmly on a profitable fur trade at the bottom of the bay, and there was little time to look for a passage that might or might not exist. But that dormant period came to an end when James Knight was appointed governor in the bay factory. From then until the end of the century, the company found itself willy-nilly embroiled in almost nonstop efforts to find a passage through Hudson Bay and at the mercy of the political schemes and machinations of Arthur Dobbs and a cohort of merchants desperate to expose the company’s charter to public scrutiny and to break its Rupert’s Land trading monopoly. In the end, the company emerged victorious over its enemies and detractors. A number of its personnel, including Knight, Samuel Hearne, Christopher Middleton, Moses Norton, and Richard Norton, played a prominent part in the discovery and exploration at sea and in the Barren Lands.

IMPERIAL POWERS IN THE PACIFIC (1775–1818) Two factors magnified and complicated the Hudson’s Bay Company’s mid-18th-century trials and tribulations. One was the publication of the de Fonte letter in the April and June 1708 issues of the Monthly Miscellany, rescued from oblivion by Arthur Dobbs and printed in his An Account of the Countries Adjoining to Hudson’s Bay (1744). The second was the hypothesis long cherished by French cartographers of a Mer de l’Ouest, which was eventually brought to public attention by Philippe Buache’s Carte des Nouvelles De´couvertes au Nord de la Mer du Sud (Map of the new discoveries in the North Pacific Ocean) and Joseph Nicolas Delisle’s map of the same title both published in 1752. Inevitably these two maps became associated with de Fonte’s supposed voyage. Despite Hearne’s overland journey from Churchill to the mouth of the Coppermine River, during which he encountered no large river or saltwater channel, demolishing all notions of a passage northward from Hudson Bay, the concept of the Strait of Anian existing in lower latitudes than the Bering Strait lingered on.

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Spanish imperial nerve ends once more quivered with apprehension of a British descent on California and with fears of British and Russian intentions to exploit the newly established fur trade on the northwest coast of America. A series of voyages northward was initiated to mark strategic sites for settlement, to forestall possible Russian and British claims to possession, and, not least, to investigate whether there was any substance to the rumors of an undiscovered passage through the continent. And so, where Dobbs and the North-West Committee had persuaded Parliament neither to abrogate the Hudson’s Bay Company’s privileges nor to set in hand official northwest discovery voyages, the dictates of national strategic and economic policies soon demanded that Britain should not idly allow France, Spain, or Russia to establish and consolidate a commercial empire in the Pacific. In the light of the Russian advance to the Aleutian Islands and the long-established claims of Spain desperately anxious to cling on to its colonial and commercial monopoly in California, Britain found it convenient to remember Francis Drake’s annexation of New Albion two centuries earlier. The search for a passage switched from private exploration within the enclosed confines of Hudson Bay to official Admiralty discovery voyages on the unknown coasts of northwest America, where the conflicting interests of three empires threatened to erupt into open warfare. It is in this context that the voyages of Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra (1775), James Cook (1778), Ignacio Arteaga (1779), John Meares (1788), Manuel Quimper (1790), Alejandro Malaspina (1791), George Vancouver (1792–1794), Jacinto Caaman˜o (1792), and Francisco Antonio Mourelle (1793) should be viewed. The presence of JeanFranc¸ ois de Galaup, Comte de La Pe´ rouse, on the northwest coast (1786) and the Alaskan explorations of Otto von Kotzebue (1815–1818) vividly illustrate the abiding interest of France and the more recent activity of Russia in this potentially explosive region. Certainly Kotzebue’s activities were a prime factor in the British Admiralty’s recommencement of northwest discovery voyages in 1818. THE ARCTIC SEARCH (1815–1859) At first sight, a modern large-scale and uncluttered map of Northern Canada and the Arctic Archipelago offers a maze of seagoing channels

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through which a skillful and experienced navigator might penetrate to the Pacific Ocean. But such maps make no mention of either the ice pack that blocks all channels for nine or ten months of the year or the harsh, ferocious, and unrelenting weather conditions. It is said that there are only two seasons in the Arctic: winter and July and August. These channels, in fact, bear no resemblance to the northwest passage to Cathay and the Spice Islands so confidently sought in the 16th and 17th centuries. But, once it was clear that no great river or ocean channel cut through the North American continent, successive expeditions in search of a passage were forced to direct their energies and resources to discovering a route around the northern coastline. Two geographical delusions had to be discarded before effective progress could be made in the Arctic fastness. The first was that, if a passage were found, it would be navigable, which had its origin in the 16th-century doctrine ‘‘No land uninhabitable, nor sea innavigable.’’ This was encouraging, but dangerously wrong. The second was the pseudoscientific fallacy that ice formed primarily in rivers and in inshore waters and that the open, deeper waters to the north would allow an uninterrupted, ice-free passage across the North Pole to the Pacific. Another unfounded assumption postulated that it was contrary to all reason that firm land stretched all the way to the pole. From this, it was but a short step to the belief that a short sea route to the East Indies remained a viable proposition. In its initial stages, the Arctic search was dominated by one man, John Barrow, second secretary to the Admiralty, who was close to the center of power and exerted a personal influence that Dobbs, Alexander Dalrymple, and Daines Barrington could only dream of. He passionately believed in the existence of a navigable passage and was in a position where he was able to persuade the Admiralty, the government, the sovereign, and the nation that it was Britain’s destiny to discover—and to control—this new global highway. The irony is that, for all its efforts, no Royal Navy ship has ever completed the passage. When Britain embarked on a concerted attempt to discover a passage in high latitudes, very little was known of the continental shorelines, except for the points reached by Hearne and Alexander Mackenzie, and virtually nothing of the Arctic Archipelago. Even knowledge of the western side of Davis Strait had increased little since the voyages of the late 16th century, while William Baffin’s discoveries were almost to-

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tally forgotten. Only the 17th- and 18th-century discoveries in Hudson Bay were mapped and documented in any great detail, and even here the correct geographical status of Christopher Middleton’s Frozen Strait remained uncertain. Within 15 years, however, much progress was made. One by one, the unknown regions were outlined. After John Ross’s 1818 Croker Mountain fiasco, the very next year William Edward Parry penetrated 500 miles through Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, and Melville Sound to longitude 112 W, halfway to the Bering Strait, before the permanent ice of McClure Strait prevented further headway and forced him to retreat to Winter Harbor for the 1819–1820 winter. Prince Regent Inlet, Wellington Channel, and Devon, Cornwallis, and Bathurst islands were all sighted. This was a remarkable advance into the furthermost recesses of the archipelago and signaled as never before that this time Britain meant business. John Franklin’s two Arctic land expeditions, 1819–1822 and 1825– 1827, added 1,800 miles of the Canadian coastline to the map and provided a baseline for all future discovery voyages to the north. Parry returned to the Arctic in 1821 and searched for a route along the western end of Foxe Basin in the northeast corner of Hudson Bay, explored the east coast of the Melville Peninsula, and reached the ice-blocked entrance to Fury and Hecla Strait. His attempt to sail down Prince Regent Inlet and follow the continental coastline westward, 1824–1825, halted when one of his ships was driven ashore on Somerset Island. Frederick Beechey was dispatched to the Pacific Ocean and thence to Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, in a bid to link up with Franklin advancing westward along the coast. This ambitious plan failed, but the gap between Franklin’s westernmost point and Beechey’s farthest eastward advance was only 200 miles. At the end of the 1820s, a private venture backed by Felix Booth, a London gin magnate, and commanded by John Ross, spent four winters holed up in Felix Harbor on the Boothia Peninsula and at Fury Beach on Somerset Island. During the course of this expedition, James Clark Ross sledged across the frozen strait named after him to reach Cape Felix on King William Land and also located the North Magnetic Pole in latitude 755⬘ N and longitude 9641⬘ W. By any measure, the results of little over a decade of Arctic exploration had reaped a rich geographical dividend, but a passage still remained elusive.

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Disquiet at John Ross’s long absence led to a publicly subscribed overland rescue expedition by George Back and Richard King. On his approach journey via Lake Athabaska, the Slave River, and Great Slave Lake, Back received news in the spring of 1834 of Ross’s safe return. His orders were then to proceed with his second objective, to establish the configuration of the northeast Canadian coastline. This he largely accomplished after descending the Great Fish River (now known as the Back River) to the sea, but the lateness of the season prevented him from putting his explorations into their true context vis-a`-vis the triangle formed by King William Island, Rae Strait, and the southwestern corner of the Boothia Peninsula. The remaining gaps in the continental shoreline, apart from the Boothia Peninsula, were put on the map by the determined efforts of two Hudson’s Bay Company men, Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson, in 1837–1839. For almost 350 years European navigators had been seeking a northwest passage and never before had they been so close. The exertions of the Royal Navy since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, complemented by the driving ambition of Simpson, had all but completed the exploration of the northern continental coastline, and a general notion of what lay farther north was slowly forming. True, there were gaps in the Admiralty’s knowledge of the Arctic Archipelago, but an imminent solution to the centuries-old puzzle was confidently expected as the 1840s unfolded. An examination of the contemporary map of the western Arctic will explain the pervading air of optimism. The geographical discoveries from 1819 may be divided into three regions. First, in the north were the Parry Islands, discovered on Parry’s 1819 voyage during which he had noticed but not investigated several openings leading northward. To the south, Parry had also charted the north coast of Somerset Island and Cape Walker 40 miles to the west. A distinct second region, imperfectly known, was formed by the continental coastline from the Bering Strait in the west to the Back River estuary in the east and the lands to the north of this long coastline: Victoria Island and King William Island, across Dolphin and Union Strait, Coronation Gulf, and Simpson Strait. The third, partially explored region was that centered on Prince Regent Inlet and the Gulf of Boothia. The east coast of Somerset Island

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and the Boothia Peninsula were known, but Bellot Strait, the narrow channel between them, had not yet been discovered, although its existence was suspected by James Clark Ross. Fury and Hecla Strait, discovered in 1822, was generally believed to enter the Gulf of Boothia, but as yet evidence for this relied solely on Inuit reports. What remained was the exploration of a fourth region to the southwest of Cape Walker, now known to encompass the McClintock Channel and the eastern and western coasts of Victoria Island. From a geographical point of view, it mattered little whether the search was conducted via Lancaster Sound or the Bering Strait, although the former remained the preferred point of entry for logistical reasons. Opinion hardened that a voyage southwestward from Cape Walker offered the best chance of a successful completion of the passage. And that was where Sir John Franklin was ordered to explore first. Franklin conducted three expeditions, from the last of which, begun in 1845, no one ever returned. None of the more than 20 rescue expeditions that were mounted found Franklin’s ships or established the fate of the missing expedition, although the geographical results of such concentrated activity were enormous. It is now axiomatic that more was discovered in searching for Franklin than in pursuing a northwest passage. The first news of the stumbling and fitful progress of the last survivors of Franklin’s ships, the Erebus and Terror, did not reach the outside world until October 1854 after John Rae had returned from his journey north of Rae Isthmus. By this time, much of the Arctic Archipelago had been mapped by the numerous Franklin rescue expeditions and an alternative northwest passage had been traversed. Robert McClure in HMS Investigator had sailed to within 100 miles of Winter Harbor, on Melville Island, in the knowledge that Parry had reached Lancaster Sound from there in just six days. But at the time, it was a case of thus far and no farther—the ice of McClure Strait was impenetrable (to this day, the strait has proven impassable to all ships attempting to proceed through its waters—only two U.S. submarines in the 1960s have succeeded in negotiating the strait, under the ice). Nevertheless, McClure completed the passage, on foot to Henry Kellett’s HMS Resolute. Once the mystery surrounding the fate of Franklin’s expedition was clarified, attention focused on ascertaining who deserved the credit for

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the discovery of the Northwest Passage. The debate may conveniently be followed in the columns of the London Times newspaper. First up was Robert McClure, who had undoubtedly discovered a passage even if the McClure Strait ice had prevented him traversing it. ‘‘He took the Investigator . . . up Prince of Wales Strait, and in a sledge reached Banks Island,’’ a Times article observed. ‘‘Opposite his position at this point lay Melville Island—the Melville Island of Parry and his successors—so that at that very moment the problem of a northwest passage, which had occupied the thoughts of so many navigators from the days of Sebastian Cabot to our own time, was solved for all practical purposes.’’ The article concluded: ‘‘He went to look for Sir John Franklin, and found the North-West Passage.’’12 Sir John Richardson immediately pressed Franklin’s claim as the first discoverer: ‘‘I think no dispassionate reasoner can doubt the priority of discovery rests with the Erebus and Terror.’’13 As might be expected Lady Jane Franklin weighed in with well-reasoned support for her husband: It would ill become me . . . to attempt to question the claims of Captain McClure to every honour his country may think proper to award him. That enterprising officer is not the less the discoverer of a north-west passage, or, in other words, one of those links which was wanted to connect the main channels of navigation already ascertained by previous explorers, because the Erebus and Terror, under my husband, had previously, though unknown to Captain McClure, discovered another and more navigable passage—that passage, in fact which if ever ships attempt to push their way from one coast to the other, will assuredly be the one adopted.14

But others have argued that Franklin’s primacy was irrelevant. In the final analysis, geographical discovery cannot exist in vacuo—it has no meaning until its results are added to the whole corpus of man’s knowledge. ‘‘For discovery is not a race conducted from a known point to an unknown one. It is the science of bringing the unknown in topography into the purview of the known, the acquirement of information about a hitherto unknown region by a discovering country. Until the country acquires the information discovery has not been completed.’’15 At the time, McClure was promoted to captain, awarded a knighthood, and voted £10,000 for discovering a passage on the recommendation of the House of Commons Select Committee on Arctic Exploration. But, 10 years later, a national monument unveiled in Waterloo Place,

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London, carried an inscription on its pedestal: ‘‘FRANKLIN: To The Great Navigator And His Brave Companions Who Sacrificed Their Lives Completing The Discovery Of The North-West Passage A.D. 1847–48. Erected By The Unanimous Vote Of Parliament.’’ John Rae, who had determined that King William Land was in fact King William Island, separated from the Boothia Peninsula by a channel now known as Rae Strait, the last link in the one passage navigable by ships of the time, was never seriously considered for the accolade of first discoverer. As the man who committed the unpardonable solecism of reporting that Royal Navy officers and men had resorted to cannibalism to prolong their survival, he found no champion in Victorian England. But Rae gained recognition in the longer term. Roald Amundsen, for one, acknowledged his priority in the discovery of a passage, and both he and Henry Larsen elected for the Rae Strait route. What was more important in the final analysis was that the passage had been put on the map, thus ending a quest that had preoccupied geographers and merchants, discoverers and navigators, for 350 years.

THE PASSAGE NAVIGATED (FROM 1903) After Amundsen became the first to navigate the Northwest Passage in his 47-ton herring boat, 1903–1906, another 35 years elapsed before his triumph was followed up by Sgt. Henry Larsen, RCMP, who took his 80-ton police auxiliary schooner, St. Roch, through the passage by reversing Amundsen’s route, 1940–1942. He returned westward via the northern route through Prince of Wales Strait to become the first man to traverse the passage in both directions. Today there are several recognized routes whose use may depend on the type of vessel, its draft, and the season. Donat Pharand distinguishes five viable sea-lanes in his Canadian Arctic Waters in International Law (1988): (1) Prince of Wales Strait; (2) McClure Strait; (3) Peel Sound and Victoria Strait or Peel Sound and James Ross Strait, west or east of King William Island; (4) Prince Regent Inlet; and (5) Fury and Hecla Strait. In the second half of the 20th century, the Northwest Passage became a global highway. American and Canadian coast guard ships, icebreakers, hydrographic and oceanographic research and survey ships, and

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yachts negotiated its waters, and a monster tanker crushed through the ice (although not quite far enough to satisfy a purist like Willy de Roos). Submarines powered the way under the ice, and even holiday cruisers and a 42-foot lifeboat navigated the passage. This is not to say the passage has been tamed, although there are signs that global warming, if allowed to proceed, might diminish some of its hazards and perils. King William Island became the most examined piece of real estate in the Arctic as armed services and civilian expedition parties scoured every possible rocky shore and inland site, searching in vain for Franklin’s grave, journals, logbooks, and other records. Early 21st-century expeditions have so far met with no greater success. Since the beginning of the 1990s, a small library of books on the Northwest Passage has been published, including David Woodward’s Unveiling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony (1991), a landmark in Arctic research in that it recounts at length the depth of Inuit knowledge of the ultimate fate of Franklin’s lost expedition and confirms that native recollections, even if sometimes garbled in translation, usually had a foundation in fact and were to be relied upon. M. J. Ross’s Polar Pioneers: John Ross and James Clark Ross (1994) is a substantial biography of the two men written with the authority one would expect of a retired rear admiral in the Royal Navy and a great-grandson of the younger Ross. Richard J. Cyriax’s Sir John Franklin’s Last Arctic Expedition (1939), long regarded as a classic study of all the circumstances surrounding this most chronicled of all voyages, was reprinted in a limited facsimile edition in 1997. Also published in 1997, Peter Firstbrook’s The Voyage of the Matthew: John Cabot and the Discovery of North America reports how a replica ship was constructed and sailed from Bristol in Cabot’s wake across the North Atlantic, accompanied by a television crew, to commemorate the quadricentennial of John Cabot’s first voyage. Fergus Fleming’s Barrow’s Boys (1998) reexamines John Barrow’s influence within the Admiralty and the Royal Geographical Society and the deeds and exploits, or lack of them, of his carefully selected Royal Navy commanders. Ann Savours’s The Search for the North West Passage (1999) concentrates on the Arctic search and makes special mention of the assistance afforded by the Inuit, which was not always

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acknowledged by ships’ captains and others. James P. Delgado’s splendidly illustrated Across the Top of the World: The Quest for the Northwest Passage (1999), furnished with paintings, engravings, maps, and photographs in abundance, succeeds in portraying both the menace and the beauty of the Arctic. Fact boxes on individuals, ships, artifacts, and so forth supply informative detail that is sometimes overlooked. Scott Cookman’s Ice Blink (2000) builds a persuasive argument that the true cause of the Franklin disaster lies in the tainted canned provisions that formed the staple shipboard diet of his crews and names the putative villains of the piece. However, not all his conclusions find general acceptance. In his Captain Vancouver, North-West Navigator (2000), E. C. Coleman, a Royal Navy officer for 26 years, mounts a sturdy defense of Vancouver against the calumnies of the ‘‘young gentlemen’’ who accompanied him on his three-year survey of the northwest coast of America. Two early 21st-century publications of note are James McDermott’s Martin Frobisher, Elizabethan Privateer, a meticulously researched biography based on original documents, and Robert McGhee’s The Arctic Voyages of Martin Frobisher, which was ‘‘intimately linked’’ to the ‘‘Inuit and Englishmen: The Nunavut Voyages of Martin Frobisher’’ exhibition held at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec, and based on McGhee’s archaeological work in the early 1990s on Kodlunarn Island (Frobisher’s Countess of Warwick Island). Jeffrey Blair Latta’s The Franklin Conspiracy (2001), subtitled Cover-up, Betrayal, and the Astonishing Secret behind the Lost Arctic Expedition, presents a bizarre scenario in which the Admiralty dispatched expeditions not to find Franklin’s records but to destroy them. It is a story ‘‘without hope of proof,’’ tinged with magic, omens, and the supernatural in which ‘‘all our conjecture can be no more than a fairy tale, a scary story told by the lambent light of a midnight campfire.’’16 Ken McGoogan’s Fatal Passage (2001), winner of the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize and other awards, examines the crucial role played by John Rae in discovering the fate of the Franklin expedition and the final link in a navigable northwest passage. His narrative strips away some of the pretensions of the discovery establishment of the 1850s and the 1860s in Victorian London. Glyn Williams’s erudite but eminently readable Voyages of Delu-

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sion: The Northwest Passage in the Age of Reason (2002) is an expanded, revised, and updated rewrite of The British Search for the Northwest Passage in the Eighteenth Century (1962). Supported by an exemplary use of original source material and with excellent coverage of the cartographic evidence, this indispensable account of Britain’s attempts to find a passage through Hudson Bay and its rivalry with Spain on the northwest coast of America to discover the entrance of the Strait of Anian is especially valuable for its explanation of the influence of French and Russian cartography in the 18th century. Ray Edinger’s Fury Beach (2003) is a detailed narrative of Sir John Ross’s four-year voyage to Prince Regent Inlet, 1829 through 1833, which vividly recounts the burgeoning trust between a veteran bulldog captain and the Inuit of the Boothia Peninsula. Derek Hayes, the author and compiler of three previous relevant historical atlases, surpassed himself with his Historical Atlas of the Arctic (2003). A series of thematic map features, in chronological order, contain an expert blend of maps, text, and illustrations charting 500 years of Arctic discovery and exploration to provide readers with hours of browsing. Equally fascinating is Samuel Bawlf’s The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake (2003), a definitive study of the course Drake pursued off the northwest coast of America in 1579. Bawlf argues that, in searching for the coast of Anian, Drake sailed north as far as Chatham Strait and Stephens Passage at latitude 57 N and that the secret location of New Albion was on the mainland coast opposite Vancouver Island at latitude 48 N. Ken McGoogan’s Ancient Mariner (2004) is a new and authoritative study of the sailor who walked to the Arctic, Samuel Hearne, who McGoogan claims was the inspiration of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In addition to these titles, four others were published in the Hakluyt Society’s editions of voyages and travels, each comprising a biographical essay; the original accounts, often not previously published; and a bibliography: Voyages to Hudson Bay in Search of a Northwest Passage, 1741–1747, in two volumes, edited by William Barr and Glyndwr Williams (1994–1995); The Journal of Jean-Franc¸ois de Galaup de la Pe´rouse, in two volumes, by John Dunmore (1994–1995); Searching for Franklin: The Land Arctic Searching Expedition; James Anderson’s and James Stewart’s Expeditions via the Back River, 1855, edited by

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William Barr (1999); and The Third Voyage of Martin Frobisher to Baffin Island, edited by James McDermott (2001). Confronted by such a formidable list it is impossible to doubt or deny that the Northwest Passage continues to exert its fascination, not only on maritime adventurers but also on academic and on-the-spot researchers and armchair readers. In this respect, nothing has changed in 500 years. NOTES 1. Ann Savours, The Search for the North West Passage (London: Chatham, 1999), i. 2. Willy de Roos, North-West Passage, trans. from the French by Bruce Penman (London: Hollis & Carter, 1980), 3. 3. The Voyages of Captain Luke Foxe of Hull, and Captain Thomas James of Bristol, in Search of a North-West Passage in 1631–32; with Narratives of the Earlier North-West Voyages of Frobisher, Davis, Weymouth, Hall, Knight, Hudson, Button, Gibbons, Bylot, Baffin, Hawkridge, and Others, ed. Miller Christy (London: Hakluyt Society, 1894), appendix D. 4. George Malcolm Thomson, The North-West Passage (London: Secker & Warburg; New York: Macmillan, 1975), 2. 5. James A. Williamson, The Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery under Henry VII, with the Cartography of the Voyages by R. A. Skelton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Hakluyt Society, 1962), 6. 6. Peter Whitfield, New Found Lands: Maps in the History of Exploration (London: British Library, 1998), 7. 7. Warren L. Cook, Flood Tide of Empire: Spain and the Pacific Northwest, 1543–1819 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973), 5. 8. Cook, Flood Tide of Empire, 17. 9. E. E. Rich, The History of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1670–1870 (London: Hudson’s Bay Record Society, 1958), 22. 10. Rich, The History of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 24. 11. Douglas MacKay, The Honourable Company: A History of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 2nd ed. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1949), 23–24. 12. Proceedings in Parliament, Times (London), 20 June 1855, 8–9. 13. Sir John Richardson, letter to the editor, Times (London), 23 June 1855, 5. 14. Lady Jane Franklin, letter to the editor, Times (London), 13 August 1855, 4. 15. Hugh N. Wallace, The Navy, the Company, and Richard King: British Exploration in the Canadian Arctic, 1829–1860 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1980), 168. 16. Jeffrey Blair Latta, The Franklin Conspiracy: Cover-up, Betrayal, and the Astonishing Secret behind the Lost Arctic Expedition (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2001), 98.

The Dictionary

–A– ADVENTURERS AND DISCOVERERS OF THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE. A term applied in the 17th century to investors in mercantile companies sponsoring voyages of discovery for a northwest passage who would profit from any commercial gains that might accrue. Adventurers and discoverers were risking their capital, not their lives. AGUILAR, MARTIN DE (fl. TURN OF THE 17TH CENTURY). Sailing in command of the frigate Tres Reyes, Aguilar accompanied Sebastia´n Vizcaı´no on his 1602–1603 expedition northward up the Californian coast. After a severe winter storm blew up off Cape Mendocino, Aguilar’s ship was swept farther to the north. When the storm abated, on 19 January 1603, he found himself, at latitude 43 N, off a cape he named Cape Blanco, from which he could see the coastline veering slightly to the northeast. Close by was a large, deep, full-flowing river later given the name Rio de Martin Aguilar. Exactly which river this was became a matter of some speculation, especially in the 18th century, when it was identified as the entrance to the Mer de l’Ouest. It was depicted as such on Philippe Buache’s 1752 map, ‘‘Carte des Nouvelles De´couvertes au Nord de la Mer du Sud’’ (Map of the new discoveries in the north of the South Sea). AKAITCHO (c. 1788–1838). Chief of a small band of Yellowknife Indians, Akaitcho guided Franklin’s First Arctic Land Expedition to a point on the Coppermine River within a short distance of the sea in July 1821 after declining to accompany him the previous year because of the lateness of the season and John Franklin’s slow rate 1

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of progress. He proved to be a steadfast friend after Franklin’s horrendous journey back to Fort Enterprise in the late autumn. Without his aid and leadership, it is extremely doubtful whether Franklin’s party would have survived their ordeal. AMERICAN EXPRESS FRANKLIN MEMORIAL EXPEDITION. See HARRIS, REBECCA. AMUNDSEN, ROALD ENGLEBRECHT GRAVNING (1872– 1928). What made Roald Amundsen so outstanding in the exploration of the Northwest Passage was not only his priority in traversing the passage but also how he deliberately trained himself to become a cold-climate explorer. He served as mate on board the Belgica on the 1897–1899 expedition to Antarctica by Gerlache de Gomery (1866– 1934) and gained his master’s certificate to bring his seamanship to a recognized standard and also perhaps to prevent a potential conflict arising between himself as captain of a voyage and a qualified navigator. Moreover, because he realized that he would not attract financial backing for his planned voyage unless he could claim a scientific purpose for it, he studied magnetism and the art of taking magnetic observations, with a view to establishing the current position of the North Magnetic Pole. Assembling a carefully chosen crew of six, he slipped out of Kristiana (now Oslo) harbor on the night of 16 June 1903 in the Gjøa, a small 47-ton fishing vessel equipped with a 13-horsepower diesel engine, a matter of hours before a disgruntled creditor would likely have seized his ship. Putting in at Godhavn, on the west coast of Greenland, Amundsen steered through Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait and by 22 August was at Beechey Island, where he went ashore to the Franklin Monument. He always acknowledged that Sir John Franklin was the first discoverer of the Northwest Passage. Still following in Franklin’s wake, the Gjøa moved south down Peel Sound into Franklin Strait to reach the De La Roquette Islands, so small as not to appear on most maps. The last European to approach them was Allen Young in 1875. Unlike then, Amundsen was not confronted by an impenetrable ice barrier, and there was a navigable channel south. But it was not all plain sailing: in Sir James Ross Strait the Gjøa ran

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aground and, the same night, a fire broke out in the engine room close to where 2,000 gallons of gasoline was stored. Having survived these hazards, the Gjøa ran aground again three days later on a submerged reef off Matty Island, halfway between Boothia Peninsula and King William Island. Twenty-five heavy cases of supplies were jettisoned as the ship battled to get free. When all seemed lost, a fierce storm filled the sails, and the accompanying seas lifted the Gjøa off the reef at the cost of more supplies being thrown overboard. At the southern end of Rae Strait, Amundsen dropped anchor in a small, sheltered harbor he named Gjøa Haven. Although Simpson Strait was clear of ice, Amundsen recognized that his scientific work took precedence over a clear run through the passage and he constructed a habitable onshore research station. No doubt he was aware also that his crew needed a long period of rest and recuperation after their perilous voyage from Beechey Island. Amundsen was to be based at Gjøa Haven for 18 months. In the summer of 1904 he located the North Magnetic Pole at latitude 7030⬘ N and longitude 9530⬘ W, 40 miles to the northeast of where James Clark Ross had pinpointed it in 1831. Much to Amundsen’s subsequent dismay, his coordinates were not entirely accurate. The following year, after a reconnaissance journey to the west coast of King William Island in 1904, Lieutenant Godfred Hansen, Amundsen’s second-in-command, and Peder Ristvedt, a meteorologist, sledged across the thick ice of Victoria Strait, named the Royal Geographical Society Islands, and explored the east coast of Victoria Island as far north as the 72nd parallel. Throughout his stay, Amundsen maintained a very cordial relationship with the various groups of Inuit attracted to Gjøa Haven who eventually numbered 200 souls to form what was, in Arctic terms, a large settlement. He broke camp on 13 August 1905, sailing round the southwestern tip of King William Island, the crew keeping a sharp lookout for reefs and shoals, into the Victoria Strait, and across to Cambridge Bay four days later. At this point he had virtually completed the passage. Continuing west, the Gjøa encountered a San Francisco–based whaling ship on 26 August but then ice blocked his way in the Beaufort Sea and the 1905–1906 winter was spent at King Point, on the Yukon coast near the mouth of the Mackenzie River. Eager to let

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the outside world know of his successful voyage, Amundsen made a 500-mile sledge journey to Eagle City, Alaska, the nearest telegraph station. Amundsen sailed from King Point on 10 July, passed round Point Barrow on 20 August, sailed through the Bering Strait four days later, and reached San Francisco on 19 October 1906. AMUNDSEN GULF. Separating Banks Island from the Canadian mainland, the 200-mile-long Amundsen Gulf connects the Prince of Wales Strait to the Beaufort Sea. ANDERSON, JAMES (1812–1867). Joining the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1831, Anderson was promoted to chief factor in 1847. Eight years later he was appointed leader of the expedition that the Admiralty requested the company send down the Great Fish River in order to verify the evidence uncovered by John Rae that a number of Sir John Franklin’s missing crew had perished there. Accompanied by James Green Stewart, whose suitability for the expedition Anderson was inclined to doubt, and with a party of 14 voyageurs in three light canoes, he set out from Fort Resolution on Great Slave Lake at the end of June 1855. He pioneered a portage route through the mountains to Lake Latymer and arrived on the Arctic shoreline on 31 July. Anderson conducted a meticulous search both on the mainland and on Montreal Island, in the estuary of the Great Fish River and about 30 miles from Starvation Cove, finding tools, oars, and various oddments, including a backgammon board known to have been on board HMS Erebus, but no human remains or written records. Because of the fragile state of the canoes, the expedition was unable to cross over to King William Island. Anderson led his party back into Fort Resolution on 12 September. They had accomplished all that had been asked of them in confirming Rae’s report. ARCHIVAL RESEARCH TASK FORCE (ARTAF). The need for an intensive archival research program in the United Kingdom was very quickly recognized by the Meta Incognita Project. ARTAF was founded at the first of many meetings held at the Royal Geographical Society in London on 1 July 1992. It is said that each

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meeting developed into an impromptu symposium. A more structured symposium was held at Trent University, Nottingham, 1–4 May 1997, when the papers printed in the two-volume Meta Incognita: A Discourse of Discovery (1999) were first presented. ARCTIC. The region north of the Arctic Circle. Alternatively, in popular parlance, the land north of the treeline. The Boothia Peninsula divides the Canadian Arctic into its eastern and western sectors. See also PERMAFROST; TUNDRA. ARCTIC ARCHIPELAGO. Islands covering 500,000 square miles north of Canada’s continental shoreline, bounded in the east by Baffin Bay, and in the west by the Beaufort Sea and the Arctic Ocean. All northwest passages wend their way through the archipelago. ARCTIC BIBLIOGRAPHY. Edited by Marie Tremaine and prepared by the Arctic Institute of North America, with the support of U.S. and Canadian government agencies, the Arctic Bibliography aimed ‘‘to bring into a unified systematic record, publications resulting from the exploration and scientific investigation of northern regions hitherto little known or difficult of access.’’ The annotated, initialed (occasionally abstracted) 108,723 entries are arranged alphabetically by author and are indexed in a second sequence under geographical subject headings, of which ‘‘Expeditions’’ is one. A list of journals cited, and a separate list of the principal libraries of North America where these might be consulted, ensure that the information included in the bibliography is readily accessible to scientists engaged in north polar research. A map indicating 69 regional sections used as main headings in the index is also included in each volume. The selection of material gave priority to narratives and scientific results written by the explorer or scientist concerned. Mainly researched at the Library of Congress, 16 volumes appeared from 1953 through 1975. The first 12 were published by the Defense Department in Washington, the remaining three by McGill-Queen’s University Press. ARCTIC BLUE BOOKS. A series of British parliamentary papers covering the exploration of the Canadian Arctic from 1818 through 1878. Many were printed either to respond to motions and debates in

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the House of Commons or to address public concern as to the measures being taken by the government to discover the fate of Sir John Franklin’s 1845–1848 voyage. They also cover the social, medical, and natural sciences and constitute a formidable and voluminous corpus of original source material. Andrew Taylor (1907–1993) published Arctic Blue Books: British Parliamentary Papers on Exploration in the Canadian North (1959), which is the subject of William ‘‘Skip’’ Koolage’s ‘‘Andrew Taylor’s Index to the Arctic Blue Books: British Parliamentary Papers Relating to Exploration in the Canadian North, 1818–1878’’ in Gateways: Archives and Libraries into the Next Millennium, edited by Barbara Kercey (2001). ARCTIC CIRCLE. An imaginary line running parallel to the equator at latitude 6632⬘ N. ARCTIC COMMITTEE. Comprising five senior Royal Navy officers—including three Arctic ‘‘heavyweights,’’ William Edward Parry, George Back, and Frederick Beechey—the Arctic Committee was set up in October 1851 to investigate the events and circumstances of Horatio Austin’s and William Penny’s 1850–1851 search-and-rescue expeditions, especially the dispute between the two captains. The committee sat for 12 days, taking evidence from both men, their senior officers, and other polar luminaries. No disciplinary action was imposed on Austin or Penny, but the Admiralty never again employed their services in the Arctic. A full account of the committee and its proceedings is printed in Report of the Committee Appointed by the Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty to Inquire into and Report on the Recent Arctic Expeditions in Search of Sir John Franklin together with the Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Committee, and Papers Concerned with the Subject (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode for HMSO, 1851). ARCTIC COUNCIL. The Arctic Council emerged in the mid-1830s as an informal group to advise the Admiralty on all matters relating to Northwest Passage voyages of discovery. Its membership and attendance varied, but the well-known Arctic figures of the Royal Navy—George Back, Francis Beaufort, Frederick William Beechey, William Edward Parry, John Richardson, and James

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Ross—and Edward Sabine (Royal Artillery) were never far away. Nor was John Barrow, who as always exerted a pervasive and powerful influence. One unfortunate result was that the Admiralty, and the government, became accustomed to relying on the Arctic Council’s ‘‘expert’’ opinion and ignored the views of Richard King and John Rae, whose land travel experience and survival skills were unequaled. As a consequence, the search for Sir John Franklin was unnecessarily prolonged. The first real divergence of opinion between the Admiralty and the council came in the 1850s when the Admiralty wished to call a halt to the search and the council recommended it be continued. ARCTIC HIGHLANDERS. The name given by John Ross to the Inuit whom he first encountered on the northwest coast of Greenland on 10 August 1818. ARCTIC INSTITUTE OF NORTH AMERICA OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY. A nonprofit, tax-exempt, educational and research organization, the Arctic Institute was created by act of Parliament in 1945 to advance the study of the North American circumpolar north through the natural and social sciences, the arts, and the humanities and to acquire, preserve, and disseminate information on the physical, environmental, and social conditions in the north. First established at McGill University in Montreal, it has been based at the University of Calgary since 1979. Its publications include Arctic, a quarterly learned journal concentrating today on the polar and subpolar regions of the world; ASTIS (the Arctic Scientific and Technology Information Service); and a newsletter, Information North. See also ARCTIC BIBLIOGRAPHY. ARCTIC LAND COMMITTEE. See COMMITTEE FOR PROMOTING THE ARCTIC EXPEDITION BY LAND. ARCTIC MEDAL (UK). Created in May 1857, the Arctic Medal was awarded to all ranks who were engaged in the Arctic discovery expeditions from 1818 on or on the search expeditions for Sir John Franklin from 1845 through 1848. An Admiralty Order of 20 No-

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vember 1857 authorized the issue of the medal to the officers and men who had sailed on Edwin Jesse De Haven’s 1850–1851 expedition. Hudson’s Bay Company personnel became eligible for the medal in 1859. The Arctic Medal was replaced by the Polar Medal in 1904. ARCTIC POSTMAN. In the 1848–1849 winter, James Clark Ross initiated the practice of trapping a fox and then releasing it after fitting it with a metal collar in which were placed details of his rescue expedition’s winter base and where food depots were located. The fox, in effect, became an Arctic postman. ARCTIC STRAIT. See MAPS AND MAPPING, EUROPEAN. ARTEAGA, IGNACIO DE (1735–1783). Captain of the squadron formed by the Spanish colonial government in 1779 to apprehend and detain James Cook and to prosecute him under the Laws of the Indies, requiring the seizure of all foreign ships visiting Spanish territory illegally, Arteaga sailed north in the Princesa in company with Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra in Favorita. Arteaga embarked at San Blas on 11 February, with orders to proceed at least to latitude 70 N, and arrived off Bucareli Sound, on the western side of Prince of Wales Island, early in May. Relations with local inhabitants were fractious, and hostages were taken by both sides, but Arteaga managed to send boat parties to explore the various channels and inlets that separated the sound from its mainland shores. Many different exits to the open sea, and a number of promising channels advancing inland, were found, but a detailed investigation of these proved impossible. Farther north, at the entrance to Prince William Sound, Arteaga took formal possession for Spain. Here, too, the interior channels were explored to determine whether one or more led to a passage across the northern regions of the American continent. The Princesa reached Afognak Island, near Kodiak, before an outbreak of scurvy persuaded Arteaga to return southward. ASTIS. The Arctic Scientific and Technology Information Service (ASTIS), describing and annotating publications and research proj-

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ects concerning northern Canada prepared at the Arctic Institute since 1978, has moved to the Worldwide Web. The printed ASTIS Current Awareness Bulletin and the CD-ROM ASTIS Bibliography have been discontinued. AURORA BOREALIS. Named after the Roman goddess of dawn, the aurora borealis, or northern lights, is a spectacularly luminous natural phenomenon, consisting of vertical streams of red, green, blue, or violet lights, sometimes culminating in a central corona flashing rays in all directions. Formerly believed to be the effect of sunlight reflecting off snow and ice, the modern view is more complex. It is now thought that the lights are caused by radiation in the upper atmosphere after periods of intense solar activity in the form of sunspots and magnetic storms. The consequent solar wind of fast-moving, electronically charged ions is deflected toward the poles by the earth’s magnetic field. Various gases produced in this process account for the different colored lights. The aurora borealis is most often seen December through March in the vicinity of the North Magnetic Pole but generally extends from Alaska across northern Canada to Norway. AUSTIN, HORATIO THOMAS (1801–1865). Austin’s first experience of the Arctic came in 1824 when he was a lieutenant on HMS Fury on William Edward Parry’s discovery voyage to Prince Regent Inlet. In the 1830s he became closely associated with the development of steam vessels and, subsequently, he captained HMS Salamander, the Royal Navy’s first partially steam-powered ship. No doubt these activities played a part in his appointment as commander of an ambitious expedition consisting of two sailing ships, HMS Resolute (commanded by Austin) and HMS Assistance (Erasmus Ommaney), and two screw steamships, HMS Pioneer (Sherard Osborn) and HMS Intrepid (Bertie Cator). The expedition sailed on 3 May 1850, provisioned for three years and with orders to search Wellington Channel and the Cape Walker region for traces of Sir John Franklin’s missing ships. Richard Collinson had sailed earlier in the year for the Bering Strait with HMS Enterprise and HMS Investigator to search eastward through the Arctic Archipelago. Austin was delayed by ice in

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Lancaster Sound, but Ommaney sailed on with the other three ships and on 23 August discovered the first traces of Franklin’s expedition on Beechey Island and on Cape Riley, Devon Island. Resolute rejoined a few days later and the squadron continued westward until ice blocked the way. They wintered in Resolute Passage at Griffith Island, south of Cornwallis Island in Barrow Strait. Three other expeditions were in the region during the 1850–1851 winter: William Penny with Lady Franklin and Sophia; John Ross in Felix; and Edwin Jesse De Haven with Advance and Rescue. All four commanders maintained close contact and coordinated their spring 1851 sledge journeys. Regarded as the most illustrious feature of Austin’s voyage, the methods and arrangements for the sledge parties sent out in search of Franklin were meticulously planned by Leopold McClintock, to whom Austin paid a warm and generous tribute on 12 April 1851, the day they marched out. They were organized in three divisions. Lt. R. D. Aldrich took the northern division past Byam Martin Island northward up the unexplored channel between Bathurst and Melville Islands. The longest and most difficult mission was allocated to McClintock’s western division. He took five sledges and proceeded down Barrow Strait to Melville Island on the premise that if Franklin had sailed up Wellington Channel to find a route to the Bering Strait and had been beset by ice farther west, he might have retreated across the island. After reaching Cape Dundas, on Russell Islet off the tip of Prince of Wales Island, McClintock sledged up Liddon’s Gulf to Buchanan Cove and crossed to Winter Harbor. He returned to Assistance on July 4, having sledged 875 miles in 83 days. Seven sledges, comprising the southern division commanded by Ommaney, with Osborn as his second-in-command, made for Cape Walker, where Franklin had been ordered to turn south. At this point, Osborn attempted to penetrate west, across the northern reaches of McClintock Channel but was forced back when his sledges began to buckle under the hazardous conditions 300 miles out and, instead, followed the shoreline of the west coast of Prince of Wales Island. Ommaney discovered the wide bay now named after him. Lieutenant William Browne was dispatched to examine Peel Sound, whose

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eastern shores had been explored by James Clark Ross two years earlier. In toto, Austin’s overland search expeditions covered 7,025 miles on foot, adding to the map 1,225 miles of previously unknown coastline. But they discovered no traces of Franklin. It was Austin’s belief that Franklin would not be found west of Lancaster Sound because his line of retreat would have been through Barrow Strait. Before returning home, after his squadron had been released from the ice on 8 August, he sailed to Jones Sound, north of Lancaster Sound, up Baffin Bay. But here, too, the ice repelled him. Back in England, the Admiralty was disappointed that Austin had returned so soon. He had been provisioned for three years and there was still no indication of Franklin’s present whereabouts. A committee was appointed to investigate the circumstances of the voyage, and it was quickly established that a dispute between Austin and Penny had occurred. Penny claimed that he had requested the use of one of Austin’s steamships to explore beyond Wellington Channel but that Austin had summarily refused without any explicit reason. Many of Austin’s officers, including Osborn, sided with Penny. Austin’s rejoinder was that it had been generally agreed to return to England. In the end, both men were cleared of any wrongdoing, but neither was again employed in the Arctic. –B– BACK, SIR GEORGE (1796–1878). Back’s earliest experience of Arctic service came in 1818 when he was a junior officer on HMS Trent (commanded by Lt. John Franklin), which accompanied HMS Dorothea (Capt. David Buchan) on an attempted voyage direct to the Bering Strait across the North Pole. A year later, he was a member of Franklin’s First Arctic Land Expedition, the objectives of which were to explore the northern coastline of Canada eastward from the mouth of the Coppermine River. Back especially distinguished himself on the harsh and exacting return journey from Point Turnagain when he was instrumental in saving Franklin and John Richardson from starvation. Back was appointed second-in-command on Franklin’s Second Arctic Land Expedition and was responsible for establishing the ex-

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pedition’s base camp at Fort Franklin in the southeastern corner of Great Bear Lake. Later he accompanied Franklin on his voyage westward from the mouth of the Mackenzie River to within 160 miles of Point Barrow. Back’s opportunity to command an Arctic expedition came in 1833 when he volunteered to lead a relief expedition in search of Sir John Ross, who had failed to return from his 1829 voyage to Prince Regent Inlet. Funded by the Committee for Promoting the Arctic Expedition by Land, and with the authorization of the Hudson’s Bay Company to draw upon its trading posts for supplies and that of the Admiralty to recruit his exploration party in Canada, Back departed from Liverpool bound for New York on 17 February 1833. Although this was a private expedition, it came under the direction of the government, and Back received his orders from the secretary of state for the colonies. Upon his arrival at Great Slave Lake, he was to leave a party to build his winter quarters and proceed without further delay to find the Great Fish River, which was believed to flow from the lake or from a point nearby, and descend the river to the sea. There he was to leave a note for Ross informing him that he would return the following year. Since the exact course of the Great Fish River had yet to be ascertained—whether northward to the Arctic Sea or eastward to Hudson Bay—much was left to Back’s discretion, except that he was to bend every effort to reach Fury Beach. Ross had made it clear that he intended to draw upon the stores William Edward Parry had deposited there in July 1825. His secondary objective was to map the unknown sections of the continental coastline. Leaving Richard King, his second-in-command, to bring up the rear party, Back hastened to Fort Resolution on Great Slave Lake via Lake Athabaska and the Slave River. He arrived on 8 August and, four days later, set out to find the Great Fish River. Hundreds of miles were traversed in search of a river that might or might not be navigable, and eventually its headwaters were found to the northeast of the lake. Within days, rapids much too strong for his fragile canoe to negotiate forced him to retreat. He returned to Great Slave Lake, where, in his absence, Fort Reliance had been constructed at its eastern end. Before setting out in the spring of 1834, news reached Back from

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London that Ross had returned safe and well. His new orders were to turn his whole attention to completing the exploration of the coastline of the northeastern extremity of the American continent. He now faced an exploration journey, pure and simple, untrammeled by any requirement to search for Ross’s missing expedition. Back’s instructions were formulated in London in the mistaken belief that all that was needed to complete the mapping of the continental coastline was to join James Clark Ross’s Point Victoria with Point Turnagain. This concept neglected the vital area east of Point Victoria, where the true configuration of King William Island and the Boothia Peninsula could be determined and the final link in the elusive passage found. A month was spent negotiating a difficult descent of the river, which left him at least three weeks to examine the coastline. Salt water was reached on 29 July 1834, at latitude 6711⬘ N and longitude 9430⬘ W. Back anticipated a fruitful and relatively trouble-free voyage westward and a swift completion of the mapping of the unexplored coastline, but it soon became apparent that he was at the bottom of an inlet still choked by ice. He succeeded in sailing up the western side of the Great Fish River estuary to observe land trending away northward and northeastward. To the north was the southern shore of King William Island; Back was in fact gazing across the southern end of Rae Strait, which, together with Bellot Strait, may be described as the key to the Northwest Passage via either Prince Regent Inlet or Peel Sound. Looking across to the eastern shore, Back discerned at the bottom of the continuous shoreline a range of mountains that projected unbroken northward for almost 450 miles, except for the very narrow Bellot Strait between the Boothia Peninsula and Somerset Island. Back estimated that this shoreline stretched only 16 miles at the most and terminated in a huge projecting headland he named Cape Hay. Continuing his journey along the western shore, he reached Point Ogle, the northern extremity of Chantrey Inlet, where ice prevented any further attempt to sail westward. From here, he could see an island on the south side of a channel westward (Simpson Strait), and to the northeastward he saw a vast stretch of water and ice. His second view of ‘‘Cape Hay’’ persuaded him that the mainland trended to the east and south. To the north, he distinguished land to which he

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gave the name of Ripon Island (in fact Cape Britannia), but he wrongly surmised that a channel corresponding to Simpson Strait existed running eastward to the south of Boothia Peninsula. King urged Back to disregard the strict letter of his orders; it would involve no more than two days’ rowing to establish whether Boothia was an island or part of the mainland. If Back had been persuaded to have undertaken such a journey—to pass through Rae Strait—it would have clarified Ross’s chart and indicated where the passage could finally be established, but eager to comply with his orders not to hazard the expedition and to begin his return journey by 20 August at the latest, and concluding that there was nothing further to investigate to the east, he turned back at the exact moment when a little more initiative would have been amply rewarded. The Great Fish River expedition is one of the least celebrated of all the early 19th-century Arctic journeys. Its primary purpose was removed before it truly started and it failed to accomplish its secondary purpose of reaching Point Turnagain, but it provided another point of reference on the northern continental coastline and, by implication, refuted James Clark Ross’s view that King William Island was part of the mainland. Both Back and King were in agreement on one essential point: the Boothia region was of the utmost importance in the discovery of a passage. The publication of Back’s Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition in 1836 renewed public interest in the discovery of a northwest passage and encouraged the Royal Geographical Society to persuade the Admiralty to send out another expedition in order to establish the coastline between Point Turnagain and Fury and Hecla Strait. Command of the expedition was again entrusted to Back. He departed from Chatham, at the mouth of the River Medway, in HMS Terror on 14 June 1836. His instructions were to proceed either to Wager River or to the Frozen Strait at the northwestern corner of Hudson Bay, haul his whaleboats across the Melville Peninsula, chart its western shoreline north to the strait, and then determine the continental coastline from the point of arrival on Prince Regent Inlet to the Great Fish River and Point Turnagain. He was also to instruct his officers to record the state of the sea each day with regard to ice and also the appearance of land, it being judged of great importance to ascertain whether the

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Arctic Sea to the northward of the north coast of America was navigable by oceangoing ships. However, Terror was beset by ice in the Frozen Strait near the northern end of Roe’s Welcome. All winter, the ship drifted southeastward along the coast of Southampton Island. By July 1837, the ship was almost unseaworthy and Back faced a difficult task in getting her back across the Atlantic. It had been a singularly unprofitable exercise. BACK RIVER. Formerly known as the Great Fish River, from the Indian Thlew-eecho-dezeth, the Back River rises near Lake Artillery, north of Reliance in the Northwest Territories, and flows 530 miles across the barren lands before debouching into an elongated estuary, Chantrey Inlet, across the Simpson Strait from Gjøa Haven. First descended by George Back in 1834, along the way it expands into a series of lakes connected by narrow waters strewn by numerous rapids impassable by boat or canoe, necessitating long portages. It was near the Back River that the bones of the last survivors of Sir John Franklin’s 1845–1848 expedition were found. BACKSIDE OF AMERICA. Late 18th-century term for America’s northwest coast, then looming large in the nascent fur trade and in the search for a northwest passage. BAFFIN, WILLIAM (1584–1622). Well-experienced in Arctic navigation off the west coast of Greenland in 1612 and on the Spitsbergen whale fisheries during the next two years, William Baffin was appointed pilot of the Discovery on Robert Bylot’s 1615 voyage in search of a northwest passage. Departing from England on 15 March, the Discovery reached Resolution Island by the end of May, but contrary winds and thick ice delayed the ship from making the southwestern coast of the island subsequently named after him. Bylot steered the ship northwestward, through Foxe Channel, toward Foxe Basin. After circling east with no better fortune, they turned westward, and by mid-July the Discovery was off the northeast coast of Southampton Island, where a flood tide from the north caused their spirits to soar. Bylot prematurely named an adjacent headland Cape Comfort, but the farther

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they proceeded, the shallower the water became and the more ice they encountered. Seventeen fruitless days were spent cruising the seas at the western mouth of Hudson Strait, desperately seeking a favorable pattern to the tides. All proving to be of no avail, Bylot turned his course to England. Because so much store had been placed on the direction of flood tides, Baffin carefully observed the times of the high tides at Nottingham and Digges Islands. He concluded that a mathematical error had greatly flawed previous calculations that underpinned the evidence for a passage. For his part, he was uncompromising in his conclusion that if any waterway to the South Sea existed through Hudson Bay, it was by some unnavigable creek or inlet. The next venture of the Company of the Merchants of London, Discoverers of the North-West Passage, with the same master and pilot, was directed to follow up John Davis’s discoveries of 30 years earlier. Specifically, Bylot was ordered to sail up the west coast of Greenland to latitude 80 N, then steer southwesterly to latitude 60 N, and finally direct his course to the land of Yedso (modern-day Hokkaido). At that point, he might—at his own discretion, according to the time of year, and as far as the winds would allow—sail more southerly so as to touch the northern part of Japan. The Discovery weighed anchor at Gravesend on 26 March 1616 and, by the end of May, had passed Sanderson’s Hope, Davis’s furthest point north. Unfavorable winds and heavy ice hindered rapid progress but, on 1 July, Bylot entered an open sea (Baffin Bay), renewing hope of finding a passage. Baffin piloted Discovery into Smith Sound in the highest latitude he achieved, 80 N. Forced southward by ice, he discovered the entrance to Alderman Jones Sound. Next he came to the 40-mile entrance to Lancaster Sound, which, like John Ross 200 years later, he decided would lead nowhere, reporting, ‘‘Here our hope of progress began to be less every day.’’ Steering south, down the heavily indented coastline of Baffin Island, they found its many fjords blocked by ice, defying all hopes of exploration. Returning to England with discouraging news for the second year in succession, Baffin’s report to his employers was as forthright as ever: ‘‘There is no passage nor hope of passage in the north of Davis Straits.’’ But this 1616 voyage, dismal and ineffectual though it

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seemed at the time, was important geographically: the whole of Baffin Bay had been discovered and accurately described. BAFFIN BAY. Ice-covered for much of the year, Baffin Bay is 800 miles long and 140 miles across at its widest point. Two deepwater channels, Lancaster Sound and Jones Sound, penetrate westward through the Arctic Archipelago to the Arctic Ocean and the Beaufort Sea. Discovered by Robert Bylot and William Baffin in 1616, it was by mischance almost forgotten for 200 years after Samuel Purchas omitted Baffin’s chart from Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625), probably because of Baffin’s conclusion that there was no passage north of Davis Strait. Instead, he chose to include a map from Henry Briggs’s Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affairs in Virginia (1622), which actually showed a channel running to the west. Later geographers, lacking authentic source material, began to rely overmuch on their own theories and imagination. A circumpolar map in Daines Barrington’s Possibility of Approaching the North Pole Asserted (1818), described as being based on the latest discoveries, represents the bay as a great stretch of water extending far to the west, with three southern entrances, one connecting it to Hudson Bay! It was not until 1818 that Baffin Bay was firmly restored to the map when John Ross reidentified Baffin’s place names and confirmed the accuracy of his bearings and observations. BAFFIN ISLAND. The largest of all Canada’s islands, Baffin Island’s eastern coastline stretches up Davis Strait and Baffin Bay, opposite Greenland, to Lancaster Sound. Its southern and western shores face Hudson Strait and Foxe Basin, respectively. Although Martin Frobisher (1576) and John Davis (1585) were there before him, the island is named after William Baffin, who sailed down its east coast in 1616. BANKS, SIR JOSEPH (1745–1820). Inheriting a large fortune at the age of 18, Joseph Banks was given the means to immerse himself in a lifelong pursuit of his botanical and other scientific interests. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1766 and became its

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president in 1778, a post he held until his death. He led a scientific team on James Cook’s first Pacific voyage. In the 1780s Banks was active in encouraging enterprises to exploit Cook’s discoveries, including the George Dixon and Nathaniel Portlock 1775–1778 trading voyage to America’s northwest coast. He also exerted his influence in support of Alexander Dalrymple’s efforts to encourage the Admiralty and the Hudson’s Bay Company to continue the exploration of Hudson Bay. When William Scoresby reported ice-free seas between latitudes 74 and 80 N in 1817, Banks, working in close liaison with John Barrow and with all the authority of the Royal Society behind him, was instrumental in persuading the Admiralty to fit out a Royal Navy voyage of discovery to confirm the existence of Baffin Bay and to investigate a maritime route from the Atlantic to the Pacific along the northern coastline of the American continent. BANKS ISLAND. At the western end of Amundsen Gulf and separated from Victoria Island by the Prince of Wales Strait, Banks Island was first sighted by Lt. Frederick William Beechey on 7 August 1820 from Cape Hay on Melville Island, across what is known today as McClure Strait. It was named Banks Land on the supposition that it formed part of the North American continental coastline. Robert McClure anchored HMS Investigator off Nelson Head, close to the island’s southern extremity, on 7 September 1850. A little over six weeks later, he took a sledge party from his icebound ship to Point Russell, on the northeast coast, from where he could clearly distinguish Melville Sound. He had established not only the insularity of Banks Land but also, more significantly, the western end of a northwest passage. BANKS LAND. See BANKS ISLAND. BARLOW, ROGER (fl. 1ST HALF OF 16TH CENTURY). A merchant associate of Robert Thorne, Barlow had collaborated on the composition of Thorne’s ‘‘A Declaration of the Indies’’ (1530). Reviving proposals for a northern voyage in 1541, Barlow incorporated the declaration in his ‘‘Briefe Summe of Geographie,’’ written to strengthen the case for an expedition across the North Pole. With the

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advantage of sailing by ‘‘night’’ as well as by day, without any darkness, he suggested, it was but 300 leagues to the pole and another 300 to temperate lands. The expedition commander then had the entire South Sea at his disposal: He could sail east to China and southward down the coast to Malacca and the East Indies or west to the far side of the new continent, into the South Sea, and to the Spice Islands. The full text of this argument is printed as ‘‘Roger Barlowe Advocates an English Voyage over the Pole’’ in New American World, vol. 1, ed. David Beers Quinn (London: Macmillan, 1979), 215. In the event, no voyage came of this proposal, although it was not entirely ruled out until the death of Henry VIII in 1547. BARNARDA, PEDRO DE. Ordered by Bartolome de Fonte to proceed independently, Pedro de Barnarda was reported to have sailed down a northward-flowing river that emptied into the Tartarian Sea in latitude 61 N. He proceeded to establish that no communication existed between the Spanish Sea (Pacific Ocean) and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Davis Strait, which ended in a frozen lake, 30 miles in circumference, at 80 N. BARREN GROUNDS. See BARREN LANDS. BARREN LANDS. The name given to the huge region of tundra that stretches in an arc west of Churchill on Hudson Bay, south of the Canadian Arctic shoreline, extending to the Great Slave Lake and west of Great Bear Lake before flattening to a narrow strip between the Mackenzie River and the Yukon. In most seasons, the Barren Lands experience nine months of winter and, even in the hottest days of July and August, the ground thaws to a depth of only three or four feet above the rock-hard permafrost layer. Fur animals, birds, and insects all survive in the Barrens, but grass and trees are generally absent, although stunted spruce and larch trees grow along the river banks (the Coppermine, Thelon, and Back Rivers rise there). Swarms of mosquitoes and black flies ascend from the moss and lichen. The Barrens were regarded as an obstacle to exploration and were usually avoided by Hudson’s Bay Company fur trappers and Royal Navy seamen.

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BARRENS. See BARREN LANDS. BARRINGTON, DAINES (1727–1800). A lawyer, antiquary, geographer, and member of the Council of the Royal Society, Barrington emerged as a strong advocate of searching for a northwest passage in February 1774 when, along with a number of other scientific luminaries, he persuaded the society to approach the Admiralty, for the promotion of science in general and particularly of geography, to fit out ships either in Europe or the East Indies, victualing them in the Chinese port of Canton, and from there exploring the northwest coast of America northward from New Albion to the coastline discovered by Samuel Hearne two years earlier. In the measured words of James Cawte Beaglehole, Barrington was ‘‘almost inevitably the sort of man who would make generalizations on an insufficiency of data’’ and ‘‘argue theories doomed to demolition by facts’’ (The Life of Captain James Cook, 482). Notably, he enthusiastically embraced the ice-free polar seas hypothesis propounded by Samuel Engel. In reply, the Admiralty informed the Royal Society that, because of the expense involved, the government was unable to fit out an expedition immediately, but that the project would be kept in mind. After long discussions with the first lord of the Admiralty, Barrington reported to the society that an expedition along the lines proposed would be dispatched once James Cook returned from his Pacific voyage. BARROW, JOHN (1764–1848). Ability, ambition, and powerful patronage, always a formidable combination, thrust John Barrow in 1803 into the influential post of second secretary of the Admiralty, a position he retained, with the exception of a very short period in 1806–1807, until his retirement in 1845. At the close of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars with France in 1815, there was a dramatic reduction in the size of the Royal Navy. Largely due to Barrow’s prompting, the Admiralty looked to the Arctic both as a peacetime proving ground for the courage and fortitude expected of the officers and men of the Royal Navy, and as suitable employment for officers whose abilities would otherwise stagnate. There was also alarm at recent Russian activities in the

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Bering Strait region, culminating in Otto von Kotzebue’s 1815– 1818 voyage. Barrow opened a public campaign in favor of further exploration for a passage in an anonymous review article in 1816, in which he presented a reasonable geographical hypothesis: The coast of America may be presumed to preserve a line from Bering’s Strait to Mackenzie’s River, and from thence to Copper-mine River, a distance of 800 miles, fluctuating between the parallels of 69 and 70, and we see not the slightest reason to question its continuance, in or near that line, for the remaining 400 miles to Baffin’s Sea, or to the strait which connects it with Hudson’s Sea: this is the only point to be discovered. (‘‘Lord Selkirk and the North-West Passage,’’ Quarterly Review 16, no. 31 [October 1816]: 165)

As he saw it, the solution to the problem would be for two small ships under the command of a skillful naval officer, with a couple of Greenland pilots through the ice, to proceed up the middle of Davis Strait and to examine the coastline between the 67th and 71st parallels. Barrow refused to discount the possibility that the passage would prove to be commercially practicable. If a passage should be found at 70 N or below, then it might be navigable for seven or eight months in the year. When William Scoresby reported the disappearance of an immense quantity of ice from the seas around Greenland in 1817, Barrow persuaded Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, to write to the Admiralty urging that this favorable climatic opportunity be seized to fit out a northwest discovery voyage. If, as seems likely, Barrow assisted Banks in drafting a letter, he put himself in a unique position to exert his influence both with the apparent originator of the letter and with its recipient. The immediate outcome was the dispatch of John Ross’s 1818 expedition. To coincide with this voyage, Barrow published A Chronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Regions. Between 1819 and 1836, Barrow was instrumental in the dispatch of eight naval northwest discovery voyages. By virtue of his position as second secretary, his fellowship in the Royal Society, his longstanding friendship with King William IV, his major role in the formation of the Royal Geographical Society (whose first two secretaries were Royal Navy officers), and his cordial relationship

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with Francis Beaufort, who was appointed hydrographer to the navy in 1829, Barrow cemented himself at the epicenter of northwest passage exploration. Barrow was heavily involved in the appointment of the officers commanding the discovery voyages. He also energetically assisted in the drafting of their orders and was de facto chairman of the Arctic Council, whose writ ran almost unchallenged in all Arctic ventures. And if there was one thing Barrow was determined upon, it was that if a northwest passage existed, it would be a Royal Navy officer, sailing in one of Her Majesty’s Ships, who would discover it. In a strange way, this ambition was ultimately fulfilled. BARROW STRAIT. The second stage of the Parry Channel eastern approach to the Northwest Passage, south of the 75th parallel, between Lancaster Sound and Melville Sound. At its western end, Peel Sound leads southwest between Somerset Island and Prince of Wales Island into the Unexplored Quadrilateral. THE BAY. A generally used term for Hudson Bay. See also BOTTOM OF THE BAY. BAY OF GOD’S MERCY. The name given by George Lyon to HMS Griper’s anchorage in Roe’s Welcome Sound after she had barely clawed her way out to deeper water in severe weather conditions in September 1824. Not to be confused with Mercy Bay. BEATTIE, OWEN (1949– ). A professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta who was well versed in forensic studies, Owen Beattie applied his physical anthropological skills and techniques to establish the cause of death of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated 1845– 1848 expedition. A laboratory examination of human remains recovered from visits to Starvation Cove and King William Island in 1981 and 1982 established that the expedition had suffered from scurvy. There were indications of cannibalism. Seeking corroborative evidence from the skeletal remains on Beechey Island, Beattie led a university scientific team to the island in 1984 and 1986. All three skeletons were disinterred and on-the-spot autopsies and laboratory tests on organ, tissue, and hair samples indicated lead lev-

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els significantly higher than normal. Traces of lead in the hair proved that all three men had been contaminated after their departure from England. Beattie also examined a huge dump of empty and disintegrating food cans. On a closer inspection, many of these displayed evidence of imperfect sealing in their manufacture, leading him to conclude that, in addition to lead poisoning, Franklin’s crew had also been exposed to food poisoning. At the end of the 1980s, Beattie turned his attention to Marble Island, spending four summers there, from 1989 through 1992, in an attempt to resolve the uncertainties relating to James Knight’s stay on the island. During that time, Beattie’s team unearthed some 5,000 artifacts, coins, broken bottles, leather shoes, and animal bones. The almost total absence of human bones could not be explained. Owen Beattie coauthored with John Geiger two books on his investigations: Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition (1987) and Dead Silence: The Greatest Mystery in Arctic Discovery (1993). See also PALFREY, DON. BEAUFORT, FRANCIS (1774–1857). The hydrographer of the Royal Navy from 1829 through 1855, Francis Beaufort became as obsessed with the northwest passage as John Barrow, assuming a far from negligible role in the commissioning of Sir John Franklin’s 1845 expedition. He actively supported Barrow in lobbying the Royal Society to press the Admiralty to fit out what was described as ‘‘a final assault on the passage’’ and exclaimed to the Royal Geographical Society that ‘‘it would be an intolerable disgrace to this country were the flag of any other nation to be borne through it before our own.’’ Beaufort succeeded Barrow as chairman of the Arctic Council and, after learning that Franklin had wintered on Beechey Island in 1845–1846, reexamined the whole question of Franklin’s whereabouts, concluding that he had penetrated to the west of Melville Island. At his own initiative, he recommended to the Admiralty a further search eastward from the Bering Strait. It was on the resulting expedition that Robert McClure first discovered and traversed a passage. THE BEAVER. Originally a company magazine, The Beaver was first published by the Hudson’s Bay Company in October 1920. It soon

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developed into a discussion forum for all North Canadian issues and, eventually, into a commercially owned magazine concerned with Canadian history in general. BECK, ADAM (fl. MID-19TH CENTURY). John Ross hired Beck, a Danish-speaking Inuk, as an interpreter on the Felix at Holsteinsborg, Greenland, in late June 1850. Beck related an account, at first to a steward on the Prince Albert and then to a council of the senior officers of all the Franklin rescue ships in the Arctic, of how two ships, with men in gold lace caps and epaulets, had beached in Wolstenholme Sound four years earlier. After the ships had been abandoned, the crews had been massacred by hostile Inuit. Later, in a statement given at Godhavn, Beck amplified his remarks and declared himself willing to accompany any further expedition northward to verify his account. Only Ross placed any credence in this story. A subsequent investigation uncovered the possibility that Beck’s account was a much-garbled repetition of a report by a seaman who had died on board HMS North Star (commanded by Capt. James Saunders), which had wintered at Wolstenholme Sound. His grave and an inscribed headstone were found there. BEECHEY, FREDERICK WILLIAM (1796–1856). Having sailed with John Franklin aboard HMS Trent in 1818 and as a lieutenant on HMS Hecla during William Edward Parry’s voyage to Lancaster Sound and Melville Island in 1819–1820, Beechey was given command of HMS Blossom. His orders were to proceed to the North Pacific Ocean, pass through the Bering Strait, and sail eastward along the coast to rendezvous with the main element of Franklin’s Second Arctic Land Expedition, which was advancing westward from the Mackenzie River delta. Beechey set sail from Spithead, England, in May 1825 on a voyage that was to last for three and a half years. He arrived at the Russian port of Petropavlosk on the Kamchatka Peninsula toward the end of June 1826. Passing through the Bering Strait, he reached Kotzebue Sound and progressed eastward past Icy Cape, surveying the coast from one of Blossom’s boats. Another of the boats reached and named Point Barrow at 7123⬘ N, only 146 miles from Franklin at Return Reef. It was a good effort by both Beechey and Franklin, but

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not quite good enough. Beechey returned to England in October 1828. BEECHEY ISLAND. Less than two miles wide and linked by a narrow isthmus over shallow water to the southwestern tip of Devon Island at the entrance to Wellington Channel, Beechey Island, at latitude 74 N and longitude 91 W, is situated at the very heart of the Arctic Archipelago and at the crossroads of the search for the northwest passage via Lancaster Sound. Discovered by William Edward Parry in 1819, the island was the home of Sir John Franklin’s expedition for the 1845–1846 winter and later became the center for Royal Navy and other vessels searching for the Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition. Three of Franklin’s crew were buried there: Pvt. William Braine of the Royal Marines, Able Seaman John Hartnell, and Petty Officer John Torrington, all of whose graves were excavated by Owen Beattie in the early 1980s. BELCHER, SIR EDWARD (1799–1877). A renowned hydrographer, highly esteemed for his surveying skills but with little else to recommend him, Sir Edward Belcher was appointed commodore of a Royal Navy squadron that sailed from England in April 1852 with orders to explore northward up Wellington Channel in search of Sir John Franklin’s missing expedition and to attempt to reach Winter Harbor to look for Richard Collinson and Robert McClure. True, he had previous experience of the Arctic as a junior officer on HMS Blossom under Frederick Beechey on the 1825–1828 voyage to the Bering Strait but, in all other respects, he was glaringly unsuitable for command in Arctic waters. Belcher was a notorious martinet seemingly incapable of retaining the respect of his officers and only too able to incur their personal dislike. In the confined conditions of Arctic service, this was a recipe for failure. On this voyage, Sherard Osborn was placed under arrest and Belcher’s first lieutenant, William May, was relieved of his duties. At least one officer meticulously kept a journal that could be produced at a future court-martial. Belcher’s squadron comprised his flagship HMS Assistance, HMS Pioneer (under George Richards), HMS Resolute (Henry Kellett), HMS Intrepid (Francis Leopold McClintock), and his depot ship,

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HMS North Star (William Pullen). After weeks of delay because of pack ice off the west coast of Greenland and subsequent involuntary dispersal, the squadron reunited at Beechey Island on 11 August. A search was conducted for surviving documents of Franklin’s but without success. On 14 August, the squadron was separated into two divisions, with Kellett and McClintock being sent west to Melville Island. Belcher and Richards proceeded up Wellington Channel, which for once was relatively ice-free, and within a week Assistance and Pioneer had passed through Queen’s Channel to discover Northumberland Sound off the northwest coast of the Grinnell Peninsula, Devon Island. Belcher established his winter berth, soon to be frozen in, at latitude 7752⬘ N, longitude 97 W, where Penny Strait merges into Belcher Channel. Before ice formed, he crossed the channel by boat to discover North Cornwall Island. By that point, he was coming to the conclusion that this open stretch of sea connected with Jones Sound and Smith Sound, both western arms of Baffin Bay. In the spring of 1853, Belcher explored the northern shore of Devon Island as far as Cardigan Strait and North Kent Island. Richards in the meantime traveled along the unexplored northern coast of Bathurst Island westward as far as the northeastern tip of Melville Island and then blithely crossed the island for another 150 miles to visit Resolute at Dealy Island. The voyage south was impeded by ice, and although Assistance and Pioneer’s progress improved in August, they were still obliged to spend the 1853–1854 winter at Cape Osborn, Devon Island. In August 1854 Belcher ordered all his commanders to abandon their ships and assemble at Beechey Island for passage back to England in North Star. Kellett flatly refused to comply without a direct and unequivocal written order. Belcher’s reasons for such an unprecedented and drastic order are still open to debate. Was it because, as he claimed, he believed that Collinson would by this time have either returned through the Bering Strait or abandoned his ship and marched overland to the nearest Hudson’s Bay Company depot, or perhaps to Melville Island and on to Beechey Island, in the hope of being rescued by whalers in Lancaster Sound? Perhaps it was simply that Belcher was prepared to sacrifice his ships in order to avoid another Arctic winter.

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Fortunately, Edward Inglefield arrived at Beechey Island with the supply ships Phoenix and Talbot before North Star sailed for England, allowing the evacuation to be effected without excessive crowding. At Belcher’s court-martial, the court found that he had acted within his instructions but regretted that he had not consulted his senior officers. Osborn and May were both promoted shortly afterward. BELLOT, JOSEPH-RENE´ (1826–1853). In 1851, against the advice of the Admiralty, Lady Jane Franklin, with the support of William Kennedy, appointed Enseigne de Vaissaux Bellot of the Imperial French Navy as second-in-command on board the Prince Albert when fitting out her second search expedition to discover the fate of her husband, Sir John Franklin. The Admiralty feared that a foreign officer would face disciplinary problems on a small ship. Their fears proved groundless when Kennedy and four of his crew were stranded on shifting ice near Port Leopold in September. Bellot took command of the Prince Albert and was able to rescue Kennedy five weeks later. Bellot accompanied Kennedy’s sledge party exploring the shore of Somerset Island southward from February through May 1852 but privately disagreed with Kennedy’s decision to travel west from Bellot Strait in an attempt to reach an open sea and not to follow Jane Franklin’s orders to proceed down the western shore of the Boothia Peninsula. In 1853 Bellot sailed under Edward Inglefield on HMS Phoenix, carrying supplies to Sir Edward Belcher’s squadron. Significantly, the Admiralty raised no objections on this occasion. Arriving at Beechey Island where HMS North Star, Belcher’s depot ship, was located, Bellot volunteered to take charge of a sledge party to deliver dispatches to Belcher on board HMS Assistance somewhere up Wellington Channel. Late on 14 August, Bellot and two others were swept away on a tiny ice floe. The next morning Bellot left their tent in order to observe the course of their drift. He was never seen again. It is presumed that he was caught by a sudden gust of wind and swept into the icy water. BELLOT STRAIT. Eighteen miles long and a mile wide at its narrowest point, Bellot Strait divides Somerset Island from the Boothia

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Peninsula. Its eastern entrance lies deep within Brentford Bay and is obscured by a number of offshore islets, no doubt explaining why Sir John Ross failed to notice it on his 1829–1833 voyage. His nephew James Clark Ross, however, seems to have suspected its existence from Inuit reports. William Kennedy and Joseph Rene´ Bellot discovered the strait’s western end in 1852, although the weather had closed in, it was very misty, and visibility was poor, so neither could be absolutely certain that it was a strait. Francis Leopold McClintock confirmed its existence in August 1858, but swift-flowing currents and great masses of ice swirling in massive whirlpools—the tides from the eastern and western Arctic meet head-on in these narrow waters—foiled four attempts to take the Fox through its perilous waters. BERING STRAIT. Named after Vitus Jonassen Bering (1681–1741), the Danish-born seaman who was commissioned in 1725 to determine whether or not the easternmost point of Siberia joined the northwestern extremity of the American continent. Three years later Bering sailed through the strait as far as latitude 67 N without sighting land to starboard, thus confirming that no land link existed between America and Asia. By 1735 knowledge of Bering’s voyage was widespread and, even though the Strait of Anian was believed to exist in the approximate location of the Bering Strait, Spanish and British ships continued to seek that mythical passage. BERNIER, JOSEPH ELZE´AR (1852–1934). In the first two decades of the 20th century, the Canadian government was anxious to reinforce its claim to sovereignty over the islands and waters in the north. Of first concern was the need to establish the rule of law over the whalers frequenting the eastern Arctic. The whole question of sovereignty was complicated by U.S. and Norwegian circumpolar exploration. The first step to ensure that Canada took effective political control of the territories Great Britain had transferred to the Dominion in 1880 was the creation, 15 years later, of four administrative districts in the Northwest Territories: Mackenzie, Keewatin, Ungava, and Franklin. Next was the establishment of North West Mounted Police posts and regular police patrols and, finally, regular Arctic voy-

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ages to show the flag and proclaim Canadian sovereignty. Joseph Bernier was the man chosen to oversee this process. He possessed a seafaring family background and had many years experience of command at sea. On 12 September 1904 the Ministry of Marine and Fisheries appointed Bernier as sailing master of the DGS Arctic, which was to carry the Canadian Polar Expedition, a detachment of 11 men of the North West Mounted Police, to patrol Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, and Smith Sound and to find suitable locations for their barracks. Departing from Quebec on 17 September, the Arctic’s first winter was spent at Fullerton, close to the police outpost on Roe’s Welcome Sound. On 18 March 1905 Bernier received letters from Roald Amundsen, who was wintering at Gjøa Haven on the southeast coast of King William Island. Two Inuit had carried them more than 500 miles in 122 days in the depths of winter! After being freed from the ice on 5 July, the Arctic touched at a bay on the northwest coast of Ungava, 80 miles east of Digges Island, and at Port Burswell, a small settlement at the eastern end of Hudson Strait, before returning to Quebec on 7 October. The dominion government placed Bernier in command of three other official voyages in the period from 1906 through 1911. For his July 1906–October 1907 expedition, he was ordered to ‘‘proceed directly to Lancaster Sound, calling at Pond Inlet to serve notices on the whalers there, or in the Narrow Straits, west of Erebus Bay or Melville Island (Winter Harbor) if possible, so that you may be enabled during the winter season to take possession of Banks Land and Prince Albert Land, opposite the Bay of Mercy, making all necessary cairns and leaving records to enable your ship to be traced in the event of misfortune. . . . It will be your duty to formally annex all new lands at which you may call, leaving proclamations in cairns at all points.’’ During the course of this voyage, Bernier issued licenses to Scottish whalers; officially annexed Bylot, Griffiths, Cornwallis, Bathurst, Byam Martin, and Melville islands; and repaired the monument erected on Beechey Island by British naval expeditions in search of Sir John Franklin. In July 1907 the Arctic could get no farther. The first task on Bernier’s 1908–1909 voyage was to unload stores at Etah, on the northwest coast of Greenland, for Frederick Albert

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Cook (1865–1940), the American polar explorer. Bernier then once more sailed into Lancaster Sound, through Barrow Strait, to arrive off Cape Hay on the southeast coast of Melville Island. A large copper plate inscribed with the Union Flag and the Canadian coat of arms was mounted on Parry’s Monument, reading: ‘‘This Memorial Is Erected Today To Commemorate The Taking Possession For The Dominion Of Canada, Of The Whole Arctic Archipelago, Laying To The North Of America, From Long. 60 W To 141 W Up To Lat. 90 North, Winter Hrb, Melville Island, C.G.S. Arctic, July 1st, 1909, J. E. Bernier, Commander, J. V. Koenig, Sculptor.’’ Proceeding west to about halfway through McClure Strait, Bernier was convinced that, if his instructions had ordered him to complete the northwest passage, he could have done so. A more serious attempt to negotiate the passage was made in September 1910, but after penetrating McClure Strait as far as Cape Ross, at the approach to Liddon Gulf, ice blocked the way. Bernier went into winter quarters at Arctic Bay, an Inuit settlement on Admiralty Inlet, which runs south deep into the northwest corner of Baffin Island. He dispatched expeditions to Bylot Island, the eastern shores of Prince Regent Inlet, and overland to Fury and Hecla Strait. Although the regions Bernier navigated and traversed had mostly been explored previously, he charted and described many coastal areas in much more detail than hitherto. But his main achievement had been to secure Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic on a firm footing. He had monitored the whalers’ activities, issued licenses, gathered climatic and meteorological data, acted as a local law officer, and, not least, recovered documents deposited in cairns by earlier explorers. BOCKSTOCE, JOHN (fl. 2ND HALF OF 20TH CENTURY). One of the longest traverses of the passage was that of ethnographer and historian John Bockstoce, who attempted, over six summers, to negotiate his 60-foot yacht Belvedere from Tuktoyaktuk, an Inuit settlement east of the Mackenzie River delta, to Holsteinsborg in Greenland. For five years, from 1983 through 1987, he battled away without success, every year being confronted by impenetrable ice;

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however, in 1988 the weather conditions softened their grip and his patience was at last rewarded. Departing from Seattle in 1983, he sailed 4,000 miles through the Bering Strait, into the Chukchi Sea, around Point Barrow, and then east to Tuktoyaktuk, where Belvedere was berthed for the winter. After putting to sea again in July 1984 with his wife and son on board, he called at Herschel Island, the former winter base for American whalers, where he completed a survey of old whaling sites. He proceeded east as far as King Point, the 1905–1906 winter shelter of Roald Amundsen, where he once again encountered the ice. The 1985 season was even worse: Bockstoce got no further than 60 miles east of Tuktoyatkuk before his way was blocked off to all but heavy icebreakers. Conditions were not improved in 1986, when he decided to detour up the Prince of Wales Strait; not long after leaving Tuktoyatkuk a 40-knot gale forced him to secure Belvedere to the lee side of a large ice floe, a tactic heavily reminiscent of the early 19th-century Royal Navy voyages to the Arctic. Eventually he was able to get halfway through the strait before the ice wall blocked his way. On his return voyage, he briefly went ashore at Cape Walker, where Henry Larsen spent the 1940–1941 winter. In 1987 the conditions were better than the three previous years and Bockstoce was able to sail 1,600 miles, past Gjøa Haven into James Ross Strait, but here he was once more obliged to turn back. Finally, 1988 saw the warmest summer for five years. The weather held as he threaded Belvedere through Amundsen Gulf, Dolphin and Union Strait, Coronation Gulf, Dease Strait, and Queen Maud Gulf, before anchoring in Simpson Strait and visiting various Sir John Franklin sites on King William Island. Proceeding past Gjøa Haven, he entered Rae Strait, and by 25 August he had reached Bellot Strait. Even here there was little ice and Belvedere was soon heading north for Lancaster Sound, clocking off the miles, sailing down Baffin Bay, into Davis Strait, and arriving in Holsteinsborg at last. Bockstoce’s patient and persevering quest to navigate the passage was enhanced by his study of its changing nature. He cast an expert eye on how the decline of the whaling industry had been replaced not only by the search for oil and gas but also by an embryonic flour-

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ish of tourism, and the significant influence this was having on the Inuit’s traditional way of life. BODEGA Y QUADRA, JUAN FRANCISCO DE LA (1743–1794). Appointed second officer on Bruno de Hezeta’s flagship sailing from San Blas in 1775, Bodega was promoted to captain of the schooner Sonora in a reshuffle of command necessitated by the insanity of a senior officer. After a shore party had been murdered by Indians at a cove thought to be located near Point Grenville, south of the Quinault River, Bodega lost contact with Hezeta, who headed back to Monterey. Bodega determined to continue the voyage up the coast, reaching latitude 58 N in the Gulf of Alaska within sight of Mount Edgecumbe. He carefully investigated every bay and inlet in the hope of finding a passage running east, explored Prince of Wales Island, and located and named Bucareli Sound. He also sailed into Sitka Bay. Adverse weather and a scurvy-devastated crew forced him to return south. Bodega returned to the Gulf of Alaska as captain of the Favorita on Ignacio de Arteaga’s 1779 show-the-flag voyage to reassert Spanish sovereignty over the northwest coast of America, which was perceived to be threatened by James Cook’s third Pacific expedition and by encroaching Russian explorers and traders. Revisiting Bucareli Sound, he conducted a detailed survey before reaching Kodiak Island. As commissioner at Nootka Sound in 1791 and 1792, Bodega directed Spain’s last concerted search for a northwest passage. The waters off Vancouver Island’s eastern shore, Queen Charlotte Strait, and Georgia Strait were examined. The historic Strait of Juan de Fuca was thoroughly investigated to no avail; it offered no eastern passage through the American continent. BOOTHIA PENINSULA (BOOTHIA FELIX). Forming the northernmost extension of the American continent, conveniently dividing the eastern and western Arctic Archipelago, the Boothia Peninsula is separated by Bellot Strait, at latitude 71 N, from Somerset Island, which stretches northward for another 200 miles. The base of the peninsula was explored by John Ross and James Clark Ross on

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their 1829–1833 expedition to Prince Regent Inlet during which the younger Ross located the North Magnetic Pole near Boothia’s southwest coast. When George Back arrived at Point Ogle on the mouth of Chantrey Inlet in July 1834, he could distinguish land to the north, which he named Ripon Island. Richard King, his second-in-command, thought that the ‘‘island’’ was in fact part of the mainland. If Back had followed King’s advice to spend two days investigating the putative island, it is likely that Boothia’s peninsularity would have been established there and then. It was John Rae, in the spring of 1847, who finally confirmed that Boothia was a continuation of mainland Canada. BOTTOM OF THE BAY. The southernmost parts of James Bay extending off the lower reaches of Hudson Bay. BOWDEN INLET. See CHESTERFIELD INLET. BREADALBANE. A 428-ton, 125-foot, three-masted barque, the Breadalbane was built on the River Clyde in 1843. Hired by the Admiralty as a provisioning ship, she left Sheerness, at the mouth of the River Thames, under the command of John Mackenzie in May 1853, bound for Lancaster Sound with orders to resupply HMS North Star, at anchor off Beechey Island acting as a store and depot ship for Edward Belcher’s search expedition. She sailed in company with HMS Phoenix. Arriving on 8 August, ice prevented the Breadalbane from discharging her cargo directly into the North Star’s hold and she lay to, off Cape Riley. Constantly squeezed by the ice, the Breadalbane was then moored to an ice floe about half a mile south of the island on 20 August. In the early hours of 22 August, the ice penetrated her starboard bow and, within 15 minutes, she sank in 30 fathoms of water. Her crew managed to save themselves by scrambling across the ice to the Phoenix. In August 1980 the Breadalbane was found, almost intact, on the seabed under the ice, by Joseph B. MacInnis. BRIGGS, HENRY (1561–1630). A celebrated mathematician who at one time was a professor of astronomy at Oxford University, Henry

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Briggs was the author of ‘‘Treatise of the North-west Passage to the South Sea through the Continent of Virginia, and by Fretum Hudson,’’ which appeared over his initials in an annex to A Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affairs in Virginia (1622). He had little difficulty in linking Virginia with Hudson Bay: ‘‘If we shape our journey towards the north-west, following the rivers towards the head, we shall, undoubtedly, come to the mountains, which, as they send divers great rivers southward into our Bay of Chesepiock, so likewise do they send others from their further side north-westward into that bay, it is not unlikely that the Westerne Sea, in some other creeke or river, cometh much nearer then that place.’’ Briggs illustrated his treatise with a map, ‘‘The North Part of America,’’ which suggested a northwest passage running from Button Bay (i.e., the western half of Hudson Bay) into the head of the Gulf of California. This map, the first to include the name ‘‘Hudson Bay,’’ is adorned by a number of legends reiterating his arguments in favor of a passage. The titular cartouche, delineating the North American continent, describes its northern boundary as ‘‘north Fretum Hudson and Buttons bay, a passage to Japan and China.’’ Reprinted in Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625), Briggs’s treatise served to keep alive the geographical concept of a passage at a time when the commercial drive for discovery briefly went quiet. Shortly before he died, Briggs lent his support to Luke Foxe’s proposed voyage, adding his name to a petition to the Crown ‘‘for the lend of a Ship for the Voyage and Countenance to the Action.’’ BRISTOL SOCIETY OF MERCHANT VENTURERS. See JAMES, THOMAS. BRITISH CAPE BRITANNIA EXPEDITION. See CUNDY, ROBERT. BROUGHTON, WILLIAM ROBERT (1762–1821). An experienced Royal Navy officer, Broughton was appointed to the command of HMS Chatham, which accompanied George Vancouver on his voyage to the northwest coast of America in 1791. At times sailing independently, he was the first European to explore the Columbia River,

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discovered by Robert Gray and surprisingly neglected by Vancouver. Broughton penetrated the river 120 miles upstream in May 1792. BUCARELI SOUND. Located on the western side of Prince of Wales Island at latitude 55 N, Bucareli Sound was discovered by Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra in 1775 when it was named Puerto de Bucareli (Port Bucareli) by Francisco Antonio Mourelle. It had a deep anchorage and would have been suitable for a major naval base. BURRIEL, ANDRE`S MARCOS (fl. MID-18TH CENTURY). A Jesuit priest, Burriel was the true author of A National and Civil History of California (2 vols., 1759), ostensibly the work of another priest, Miguel Venegas. In the Spanish edition published in Madrid in 1758, Burriel included two appendices concerned with the question of a northwest passage. One was an account of the English search voyages and a critical examination of Henry Ellis’s Considerations on the Great Advantages Which Would Accrue from the Discovery of the North West Passage (1750); the other was a close scrutiny of Bartolome de Fonte’s account and the speculative geography of Philippe Buache and Joseph Nicolas Delisle. By virtue of his appointment to a commission investigating the state of Spanish archives, Burriel was in a position to comment authoritatively on de Fonte’s narrative. He could find no record of his supposed voyage in any archival office in either Madrid or Cadiz and considered the whole account to be no more than a fanciful and elaborate hoax. Either by coincidence or by design, these two appendices were omitted from the English edition. On more serious ground, Burriel warned the Spanish authorities that, if the English were to be successful in discovering an easily navigable passage, this would have a serious strategic significance for Spain’s commerce in the Pacific. Powerful British fleets would have the capacity to descend on Spanish territories there with impunity. BURTON, KEN. Sgt. Ken Burton was the skipper of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s 65-foot aluminum catamaran patrol boat Nadon, which departed Vancouver on Canada Day, 1 July 2000, in company with the Canadian Coast Guard vessel Simon Fraser

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under Capt. Robert Mellis to retrace Henry Larsen’s 1940–1942 voyage through the Northwest Passage in the St. Roch (for this voyage only, the Nadon was dubbed the St. Roch II). Their primary purpose was to excite public interest and generate a $3 million endowment fund to preserve the St. Roch, berthed at the Vancouver Maritime Museum. En route the Simon Fraser engaged in scientific studies into water salinity, coastal erosion, and fishing stocks. Filled to the gunwales with the latest hi-tech equipment, the Nadon visited Tuktoyaktuk, Cambridge Bay, Pond Inlet, and Iquluit on her way to Halifax in the record time of four weeks. At Halifax the Simon Fraser returned to normal duty and the Nadon sailed on alone through the Panama Canal, up the coast to Acapulco, Mazatla´n, San Diego, Long Beach, San Francisco, and Seattle to arrive back at Vancouver on December 16, having completed a 169-day, 24,000-mile circumnavigation of the North American continent. BURWASH, L. T. In 1925 the Canadian government ordered Major Burwash to journey along the mainland Arctic coast from the Mackenzie River delta eastward to Hudson Bay to gather economic, geological, botanical, and anthropological information. On 7 August he embarked on a small schooner at Aklavik, on one of the Mackenzie’s tributaries, to Shingle Point, where he transferred to a Hudson’s Bay Company supply ship, the SS Bay Chino, bound for Cambridge Bay. He arrived there on 18 August and two weeks later shipped out on another schooner, the Fort Macpherson, to King William Island, where he spent the winter with William Gibson. Burwash noted three cairns on the island’s south coast: one at Cape Herschel erected by Thomas Simpson in 1839, another on a headland 20 miles east of Cape Seaforth built by Charles Hall in 1869, and Roald Amundsen’s, erected at the eastern side of the entrance to Gjøa Haven in 1903. On 1 March 1926 Burwash set out with two Inuit, three sledges, and 19 dogs to visit villages scattered in Queen Maud Gulf between King William Island and the Boothia Peninsula in order to deposit caches for the journey to Repulse Bay. During this period, Burwash heard of a ship lying on a reef to the east of Matty Island in James Ross Strait; all who had seen it agreed on its location and confirmed that much wood and iron had been recovered along that stretch of

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coast. He crossed to Boothia and pushed north to the mouth of the Murchison River. Fifteen miles upriver, he deposited another cache. A start was made for Repulse Bay on 5 April. Burwash’s route took him to Gjøa Haven and to a sealing camp in Rae Strait, at which point a notion to make a run to the North Magnetic Pole was stifled at birth because of increasing sickness among his dogs. Nevertheless, this did not prevent him from reaching Repulse Bay via Pelly Bay, the Simpson Peninsula, the western shoreline of Committee Bay, and the Rae Isthmus. BUTTON, SIR THOMAS (?–1634). No sooner had Henry Hudson’s expedition returned to England in fall 1611 than preparations for another discovery voyage were put in motion. Thomas Button, a wellconnected and experienced naval captain and privateer, was selected to command an expedition that was backed by an ad hoc group of no fewer than 160 merchants to inquire into Hudson’s fate and to complete a ‘‘full and perfect discovery of the North-west passage.’’ Button sailed with the Resolution and the Discovery in April 1612, three months before his backers were granted a royal charter and were incorporated into the Company of the Merchants of London, Discoverers of the North-West Passage. His instructions, drawn up by mathematician Edward Wright and signed by Henry, Prince of Wales, ordered him to keep to the northern shore through Hudson Strait and to cross over to the western shore of Hudson Bay at latitude 58 N. After observing the direction of the flood tide, Button was then to set an appropriate course to the south, north, or northwest. If a passage was not discovered before the onset of winter, he was to sail south. As it happened, Button’s first landfall was at Hope’s Advance Cape, at the top of Ungava Bay, but he crossed to the north shore at the Savage Islands before continuing through the strait, taking the channel south of Salisbury Island to Digges Island, where he anchored for eight days. Standing to the northwest, he sighted land at Cary’s-Swan’s-Nest on the west side of Southampton Island. Sailing south, he became the first European to sight the west coast of Hudson Bay, making a landfall at Hopes Check’d, latitude 6040⬘ N, on 13 August. A damaging storm made it imperative for Button to find a harbor

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to make repairs to his ships. This was found at Port Nelson, close to the mouth of the Nelson River, where Button wisely decided to spend the 1612–1613 winter. From February on, the weather was extremely severe, but Button proved himself an excellent leader and an expert in personnel management, involving every crew member and assiduously engaging their interest by consulting them on the best course to pursue when the ice broke up in the spring. This process began on 5 April but it was two months later before the Resolution and Discovery were freed from the ice. Button sailed north, reaching Roe’s Welcome Sound in latitude 65, his northernmost point, on 29 July. He then returned to Digges Island and from there sailed for England. He was the first to cross Hudson Bay, he had explored 600 miles of its western and northern shores, and he had charted the Nelson and Churchill River estuaries. Despite his failure to find a passage, Button continued to believe that one would be found inside Hudson Bay. His voyage was perceived as encouraging, but it had not afforded ‘‘sufficient assurance of an impossibility.’’ The search went on. BYLOT, ROBERT (fl. EARLY 17TH CENTURY). Despite participating, in one role or another, in no fewer than five northwest voyages of discovery, Robert Bylot remains a shadowy figure in the history of the exploration for the Northwest Passage. A seaman on Henry Hudson’s last voyage, Bylot was promoted to mate but later demoted to his original rank. He claimed total innocence in the mutiny against Hudson, but he was appointed second-in-command of the mutineers (no doubt they recognized his competent seamanship) and he was clearly instrumental in bringing the Discovery back to England. In 1612 he sailed on Thomas Button’s expedition and, in 1614, he served as mate on William Gibbons’s abortive voyage. When the Company of the Merchants of London, Discoverers of the NorthWest Passage, fitted out the Discovery for its 1615 and 1616 voyages, Bylot was appointed as master, although William Baffin, officially the ship’s pilot and navigator, is usually given credit for the geographical discoveries of those two voyages. BYRON, JOHN (1723–1786). Commodore John Byron was ordered by the British Admiralty in 1764 to explore the islands of the South

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Atlantic controlling access to the South Sea and was then to proceed to New Albion, on the western coast of North America, ‘‘endeavouring to fall in with the said Coast in the latitude of 30 or 303⬘ N, where Sir Francis Drake, who was the first Discoverer of that country, found a convenient Harbour.’’ Byron’s instructions continued: ‘‘You are to search the said Coast with great care and diligence . . . as far to the Northward as you shall find it practicable. . . . And in case you find any probability of exploring a Passage from the said Coast of North America to the eastern side of North America through Hudson’s Bay, you are most diligently to pursue it, and return to England that way.’’ In the event, once through the Strait of Magellan, Byron set a course across the Pacific to seek the Solomon Islands. –C– ˜ O, JACINTO (1759–1825). Jacinto Caaman˜ o departed CAAMAN from Nootka Sound in the Aranzazu´ on 12 June 1792 with orders to chart the Alaskan coast south from Bucareli Sound, on the seaward side of Prince of Wales Island, and to investigate the maze of channels and inlets there, any one of which might prove to be the opening of a passage to the Atlantic. He explored Clarence Strait northward for more than 100 miles to latitude 5530⬘ N, confirming that Prince of Wales Island was part of an archipelago. Adverse weather prevented further exploration, and he returned to Nootka on 8 September. CABOT, JOHN (GIOVANNI CABOTO) (c. 1450–1498). Either Venetian or Genoese born (the clouds surrounding him start early) and an experienced merchant and traveler in the Levant, Cabot probably came to England in 1495. He was beguiled by the idea of finding a short sea route to the rich spices of the East Indies across the western ocean to bypass the long haul around Africa and arrived in England at a propitious moment to seek support for a voyage of exploration across the Atlantic farther to the north than Christopher Columbus’s route, where the decreasing circumference of the earth would reduce the distance to be sailed. In March 1496 he was granted letters patent by King Henry VII authorizing him to equip at his own expense a flotilla of five ships and to sail any seas to the east, west, or north

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and to occupy or possess ‘‘whatsoever iles, countreyes, regions or provinces of the heathen and infedelles, whatsoever they bee, and in what part of the world soever they be, which before this time have beene unknownen to all Christians.’’ If Cabot should prove successful, he would be allowed a monopoly of trade, free of customs payments, from the port of Bristol; in return, he was to pay one-fifth of all profits to the Crown. After an abortive voyage in 1496 when bad weather, a shortage of provisions, and a disgruntled crew forced him to turn back, Cabot made a fresh start on 7 May 1497, sailing from Bristol in the Matthew, a small three-masted caravel, with a crew of 18 men. Rounding Ireland, he set a course north and then west. Landfall was made on 24 June, and Cabot went ashore to plant the English and Venetian flags, taking possession in the name of King Henry. It has never been fully confirmed exactly where Cabot landed—Labrador, Newfoundland, or Cape Breton. Samuel Eliot Morison, writing in The Great Explorers (1978), conjectured it was at Cape De´grat on the northern tip of Newfoundland, only five miles distant from L’Anse aux Meadows where Leif Eriksson (970–1020) is believed to have founded a colony half a millennium earlier. No inhabitants put in an appearance, although there were signs of human habitation. Cabot sailed southward down the coast perhaps as far as Maine before (probably) returning to his original landfall in preparation for the voyage back to Bristol, where he arrived on 6 August. Not for the last time in the history of the search for a passage, the return of a reconnaissance ship raised extravagant hopes of an imminent discovery. Firmly convinced that he had landed on the coast of Asia, Cabot had little difficulty in persuading the king and the merchants of Bristol and London to fit out a second expedition, which he promised would proceed to the wealthy cities of China and Japan, where he would establish English trading communities. Early in May 1498 he set sail with five ships. Four of them, including Cabot’s, disappeared without a trace; the fifth, damaged in the early summer gales, put into an Irish port. From this time onward, there seems to be a general recognition that a direct voyage to Asia had been proven impossible by the discovery of a land barrier. The extent of the new continent, and the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, remained unsuspected but English

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mariners appear to have realized that, in order to reach the Orient by sailing westward, they would have to sail around the newly discovered landmass or through it. This marks the beginning of the search for the Northwest Passage. CABOT, SEBASTIAN (1484?–1577). Evidence for Sebastian Cabot’s northwest voyage of discovery in 1509 remains piecemeal and exiguous and lacks the authority of the contemporary royal administrative documentation that amplifies the voyages of his father, John Cabot, 10 years earlier. Based mainly on cartographical evidence, one eminent Cabotian scholar, Arthur Davies, always insisted that whatever information is presented as indicating a 1509 voyage by Sebastian in fact relates to his father’s 1498 expedition. But three 16th-century historians, one of whom was a personal friend of Sebastian’s, refer to this voyage in concrete terms and, in his later years, Sebastian himself was quite definite as to its course, direction, and location. He appears to have convinced, among others, Humphrey Gilbert and Richard Willes, the author of The History of Travayle in the Weste and East Indies (1571). What is perhaps more curious and more significant about Sebastian’s voyage is that it was directed to much higher latitudes than his father’s. Sebastian’s was more of a reconnaissance voyage to the north of Labrador and Newfoundland, as if he were deliberately searching for a way round the continental landmass—that he was, not to put too fine a point on it, seeking a route to the Orient by a northwest passage. If Sebastian’s own account is accepted, there seems little doubt that he reached the Arctic, east of Greenland, set his course westward first into Davis Strait and then into Hudson Strait, and so into Hudson Bay, 100 years before Henry Hudson. This apparently open sea Sebastian had every right to suppose was the South Sea. According to contemporary geographical knowledge and cartography, he had discovered a northwest passage to the silks of Cathay and the spices of the Indies. Cabot’s maps and charts, drawn after his return to England from Spanish service in 1548, survived. Richard Hakluyt, in his Divers Voyages (1582), remarks that they were in the possession of one of Cabot’s associates, who was willing to have them printed. It is also

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known that a large map of his discoveries was hung in Queen Elizabeth I’s private gallery in her palace in Whitehall. But the maps were never printed, and it seems likely that the queen’s map was engulfed in the flames that destroyed the palace in 1691 or 1697. ˜ O RODRIGUES (JUAN RODRIGUEZ CACABRILHO, JOA BRILLO) (?–1543). One of the objectives of the 1542–1543 Spanish expedition up the coast of California by Joa˜o Rodrigues Cabrilho (in the San Salvador) and Bartolome Ferrelo (Vı´ctoria) was the discovery of a great river flowing into the South Sea that would prove to be the elusive and as yet unnamed Strait of Anian. Driven by a storm near Point Reyes, the two ships sought a haven at San Miguel Island, where Cabrilho died. Ferrelo took command, and in the early months of 1543 he ventured north of Point Reyes. He sighted Point Arena, but unrelenting storm-force adverse winds prevented a further advance, and he was forced to return southward. CAIRNS. The mailboxes of the Arctic, cairns were built of rough stones, usually in the shape of a pyramid, erected at prominent spots to indicate that a written message, often encapsulated in a bottle or cylinder, was buried within it. The message would usually report the events and progress of an expedition and its future plans or else indicate where caches of supplies had been deposited. Without doubt the most celebrated cairn messages ever found were the documents discovered by William Hobson at two locations: one near Victory Point, the other at Gore Point on King William Island in 1859. These remain the only surviving records of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition. One 14-foot-high cairn, erected by Thomas Simpson on Cape Britannia in 1839, gave its name to Robert Cundy’s Beacon Six (1970). See also INUKSHUK; FRANKLIN’S THIRD ARCTIC EXPEDITION; VICTORY POINT DOCUMENT. CAMBRIDGE BAY. On the Dease Strait coast of southeast Victoria Island, Cambridge Bay was first visited and explored by Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson in 1839. Richard Collinson in HMS Enterprise spent the 1852–1853 winter there, and it was visited again by Roald Amundsen in 1905 and by Henry Larsen in 1940.

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Today Cambridge Bay, with a population of about 1,300, is the main settlement of Nunavut’s Kitikmeot region. A vivid and well-observed account of the modern settlement may be read in Jonathan Waterman’s Arctic Crossing: A Journey through the Northwest Passage (2001). CANADIAN ARCHIPELAGO (CANADIAN ARCTIC ARCHIPELAGO). Indistinguishable from Arctic Archipelago. CANADIAN COAST GUARD. The duties of the Canadian Coast Guard, which operates in all Canadian waters, include keeping shipping channels open to maritime traffic, notably for supply ships to Arctic defense installations and civilian outposts, and also providing accommodation for government groups engaged in oceanographic and hydrographic studies. CANADIAN POLAR EXPEDITION. See BERNIER, JOSEPH ELZE´AR. CANNIBALISM. Two notorious cases of cannibalism, suspected or proven—opinions continue to differ—sully the history of the search for a northwest passage. Both are coincidentally connected with John Franklin, although he was not present on either occasion. The first occurred in October 1821 when John Richardson was leading the rear party of Franklin’s First Arctic Land Expedition back to Fort Enterprise. His suspicions were first aroused when eating meat—allegedly part of a wolf gored by a reindeer—brought in by Michel Teroahaute´, one of the voyageurs accompanying the expedition. As a qualified physician, Richardson could readily distinguish between human and lupine bones, and he concluded that the meat came from the body of one of two voyageurs whose whereabouts were unknown. What could not be established, of course, was whether Teroahaute´ had stumbled across the body or had murdered his comrade for food. Nine days later, on 20 October, Richardson’s suspicions hardened. While gathering tripe de roche, he heard a gunshot. Hastily returning to camp, he found Midn. Robert Hood dead and Teroahaute´ holding a pistol. Teroahaute´ claimed that Hood had shot himself by

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accident, but Richardson satisfied himself from the position of Hood’s body and the angle of the wound that this could not possibly be the case. Teroahaute´’s erratic behavior, wild talk, and obvious reluctance to leave Richardson alone with John Hepburn persuaded Richardson that he was intending to murder them both. On 23 October, when Teroahaute´ appeared to be stalking them with a loaded gun, their lives in immediate danger, Richardson shot him. If English reaction to Richardson’s account of events in the 1820s was one of horror, the response to John Rae’s 1854 report, based on Inuit testimony, of cannibalism among the survivors of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition on King William Island was one of outrage. Polite society in Victorian England was not ready to contemplate that seamen of the Royal Navy would stoop to eating their shipmates, perhaps even slaughtering them by design, even in the last extremities of hunger. Many pointed out that Rae’s report had been based on uncorroborated oral evidence from uncivilized savages. Research in the 1980s by Owen Beattie on King William Island tends to support Rae and the Inuit against their detractors. Physical investigation revealed not only that the Franklin survivors were suffering severely from scurvy but also that some of the bones showed evidence of knife marks consistent with probing for edible bone tissue. This convinced Beattie that, as the survivors died, those remaining ate their flesh for strength to struggle on to safety. Twelve years later, Barry Ranford’s expedition corroborated Beattie’s findings. CANOES. Two types of canoes were used by Canada’s voyageurs: the canot du maıˆtre, 40 feet in length and 5 feet wide manned by 10–12 paddlers, which could carry almost 3 tons of freight; and the canot du nord, of smaller dimensions (24 feet by 4 feet) and with a lesser capacity of 1.5 tons, light enough in fact to be portaged by two men. Both were constructed of birch bark stretched over a cedar frame and caulked by spruce gum, enabling them to carry an economic load without losing their essential maneuverability in fast-flowing water. Canoes were decidedly not intended for open sea voyaging, although they were hazardously used by John Franklin on his 1821 coastal survey eastward of the Coppermine River to Point Turnagain. They were also used by George Back on his 1833 descent of the Great Fish River and by James Anderson on his 1855 journey

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down the same river to confirm John Rae’s report on the fate of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition. On his arrival at Montreal Island, Anderson found his canoes to be far too frail to take him across to King William Island. CAPE RILEY. See DEVON ISLAND. CAPE WALKER. Situated on the northeastern tip of Russell Island, off the north coast of Prince of Wales Island at the western end of Barrow Strait, Cape Walker formed not only the northeastern corner of the Unexplored Quadrilateral but also the starting point of a voyage southward and westward to penetrate the quadrilateral and pass through it to the known continental coastline of Canada, thus completing a navigable northwest passage—or so it was confidently predicted on 19 May 1845 when Sir John Franklin sailed from Greenhithe, on the southern bank of the River Thames, with orders to press through Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait and to steer a southwesterly course when he reached Cape Walker at about longitude 98 W. When Horatio Austin’s rescue squadron was searching for traces of Franklin, the cape was an obvious target. It was thought likely that Franklin would have erected a cairn there containing an indication of his intentions. But Austin’s southern sledge party, commanded by Erasmus Ommaney, found no such cairn. CARIBOU. North American reindeer inhabiting the Barren Lands and the tundra. CARLEILL, CHRISTOPHER (1551–1593). A military commander and son-in-law of Sir Francis Walsingham, Carleill sought support from Bristol and Muscovy Company venturers to settle a colony on the North American coast south of Cape Breton. In April 1583 he issued A Breef and Sommarie Discourse upon the Entended Voyage to the Hethermoste Partes of America, a down-to-earth, no-frills commercial prospectus identifying the profitable advantages of regular transatlantic trade. Possibly as an extra inducement, albeit in terms of caution, he observed that ‘‘if there be any possible means to find a sea passage, or other fresh water course, which may serve in

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some reasonable and convenient sort, to transport our merchandize into the East Indian sea, through any of these Northerly parts of America, it shall be soonest and most assuredly performed by those who inhabit, and first grow into familiarity with the inland people.’’ CARTIER, JACQUES (1491–1557). A master pilot of the Breton port of St.-Malo, Jacques Cartier in 1534 was commissioned by the French king, Francis I, to search for a northwest route to the Orient. The discovery of gold was also in the forefront of Francis’s mind. Sailing on 20 April 1534 with two ships and 61 men, Cartier arrived off the Newfoundland coast at Cape Bonavista on 10 May. He entered the northern end of the Belle Isle Strait and steered southwest down the Labrador coast, landing at several points before crossing to the western shores of Newfoundland, whence he sailed across the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Prince Edward Island. Failing to find a suitable harbor, he then followed the coast of New Brunswick to Chaleur Bay, to whose northern tip he gave the name Cap d’Espe´rance (Cape of Hope) in anticipation of finding a passage. A systematic investigation 4–9 July ended in disappointment. Cartier next sailed to Gaspe´ Bay, where he encountered a summer fishing party of Hurons. Crossing to the ˆIle d’Assomption (Anticosti Island), he rounded its western point and sailed halfway along its northern coast, sighting the highlands of the Quebec mainland to port, before turning back at the beginning of August. He returned to St.-Malo on 5 September, having reconnoitered the whole of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to signal the route of French penetration into the North American continent and, more immediately, having learned from captive Indians of a great river leading westward from the gulf he had explored. To ascertain whether this reported river was the long-sought passage to the South Sea, Cartier was commissioned within two months of his return to lead an expedition of three ships, equipped and supplied for 15 months, to perfect the navigation of the lands he had already discovered—in other words, to continue his search for a passage to Cathay and to locate the land of Saguenay. Cartier sailed once more from St.-Malo on 19 May 1535, in command of La Grande Hermine, La Petite Hermine, and L’E´merillon, with a total complement of 112 officers and men. On 7 July he

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sighted Funk Island, off Newfoundland’s northeast coast. He rounded the northern tip of Newfoundland and sailed through the Strait of Belle Isle southwestward into the Gulf of St. Lawrence and to the mighty river flowing from the Great Lakes that fed it. Learning of the vast length of the river and deciding it offered a promising westward course, Cartier sailed upriver toward a land the Indians called ‘‘Canada.’’ On 7 September they came to an archipelago of small islands and landed at a Huron camp on the Iˆ le d’Orle´ ans. Ships’ boats were launched and soon found the village of Stadacona farther upriver, at the foot of the Rock of Quebec. Cartier pressed on to the Huron city of Hochelaga and climbed the mountain that dominated it, which he named Mont Royal. From its peak, he could see that his hopes of a strait were illusory—a series of impassable rapids barred the way just above the point where he had left his boats—and he returned to Stadacona to spend a grim winter from mid-November through May 1536, when he returned to France. Although he had failed to discover a passage to the Pacific, Cartier had succeeded in opening a great waterway into the North American continent and had prospected the sites of two important French settlements of the future at Quebec and Montreal. Cartier’s third expedition of 1541–1542, when he was nominally subject to the authority of the Sieur de Roberval, was a colonizing enterprise with a strong missionary bias. The colonists were disembarked at the confluence of the Rouge and St. Lawrence rivers and a settlement, given the name Charlesbourg-Royal, was established. Cartier explored farther upriver in search of the mythical treasure of Saguenay, reaching Lake St. Louis, but the Indians were turning hostile and the colony was abandoned early in 1542. CARVER, JONATHAN (1710–1780). A retired Connecticut captain who had served in the New England militia, Jonathan Carver accepted a vague commission from Maj. Robert Rogers in 1766 to explore the northern reaches of the Mississippi River. He departed westward from Mackinac across Lake Michigan and traveled down the full length of Green Bay and up the Fox River to an Indian settlement on Lake Winnebago. In the late autumn, he canoed up the Mississippi to Lake Pepin, which Carver declared was the true source of

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the river because it only assumed its proper identity after leaving there, a theory that gains no support today. He spent the winter with the Lakota Sioux Indians, visiting their lodges 200 miles up the Minnesota River. In the spring of 1767, Carver rendezvoused with James Tute, who was in command of Rogers’s northwest passage expedition, but a fierce war between the Sioux and the Chippewa Indians prevented further exploration and the expedition wandered northeastward to the Pigeon River. The supplies promised by Rogers failed to appear and, after a decent interval, the planned expedition westward was abandoned. CATHAY (CATAIA, CATAI, CATHAI, CATHAYA). Medieval European names for China, which persisted through most of the 16th century. CHESTERFIELD INLET. On the western side of Hudson Bay, the 230-mile-long Chesterfield Inlet is 23 miles across at its estuary at latitude 64 N. Unaccountably missed by Christopher Middleton in 1742, it was entered by Francis Smith aboard California and by William Moor on the Dobbs, sailing independently, in July 1747. Theodore Swaine Drage, who sailed in the California, referred to it as Bowden Inlet, but the canny Moor named it Chesterfield Inlet after the Earl of Chesterfield, an influential politician of the time. A longboat from the California sailed 60 miles upstream but, after four days, the water became fresher and considerably more shallow. Nevertheless, the inlet was still considered to offer a passage westward and was even mentioned as the outlet to the bay for Bartolome de Fonte! The entire length of the inlet to Baker’s Lake was negotiated by William Christopher in the Churchill in the summer of 1762. ´ DARD. See GROSEILLIERS, ME´ DARD CHOUCHOUART, ME ART, SIEUR DES. CHRISTOPHER, WILLIAM (fl. MID-18TH CENTURY). Master of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s schooner Churchill, William Christopher twice explored Chesterfield Inlet. In 1761 he sailed 100

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miles upstream before being forced back by unfavorable winds. He determined to return the following summer. Moses Norton was on board when, accompanied by the cutter Strivewell, the Churchill slipped her moorings on 13 July 1762 and embarked on a voyage that the company hoped would establish whether Chesterfield Inlet was ‘‘a Streight or passage or not.’’ Christopher reached his farthest point of the previous year on 3 August, and two days later the Strivewell towed the Churchill into Baker’s Lake. Christopher and Norton landed on a small island, subsequently named Despair Island, from which it was clearly observed that unbroken land lay to the west. Persistent though he was, Christopher could do no more than to confirm William Moor’s conclusion that Chesterfield Inlet was a closed bay, reporting that there was no passage through the river or inlet into the South Sea. CHURCHILL. A trading post established by James Knight in 1717 on the northern bank of the Churchill River, a short distance from its estuary on the southwestern shores of Hudson Bay, 123 miles northwest of York Factory. The Prince of Wales Fort, with massive stone walls, was built there a few years later. Churchill was the departure point of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s northern voyages of discovery and exploration in the 18th century. See also CHRISTOPHER, WILLIAM; DUNCAN, CHARLES; HEARNE, SAMUEL; MATTONABEE; MIDDLETON, CHRISTOPHER; NAPPER, JAMES; NORTON, MOSES; NORTON, RICHARD; SCROGGS, JOHN; SEVENTEEN RIVERS FROM CHURCHILL. CHURCHILL RIVER. Discovered by Jens Munk in 1619, the Churchill River rises at Lac La Loche in northwestern Saskatchewan and flows southeastward across Manitoba and through a series of lakes to reach Hudson Bay at Churchill. It was sometimes called English River because of its frequent use by Hudson’s Bay Company traders. The river was an arterial waterway by canoe and portage to the Northwest Territories and the Arctic coastline, either by way of Lake Athabasca and the Mackenzie River, by Great Slave Lake and the Coppermine River, or via Great Bear Lake and the Back River.

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CLERKE, CHARLES (1741–1779). A career Royal Navy officer, Charles Clerke sailed as a midshipman on John Byron’s 1764–1766 circumnavigation. He also served on all three of James Cook’s Pacific expeditions, being captain on board the Discovery on the third. When Cook was killed in February 1779, Clerke assumed command of the expedition and renewed the search for the passage north of the Bering Strait. Ivy Cape, on the northwestern shore of Alaska was reached once more, but on 21 July ice again blocked the way. Clerke recognized that ‘‘it is now clearly impossible to proceed in the least farther to the No.ward’’ but resolved to try to bypass the ice in front of him by returning to the Asian shore and steering north from there. Suffering from advanced tuberculosis, Clerke died, at the age of 38, while the Resolution and the Discovery were sailing east. CLUNY, ALEXANDER (fl. MID-18TH CENTURY). Formerly an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), Cluny authored the pseudonymously published The American Traveller . . . or Observations on the Present State, Culture and Commerce of the British Colonies in America by an Old and Experienced Trader (1769). Much of the book was taken up with the advantages that would accrue from the establishment of a colony on Hudson Bay. Not least, Cluny wrote, it would serve as an advance base for the discovery of a northwest passage. No specific account of a voyage through the passage was included, but a map clearly showed a channel running westward from Repulse Bay and entering the Polar Sea, graphically inscribed ‘‘Here is supposed to be the North West Passage.’’ Moreover, at the western end of this channel, two headlands were indicated, Cape Spurrell and Cape Fowler, apparently named after two HBC sea captains of the time. Daines Barrington closely questioned Cluny on the authenticity of his book. Cluny stated that in 1746 he had been shipwrecked at latitude 791/2 N and had sailed in a Greenland whaler in an ice-free sea to latitude 831/2 N. Because the whaler was sailing alone, with no accompanying vessel, the skipper had turned back at this point. He further stated that, two years earlier, he and five others had traveled thousands of miles into the wilderness westward from the bay by dogsled.

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Both these accounts were extremely fanciful, but they immediately wounded the HBC, suggesting that it had carried out secret explorations to discover whether a passage existed and, if so, to discourage further discovery voyages in its own commercial interests. It transpired later that Cluny had spent only one winter in the bay. COLEMAN, ERNEST. In 1992, what appeared to be two man-made burial mounds were discovered by Coleman approximately four miles south of Cape Felix, on the northwest tip of King William Island. One of the mounds contained a rectangular depression paved with stone slabs. Because of its location, not far from where HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were gripped in the ice of Victoria Strait, there was some speculation, and no little excitement, that it might be a grave—perhaps even that of Sir John Franklin. When Peter Wadhams excavated the site, a year later, it was found that both the depression and the stone slabs were natural formations. COLLEGUES OF THE FELLOWSHIPP FOR THE DISCOVERIE OF THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE. A mixed group of enterprising Devonshire seafarers and prominent London merchants, statesmen, and courtiers—including Adrian Gilbert, John Davis, Walter Raleigh, and Sir Francis Walsingham—who were granted letters patent by Queen Elizabeth I on 6 February 1585 to embark on voyages from London, Dartmouth, or Plymouth for the search and discovery of a northern passage to China and the Moluccas. A five-year trading monopoly was licensed and, in return, the Crown would benefit by one-tenth of the profits accrued. The Collegues appear to have lingered on at least until 1607, when they backed Richard Penkevell’s proposed voyage. COLLINSON, RICHARD (1811–1883). With over 25 years’ experience in the Royal Navy, Richard Collinson was entrusted with the command of the Bering Strait–western Arctic arm of a pincer operation to locate Sir John Franklin’s missing ships in 1850. At the same time, Horatio Austin was to lead four ships into the eastern Arctic through Lancaster Sound. Collinson sailed from the Thames on the Enterprise on 11 January, in company with Robert McClure on the Investigator. His mission was to obtain intelligence of Frank-

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lin and his companions—not, it was underlined, to engage in geographical discovery or to conduct scientific research. In other words, this was not a voyage of discovery in search of a northwest passage. He was also instructed not to allow the Enterprise and the Investigator to separate. This last instruction was not easy to comply with. In fact, for most of the voyage to the Bering Strait, the two ships sailed independently, the Enterprise being a much faster ship. Thus it was that Collinson departed from Honolulu four days before McClure, but showing extreme caution, he took the longer route round the Aleutian Islands despite having prior knowledge of a safe channel through them, seemingly oblivious of the urgency of reaching the ice by the beginning of August. Two weeks were added to his journey, and consequently he arrived at the arranged rendezvous off Cape Lisburne a week later than McClure who, by now, was far ahead of him. Once through the Bering Strait and around Point Barrow, Collinson searched for an open passage across the Beaufort Sea to Banks Island, but ice forced him to abandon the attempt. He returned through the strait and sailed south to Hong Kong, where he spent the winter. Collinson worked his way out of Hong Kong harbor on 2 April 1851 and rounded Point Barrow for the third time, intending to sail along the Alaska coast to Franklin Bay before setting a course for Banks Island where he hoped to rejoin McClure. But, by one of the near misses that punctuated Collinson’s voyage, he entered the Prince of Wales Strait on 26 August, just 10 days after the Investigator emerged from her winter harbor. Halfway through the strait, Collinson found evidence of McClure having been there before him. Like McClure, he continued northward in the hope of passing into Melville Sound to complete the Northwest Passage. Again like McClure, his way forward was choked with ice and he turned back to find a winter harbor on the west coast of Banks Island. On 7 September, however, he encountered the heavy ice pack and determined that an anchorage there would be too dangerous. Instead, Collinson found a haven in Walker Bay, off the southwestern shore of the Prince Albert Peninsula on the west coast of Victoria Island, not too distant from the southern entrance to the Prince of Wales Strait. Unlike many other Arctic expedition commanders, Collinson at-

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tempted little sledge exploration during the winter, but a party was sent out, from 16 April through 6 June 1852, to examine the north coast of Victoria Island and to cross Melville Sound in order to leave a record of his voyage at Winter Harbor. Heavy and uneven ice led the party to leave their sledge behind, but soon the men were exhausted, lame, and suffering from snow blindness. M. T. Parks, the mate in charge, pressed on alone until he heard dogs howling and saw sledge marks over the ice. Fearing that he was in no condition to meet an Inuit band alone, he turned back. In fact, it was a sledge party from the Investigator, at the time iced in at Mercy Bay—yet another near miss for Collinson. A record was left at Point Hearne, some miles short of Winter Harbor, but this was never found by any sledge party exploring from the eastern Arctic in search of McClure’s ship. Released from the ice on 5 August, Collinson searched Prince Albert Sound and made the important discovery that Woolaston Land, Prince Albert Land, and Victoria Land were in fact one island. The Enterprise then continued south and east around the Wollaston Peninsula and sailed through Dolphin and Union Strait, the Coronation Gulf, and Dease Strait to Cambridge Bay, surveyed by Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson in 1836 and 1837. Here Collinson spent his second Arctic winter. In later years he was much praised for his seamanship in navigating the 400-ton Enterprise through these narrow and perilous channels. Roald Amundsen was especially effusive in lauding Collinson’s navigational skills. A major expedition with three sledges, from 12 April to 8 May 1853, rounded De Haven Point and traveled up the east coast of Victoria Island. Collinson was exasperated to find a note deposited in a cairn by John Rae two years earlier. All too often, it was Collinson’s misfortune to have followed unknowingly in the wake of others. If he had been aware of Rae’s exploration, he might well have crossed to King William Island, where he would likely have found traces of Franklin’s expedition. As it was, he had journeyed to within 30 miles of the relics of Franklin’s crew sledging southward. With supplies running dangerously low, it was now time for Collinson to head for home. But this was not plain sailing; ice and foul weather forced him to spend a third winter in the Arctic, at Camden Bay on the Alaskan coast. At length, in August 1854, he passed Point

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Barrow for the last time and met Rochfort Maguire waiting in HMS Plover. Collinson arrived back in England on 5 May 1855. Collinson may be described as the ‘‘nearly’’ man of the Royal Navy’s expeditions in search of Sir John Franklin. He had found the same icy passage as Robert McClure, albeit a year later than his nominal subordinate officer, who had deliberately avoided him in a desperate attempt to be the first to discover a passage. Collinson had also come very close to discovering another, more navigable, passage to the north of Victoria Island, but McClure had arrived in England before him. It was McClure who received the £10,000 Parliament reward. COMMITTEE FOR PROMOTING THE ARCTIC EXPEDITION BY LAND. Often referred to as the Arctic Land Committee, the Committee for Promoting the Arctic Expedition by Land was formed at a public meeting at the rooms of the Horticultural Society on 1 November 1832. By that time there was growing anxiety for Sir John Ross’s privately sponsored 1829 voyage to Lancaster Sound and Prince Regent Inlet. Consisting of a number of prominent public figures, together with members of the Ross family, the group promptly set up a working committee of Royal Navy officers with Arctic experience, including Frederick Beechey and John Richardson, that appointed agents at various ports in England and Scotland to raise funds for a search expedition. Within three months, £3,000 had been raised. With assistance from the Admiralty and the Hudson’s Bay Company also secured, the expedition’s two officers, George Back and Richard King, departed from Liverpool for New York on 17 February 1833. When Ross returned to London out of the blue on 19 October, fresh instructions were sent to Back to complete a survey of the northeast coast of Canada and the committee was dissolved. COMPANY OF ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND TRADING INTO HUDSON’S BAY. See HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY. COMPANY OF CATHAY. Granted a charter by Queen Elizabeth I on 15 March 1577 with the privilege of discovery and commerce to the north, south, and west of England—leaving the Muscovy Company

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to explore only to the east—the Company of Cathay was a jointstock company formed by Michael Lok to include the London merchant adventurers who had backed Martin Frobisher’s 1576 expedition. The company elected Lok governor for life and designated Frobisher as ‘‘High Admyrall of all seas and waters, countryes, landes and iles, as well of Cathai as of all other countries and places of new discovery.’’ A heavy investor in Frobisher’s 1577 and 1578 voyages, the company incurred disastrous losses when the black rock brought back from Meta Incognita proved worthless, and within 18 months of its incorporation, the company disbanded. COMPANY OF THE MERCHANTS OF LONDON, DISCOVERERS OF THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. Comprising a powerful and influential body of noblemen—including Henry, the Prince of Wales, as its supreme protector, and the archbishop of Canterbury— and wealthy London merchants and country gentry, many of whom had backed Thomas Button’s voyage that sailed three months earlier, the Company of the Merchants of London was granted a charter by King James I on 26 July 1612. Notwithstanding previous Elizabethan charters, it was given monopoly trading rights and privileges into and beyond the passage, which, for good measure, was defined and delineated at length to avoid legal quibbles (see the introduction to this volume). Voyages sponsored by the company include those of William Gibbons (1614) and Robert Bylot and William Baffin (1615 and 1616). After the return of Bylot and Baffin’s second voyage, however, the merchants’ enthusiasm waned. Seven London merchant– backed voyages of northwest discovery had sailed in the previous 14 years (five of them in the last seven years), yet the passage remained as elusive as ever. Baffin’s verdict that there was no passage nor hope of a passage north of Davis Strait discouraged them, and although individual merchants continued to invest in northwest voyages, the company discontinued its corporate activities. COOK, JAMES (1728–1779). Essentially, James Cook’s third Pacific voyage was a scientific expedition, although it cannot be denied that its discovery of a navigable northwest passage would have transformed British overseas commerce nor that the Admiralty was fully

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aware of the strategic advantages of a British-controlled route to the South Sea. In the never unlikely event of war with Spain, a British fleet would be able to descend without warning upon Spanish coastal settlements and merchantmen. Nevertheless, the moving spirits behind the voyage were Daines Barrington and the Royal Society. General expectations of finding a passage were not high and there had been too many disappointments over too long a period, but on the other hand, Cook was a talismanic figure; if anyone could discover and explore a passage, backers reasoned, it was James Cook. Sailing from Plymouth on the Resolution on 12 July 1776, in company with Charles Clerke’s Discovery, Cook’s instructions were to proceed to the coast of New Albion, ‘‘endeavouring to fall in with it in the latitude of 45 North.’’ Upon arrival there, he was to replenish his supplies and then ‘‘to proceed northward along the coast as far as the latitude of 65, or farther, if you are not obstructed by lands or ice, taking care not to lose any time in exploring rivers, or inlets . . . until you get into the before-mentioned latitude of 65, where we could wish you to arrive in the month of June next.’’ This signified that haste was everything and consequently there would be no thorough inspection of a sensitive stretch of coastline where the straits reported by Juan de Fuca and Bartolome de Fonte were likely to be found. Once at 65 N, Cook was ‘‘very carefully to search for and to explore such rivers or inlets as may appear to be of a considerable extent and pointing towards Hudsons or Baffins Bay; and, if from your own observations, or from any information you may receive from the natives . . . there shall be a certainty, or even a probability, of a water passage into the aforementioned bays, or either of them, you are, in such a case to use your utmost endeavors to pass through.’’ Why Hudson Bay was mentioned in Cook’s instructions remains unclear. Both the Admiralty and Cook were aware of Samuel Hearne’s explorations, which conclusively proved that no passage existed between the northwest coast of America and Hudson Bay. What is more, Richard Pickersgill’s preliminary voyage to Baffin Bay to explore a possible passage through which Cook might emerge had departed eight weeks before Cook left England. Clearly, the focus of attention at the Atlantic end of the passage had shifted north-

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ward to the region first explored by Robert Bylot and William Baffin in 1616 and almost totally neglected subsequently. Cook sighted ‘‘the long-looked-for Coast of New Albion’’ at daybreak on 7 March 1778, but continuous bad weather prevented him from approaching the shore too often. No scientific observations could be taken as the Resolution and Discovery inched gradually northward along the apparently broken shoreline, missing the entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Cook’s journal for 22 March, when he wrongly estimated he was at latitude 45 N, recorded, ‘‘It is in this very latitude we were now in that geographers have placed the pretended Strait of Juan de Fuca, but we saw nothing of it, nor is there the least probability that ever such thing existed.’’ Four weeks were spent anchored inside Nootka Sound (Cook named it King George’s Sound), on the west side of Vancouver Island, before weighing anchor on 26 April and resuming the voyage northward. Once again unable to sail inshore because of the weather, Cook was prevented from examining that stretch of the coastline at latitude 53 N where geographers had placed the Strait of Admiral de Fonte. In fact, no real survey of the coast was made before it tended westward to Mount St. Elias. Although his orders expressly advised him not to lose time in exploring every river or inlet he passed, he was often constrained to investigate the continuously indented Alaskan peninsula. Cook’s wildly inaccurate Russian maps were of no assistance. On 12 May, Lieutenant King of the Resolution recorded in his journal: ‘‘The direction of the Coast is nearly East & West . . . it seemed to incline well to the Southward, a direction so contrary to the Modern Charts, founded on the late Russian discoveries, that we had reason to expect that by the inlet before us we should find a passage to the North.’’ Inside Sandwich Sound, later renamed Prince William Sound, Cook sailed northward, but after a few hours, the land ahead appeared to close in. Two channels, a northern and an eastern arm of the sound, were explored by ships’ boats. Lt. John Gore claimed he had found an entrance to a passage in the northern channel, but Cook was unconvinced and returned to the open sea. By now steering a southwestward course off the Kenai Peninsula, Cook came to a 60-mile-wide stretch of open water between two

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headlands at latitude 58 N and on 25 May entered what eventually proved to be the mouth of a large river. The next morning, haze hovered over a northwestward channel seemingly dotted with islands, but as the haze disappeared, the islands were seen to be mountaintops. Cook confided to his journal: ‘‘This land was every where covered with snow from the summits of the hills to the very sea beach, and had every appearance of being part of a great continent, so that I was fully persuaded that we should find no passage by this inlet.’’ But, responsive to the moods of his officers, he continued north for 70 leagues to latitude 6130⬘ before turning about. This river was later named Cook River, but George Vancouver more accurately named it Cook Inlet. At length, Cook sailed around the Alaskan peninsula, and on 25 June he turned north through a channel to the east of Unalaska Island, sailing through the Bering Strait where 40 miles of water separate the Old World from the New. Before winter set in, he determined to press on along the American shore until he encountered floating ice and an impenetrable ice wall off Icy Cape at latitude 70 N. Reluctant to abandon the ice while further reconnaissance remained possible, he sailed west to the Asian shore at Cape Mys Schmidta before turning south, through the Aleutian Islands, to spend the winter in the more hospitable climate of the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands. In one short season of discovery, Cook outlined the remaining unknown stretch of the northwestern coast of America, explored deep into Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet, penetrated the Bering Strait, and clarified the geography of the Aleutians. He planned to continue exploring for a passage along the American shore the following summer, but on 14 February 1779 he was killed in a meaningless fracas on Hawaii and it was left to Clerke to take the Resolution and Discovery back through the Bering Strait. COPPERMINE RIVER. Discovered by Samuel Hearne, who arrived at its mouth overland from Churchill in 1771, the Coppermine River flows for 575 miles from Great Slave Lake to what is known today as Coronation Gulf. Its discovery virtually ruled out the concept of a passage across North America from Hudson Bay, or anywhere else south of the Arctic Circle, although a few armchair geographers persisted in proclaiming otherwise. The river proved to be a convenient

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highway to the northern coastline, as John Franklin, who first descended it in 1821, and John Rae found to their advantage. CORONAS, PEDRO DE (fl. MID-16TH CENTURY). Having been ordered by Pedro Mene´ndez de Avile´s, the governor of Florida, to explore north as far as the 39th parallel and to investigate the Chesapeake Bay in the expectation that its waterway system included channels running to Newfoundland and Labrador—and from there to the Pacific Ocean—in a not-too-demanding latitude and climate, Coronas sailed in La Trinidad from Fort San Mateo at the beginning of August 1566. He anchored in a river mouth at latitude 3730⬘ N on 14 August (possibly the entrance to Chesapeake Bay), but strong contrary winds lasting for four days forced him out to sea. Ten days later he entered a river at latitude 36 N, which, allowing for rudimentary navigational instruments, was perhaps Oregon Inlet, the opening into Pamlico Sound to the north of Cape Hatteras. From here Coronas sailed direct to Spain, but his report failed to excite the appropriate authorities and no attempt was made to follow up his voyage. ˆ RTE-REAL, GASPAR (?–1501?). A landed gentleman of the CO court of King Manuel of Portugal, Gaspar Coˆrte-Real made a transatlantic voyage of discovery at his own expense in 1499. He is thought to have sailed down the eastern seaboard of America from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. A year later he sailed northward from Lisbon on an official voyage on behalf of the Crown, in all probability to confirm the discoveries of John Cabot and to investigate whether Portuguese interests were threatened. His route took him first to Iceland, then southwestward to Greenland’s Cape Farewell and up its southwestern coasts into Davis Strait as far as the modern settlement of Godthaab. Ice forced him back from there, and he returned to Lisbon. Like Martin Frobisher 75 years later, Coˆrte-Real believed he had reached the northeast coast of Asia, and he soon organized an expedition of three ships and set sail again in May 1501. Taking a more southerly route, but still to the northwest, he arrived off the Labrador coast. Passing the Strait of Belle Isle, which he failed to explore—

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probably judging it to be no more than an inlet—his next port of call was Newfoundland, where Beothuk Indians were encountered. Two of the ships then returned to Lisbon with 50 captives to prove that the expedition had reached Asia and, no doubt, to serve as slave labor. Corte-Real himself continued southward, most likely in the expectation that he would soon be approaching the coast of Cathay. One conjecture is that he turned west into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He failed to return to Lisbon and his fate remains unknown. See also ˆ RTE-REAL, MIGUEL. CO ˆ RTE-REAL, MIGUEL (?–1502). Miguel Coˆrte-Real, who probaCO bly commanded one of the ships on Gaspar Coˆrte-Real’s 1501 voyage, lost no time in fitting out a search expedition when his brother failed to return. Three ships left Lisbon in May 1502. By 5 June they were off the southern coast of Newfoundland, where they separated to widen the search after arranging to rendezvous at the same point at the end of August. Only two of the three ships turned up at the appointed time and sailed for home. The third, with Miguel CoˆrteReal on board, was never seen again. For the second year in succession, a Coˆrte-Real had presumably been lost at sea. ˆ RTE-REAL, VASQUES EANES (fl. 2ND HALF OF 16TH CO CENTURY). A paragraph in Richard Hakluyt’s Discourse of Western Planting (1584) reports that Vasques Coˆrte-Real, of the island of Terceira in the Azores, sent a ship to discover a northwest passage in 1574. A landfall was reportedly made at latitude 57 N where ‘‘a great entrance very deep and broade without impediment of ice,’’ possibly Hudson Strait, was found. After sailing southward, they exhausted their food supplies and turned for home, hoping to return to make a full search for the passage ‘‘whereof they saw no small likelihood.’’ CORTE´S, HERNANDO (1485–1547). In 1523 Hernando Corte´s, the captain-general of New Spain, was ordered by King Carlos I of Spain to search for a strait linking the Atlantic and Southern oceans north or northwest of Panama. Although a number of reconnaissance voyages sailed north up the coast of Mexico, it was already clear that

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no such passage existed in the indicated region, and the project was allowed to lapse. COUREURS DE BOIS (WOODSMEN). Unlicensed itinerant fur traders who traveled vast distances in their search for furs and skins. With the passage of time, some coureurs de bois became licensed traders, but the Hudson’s Bay Company always regarded them with mistrust and suspicion. See also VOYAGEURS. COWPER, DAVID SCOTT. In 1986 David Cowper embarked in a converted Royal National Life-boat Institution boat, the Mabel E. Holland, to circumnavigate the world solo, including a westward transit of the Northwest Passage. After putting in at Resolute, he proceeded down Prince Regent Inlet with the intention of passing through Bellot Strait. Here ice forbade him entry, and Cowper was forced to lay up his boat for the winter at Fort Ross. He returned to Resolute on the Canadian icebreaker Pierre Radisson. The following year, Cowper and two companions, equipped with three skidoos, traveled overland to Fort Ross and down the western shores of Somerset Island to latitude 73 N before turning inland to the settlement at Cresswell Bay. They found the Mary E. Holland frozen in the ice, but with no equipment to recover the boat, Cowper’s party made its way back to Resolute up the east coast. In the 1987–1988 winter, aircraft of the Canadian Ice Patrol reported that Cowper’s boat was lying on the foreshore of Depot Bay. In the spring, Cowper flew to Fort Ross and endeavored to refloat his boat and to effect necessary repairs. He finally departed from Fort Ross on 28 August 1988, sailing through the Bellot Strait to Gjøa Haven. Continuing westward through the Simpson Strait and Queen Maud Gulf to Cambridge Bay, he navigated his way through Amundsen Gulf and along the shores of the Beaufort Sea to reach Tuktoyaktuk. Needing an overhaul, his boat was transported up the Mackenzie River to a shipyard at Inuvik, where she spent the 1988– 1989 winter. Cowper resumed his voyage on 28 June 1989, passed Point Barrow on 5 August, and negotiated the Bering Strait to continue with his one-man circumnavigation. His evident tenacity in overcoming all obstacles placed in his path fully matched that of earlier voyagers seeking a passage through the Arctic Archipelago.

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CRESSWELL, SAMUEL GURNEY (1827–1867). Cresswell’s first Arctic voyage was as mate (the equivalent of sublieutenant) on HMS Investigator, commanded by Capt. Edward Bird, which sailed in company with HMS Enterprise on James Clark Ross’s 1848–1849 Franklin rescue expedition. Just three weeks after his return to England in November 1849, Cresswell rejoined the Investigator, now under the command of Robert McClure, on Richard Collinson’s expedition to the Bering Strait and the western Arctic. After Bedford Pim’s arrival at Mercy Bay on 6 April 1853, Cresswell shepherded 24 ailing seamen 170 miles across Banks Island to Henry Kellett’s HMS Resolute berthed at Dealy Island. No sooner had he arrived than Cresswell volunteered to continue another 300 miles to Beechey Island in the hope of carrying McClure’s dispatches without too much delay to the Admiralty. As luck would have it, Edward Inglefield arrived in HMS Phoenix on 2 August, and three weeks later Cresswell was on his way back to Britain. He arrived in Aberdeen on 5 October, the first man to have traversed the Northwest Passage and to return home. Cresswell was an accomplished watercolor artist, and his sketches provide a vivid pictorial record of his two Arctic voyages. A number of them were presented personally to Queen Victoria, and his A Series of Eight Sketches in Colour . . . of the Voyage of HMS Investigator (1854) was dedicated to Her Majesty. CROKER MOUNTAINS. When sailing west through Lancaster Sound early in September 1818, John Ross briefly discerned a range of mountains eight leagues ahead, blocking further progress. He named them the Croker Mountains after John Wilson Croker, the first secretary of the Admiralty. The trouble was, no other officer, either in the Isabella or the Alexander, saw them. A year later William Parry in HMS Hecla sailed serenely through the sound, and no vestige of these imaginary mountains impeded his course westward into Barrow Strait and Viscount Melville Sound. Ross was never again entrusted with an official Admiralty voyage. CROZIER, FRANCIS RAWDON MOIRA (1796–1848). No Royal Navy officer, with the single exception of James Clark Ross, could claim more polar service than Francis Crozier. He was a midshipman

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on William Edward Parry’s 1819–1820 and 1821–1823 voyages and second-in-command to Ross on his 1839–1843 Antarctic expedition. Crozier held a similar position on Sir John Franklin’s 1845 discovery expedition, and although he was the third choice, he was excellently qualified for this important role. Apart from his experience at sea, he was an authority on magnetism and a fellow of the Royal Society. The Admiralty’s high opinion of him was made clear in their instructions to Franklin, who was ordered to keep Crozier fully informed of his intentions throughout the voyage. After Franklin died on 11 June 1847, Crozier assumed command of the expedition. He expected, or at least hoped, that if HMS Erebus and HMS Terror could not be extricated from the ice, they would eventually drift into open water. However, this never happened, and after a grim winter when 24 men died, Crozier faced a critical dilemma and a crucial decision. Unless there was an exceptionally early spring, Crozier would have to decide either to abandon his ships and set out overland in search of a safe refuge or to remain on board hoping that his ship would be released from the ice in the summer in time to reach open water. If he stayed with his ships and they were not released, he would face another winter locked in the ice and be presented with the same dilemma in 1849. In fact, there was really no choice: the ships had to be abandoned. One obvious refuge, with stores in profusion as Crozier well knew, was Fury Beach. This was also an obvious destination for a rescue mission. Instead, inexplicably and almost perversely, he decided to head for the Back River in an attempt to reach a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post—the nearest of which was at Fort Resolution on Great Slave Lake, 1,250 miles away. To reach it, the expedition would have had to haul their boats down the western and southern shores of King William Island, cross the Simpson Strait to the river estuary, ascend the river—no mean task in itself, as George Back had proved—and undertake a final march overland. For a debilitated, scurvy-ridden crew, it was a route that invited total disaster. Perhaps Crozier believed he could not rely on the Fury Beach depot remaining intact after an interval of more than 20 years. Perhaps he calculated that, even if the stores had survived undamaged, they consisted entirely of processed food, which was not what his men so desperately needed. Perhaps he thought it likely that a relief

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expedition was already coming down the Back River. At least the river would offer supplies of fresh food. Crozier landed at Victory Point, King William Island, on 22 April 1848 with 105 officers and men, three days after the ships were abandoned. He left there a brief record of events and an indication of his line of retreat. A third of the party actually reached the continental coastline near the Back River estuary, a remarkable achievement and one proving that Franklin’s expedition had completed the discovery of a northwest passage. The others perished along the way, as a few graves and some unburied bones have testified. See also FRANKLIN’S THIRD ARCTIC EXPEDITION; VICTORY POINT DOCUMENT. CUNDY, ROBERT. On 17 July 1962, the British Cape Britannia Expedition, consisting of a team of four men, all with service in Britain’s armed forces and led by Robert Cundy, flew 300 miles in a 20-year-old Supermarine Stranraer flying boat from Yellowknife on Great Slave Lake to Lake Beechey. Their purpose was to paddle down the Back River in three kayaks to Chantrey Inlet and thence to Cape Britannia on its eastern shore to examine a cairn erected by Thomas Simpson in 1839. In his book Quest for Franklin (1959), Rear Adm. Noel Wright had expounded the theory that the remnants of Sir John Franklin’s 1845–1848 expedition, plodding down the west coast of King William Island to the Back River in a last desperate bid to reach a Hudson’s Bay Company outpost, would have left a message in the cairn that lay so closely adjacent to their line of march. He had ascertained that Cape Britannia had never been searched for a record of Franklin’s expedition. In an adventurous descent of the river, Cundy and his team had to contend with maneuvering their heavily laden kayaks down 83 rapids, constructing a single kayak from two that were wrecked in capsizes, and enduring time-consuming portages, all the while engaged in making scientific records and shooting film for a television program that would help recover their expenses. Seriously behind schedule, they were unable to make radio contact with the aircraft that was to pick them up at an appointed date. At Chantrey Inlet they found an Inuit camp. Two kayaks were formed into a single catamaran with an outboard motor fixed on a

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frame. Weather conditions were worsening, but after a 180 shift in wind direction, they were able to reach Cape Britannia on 31 August, having traveled 718 miles from Lake Beechey. The next day, a cairn was found on high ground. A yellow film can, wrapped in polythene, was uncovered. Inside was a short note written on graph paper. ‘‘Operation Back River 1960,’’ it began. ‘‘August 4th. Probable site of Simpson’s Cairn. No letters or relics of Franklin expedition found. Geographical Survey of Canada.’’ It was signed by B. G. Craig, other geologists, and the pilot of a light aircraft (Robert Cundy, Beacon Six [1970], 237–38). The British Cape Britannia Expedition had been forestalled in its attempt to add flesh to the bones of Noel Wright’s hypothesis. See also HOYT, AUSTIN. –D– DALRYMPLE, ALEXANDER (1737–1808). Long in the employ of the East India Company as a chart maker, Alexander Dalrymple was successively hydrographer to the East India Company and to the Admiralty. He was also a conspicuous figure as a writer on geographical issues, notably the location of the great unknown continent in the South Sea. In 1789 he issued a pamphlet entitled Plan for Promoting the Fur Trade and Securing It to This Country by Uniting the Operations of the East India and Hudson’s Bay Companies. This ambitious and visionary plan argued that the experience of the Hudson’s Bay Company in collecting furs could be combined with the East India Company’s facilities for carrying them to China, thus cutting out the Russian middlemen. Instead of the cumbersome and expensive route of carrying the furs to London and reexporting them to St. Petersburg for onward transmission to China, East India Company ships could sail direct from the northwest coast to Canton—provided, of course, that a navigable waterway could be found from Hudson Bay through the continent to the northwest coast. Because the various charts of the northwest corner of Hudson Bay were so discordant, every voyage discovering new openings, Dalrymple concluded that the region consisted entirely of broken islands. But he condemned as a flagrant absurdity the practice of determining whether or not a channel into the interior existed by a few days’ observation at sea. He was also scornful of the Hudson’s

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Bay Company’s servants on the bay who, almost to a man, were against northern discovery expeditions and obdurate in resisting unwelcome orders to the contrary. The recent discoveries on the northwest coast by James Cook, William Barkley, Nathaniel Portlock, and George Dixon confirming that islands abounded there, shrinking the continent, and reducing the distance between its east and west coasts also encouraged Dalrymple to believe that a passage would be found. To further assist his argument, Dalrymple published Memoir of a Map of the Lands around the North Pole (1789), which questioned Samuel Hearne’s observations. He still hoped that an eastern entrance to an unimpeded transcontinental channel would be found up either Chesterfield Inlet or some other Hudson Bay opening. If he achieved nothing else, Dalrymple ensured that the issue of a northwest passage would remain in the public eye. DAVIS, JOHN (1550–1605). Sharing the Devon background of Francis Drake and Humphrey Gilbert, and their interest in exploration for a northwest passage, and having already earned a reputation for his seamanship and navigation prowess, John Davis would inevitably set sail in command of a northwest discovery voyage. As early as 1579, he and Adrian Gilbert had discussed the possibility of an expedition with John Dee and Walter Raleigh. Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s private secretary, was drawn in, and no doubt it was he who influenced the queen to grant to Gilbert and others the liberty, power, and full authority to mount an expedition ‘‘for the search and discovery of the Northwest passage to China.’’ Gilbert had already enlisted the necessary financial backing from a group of London merchants and from the merchants of Exeter and Totnes in Devon. Davis sailed from Dartmouth on 7 June 1585 with two barks, the Sunneshine and the Mooneshine, with a complement of 42 men. They raised the east coast of Greenland six weeks later, doubled Cape Farewell, and sailed up the coast to Gilbert Sound (present-day Godthaab Fjord or Nouk) by the end of July. After two days cavorting and trading with the Inuit, they proceeded northwestward across the strait that now bears Davis’s name to Exeter Sound on Baffin Island, at latitude 6640⬘ N, the farthest north for this voyage. Shaping their

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course southwest down the uneven eastern shores of Baffin Island, they sailed 60 leagues into Cumberland Sound in great hope of finding a passage. The farther they sailed, the deeper the water became, the same color as the open sea, with the tide ebbing and flowing six or seven fathoms up and down. But by now it was the third week in August, and supplies were running low. Adverse winds persuaded Davis to return to England. By 30 September his two ships were at anchor in the River Dart, and within three days he had written to Walsingham ‘‘to signify . . . that the northwest passage is a matter nothing doubtful, but at any time almost to be passed, the sea navigable, void of ice, the air tolerable, and the waters very deep.’’ He added, ‘‘I have also found an island, not described on any map, yielding a sufficient trade of fur and leather, and although this passage has been supposed impassable, I am an eye-witness to the contrary.’’ Davis’s confidence inspired sufficient backing in Devon to contribute more than the London merchants in fitting out a squadron of four ships, which departed from Dartmouth on a second voyage on 7 May 1586. Arriving in high latitudes, he divided his ships, sending the Sunneshine and the pinnace Northstarre to search for a passage between Greenland and Iceland. The Mooneshine and Mermayde set a course for Gilbert Sound, where Davis explored inland. Prevented from continuing up Greenland’s west coast by dense fog and a huge mass of ice, disheartening weather conditions after the open seas of the previous year, Davis sent the Mermayd home and sailed across the strait in the Mooneshine, again finding his way into Exeter Sound. He sailed south to the islands at the entrance to Hudson Strait, then to the Labrador coast, before returning home laden with salted cod and sealskins. Unaccountably for a navigator of his caliber, Davis had apparently failed to recognize the route of his 1585 voyage or to perceive the promising entrance of Hudson Strait. Although the Exeter merchants withdrew from the venture, the fish he brought home promised some return on investment, and Davis was given three ships in 1587, Sunneshine, Ellen, and Elizabeth, for a third expedition. He sailed to Baffin Island’s southeast coast before crossing northeastward to a point on the west coast of Greenland at 7246⬘ N, where he named a perpendicular cliff—in reality one of

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several islands skirting the coast—Sanderson His Hope of a Northwest Passage. In an attempt to sail west, he encountered pack ice and was forced south to the west shore of Davis Strait. Still on a southerly course, he passed across the entrance to Frobisher’s Bay, naming it Lord Lumly’s Inlet, and then on 31 July he found himself in a furious race of water, where he witnessed ‘‘the sea falling down into the gulf with a mighty overfall, and roaring, and with divers circular motions like whirlpools.’’ This was, of course, the entrance to Hudson Strait, but Davis did not explore further despite the direction and force of the current indicating a channel, possibly because of ice. Back in Dartmouth by 15 September, Davis immediately reported to Sanderson: ‘‘I have made my safe return in health, with all my company, and have sailed 60 leagues further than my determination at my departure. I have been in 73 degrees finding the sea all open, and 40 leagues between land and land. The passage is most certain, the execution made easy.’’ If Davis cherished hopes of a fourth voyage, they were dashed: his backers were deterred by another failed venture, and in any case England faced a momentous threat in 1588 with the sailing of the Spanish Armada. Her seamen were needed in home waters. Davis’s place in the history of the search for the Northwest Passage is secure. He had penetrated Davis Strait to the furthest north yet recorded, and he had pointed the way to where the Northwest Passage was to be found. Almost opposite to Sanderson His Hope was Lancaster Sound, the eastern entrance to the passage. Not the least of his accomplishments was his conclusive demonstration that a small ship, under a brave and skillful captain, could not only withstand North Atlantic storms but also negotiate its way far into polar waters. Davis was by no means simply an untutored and unlettered seafarer. In 1595 he published The Worlds Hydrographical Discription. Wherein is proved not onely by Aucthoritie of Writers, but also by late experience of Travellers and Reasons of Substantiall Probabilitie, that the Worlde in all his Zones, Clymats, and places is habitable and inhabited, and the Seas universally navigable . . . Whereby appears that from England there is a short and speedie passage into the South Seas, to China, Molucca, Philippina and India by Northerly

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Navigation. This was Davis’s final attempt to rekindle the enthusiasm for Arctic exploration. He outlined the geographical, hydrographical, and navigational obstacles to a discovery of a passage and then proceeded to discredit them all. In his final section, he concentrated on the material advantages that would accrue from commercial exploitation of a short sea route to the Orient. It was a good case, eloquently presented; only the absence of a navigable passage confounded it. DAVIS STRAIT. A northwestern arm of the Atlantic Ocean leading to Baffin Bay, between Greenland and Baffin Island, Davis Strait is 460 miles long and 200–400 miles wide. It is usually navigable from July through November. John Davis explored the strait three years in succession in 1585–1587, reaching latitude 7246⬘ N on the west coast of Greenland during his third voyage. DEALY ISLAND. Forty miles east of Winter Harbor, Dealy Island was the 1852–1853 winter quarters for HMS Resolute (commanded by Henry Kellett) and HMS Intrepid (Francis Leopold McClintock), the western division of Edward Belcher’s Arctic Squadron. Henry Larsen visited the island in August 1944. DEASE, PETER WARREN (1788–1863). A veteran fur trader with the XY, North West, and Hudson’s Bay companies, Dease provided John Franklin with local information to such good effect in 1820 that Franklin specifically requested his services on his second expedition. Dease proved equally effective in arranging Franklin’s food supplies, supervising the recruitment of the voyageurs, and taking over the construction of Fort Franklin on Great Bear Lake. For these services, the Hudson’s Bay Company promoted him to chief factor in January 1828. Eight years later, the London Committee of the company instructed its governor in Rupert’s Land, George Simpson, to make arrangements for an exploratory expedition to connect the discoveries of Franklin, Frederick Beechey, and George Back along the northern coastline with those of John Ross in Prince Regent Inlet. Dease was appointed leader of a 12-man expedition with Thomas Simpson, a younger cousin of the governor, as his second-in-command.

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During the 1837 season, eight men embarked on the western stage of the exploration while the other four traveled to the northeast corner of Great Bear Lake, where they constructed a base (Fort Confidence) for the eastward journey. Dease and Simpson departed from Fort Chipewyan with two small boats, the Castor and Pollux, on 1 June and reached the mouth of the Mackenzie River on 9 July. Another fortnight took them to Franklin’s farthest point west, Return Reef, but from there they could make no further progress through the ice in adverse weather conditions. In truth, their rapid progress thus far had been sustained only by highly dangerous methods. Simpson persuaded Dease to allow him to continue westward overland to Point Barrow, 60 miles away. By 25 September the entire expedition was reunited at Fort Confidence to plan and prepare for the eastward journey the following year. The 1838 exploring season started off reasonably well, but lingering ice made it an unrelenting struggle on the coastal voyage from the mouth of the Coppermine River. They were detained there for a week, and it was not until 29 July that they rounded Cape Barrow. Their boats’ progress was finally halted on 9 August when they reached Cape Flinders, three miles short of Point Turnagain. Again Dease remained with the boats while Simpson continued for another 100 miles on foot. Simpson rejoined him on 29 August and the expedition returned to the Coppermine on 3 September and to Fort Confidence on 14 September. Dease and Simpson’s second attempt eastward, in 1839, was blessed with more clement weather. Although starting out from Fort Confidence on 15 June, a week later than the previous year, they were able to explore the Richardson River before proceeding along the coast again. Cape Barrow was reached on 18 July and, 10 days later, they doubled Cape Alexander, the farthest point attained by Simpson in 1838. Still in clear weather and open seas, they continued along the shores of Coronation Gulf to discover Dease and Simpson Strait, separating King William Island from the mainland and leading to the estuary of the Back River. By now the weather was thickening, but they reached Point Ogle on the northwest corner of the Adelaide Peninsula, and by 16 August the Castor and Pollux were beached on Montreal Island in Chantrey Inlet. At this point their scheduled task was all but finished. It remained

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only to confirm whether or not Boothia was part of the mainland. They crossed Chantrey Inlet to Cape Britannia, and Simpson made a 40-mile journey to Cape John Ross, where poor visibility prevented him from establishing for certain whether Boothia was a peninsula or an island. On their return journey, they crossed to King William Island on 24 August and traced 60 miles of its coastline to its southwestern corner at Cape Herschel before recrossing to the continental shoreline. Then, despite obvious signs of winter coming, they coasted along the southern shores of Victoria Island for 150 miles before reaching the Coppermine on 16 September, completing a 1,400-mile voyage in two small boats in Arctic seas. In the course of three summers, Dease and Simpson had successfully traced the coastline between Point Barrow, the easternmost location reached by sea through the Bering Strait, and Franklin’s farthest point west at Return Reef. Point Turnagain was connected to Back’s discoveries in the Great Fish River estuary. Dease and Simpson Strait was opened up, and the southern shores of King William and Victoria Islands were put on the map for the first time. Only the true status of Boothia still remained doubtful. Their success in extending the map of the continental coastline could not be questioned. DEE, JOHN (1527–1608). A truly enigmatic figure, though with powerful social and academic connections at home and abroad, John Dee was seemingly associated with all areas of scientific research and pseudoscientific investigations in Elizabethan England. In a crowded life, Dee’s cosmography, cartography, navigation, astronomy, and mathematics rubbed shoulders with alchemy, astrology, and necromancy. Inevitably, he was involved in the search not only for a northwest but also for a northeast passage. His own singular view was that a northeast passage offered the better possibility of reaching the Orient, although he prepared a map for Humphrey Gilbert that showed not only an open passage around the North American coast but also another linking the St. Lawrence River with the Gulf of California. Once a successful passage had been completed, it would be possible to sail to the New World’s western shores. Dee was kept busy in the mid-1570s: it is possible that his advice was sought in the early discussions concerning the objectives of Francis Drake’s 1577–1580 circumnavigation voyage, especially

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with regard to the Strait of Anian. He was certainly asked to examine the proposal for Martin Frobisher’s first Arctic expedition and to instruct its personnel on chart making and the navigational skills required in high latitudes, much to Michael Lok’s chagrin. But Dee even won him over by readily sharing his own knowledge and information. When Frobisher’s adventures came to an end, Dee was appointed to the commission investigating the true value of the ‘‘gold ore’’ brought home and the consequent financial difficulties when it was finally proven worthless. He was also prominent in the preliminary discussions culminating in John Davis’s 1585 voyage. Dee’s preoccupation with a northern passage to Cathay may have stemmed from, or been strengthened by, the expressed views of two European cartographers, Gerard Mercator (1512–1594) and Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598), who both urged England to complete the exploration of the Arctic region. He transformed this suggestion into the concept of England ruling a northern oceanic empire. September 1577 saw the publication of Dee’s Pety Navy Royal (the first and only printed volume of his ‘‘General and Rare Memorials Pertayning to the Perfect Art of Navigation’’), advocating the establishment of a navy in permanent commission to secure the necessary command of the seas. A year later he produced ‘‘Her Majesty’s Title Royal to Many Foreign Countreys, Kingdoms and Provinces’’ on 12 vellum skins of parchment and presented it to the queen. In the long light of history, this may be regarded as marking the first stage toward Canada’s present-day claim to sovereignty over the Arctic Archipelago. DE FONTE, BARTOLOME (BARTHOLOMEW). The April and June 1708 issues of a short-lived London periodical, Monthly Miscellany; or, Memoirs For The Curious, carried ‘‘A letter from Admiral Bartholomew de Fonte the Admiral of New Spain and Peru,’’ which purported to relate the events of a voyage of discovery by four Spanish warships that set sail from Callao, the port of Lima, on 3 April 1640. Their objective was to ascertain if a passage existed through the North American continent from the Atlantic into the South and Tartarian seas, a sensitive issue at a time when it was commonly re-

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ported that ‘‘industrious navigators’’ from England were probing the eastern seaboard for an entrance to an intercontinental waterway. At latitude 53 N, so the letter narrated, de Fonte discovered a group of islands he named the Archipelago of St. Lazarus (possibly the present-day Queen Charlotte Islands) at the entrance to a great channel leading to a network of straits, rivers, and lakes deep into the interior. Ordering Pedro de Barnarda to explore a northward-flowing river, de Fonte followed another river, the Rı´o los Reyes. Other topographical features he gave a name to included Lake Belle, Parmentier River, Lake de Fonte, and the Estrecho de Ronquillo (Ronquillo Strait). On 17 June, de Fonte encountered a ship from Boston, ‘‘Mastechusets,’’ commanded by Nicholas Shapley. Despite his orders to seize any ship seeking a northwest or west passage into the South Sea, he informed Shapley that he would regard him simply as a merchant trading with the natives for otters, beavers, and other furs and skins, thus avoiding a diplomatic incident deep in unexplored country. By early September he was heading back downriver on the long voyage home to Peru, ‘‘having found that there was no Passage into the South Sea by what they call the North West Passage.’’ The fictitious letter, possibly written by James Petiver, the editor of the Monthly Miscellany, caused no great stir at the time of publication, but 40 years later it was enthusiastically grasped, magnified, and hugely exploited by Arthur Dobbs and his adherents eager to boost their arguments for the existence of a northwest passage. Theodore Swaine Drage identified de Fonte’s channel with the Strait of Anian. DE FUCA, JUAN (1536–1602). Apostolos Valerianos, an experienced Greek pilot, according to his own account, spent 40 years as a navigator for Spain in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, when he was known as Juan de Fuca. At a chance meeting with Michael Lok in Venice in April 1596, de Fuca recounted the story of a recent voyage he had recently made northward along the California coast. In 1592, he claimed, the viceroy of New Spain had commissioned him, in command of two small ships, to discover the Strait of Anian in order to forestall the English who, it was feared, were currently endeavoring to discover a passage.

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He had followed the coast to a point between 47 and 48 N, where he entered a strait tending north, northwest, and northeast, 30–40 leagues wide at its entrance, and marked by ‘‘an exceeding high Pinacle or spired rock, like a pillar.’’ After three weeks sailing, negotiating several channels, and winding through a number of islands, he decided that he had reached the North Sea and had accomplished all that had been asked of him. He turned about and returned to Acapulco. De Fuca told Lok that he had never received his promised reward and reasoned that the Spanish authorities now believed that England had ceased its Northwest Passage discovery voyages and consequently would not suddenly be appearing in the North Pacific. In these circumstances, his services were no longer required. Because of this ill treatment, de Fuca expressed a wish to enter the service of Queen Elizabeth if she would furnish him with a 40-ton ship and a pinnace. He would then sail through the passage from one end to another in 30 days. However, Lok failed to find any backers in England for this proposal. Lok’s account is the original source for Juan de Fuca’s voyage: no other contemporary document exists, although this of course could be explained by the Spanish obsession for secrecy. It is known, however, that there was a Greek pilot employed in New Spain at the relevant time. It is possible that Lok fabricated the story himself to give credence to his own views on the supposed passage. Alternatively, it is possible that de Fuca actually navigated the strait that now bears his name, separating Vancouver Island from the mainland, then proceeded northward through the Strait of Georgia, along the inland passage to Alaska, and back to the open sea through Queen Charlotte Strait, imagining that he had reached the Polar Sea through the Strait of Anian. The profusion of small islands along this waterway lends some sort of credibility to his account. Certainly, William Barkley had no hesitation in naming it the Strait of Juan de Fuca when he rediscovered it in 1787. DE HAVEN, EDWIN JESSE (1816–1865). With the help of Lt. Matthew Maury, USN, of the Naval Observatory and Hydrographic Office, Henry Grinnell selected Lt. Edwin Jesse De Haven as commander of an expedition (the First Grinnell Expedition) to search

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for Sir John Franklin. De Haven could boast of a distinguished record, including service on Charles Wilkes’s 1839–1842 U.S. Exploring Expedition to Antarctica. An acrimonious debate in the U.S. Senate ended with the supporters of the expedition prevailing on the grounds of common humanity, U.S. friendship with Great Britain, and the kudos that would accrue to the United States should the expedition be successful in either finding Franklin and his men or solving the mystery surrounding their fate. De Haven sailed from New York with the Advance and Rescue on 22 May 1850. He was instructed to follow Franklin’s route as far as the approach to the Wellington Channel on the north side of Barrow Strait. At that point, he was left very much to his own discretion, although he was not to turn south to explore the Canadian coastline. If ice blocked his way through Barrow Strait, he was advised to return to Baffin Bay and sail north in order to investigate Jones Sound and Smith Sound. It has been surmised that, in fact, the U.S. Navy was rather more interested in exploring the supposed open sea circling the North Pole than in a Franklin rescue expedition. After three weeks adrift in pack ice, De Haven entered Lancaster Sound and proceeded as ordered to Wellington Channel, encountering many British ships engaged on the same mission. When the first evidence of Franklin’s expedition was found on 27 August, De Haven agreed to coordinate his activities with those of the British captains in order to cover all geographical eventualities and directions. No doubt he was pleased to be invited to explore northward up Wellington Channel. Working their way to Cornwallis Island on the western side of the channel, the Advance and Rescue were again trapped in the ice and drifted northward, sighting the northwestern extension of Devon Island and naming it the Grinnell Peninsula. As capriciously as the ice had taken them north, so by the end of November it drifted them south again and then eastward through Lancaster Sound to Baffin Bay. Exhaustion, scurvy, pneumonia, and other illnesses began to afflict the crew, and by mid-January it was clear that De Haven himself was suffering from scurvy. Despite the best efforts of Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, the medical officer on board the Advance, by the end of

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February most of the crew were similarly affected. When spring arrived, snow blindness added to their woes. The two ships were at last freed from the ice on 5 June near the western shore of Davis Strait, almost on the Arctic Circle. De Haven sailed east across the strait to Godhavn for five days’ rest and recuperation before setting a course for Lancaster Sound to get back on station. But only four days later, they were again held in the ice. Extricating themselves, they headed for Upernavik, on the Greenland shore of Baffin Bay southeast from the entrance to Lancaster Sound. From 10 July through 19 August, they were once more in the grip of the ice pack. At this point, when it became abundantly clear that his crew was in no fit state to survive another Arctic winter, De Haven had no choice but to turn for home. It had been a particularly frustrating and fruitless mission, but his men, imprisoned in the ice for almost nine months and prepared at almost every stage of their voyage to abandon ship at a moment’s notice, could take pride in their unrelenting efforts during one of the worst winters on record. The Advance sailed into New York on 30 September 1851; the Rescue followed on 7 October. DE LANGLE, PAUL-ANTOINE-MARIE FLEURIOT. See LA PE´ROUSE, JEAN-FRANC¸OIS DE GALAUP, COMTE DE. DE ROOS, WILLY (1923– ). Having previously circumnavigated the globe, De Roos set out from Falmouth, Cornwall, on 21 May 1977 in an attempt to sail through the passage in his 42-foot steelhulled ketch, the Williwaw, which was equipped with advanced navigation instruments and devices, an automatic pilot, an echo sounder, and hydrographic rudder control. His preparations included immersing himself in the narratives of previous Arctic explorers. Arriving at Egedesminde, Greenland, on 17 June, he was joined by Jean-Louis de Gerlache, the son and grandson of two well-known Antarctic explorers. Their relationship can only be described as distant and formal with some irritation at times. It was here, too, that he first encountered Re´al Bouvier and the crew of the J. E. Bernier II. The two ships proceeded in company up the coast to Upernavik and across Melville Bay. It took them four days to double Cape York

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because of the solid ice pack. At one point, the Williwaw took the Bernier in tow. Although the North Water was supposed to be relatively ice-free, the crossing of Baffin Bay was equally arduous, with fog adding to the hazards, but by 31 July they reached the entrance to Lancaster Sound. Finding the northern shore still blocked by ice, they crossed to the Wollaston Islands, at the entrance to Navy Board Inlet. Storm conditions kept them there until 4 August before they were able to set a course for Resolute Bay. At Strathcona Sound in Admiralty Inlet, De Roos had trouble persuading the Canadian Coast Guard that he was capable of navigating the Williwaw through the passage, but he was allowed to continue on the condition that he maintain daily radio contact with Nordreg Canada, the Coast Guard’s operational center at Frobisher Bay. Separating from the Bernier, much to his relief, De Roos reentered Lancaster Sound and sailed west through Barrow Strait to arrive at Erebus Bay on Beechey Island on 8 August. The Williwaw’s next anchorage was at Resolute Bay, where De Roos determined to follow Roald Amundsen’s route through Peel Sound, Franklin Strait, James Ross Strait, and Simpson Strait to Queen Maud Gulf. He made good progress until dense ice and shallow coastal waters 30 miles past Pasley Bay forced him to retreat to the bay where Henry Larsen spent the 1941–1942 winter. In poor visibility and an uncertain sea bottom, all De Roos’s seamanship and expertise were called into play in this potentially disastrous position where it was imperative he quickly find a secure berth. But he displayed the necessary skill and edged his way south to Gjøa Haven. At this point, de Gerlache took his departure. De Roos sailed on alone, through Simpson Strait, in familiar worsening fog and ice conditions, to Queen Maud Gulf where he again encountered the ice pack. As he entered Dolphin and Union Strait, his thoughts turned to winning a possible race with the Bernier through the passage. He took comfort that its last reported position was about five days behind in Simpson Strait. Also in the forefront of his mind was the approach of winter. As he reached Cape Bathurst on 5 September, his eyes were on Herschel Island and Demarcation Bay, not wanting to detour to Tuktoyaktuk in order to refuel. Instead he rendezvoused with a geological research ship, the Nahidik, which refueled him off Pullen Island,

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and he was able to reach and pass those objectives. Conscious that there was no winter shelter ahead of him along the shores of the Beaufort Sea, he threw caution to the winds and pressed on in a desperate bid to round Icy Cape. His determination paid off, and on 12 September he sailed into the Chukchi Sea. Six days later he rounded Fairway Rock, the southern exit of the Bering Strait. He had completed the passage single-handedly. DEVON ISLAND. The fourth-largest island in the Arctic Archipelago, Devon Island forms the northern shoreline of Lancaster Sound to the point where it leads into Barrow Strait. In the words of Joe MacInnis, it is ‘‘a gritty, fleshless land of chasms and cliffs. Across the desert of wind-worn stone lies the silence of centuries’’ (The Search for the Breadalbane [1985], 50). No doubt the silence was broken when Sir John Franklin made a temporary camp on Cape Riles, a 700-foot headland on the island’s southwestern extremity, during the 1845–1846 winter, and again on 23 August 1850 when Erasmus Ommaney of HMS Assistance landed to examine a cairn on the headland. Unfortunately, although he came across fragments of naval clothing, broken bottles, and preserved meat cans, his hopes of finding a message or some other written record were not realized. DEW LINE. Each of 31 Distant Early Warning (DEW) radar posts, stretching across the American Arctic—six in Alaska, 21 in Canada, and four in Greenland—consisted of a radar dome, four radar dishes facing north, and an infrastructure of living quarters, roads, garages, fuel storage tanks, hangars, and an airstrip. Conceived in 1952 and completed five years later, their purpose was to give early warning of the approach of manned aircraft or incoming missiles over the pole from the Soviet Union. They were dismantled at the end of the Cold War. See also UNITED STATES HYDROGRAPHIC SURVEY FOR THE DEW LINE. DISCOURSE CONCERNING A STRAIGHTE TO BE DISCOVERED TOWARDE THE NORTHWESTE. See GRENVILLE, RICHARD. DISCOURSE CONCERNING THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. See MONSON, SIR WILLIAM.

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DISCOURSE OF A DISCOVERIE FOR A NEWE PASSAGE TO CATAIA. See GILBERT, SIR HUMPHREY. DIXON, GEORGE (c. 1755–1800?). Having served as a petty officer on HMS Resolution on James Cook’s 1776–1779 expedition in search of a northwest passage running from the northwestern coast of America, George Dixon was appointed captain of the King George’s Sound Company’s ship Queen Charlotte, which accompanied Nathaniel Portlock on his fur trade prospecting voyage to the northwest coast from 1785 through 1788. During the later stages of the expedition, in the spring and summer of 1787, Dixon sailed south independently of Portlock, engaging in trade with the Indians for furs and making a close examination of the coastline. Although Cook had outlined the coast a few years earlier, much detail remained to be confirmed. Dixon’s most important addition to its configuration was the discovery of the Queen Charlotte Islands. He sailed down their western shores, rounded and named Cape St. James, and proceeded north into Hecate Strait, up the islands’ coast as far as Skidegate. He was fully aware that the prime purpose for his voyage was commercial rather than coastal exploration, and he was also conscious that he had discovered coastal islands, not the continental mainland. What excited him was the perceived resemblance of the Queen Charlotte Islands to the Archipelago of St. Lazarus described by Bartolome de Fonte. This identification soon found widespread support. For example, one writer declared: ‘‘As this Archipelago is now ascertained, we may give a little more credit to the pretended Strait of de Fonte; and when we consider that the parallel of lat. 55 divides nearly the largest of the North Western Lakes (Lake Winnipeg), and touches the southern extremity of James’ Bay, it will be allowed to be the most promising spot for the expected communication’’ (Critical Review 67, March 1789, 192–96). Dixon never lost his interest in either the exploration of the northwest coast or the discovery of a passage, involving himself in Alexander Dalrymple’s plans to establish a settlement on the coast to confound the ambitions of other European powers. And after the publication of John Meares’s Voyages Made in the Years 1788 and 1789, from China to the North West Coast of America (1790), he was

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assiduous in correcting its inaccuracies. This occasioned a pamphlet war similar to that between Arthur Dobbs and Christopher Middleton. DOBBS, ARTHUR (1689–1765). A prominent member of the Irish House of Commons from 1721 through 1730, as well as engineerin-chief and surveyor-general in Ireland, Arthur Dobbs retained an abiding interest in the prosperity and furtherance of British and colonial trade. He possessed, too, an unwavering conviction that a channel westward would be discovered inside Hudson Bay. For 20 years his efforts ensured that the issue of the Northwest Passage would be firmly before Parliament, the Privy Council, the Royal Society, the City of London, and not least the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). In 1731 Dobbs prepared a well-argued memorial, some 70 pages long, which opened with a detailed examination of previous voyages and discoveries so that he might pinpoint those regions that offered the greatest promise of a passage. He concentrated his attention on Ne Ultra, now known as Roe’s Welcome Sound, in the northwestern reaches of Hudson Bay. Dobbs outlined the advantages to be gained from the discovery of a passage: beneficial trade along the Spanish-dominated coasts of America and with the many countries and islands in the South Sea, a strategic advantage in time of war, and the facility of establishing colonies and settlements ‘‘without the other Powers of Europe having a pretence to make any.’’ The memorial was submitted to Colonel Braden, one of the lords commissioners of the Board of Trade and Plantations; to Sir Charles Wager, first lord of the Admiralty; and to Samuel Jones, deputy governor of the HBC. Dobbs had stressed the advantages that would accrue to British trade from a discovery of a western channel, but in 1735 he learned that the HBC’s royal charter would restrict all profits to its shareholders. That being so, Dobbs concluded, it should bear the costs of exploration. From that moment, it became apparent that he and the company would grow steadily apart in their motives, intentions, and proceedings. Their interests were irreconcilable. The HBC’s reluctant and halfhearted attempts to explore Hudson Bay persuaded Dobbs to bend all his efforts to prevail upon the Admiralty to dis-

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patch a Royal Navy expedition to the bay. To that end, Christopher Middleton departed on 8 June 1741 in HMS Discovery. Middleton’s verdict that his voyage had dispersed all hopes of a passage through Hudson Bay was not what Dobbs wanted to hear, however. Convinced that the HBC had bribed Middleton not to prosecute the search with the necessary vigor, Dobbs directed his actions henceforward to the rescindment of the HBC’s trade monopoly. Encouraged by Dobbs’s hostility to the company’s privileges, a group of London merchants then began to associate themselves with his public endeavors. Dobbs’s dispute with Middleton erupted into a bad-tempered and vituperative quarrel in book and pamphlet form. In the midst of a spate of publications, Dobbs authored a much more substantial and significant work, An Account of the Countries Adjoining to Hudson’s Bay (London: J. Robinson, 1744), which embodied his grand design, provided extracts from Middleton’s expedition journal, remarked upon his shortcomings, revived the account of Bartolome de Fonte’s voyage, and printed the HBC’s charter, ‘‘the whole intended to shew the Probability of a North-West Passage, so long desired; and which (if discovered) would be of the highest Advantage to these kingdoms.’’ ‘‘A New Map of Parts of North America From The Latitude of 40 to 68 Degrees: Including the late discoveries made on board the Furnace Bomb Ketch in 1742: And the Western Rivers or Lakes falling into Nelson River in Hudson’s Bay as described by Joseph La France a French Canadese Indian who Travailed thro these Countries and Lakes for 3 Years from 1739 to 1742’’ was included in both An Account of the Countries Adjoining to Hudson’s Bay and Remarks upon Captain Middleton’s Defence (London: Jacob Robinson, 1744). Dobbs had made La France’s acquaintance and had listened eagerly to his description of the regions he had traversed. He added an indeterminate and unknown Western American coastline veering northeastward from Cape Blanco, California, that joined up with Hudson Bay through Rankin Inlet opposite Marble Island. Dobbs argued vehemently that the British government and Parliament had a just and legal right to lay open the trade in Hudson Bay to all British merchants. If the HBC ever had a right to a trade monopoly, he reasoned, it had forfeited that right by totally neglecting

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the intentions of its royal charter, which was originally granted to encourage the discovery of a passage to the Western Ocean. Following a petition to the House of Commons by City of London merchants early in 1745, the House declared that a public reward should be given to adventurers who made a perfect discovery of a northwest passage. The North West Committee, which included Dobbs, immediately put in hand preparations that culminated in William Moor’s 1746–1747 voyage. Outwardly unabashed or discountenanced by Moor’s ineffectual results, Dobbs continued to press the case for further exploration, but he was increasingly at odds with his erstwhile supporters. It was dawning on the City merchants that, even if a passage existed, its commercial potential was limited. The voyages of Middleton and Moor had made it obvious that, if discovered, the passage would be navigable at most for only three months of the year. The end of Dobbs’s long campaign was marked by the publication of A Short State of the Countries and Trade of North America (London: J. Robinson, 1749), in which he reluctantly agreed that a settled trade in the hinterland of Hudson Bay must precede the commercial exploitation of a northwest passage. Undoubtedly Dobbs was a man of energy and unbridled enthusiasm. He had the ability to synthesize extracts from 16th- and 17thcentury travel literature into an attractive and plausible theory calculated to appeal to men of business and affairs, but his ignorance of practical seamanship and his inability to grasp the difficulties of exploring the coastal waters at the top of Hudson Bay inevitably led him into a geographical dispute that he could never win. DOGSLEDS. See SLEDGES AND SLEDGE TRAVEL. DRAGE, THEODORE SWAINE (1712?–1774). An air of doubt and uncertainty hovers over Drage, at least as a seaman or would-be discoverer. Until the late 1940s it had been assumed that he was the anonymous author of An Account of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage by Hudson’s Streights to the Western and Southern Ocean of America: Performed in the Year 1746 and 1747 in the Ship California, Captain Francis Smith (2 vols., 1748–1749). Drage claimed that ‘‘the many quotations taken from the accounts

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of the former Discoverers, not only make [his] Account more intelligible, but also make it rather to be a compleat History of all the Undertakings for the Discovery of a North-West Passage.’’ Among those previous narratives he took very seriously was Bartolome de Fonte’s account of a voyage through the fabled Strait of Anian in 1640, going so far as to include Edward Holding’s A Chart for the Better Understanding De Font’s Letter (1749) purporting to illustrate the course of that voyage. Twenty years after his California journal, Drage published his disputatious The Great Probability of a Northwest Passage: Deduced from the Observations on the Letter of Admiral de Fonte (1769), which was attributed at the time to Thomas Jefferys, a prominent map publisher whose name appeared on the title page. After the disappointments of the various discovery voyages from the 1740s on, Drage realistically doubted whether a passage existed from Hudson Bay, although he persuaded himself that an entrance to the Strait of Anian might be found on the hitherto unexplored coastline running north from Hudson Bay to Baffin Bay. In two items in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America in 1943 and 1945, Bertha Solis-Cohen argued that Charles Swaine was the author of both books. Howard N. Eavenson, in his impressively researched and well-documented Map Maker and Indian Traders (1949), agreed with this but concluded that Swaine, a seaman and voyager, and Theodore Swaine Drage, a clerk and Anglican priest, were not the same person, although possibly they were related. DRAKE, SIR FRANCIS (1540–1596). Documentary evidence of the preparation and planning of Francis Drake’s circumnavigation voyage, from December 1577 through September 1580, is slight, probably reflecting an unusually effective security clampdown. One telling record, however, is a manuscript memorandum, written for Sir Francis Walsingham to present Drake’s proposals to Queen Elizabeth I, that lists the shareholders whose support Drake had attracted. The queen herself agreed to contribute a ship. Others in the venture included the Earl of Lincoln, lord high admiral of England; Sir William Wynter, who combined the offices of surveyor of the queen’s ships and master of the ordnance; his brother, George Wynter, clerk of the

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queen’s ships; and John Hawkins, the celebrated seaman. The Earl of Leicester, Christopher Hatton, and Walsingham, from Elizabeth’s immediate circle, completed as powerful a group as the court and the naval administration could muster. The motives put forward for Drake’s voyage are many and various: the opening of a trade route with the Spice Islands (modern Indonesia), the establishment of an English colony on the west coast of North America, the discovery of the Strait of Anian, and the discovery and coastal exploration of Terra Australis, the supposed great southern continent. Drake sailed from Plymouth in the Pelican in company with the Elizabeth, Marigold, Swan, and Christopher on 13 December 1577. He entered the Strait of Magellan on 21 August 1578 and emerged from its western entrance on 6 September. By late 1578 he was sailing unaccompanied up the west coast of South America in the Golden Hind (the renamed Pelican), wreaking havoc on Spanish coastal and maritime trade in an orgy of piracy. In addition to Spanish goods and treasure, Drake had taken possession of their maps and charts, delineating their major sea routes and destinations. After capturing one of the Silver Fleet’s principal treasure ships, the Nuestra Sen˜ora de la Concepcio´n, north of San Francisco Cape on 3 March 1579, Drake was forced to contemplate a quick return to England. He sailed north, probably to ascertain whether there existed a northern passage to the Atlantic Ocean in a relatively low latitude and in a reasonable clime. The exact point of Drake’s northernmost landfall is a matter of some controversy. R. P. Bishop, a Royal Navy captain and later a British Columbia land surveyor, after studying the surviving account and allowing for hydrographic and atmospheric conditions, calculated that he had reached Vancouver Island at about 47 or 48 N. Other reports favor the Oregon Dunes, a little to the north of Coos Bay, below 45 N. Wherever he was, contrary winds and murmurs from the crew regarding the temperature dissuaded Drake from seeking an eastern passage. Confirmation that Drake diligently examined the coast for a passage as far as latitude 48 N comes from Francis Fletcher, the chaplain on the Golden Hind. But the coastline showed no signs of trending eastward. Instead continuing to run northwestward, perhaps

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to link up with Asia. Fletcher, for one, was convinced that, in the unlikely event of a passage existing farther north, it would prove to be unnavigable. If this view had prevailed, 300 years of endeavor might have been saved. Drake turned south to find a haven where he could repair his ship, refresh the crew, and replenish his supplies before a voyage across the South Sea home. At a point near latitude 38 N, he came across such a haven, naming its country New Albion and its harbor Portus Novae Albionis (the Harbor of New England). Samuel Bawlf considerably extends this northern limit in The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake (2003). Based on a close study of the cartographical evidence, he argues that the true extent of the voyage, and of the discoveries on the northwest coast of America, was concealed for national and strategic reasons. Drake himself was convinced that he had discovered the Strait of Anian on his voyage, which carried him northward up the Clarence Strait, between Prince of Wales Island and the mainland coast, to the River of the Strait (Stikine River), then westward to the open sea before turning northward again up the west coast of Kuiu Island, as far as latitude 57 N, at the southern end of Admiralty Island. With two channels leading due north, up Chatham Strait and Stephens Passage, there was little doubt in Drake’s mind that he had penetrated to the western exit of the Northwest Passage. Bawlf further argues that Drake’s New Albion was present-day Vancouver Island and that the site for a planned future colony was on the Strait of Georgia at latitude 50 N. In the national interest, this location was kept under wraps until the Northwest Passage could be completed and a colony established. The Spanish were to have no knowledge of this until it was revealed as a fait accompli. DUNCAN, CHARLES (fl. LATE 18TH CENTURY). Sent out for commercial reasons to the northwest coast of America in the 65-ton Princess Royal by the King George’s Sound Company in 1786, Duncan became aware of Indian reports of a great river running north to south. He was immediately alerted to the possibility that the Strait of Juan de Fuca might well be connected to the Arctic Ocean. His ‘‘Sketch of the Entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca,’’ dated 15 August 1788, including views of the strait, was published by order of

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Parliament in 1790. A drawing of a rock similar to the one described in de Fuca’s account of the Strait of Anian heightened the belief that the Strait led directly to a polar sea. His reputation to some extent made, Duncan was appointed commander of a Hudson’s Bay Company expedition in 1790, prompted by Alexander Dalrymple, with instructions to look for a passage west from Hudson Bay by way of Lake Yathked. If no outlet could be located there, he was to sail up Chesterfield Inlet and proceed overland to Lakes Yathked and Dubawnt, from where George Dixon was to explore a route to the Pacific via the Great Slave Lake. Should a passage be discovered, he was to sail through it and attempt to find the inland sea reported by the Indians on the Pacific coast. In the event, Duncan arrived at Churchill in mid-September only to find that the ship assigned to him in disrepair, the crew extremely reluctant to sail so late in the year, and the company’s factor stubbornly and consistently unhelpful. Frustrated and angry, Duncan returned to England, where the company placated him with assurances that a sturdier ship would be found in the following year. On his second voyage to the bay in 1791, he wintered at Churchill before examining the western shores and Chesterfield Inlet. It is said that Duncan was so disappointed and distressed by his failure to find a passage that his mind collapsed on the voyage back to England and that, following a suicide attempt, he had to be restrained and tied to his bunk. –E– EAST INDIA COMPANY. Unlike the other mercantile companies or ad hoc groups of merchants of the late 16th or early 17th century, the East India Company survived to flit in and out of the history of the search for a northwest passage to the 18th century. Incorporated as the Company of Merchants Trading into the East Indies on 12 December 1601, its charter allowed it to traffic and trade in all passages already known or that might be discovered either by Asia, Africa, or America. This clearly indicates that the East India merchants would be prepared to underwrite a northern voyage either to the east or to the west. There could be no doubt that it would profit from the discovery of a short sea route to the East Indies.

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When George Waymouth approached the company to fit out a northwest discovery voyage, it seemed prudent that some sort of understanding should be reached with the Muscovy Company, whose long-standing rights obviously troubled the East India merchants. After that company refused either to fit out a voyage or to license others, the East India Company determined to go it alone. However, in 1606 the two companies formed a syndicate known as the Society of English Merchants for the Discovery of New Trades to back John Knight’s voyage to the northwest. The two companies came together again to share the costs of Henry Hudson’s 1610–1611 voyage. In addition the East India Company contributed £200 toward preparing William Hawkridge’s 1619 voyage. The company reentered the northwest scene on 29 April 1785 when its Court of Directors considered proposals put forward by the King George’s Sound Company to establish trade between the northwest coast of America (from Cape Blanco northward) and the islands off the coast of Asia. They noted that trade on the northwest coast, especially in the region of Prince William Sound, might discover a waterway running east to either Hudson Bay or Baffin Bay. It was decided to encourage and license voyages by the King George’s Sound Company, provided that its ships ventured neither south or west of Canton nor west of New Holland. A year later, the company supported James Strange’s voyage from Madras to the northwest coast on the understanding that, as a servant of the company, he would pass on information that might be important to the company’s future operations in those waters. Alexander Dalrymple came forward in 1789 with a proposal for a union of the operations of the East India and Hudson’s Bay companies. ‘‘A bare inspection of the map . . . will evince that the co-operation of the two companies would effectually secure to this country the command of the fur-trade; for by no other way than Hudson’s Bay, can the communication be made with so much facility . . .’’ (Plan for Promoting the Fur Trade [1789], 31–32). EASTERN ARCTIC. See ARCTIC. ELIZA, FRANCISCO DE (1759–1825). Following Manuel Quimper’s 1790 discovery of Haro Strait, Eliza was ordered to examine

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Bucareli Sound and various other promising channels running deep into the interior. South of Nootka Sound, he was to explore Clayoquot Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Departing from Nootka on 4 May 1791 in the San Carlos, accompanied by Jose´ Maria Narva´ez in the schooner Santa Saturnina, Eliza first headed northward to Yakutat Bay, but contrary winds forced him to turn south to the channels south and east of Nootka. One of the San Carlos’s longboats explored Haro Strait, discovering that it widened into an extensive sound, which Eliza explored northwestward to attain latitude 50 N. His supplies running out, however, he was obliged to turn back. So impressed was he by what he had discovered, he reported to the viceroy that, if a transcontinental passage existed, then he had found its entrance. Walter N. Sage, in his ‘‘Spanish Explorers of the British Columbia Coast,’’ remarks, ‘‘Eliza’s voyage, although historically one of the most obscure on account of the paucity of records, is easily one of the most important of the Spanish explorations on the far west coast’’ (Canadian Historical Review 12, no. 4 [December 1931]). ELLIS, HENRY (1721–1806). A subscriber to the North West Committee’s expedition to Hudson Bay, Henry Ellis sailed on board the galley Dobbs (commanded by Capt. William Moor) as hydrographer, draftsman, and mineralogist—and as the committee’s agent. This poses the question: was this an 18th-century political commissar appointment? On his return, Ellis published A Voyage to Hudson’sBay by the Dobbs Galley and California, in the Years 1746 and 1747: For Discovering a North West Passage (1748), whose third part was grandiloquently headed ‘‘Such Arguments, drawn from matters of Fact, as serve to show the great Probability of a Passage by the North West into the South Seas, notwithstanding the same was not actually discovered in the last Expedition.’’ With an admirable fixity of purpose, Ellis insisted that ‘‘such a Passage may yet be found; and there is nothing absurd, or even improbable, in supposing that, with no great Expence, the finding it may be successfully attempted.’’ He continued, with studied objectivity and impartiality, ‘‘If that Passage be a very long one, in a very high Northern Latitude, or very difficult, and encumbered, our Discovery might be thought of very little consequence.’’ Lest this sounded hasty

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and ill founded, he proceeded with ‘‘the clearest and most convincing Proofs, not only that there is such a Passage from one Sea to the other, but that it is short, open and commodious.’’ He declined to state positively where the passage was to be found, but he conjectured that Chesterfield Inlet and Repulse Bay were the most likely locations. Two years later, Ellis published an eight-page pamphlet, Considerations on the Great Advantages Which Would Accrue from the Discovery of the Northwest Passage and a Clear Account of the Most Practicable Method for Attempting That Discovery, in which he favored a Pacific approach where the weather was milder and the sea was not impeded by ice. Newspaper reports speculated that Ellis was to be offered the command of three Royal Navy sloops on an expedition to ‘‘the backside of America.’’ If an Admiralty expedition was within the bounds of possibility, the notion that Henry Ellis might lead it was more questionable. ENGEL, SAMUEL (1702–1784). A Swiss geographer, the author of Me´moires et Observations Ge´ographiques et Critiques sur la Situation des Pays Septentrionaux de l’Asie et l’Ame´rique (Geographical and critical memoirs and observations on the situation of the northern lands of Asia and America, 1765), Engel argued that seawater could not freeze, that in consequence the North Polar Sea was icefree, that the ice that had been encountered by navigators came from continental rivers breaking up in the summer months, and that ice could be avoided by sailing in the right direction at the right time. His views were widely adopted in London, not least by Daines Barrington, and were still influencing geographical thought in the middle of the next century. ENGLISHMEN’S STRAIT. In the late 16th century the Spanish in New Mexico searching for the southwestern end of the Strait of Anian named it the Englishmen’s Strait. Certainly, to facilitate English access to the South Sea, it was imperative that the Strait of Anian should be explored and exploited. At least from late Tudor times, it presented an enticing maritime highway for English seamen and merchants: ‘‘As far as the evidence went (e.g., Sebastian Cabot’s), it was only its extreme eastern end that lay in high latitudes,

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since it trended rapidly southwards after 100 leagues or so. The south-westerly winds across the Pacific would carry the ships to the western extremity (the Strait of Anian), and on through the passage itself, while if the voyage was carefully timed to reach the most northerly section, that between New Found Land and Greenland, in late summer, no danger from ice was to be anticipated’’ (E. G. R. Taylor, Tudor Geography, 1485–1583 [1930]). ENGLISH RIVER. See CHURCHILL RIVER. ESKIMO. See INUIT; INUK. ETCHES, RICHARD CADMAN. See KING GEORGE’S SOUND COMPANY. EVANS, MARK. In 1995 Evans was a member of a group of explorers who made a short stay on Melville Island to investigate whether any visual evidence remained of William Edward Parry’s winter there in 1819–1820. Three years later, Evans returned to the island as leader of a six-strong expedition whose purpose was to retrace Parry’s footsteps and to identify the physical remains of his explorations. Landing near Winter Harbor in a Twin Otter aircraft, they visited Parry’s Monument and the burial headstone of William Scott, one of the seamen on that voyage. Various cairns, each topped by a wooden barrel to make them more conspicuous, were inspected, and the remains of a shed erected by Joseph Elze´ar Bernier on his 1908–1909 expedition were utilized to store their equipment. –F– FATA MORGANA (MORGAN LE FAY). Morgan the Fairy of the medieval Arthurian romances gave her name to the mists and fog experienced in the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily. In the Canadian north, the name was adopted for occasions when land was seen where no land existed. Refraction of light was the scientific explanation for this natural phenomenon. Its best-known, though surmised, instance is John Ross’s otherwise inexplicable sighting of the

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Croker Mountains blocking his passage westward through Lancaster Sound on 30 August 1818. See also ICEBLINK. FENTON, EDWARD (?–1603). Master of the Gabriel on Martin Frobisher’s second voyage to the Arctic in 1577 and lieutenant-governor and second-in-command on his third voyage a year later, Fenton was selected to lead the 1582 follow-up to Francis Drake’s circumnavigation voyage. His instructions were to sail from the Cape of Good Hope directly to the Moluccas ‘‘for the better discovery of the northwest passage.’’ Opinions differ on whether this was the true purpose behind the expedition or it was in reality a trading voyage pure and simple. In either case, it seems probable that Fenton was not enthusiastic about the voyage. At sea, he floated the notion of seizing the South Atlantic island of St. Helena in order to capture Portuguese merchant ships on their homeward voyage from the East Indies. After being dissuaded by his officers from putting this scheme into practice, he turned back when within 300 miles of the River Plate. On his return to England in June 1583, Queen Elizabeth had him summarily imprisoned for failing to obey orders. ˜O FERRELO, BARTOLOME (1499–1548). See CABRILHO, JOA RODRIGUES. FIENNES, SIR RANULPH TWISTLETON-WYKEHAM (1944– ). An experienced traveler and explorer, Ranulph Fiennes was the leader of the Transglobe Expedition, the first surface journey around the world’s polar axis, which started out from the prime meridian at Greenwich on 2 September 1979 and ended back at Greenwich on 29 August 1982, completing the 3,000-mile Northwest Passage stage in July–August 1981. Accompanied by Charlie Burton (1942–2002), Fiennes departed from Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, on the Beaufort Sea on 26 July in an open 18-foot Boston whaler boat fitted with two 60-horsepower outboard engines. Rounding Cape Dalhousie, they headed for the DEW Line station near the Nicholson Peninsula, where a brief spell ashore was enlivened by an exhilarating impromptu camera polar bear hunt. Their route then took them east through Snowgoose Passage to Cape Bathurst, into the full face of the wind beating up

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heavy waves, before hugging the shoreline southwestward down Franklin Bay, taking shelter in a shallow lagoon close to the cliffs of Malloch Hill. Around Cape Parry, Fiennes and Burton proceeded southeastward down the Dolphin and Union Strait to another DEW site at Lady Franklin Point and through the Dease Strait to arrive at Cambridge Bay on 6 August. There they heard reports of ice blocking Queen Maud Gulf and Victoria Strait that, if confirmed, would necessitate either an unwanted delay or steering a course southward to skirt the continental coastline, adding 200 miles to their voyage. After aerial reconnaissance in a Twin Otter verified the ice blockage, they chose the detour. With their compass useless so near the North Magnetic Pole, the two plotted a difficult 200-mile navigation to Perry Island, where they were forced to shelter from a storm for 24 hours in an abandoned Hudson’s Bay Company hut. Hurrying on despite nightmare weather conditions, they eventually reached the Gladman Point DEW station on the southern shore of King William Island, where they were advised to wait until the storm subsided. Instead, Fiennes decided to press on lest ice form and bar their way east to Gjøa Haven, the halfway point of their passage. ‘‘It was not a question of deriding local knowledge, but purely a matter of time and distance mathematics’’ (Ranulph Fiennes, To the Ends of the Earth [1983]). From Gjøa Haven, the whaler crossed Rae Strait, through the St. Roch Basin, to the Inuit hamlet at Spence Bay. Pleased to be heading north at last, they again disregarded advice to stop or turn back and endured a fierce storm a short distance up a river flowing into Pasley Bay on the west coast of the Boothia Peninsula. Following the coast north through Franklin Strait into Peel Sound and up the west coast of Somerset Island, they anchored for a while in Aston Bay, a deep inlet, before rounding Cape Anne. Confronted with pack ice in Barrow Strait, they were guided through by radio instructions from a Twin Otter circling overhead, reaching Resolute Bay on the southern tip of Cornwallis Island just two hours before it was wrapped in fog. Depending on the prevailing ice conditions, Fiennes from here could make his way either northwestward up the west coast, east through the Parry Channel into Lancaster Sound and up the east coast of Ellesmere Island to Alert, or around Devon Island into

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Jones Sound and through Hell Gate to Norwegian Bay. The first two options were ruled out because of pack ice, but the third was deemed inadvisable owing to adverse sea conditions around Devon Island. Nevertheless, Fiennes took the third option: after all, it had been an inadvisable voyage throughout—in an open boat, with only two crew members, and racing the onset of winter all the way. After successfully completing the voyage, Fiennes was awarded the Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society (1983), the Explorers Club of New York Medal (1983), and the Polar Medal (1987). FIFTH THULE EXPEDITION. See RASMUSSEN, KNUD JOHAN VICTOR. FIRST UNITED STATES GRINNELL EXPEDITION. See DE HAVEN, EDWIN JESSE; GRINNELL, HENRY. FLOWERS, PAMELA. Departing from Barrow, Alaska, in February 1993, Flowers trekked solo by dogsled the 2,800-mile coastal route to Repulse Bay, where, after a summer stopover at Gjøa Haven, she arrived in January 1994. Her journey was inspired by that of Anarulunguaq, a Greenlandic woman who traveled this route in the reverse direction on Knud Rasmussen’s Fifth Thule Expedition 70 years earlier. FONTE, BARTOLOME DE. See DE FONTE, BARTOLOME. FOOD POISONING. From the moment several hundred empty food cans were found on the northeast slope of Beechey Island, in distinct heaps and arranged neatly in rows, there were suspicions that Sir John Franklin’s 1845–1848 discovery expedition suffered from food poisoning. Sir John Richardson, a former Royal Marines surgeon, thought it likely that a large quantity of his canned provisions was contaminated and that the ranks of empty cans indicated that Franklin had become aware of this and arranged the cans in rows so that they might be counted, no doubt with a view that eventually the Admiralty would demand compensation from its supplier. Richard J. Cyriax, a highly respected authority on all aspects of the Franklin expedition, the rescue voyages, and the search for his

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logs and journals, examined this question in Sir John Franklin’s Last Arctic Expedition (1939). The food contractor was Stephen Golder, who owned factories in Whitechapel, an unsavory area of London at the time, and in the Central European town of Galatz in Moldavia. On the surface, the fact that it was the first time he had been given an Admiralty contract lends weight to Cyriax’s assertion that the meat supplied must have been examined in the victualing yard and had presumably measured up to the Admiralty’s requirements and standards. It was inconceivable, Cyriax added, that Franklin would have sailed if his preserved meat supply had not been in tip-top condition. Seven years after Franklin’s voyage, a consignment of meat from Golder’s Galatz factory was condemned at Portsmouth when it was found to be in an advanced state of putrefaction. A consequent parliamentary inquiry found this to be an exceptional case, leading Cyriax to argue that if the meat supplied to Franklin was of inferior quality, it would have been ‘‘a most unlikely exception to the high standard maintained at this time’’ (112). He was also of the opinion that the number of empty cans found on Beechey Island was not excessive. Furthermore, Dr. P. C. Sutherland, formerly a surgeon on William Penny’s 1850 expedition, had declared that none of the empty cans showed signs of having contained decomposed meat. A far different scenario is painted in Scott Cookman’s Iceblink (2000), wherein Golder is described as an evil man and is depicted as the villain of the piece. There was no way, Cookman argues, that Golder could have supplied the quantity of food required within the prescribed time limits. He was faced with the task of supplying 29,500 cans—each of which was manufactured in 16 different stages, requiring at least 100 skilled craftsmen—within seven weeks. The only way Golder could meet this contract, Cookman believes, was by cutting corners, curtailing the manufacturing process, and reducing the quality of the cans. Quite apart from the quality of the meat, the cans would almost certainly have been substandard, especially in their soldering, signifying that they were nowhere near airtight. When it came to the food itself, Cookman contends, Golder failed to heat it adequately and the last defense against bacterial spores was breached. Cookman also adopts a far more robust attitude than Cyriax toward the sample inspections at the victualing yards. The only

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real debate, according to Cookman, is whether the Franklin expedition suffered from food poisoning or lead poisoning. The possibility exists, of course, that they were handicapped by both. FORSYTH, CHARLES CODRINGTON (1826–?). Convinced that her husband, Sir John Franklin, would make strenuous efforts to follow his original instructions, Lady Jane Franklin fitted out a 90ton schooner, the Prince Albert, under the command of Forsyth, who had no Arctic experience but whom she had known when Franklin was governor of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). William Parker Snow was appointed Forsyth’s first officer. The Prince Albert sailed in June 1850 with orders to proceed down Prince Regent Inlet past Fury Beach and to winter in Brentford Bay. From there, sledge parties were to search for signs of Franklin’s missing expedition. On the face of it, this was the most promising plan of all those to be followed by the expeditions then in the eastern Arctic under Horatio Austin, Edwin Jesse De Haven, and John Ross. At least it was heading in the right direction, and possibly, to put it no stronger, Forsyth might have discovered the Franklin remains on King William Island or at least have gleaned information from the Inuit of the Boothia Peninsula. However, on reaching Fury Beach, Forsyth was faced by what he described as impenetrable ice and, ignoring Snow’s pleas to allow him to take a boat farther down the coast and to explore by sledge, he turned about. Back in Barrow Strait, he crossed to Devon Island and spotted two cairns on Cape Riley, at its southwest corner, containing notes left by Erasmus Ommaney to the effect that he had landed there on 23 August and had found traces of a Royal Navy encampment. Other traces of Franklin’s expedition had been discovered on Beechey Island some 10 miles away up Wellington Channel. Forsyth declined to visit the island on the grounds that the Prince Albert could not survive the winter if she were to be beset by the ice. He returned to England within four months of his departure. It was a disappointing anticlimax, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Forsyth was not the right man to command an Arctic expedition.

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FORT CONFIDENCE. See GREAT BEAR LAKE. FORT ENTERPRISE. After descending the Yellowknife River from Great Slave Lake for 150 miles and crossing the Barren Lands for a further 30 miles, Franklin’s First Arctic Land Expedition constructed its 1820–1821 winter camp, Fort Enterprise, on the bank of the Winter River, conveniently close to the Coppermine River. It was a log building, 50 feet long by 24 feet wide, and included a hall, three bedrooms, and a kitchen. The expedition departed for its descent of the Coppermine on 14 June 1821. FORT FRANKLIN. See GREAT BEAR LAKE. FORT RESOLUTION. Situated on the southern shore of Great Slave Lake, between the mouth of the Hay River and the Slave River delta, the Fort Resolution trading post was the jumping-off point for Franklin’s First Arctic Land Expedition and George Back’s 1833 voyage down the Great Fish River. It was also James Anderson’s departure point on 30 June 1855. When Francis Crozier abandoned HMS Erebus and HMS Terror in April 1848, his intention was to head for Fort Resolution, 1,250 miles away. FOURNIER, PAUL M. In September 1967, Fournier in the CCGS John A. Macdonald (affectionately known as the Johnny Mac) assisted the USCG icebreaker Northwind, which was hemmed in by pack ice 500 miles north of Point Barrow. He went on through the Bering Strait to complete the passage, the first ever by a Canadian Coast Guard ship. Two years later Fournier and the John A. Macdonald escorted the SS Manhattan on its eventful and momentous voyage to Prudhoe Bay, notably coming to her assistance in Melville Sound when the Johnny Mac ‘‘came rollicking through the floe like a puppy in a pansy bed’’ to break the ice that had stopped the Manhattan in its tracks. ‘‘Sometimes the icebreaker’s bow passed less than a hundred feet from our stern plates, filling with horror those officer-observers who had never before seen a master ice mariner at work’’ (Bern Keating, ‘‘North For Oil’’ National Geographic 137, no. 3 [March 1970], 355). See also STEWARD, ROGER A.

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FOXE, LUKE (1586–1635). Raised in a seafaring family and a veteran of voyages to the Mediterranean, Scandinavia, and the Baltic Sea, Luke Foxe had long nurtured an ambition to search for the Northwest Passage. In 1606 he unsuccessfully volunteered to sail with John Knight. With the influential support of Henry Briggs, Foxe petitioned King Charles I to loan him a ship for a new voyage of exploration to the northwest in December 1629. Lord Dorchester, one of the lords of the Admiralty, was asked by the king to consult Sir Thomas Button on Foxe’s chances of success. Button’s reply was favorable, but he reminded Charles that his father, King James I, had granted a patent to the Company of the Merchants of London, Discoverers of the North-West Passage in 1612 and submitted that he should confer with prominent members of that company before granting concessions to Foxe. After three months’ consultation, Foxe’s petition was approved, but because the fitting out of the expedition was at an early stage, the voyage was postponed to 1631. Foxe sailed from Deptford on the Thames in the Charles on 5 May and reached Hudson Strait on 22 June. In Hudson Bay he first examined the coast of Coates Island and then penetrated Roe’s Welcome Sound as far as Cape Fullerton before sailing south down the western shore of the bay, connecting the discoveries of Henry Hudson and Button. Remains of Button’s winter camp were inspected at Port Nelson, and at the end of August he encountered Thomas James near Cape Henrietta Maria at the northwest tip of James Bay. Foxe then sailed northward on what was the most significant stage of his voyage. Sighting the southern shore of Southampton Island, he followed a northeasterly course into Foxe Channel to land on Mill Island off the southwest coast of Baffin Island. His exact route remains uncertain, but it is known that he surveyed the Foxe Peninsula shoreline as far as Cape Dorchester at latitude 66 N. By now, the discovery season was over and Foxe turned about and set course for England, sensibly declining to spend the winter icebound and exhaust his supplies. When his quick return angered a number of his backers, the mortified Foxe published North-West Fox; or, Fox from the North-west passage (1635), which includes summaries of previous English explorations for a passage; much meticulously observed information on

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the Inuit, the tides, the ice formations, and the flora and fauna of the regions he had examined; and a tedious and almost incomprehensible discourse on the probability of a northwest passage based on ingenious but desperately flawed arguments. Foxe never wavered in his conviction that a passage would be found, perhaps through Roe’s Welcome Sound, where the tides rose higher than in any other sector of Hudson Bay. No doubt he was disappointed that the flood tide in Foxe Channel was not coming from the west as both Hudson and Button had reported. FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN (1706–1790). A noted businessman, public servant, politician, and scientist in Pennsylvania and one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Benjamin Franklin took a close interest in the mercantile possibilities of a northwest passage. He was instrumental in forming the Northwest Committee in Philadelphia and later the Northwest Company, which backed Charles Swaine’s two voyages in the Argo in 1753 and 1754. FRANKLIN, LADY JANE (1791–1875). By her unwavering efforts in the early 1850s, exhorting the Admiralty to commit more and more resources in terms of ships and men to the search for her husband’s 1845 Arctic expedition, Lady Jane Franklin won the admiration of the British people and, when all else failed, persuaded them to contribute directly to the cost of fitting out her own private rescue expeditions. Even when it became clear that Sir John Franklin and his crew had perished, she remained unrelenting in her determination to track down every vestige of the lost expedition and to establish his priority of discovery of a navigable northwest passage. In all, she spent more than £3,000 of her own money—exhausting the fortune she had received from her husband’s will—in purchasing three different ships and sending out four separate Franklin rescue expeditions. Knowing full well that her husband would follow his instructions to the letter if it were at all possible, Lady Franklin always maintained that the most likely location to find the missing ships and their crews was either side of the Boothia Peninsula south of Bellot Strait. In a letter to James Clark Ross in October 1854, she recom-

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mended that the search concentrate there, spending the winter at King William Island. Her orders to Charles Forsyth in 1850 were to sail down Prince Regent Inlet, to cross Somerset Island to Peel Sound, and to travel southward down the coast. With good fortune and a little more determination, Forsyth might have advanced beyond James Clark Ross’s farthest point the previous year and, who knows, might well have gleaned information from the Inuit on HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, less than 200 miles away. Two other expeditions mounted in quick succession by Lady Franklin included William Kennedy’s 1851 voyage in the Prince Albert and that of Edward Inglefield in the Isabel a year later. Earlier, she was instrumental in getting Henry Grinnell to fit out Edwin Jesse De Haven’s voyage with the Advance and the Rescue following her 1849 letter to U.S. president Zachary Taylor. When the Admiralty informed her in 1857 that further expeditions in search of her husband enjoyed no prospect of saving lives and could no longer be justified, Lady Franklin mounted one final expedition. As it turned out, Francis Leopold McClintock’s 1857–1859 voyage in the Fox was the most successful of all the expeditions endeavoring to ascertain her husband’s fate. And as she had always supposed, the answer was at the lower end of the Boothia Peninsula, on King William Island across what became known as Franklin Strait. FRANKLIN, SIR JOHN (1786–1847). No other individual Royal Navy officer or overland explorer is more identified with the discovery of the Northwest Passage than Sir John Franklin. To this day, books and articles assessing his record in command of two overland exploring expeditions and the 1845 voyage with HMS Terror and HMS Erebus continue to be published. Various theories as to why this voyage ended in disaster are brought forward at regular intervals. Expeditions are still being fitted out to retrace his route and to discover exactly where and how he died. See also FRANKLIN, LADY JANE; FRANKLIN MAFIA; FRANKLIN MONUMENT; FRANKLIN RESCUE EXPEDITIONS; FRANKLIN REWARD; FRANKLIN’S FIRST ARCTIC LAND EXPEDITION, 1819–1822; FRANKLIN’S SECOND ARCTIC LAND EXPEDITION, 1825–

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1828; FRANKLIN’S THIRD ARCTIC EXPEDITION, 1845–1848; VICTORY POINT DOCUMENT. ‘‘THE FRANKLIN ERA IN CANADIAN ARCTIC HISTORY, 1845–1859.’’A three-day, multidisciplinary symposium that was held at the Victoria Memorial Museum in Ottawa 7–9 June 1984. Its purpose was to assemble scholars from the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and associated technologies in order to examine all aspects of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition in search of the Northwest Passage, of the subsequent Franklin rescue expeditions, and of the cumulative effect of all these voyages on the history of the Canadian Arctic, including the vexing question of sovereignty. The papers delivered at the symposium were printed in The Franklin Era in Canadian Arctic History, 1845–1859, edited by Patricia D. Sutherland (Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1985). FRANKLIN MAFIA. ‘‘The legion of admirals, captains, lieutenants, mates, petty officers, able seamen, gentleman adventurers, doctors, lawyers, scientists, pilots, professors, historians, teachers, archaeologists, and other aficionados who have been stomping around the Arctic for nearly 150 years, looking for traces of the late Sir John Franklin’’ (Jim Green, ‘‘On Franklin’s Trail of Terror,’’ Up Here 11, no. 2 [March/April 1995], 37). FRANKLIN MONUMENT. Erected in August 1858 by Francis Leopold McClintock on behalf of Lady Jane Franklin, the monument stands on Beechey Island. It reads in part: To the memory of FRANKLIN, CROZIER, FITZJAMES and all their brother officers and faithful companions who have suffered and perished in the cause of science and the service of their country this tablet is erected near the spot where they passed their first winter, and whence they issued forth, to conquer difficulties or to die.

FRANKLIN RESCUE EXPEDITIONS. Voyages in search of a northwest passage were normally absent for years rather than months, and so an appreciable time elapsed before anyone except Sir John Ross felt any cause for alarm at the nonappearance of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition. Early in 1847, at Ross’s insistence,

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the Admiralty consulted William Edward Parry, James Clark Ross, Edward Sabine, and John Richardson, who all replied that while there was no immediate reason for anxiety, no harm could come in preparing a rescue expedition for the following year. In November the Admiralty announced that three expeditions would be dispatched: one would sail for the Bering Strait; a second would head for Baffin Bay; and the third, under Richardson, would retrace the 1825–1827 journey down the Mackenzie River. These were the first of more than 20 major and minor rescue expeditions that either proceeded overland or sailed west through Lancaster Sound or east through Bering Strait, equipped and fitted out variously by the Hudson’s Bay Company, Lady Jane Franklin, Henry Grinnell, the Royal Navy, or the United States Navy. The Franklin relics brought back to England by John Rae in 1854 and the documents and various physical remains found on King William Island by Francis Leopold McClintock and William Hobson in 1859, left no doubt as to Sir John Franklin’s fate. Although rumors and theories regarding a few survivors of his expedition living with the Inuit persisted, it was generally acknowledged, after 10 years of searching, that there was no hope of finding anyone still alive. But this in no way signified that public interest in the events that led up to the tragedy had ceased. Every so often, another expedition is mounted to find graves or to recover further documentary evidence to fill in the blanks. As late as April 2003, Rebecca Harris led a party of eight, including a descendant of Samuel Cresswell, to retrace the expedition’s route from Victory Point to Starvation Cove. See also ANDERSON, JAMES; AUSTIN, HORATIO THOMAS; BELCHER, EDWARD; BURWASH, L. T.; COLLINSON, RICHARD; CUNDY, ROBERT; DE HAVEN, EDWIN JESSE; FORSYTH, CHARLES CODRINGTON; ‘‘FRANKLIN ERA IN CANADIAN ARCTIC HISTORY, 1845–1859’’; FRANKLIN MAFIA; FRANKLIN REWARD; GIBSON, WILLIAM; GILLAN, R. D.; INGLEFIELD, EDWARD AUGUSTUS; KANE, ELISHA KENT; KELLETT, HENRY; KENNEDY, WILLIAM; MAGUIRE, ROCHFORT; McCLURE, ROBERT JOHN LE MESURIER; McCORMICK, ROBERT; MECHAM, GEORGE FREDERICK; MOORE, THOMAS EDWARD LAWS; OMMANEY, ERASMUS; OSBORN, SHERARD; PENNY, WILLIAM; PIM, BEDFORD CLAPPERTON

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TREVELYAN; PULLEN, WILLIAM JOHN SAMUEL; SHEDDEN, ROBERT; SNOW, WILLIAM PARKER; TRAFTON, STEPHEN J.; WADHAMS, PETER. FRANKLIN REWARD. Notices signed by the secretary to the Admiralty were widely distributed to ports frequented by private ships in the years 1849 and 1850 offering ‘‘£20,000 Sterling (100,000 Dollars) To Be Given by her Britannic Majesty’s Government to such a private Ship, or distributed among such private Ships, of any Country, as may, in the judgment of the Board of Admiralty, have rendered efficient assistance to Sir John Franklin, His Ships, or their Crews, and may have contributed directly to extricate them from the Ice.’’ The attention of whalers and other ships was particularly directed to Smith Sound and Jones Sound in Baffin Bay, to Prince Regent Inlet and the Gulf of Boothia, and to any of the inlets or channels leading north or south of Barrow Strait. Ships entering through the Bering Strait were advised to direct their search to the north and south of Melville Island. There could be no clearer indication of the Admiralty’s total ignorance of Franklin’s route or of his current location. A very clear, legible reproduction of one of these notices, now in the collection of the National Maritime Museum, is printed in James P. Delgado’s Across the Roof of the World (1999, 116). A variant notice was printed in the Toronto Globe newspaper on 7 March 1850. See also PARLIAMENT AND ADMIRALTY REWARDS. FRANKLIN’S FIRST ARCTIC LAND EXPEDITION, 1819–1822. Appointed leader of a British government expedition to travel overland from Hudson Bay and to explore the northern coast of the American continent, determining its latitudes and longitudes from the mouth of the Coppermine River to its eastern extremity, Sir John Franklin was to act in conjunction with William Edward Parry’s 1819–1820 discovery voyage. In venturing along the coast, he was instructed to erect conspicuous marks at places where oceangoing ships might enter or to which boats might be sent to gather information about the trend of the coastline. It was left to Franklin’s discretion whether he should proceed northward from the bay and advance westward to the Coppermine or proceed by the usual Indian

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route to that river and head east. In deciding between these alternative routes, Franklin was expected to take heed of the advice tendered by Hudson’s Bay Company personnel on the spot. Leaving England in May 1819, the expedition included John Richardson, George Back, and Robert Hood, who were to assist Franklin in his survey of the coast. Arriving at York Factory, on the west coast of Hudson Bay, in August, they departed early in September up the Hayes River to reach the northern shores of Lake Winnipeg in October. They descended the Saskatchewan River and eventually arrived at Cumberland House, a North West Company trading post on Pine Island Lake, having already traveled more than 700 miles from the bay. In January 1820 they pushed on to Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca, a further 500 miles. Frustrated by the commercial rivalry between the Hudson’s Bay and North West trading companies and so unable to buy sufficient provisions, depending on the uncertain goodwill of the voyageurs Franklin had hired, beset by troubles in recruiting Indian guides, and plagued by mosquitoes and horse flies during the summer months, the party set out northward for the Polar Sea in July, roughly following the course of the Yellowknife River. The 1820–1821 winter was spent at Fort Enterprise after extensive reconnaissance as far as the Coppermine. The march northward was resumed on 14 June 1821: an advance party under Richardson was followed 10 days later by Franklin and the main party, and the shores of the Polar Sea were reached on 19 July. The exploration eastward to establish whether there was a clear waterway linking the Arctic and Atlantic oceans started immediately: Franklin voyaged more than 550 miles along the coast in bark canoes, meant for use on Canada’s rivers and lakes, demoralizing the voyageurs who were completely out of their element, until he reached Point Turnagain. The return journey took him from Bathurst Inlet across the Barren Lands, the most desolate region of the Canadian North, in the direction of Great Slave Lake. Living on exiguous, almost starvation rations, jettisoning their heavy equipment, and losing their astronomical and meteorological observations, the party struggled back to the Coppermine and, after much difficulty, managed to cross to its western bank. Franklin sent Back and four of the voyageurs ahead to seek Indian assistance. On 6 October, after eating their old shoes (see MAN

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WHO ATE HIS BOOTS), the main party set out to walk to Fort Enterprise. It soon became apparent that their diet, comprising mainly of tripe de roche, was inadequate to sustain the energy of the weakest of the voyageurs. Richardson, Hood, and John Hepburn stayed behind with the exhausted men, while Franklin, with nine of the voyageurs, stumbled on. Two of the voyageurs, Jean-Baptiste Beranger and Michel Teroahaute´, were given permission to make their way back to Richardson, as were two others soon afterward, while Franklin and the rest of the party continued on. At length, Franklin’s group reached a deserted Fort Enterprise. In very real danger of succumbing to starvation, on 29 October they were joined by Richardson and Hepburn, the only survivors of the rear party—exhaustion, starvation, and murder and perhaps cannibalism had accounted for the others. By the time three Indians sent by Back arrived on 7 November, only Franklin, Richardson, Hepburn, and one voyageur remained alive. Carefully and sympathetically encouraged by the Indians, they made their way to Fort Providence. After wintering on Great Slave Lake, Franklin returned to England in fall 1822. John Franklin was rightly praised for his achievements in exploring the coastline of what is now called Coronation Gulf as far as Point Turnagain on the Kent Peninsula. Including the coastline of Bathurst Inlet—which had consumed valuable time, energy, and provisions—the expedition had journeyed some 5,550 miles by land and sea. As to the probability of a northwest passage, Franklin was optimistic: the general trend of the coastline, running east and west at a latitude approximating Alexander Mackenzie’s river, the sound discovered by Otto von Kotzebue, and Repulse Bay, persuaded him that there was little doubt of continuous sea all along the continental shore. He was further encouraged by the chain of islands that appeared to give shelter from heavy seas and the good harbors he found at convenient distances along the coast. But there was a darker side to the expedition, one that was subjected to severe scrutiny in the 20th century. Its death toll was alarming; 11 men had lost their lives. Franklin’s leadership had not always been as decisive as it might have been, he was accused of giving discovery priority over human life, and he and the other officers had manifestly not pulled their weight in the everyday necessity of hunt-

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ing for food. Above all else, an air of mystery hung over the violent events on Richardson’s rear party. FRANKLIN’S SECOND ARCTIC LAND EXPEDITION, 1825– 1828. Apparently unfazed by his harrowing 1819–1822 experiences, Franklin proposed to the Admiralty that he should lead another expedition to the Canadian northwest in order to descend the Mackenzie River. The Admiralty agreed and coordinated Franklin’s expedition with William Edward Parry’s voyage to Lancaster Sound and Prince Regent Inlet. George Lyon was dispatched to Repulse Bay with orders to attempt an overland journey west to Point Turnagain. In addition to this three-prong approach, Frederick Beechey was to sail halfway around the world to the North Pacific and through the Bering Strait to link up with Franklin somewhere along the north coast of the American continent. It was an ambitious plan that would deserve whatever success came its way. Sure signs that Franklin had learned from his previous mistakes and misfortunes are evident in the detailed planning involved in mounting the expedition. The birchbark canoes, whose limitations in navigating rough seas had been exposed four years earlier, were replaced by more sturdy boats designed for inshore exploration that were constructed in Woolwich Dockyard under Franklin’s vigilant eye. They were light enough to be maneuvered in the rapids and over the portages that would undoubtedly be encountered when negotiating the Canadian rivers. With the consent of the governors of the Hudson’s Bay Company in London, he sent letters to the chief factors of the posts along the route his expedition would follow to explain its purpose and seek their assistance. Fortunately, the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company had merged, and their rivalry would not again hinder the expedition’s food supplies. Franklin himself saw to it that a large quantity of pemmican was prepared. The equipment supplied by the Admiralty included new water-resistant clothing resulting from the chemical experiments of Charles Macintosh (1766–1843). Besides Franklin, the expedition included George Back and John Richardson, who had both served in Franklin’s First Arctic Land Expedition; E. N. Kendall, who had Arctic experience with Lyon; Thomas Drummond, a Scottish naturalist; and four Royal Marines.

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In Canada the expedition enjoyed the expert assistance of Peter Warren Dease. Franklin’s instructions were to set up an advance base on Great Bear Lake, where he was to spend the winter; to establish good relations with the Inuit; and to descend the Mackenzie River to the sea in the spring of 1826. At the mouth of the Mackenzie, he was to divide his party: Franklin and Back were to survey the coastline westward to Icy Cape and to Kotzebue’s Inlet, where Beechey would be waiting for him; Richardson and Kendall were to examine the coast eastward to the Coppermine River. In mid-July 1825 the expedition reached Fort Chipewyan en route to Fort Resolution, on the southern shores of Great Slave Lake, before traveling another 300 miles to Fort Simpson, where the Mackenzie River was joined by the River of the Mountains. Two hundred miles downriver at Fort Norman, the expedition was divided into three parties: Richardson would examine the northern shore of Great Bear Lake to determine the location for a staging post on his return from the Coppermine the following year; Back would transport supplies in three canoes to set up winter quarters on the lake and, in conjunction with Dease, would supervise the Indian hunting and fishing operations; and Franklin and Kendall would set off down the Mackenzie on a reconnaissance voyage to the sea. By 5 September they were all reunited at Fort Franklin, in the southern corner of Great Bear Lake. Departing down the Mackenzie on 20 June 1826, the expedition, as planned, split into two groups on reaching the river’s delta on 3 July. Richardson set off eastward with the boats Dolphin and Union to survey the coast between the Mackenzie and the Coppermine, while Franklin and Back headed west with the Lion and Reliance. After an imbroglio with Inuit at the aptly named Pillage Point, Franklin reached the sea six days later. Sailing west, the Kendall and Herschel Islands were passed and the Clarence River was discovered and named. Worsening weather conditions heralded the onset of winter, but Franklin pressed on to the Flaxman Islands and to Foggy Island, where a shore camp was established. Early in August, Franklin determined that it would be reckless to continue. If his boats were wrecked, his party would be in grave danger, and on 18 August, at a spot he named Return Reef, longitude 14937⬘ W, latitude 7024⬘ N,

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he turned back, just 146 miles away from Beechey at Point Barrow. It was none too soon: adverse winds, violent squalls, ice formations threatening to pack solid, and dense fog made for extremely hazardous sailing as they returned eastward. They had explored the coastline for 400 miles, without finding a single harbor, before returning to the Great Bear Lake, having traveled more than 2,000 miles, 600 of them in previously unexplored territory, in three months. In the meantime, Richardson had explored the whole 900-mile stretch of coastline between the mouths of the Mackenzie and Coppermine rivers before marching back to Great Bear Lake direct. Franklin returned to England well content with the results of the expedition and with the conviction that a west–east voyage might succeed in finding a passage even though all east–west attempts had failed. His explorations, allied with those of Parry, had undoubtedly reduced the problem to manageable proportions. More than 1,000 miles of the northern coastline of Canada had been found to be navigable and opinion was hardening in favor of Prince Regent Inlet offering the most promising prospect of a route westward. In 1828 Franklin submitted two proposals to the Admiralty: The first was for a ship to be sent to Repulse Bay with supplies and equipment, which would be dragged across the Melville Peninsula to the sea Parry had observed at the western entrance to Fury and Hecla Strait; the expedition would then explore the coast westward (in effect, this resurrected the plan behind George Lyon’s abortive 1824 expedition). The other proposal was for a boat journey down the Great Fish River, which was reported by Indians to flow northeast to the Arctic from Great Slave Lake. Both these plans came to naught; the Admiralty had for the moment lost interest in Arctic discovery, probably because of the visible decline of Russian involvement. FRANKLIN’S THIRD ARCTIC EXPEDITION, 1845–1848. The success of Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson’s 1837–1839 explorations in extending the map of the North American coastline had effectively condensed the problem of discovering a northwest passage to the 300 miles separating Barrow Strait and Melville Sound from the continental shoreline, always remembering that Bellot Strait dividing Somerset Island from the Boothia Peninsula re-

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mained unknown. Once the temporary preoccupation with the Antarctic ended when James Clark Ross returned with HMS Erebus and HMS Terror on 7 September 1843, public attention led by Sir John Barrow and the Royal Society reverted to the discovery of a northwest passage. Barrow’s ‘‘Proposal for an Attempt to Complete the Discovery of a North-West Passage,’’ submitted to the first lord of the Admiralty, Lord Haddington, in December 1844 provided the immediate impetus for a new discovery voyage. This represented the summit of Barrow’s influence at the Admiralty and summarized contemporary geographical knowledge of the western Arctic. His first paragraph can be regarded as an abstract of the full document: There is a feeling generally entertained in the several scientific societies, and individuals attached to scientific pursuits, and also among officers of the Navy, that the discovery, or rather the completion of the discovery, of a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, round the Northern coast of North America, ought not to be abandoned, after so much has been done, and so little now remains to be done; and that with our present knowledge no reasonable doubt can be entertained that the accomplishment of so desirable an object is practicable.

The full text of the proposal may be found in Richard J. Cyriax’s Sir John Franklin’s Last Arctic Expedition (1997, 18–20). At Barrow’s request, Haddington referred the proposal to the Royal Society, whose council approved it in full. Still not entirely convinced that he should give Barrow his support, and seemingly at the instigation of Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel, Haddington went back to the Royal Society for its opinion as to the scientific advantages that might result from the proposed expedition. Barrow weighed in with a suggestion to Haddington that Peel might be satisfied with the considered and expert opinions of William Edward Parry, George Back, James Clark Ross, Francis Beaufort, Frederick Beechey, and John Franklin. Unanimous support for the expedition from the Royal Society and from those experienced Arctic commanders persuaded the prime minister to give the go-ahead. To command the expedition, the Admiralty first approached James Clark Ross, but he declined the appointment for personal reasons. In the end it was decided that the 58-year-old Franklin should lead the expedition.

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Public confidence in the success of the expedition that set sail from Greenhithe on 9 May 1845 was high. It was expected to complete the 300-year search for a navigable route from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the uncharted area to the west of Boothia. Franklin’s two sturdy ships, the Erebus and the Terror, the latter to be commanded by Francis Crozier, had recently proved their worth in the Antarctic; both were fitted with auxiliary engines, and their provisioning was on a generous scale. The heart of the mystery lay in a vast unexplored quadrilateral bounded by Banks Land at the western end of the Parry Channel, Cape Walker on the northeast tip of Prince of Wales Island, the Wollaston Peninsula on the southwest corner of Victoria Land, and King William Island. Somewhere in that 70,000 square miles, the key to the passage was to be found. Franklin’s orders reflected this. He was to push westward without loss of time through Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait at latitude 74 N until he reached Cape Walker at longitude 98 W. From that point he was to bend every effort to penetrate southward and westward ‘‘as direct towards Bering’s Strait as the position and extent of ice, or the existence of land, at present unknown, may admit.’’ Franklin’s own preference for a northward search through Wellington Channel was allowed should ice prohibit progress to the south or west. After taking supplies on board at Disko Island, near Godhavn, Franklin sailed on 11 July and was last seen at the end of the month in the upper regions of Baffin Bay, moored to an iceberg and poised to enter Lancaster Sound. His course through the Arctic Archipelago from then on remained conjectural until an inscribed Admiralty message form, placed in a metal cylinder, was discovered in a cairn on the northwest coast of King William Island by Lt. William Hobson in May 1859. How far Franklin penetrated through Barrow Strait to the west cannot be accurately determined, although it seems likely that ice prevented him from proceeding southwest from Cape Walker. Acting upon his instructions, he then explored up Wellington Channel for about 150 miles before returning to Barrow Strait by way of Crozier Strait, separating Bathurst Island and Cornwallis Island. The 1845–1846 winter was spent at Beechey Island. Thus far, although he was no nearer to the last link in a navigable passage, Franklin

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could look back with a fair amount of satisfaction on the exploration of Wellington Channel and Queens Channel and on adding hundreds of miles of coastline to his charts. The summer of 1846 saw the Erebus and Terror sailing southwestward through Peel Sound and Franklin Strait to a point within 12 miles of the northern extremity of King William Island, in Victoria Strait, where winter enfolded them on 12 September. At this point, all that was left to Franklin to complete a northwest passage was to prove that Victoria Strait, in some way or another, was connected by sea to the continental shoreline. In May 1847 a party commanded by Lt. Graham Gore was ordered out to obtain the requisite proof, and although it remains a matter for conjecture, it seems likely that he was able to return with the news that the expedition’s primary objective had been achieved. Franklin died on 11 June 1847, and command devolved upon Crozier. The two ships were beset in the ice for a third winter, drifting slowly down Victoria Strait toward Simpson Strait. At length, Crozier abandoned the Erebus and Terror on 25 April 1848 and endeavored to conduct the crews in boats along the west and south coasts of King William Island and up the Great Fish River to Fort Resolution, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s nearest trading post. In poor mental and physical shape, debilitated by scurvy, and initially encumbered not only by their essential supplies but also by a mass of superfluous and energy-sapping baggage, the crews were in no condition to survive such a long and arduous journey. One by one the men perished. At the end, triumph gilded the human tragedy. If Gore’s party had not already confirmed the success of the expedition in 1847, a few officers and men, marching toward the Great Fish River after abandoning their ships, crossed Simpson Strait to Starvation Cove on Adelaide Peninsula. The last link had been forged between the maritime advance in the Arctic Archipelago and the river journeys and coastal surveys on the continental mainland. A navigable waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans had been found, although this was not yet known in the outside world. See also VICTORY POINT DOCUMENT. FRETUM ARCTICUM SIVE FRETUM TRIUM FRATRUM. See MAPS AND MAPPING, EUROPEAN.

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FRETUM DAVIS. See DAVIS STRAIT. FRETUM HUDSON. See HUDSON STRAIT. FRIENDLY COVE. Arriving in Friendly Cove in 1778, James Cook actually named it Friendly Harbor because of the welcome he received from its inhabitants. Since the late 1780s it has been generally known by its native name, Nootka Sound. FROBISHER, MARTIN (1535–1594). Soldier, mariner, merchanttrader, courtier, privateer, Martin Frobisher was a quintessential Elizabethan adventurer. He had a long-standing interest in the discovery of a northwest passage. George Beste, who sailed with Frobisher on his voyages, confirms that he was ‘‘persuaded of a new and nearer passage to Cataia than by Cape d’buona Speranza [the Cape of Good Hope]. He began first with himselfe to devise, and then with his friends to conferre, and layde a playne platte [plan or sketch] unto them, that their voyage was not onely possible by the Northwest, but also as he coulde prove, easie to bee performed’’ (Richard Collinson, ed., The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher [1867], 69). The friends he conferred with included John Dee, Humphrey Gilbert, and Michael Lok. Frobisher first presented a proposal to the Muscovy Company, which held the monopoly of northern exploration, in late 1574 for a discovery voyage in the following year. He was given a license, but the time allowed proved too short to attract funds and to properly organize an expedition. The next year, thanks to Lok’s efforts in putting together a consortium of London merchants, a well-equipped flotilla of two small barks, the Gabriel and the Michael, and an unnamed pinnace sailed from the Thames on 7 June 1576, set a course north of west, and sighted the east coast of Greenland on 11 July. Nine days later Frobisher reached Resolution Island, to the southeast of Baffin Island. Steering north, he entered Frobisher Bay (Frobisher himself named it ‘‘Frobishers Streights,’’ having convinced himself that he had discovered the passage, with the American continent on his port side and Asia to starboard!). After sailing 150 miles up the bay, five seamen went missing, presumably kidnapped or taken hostage by the

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Inuit, leaving the Gabriel severely shorthanded. Seeing no alternative, Frobisher returned to England on 25 August, but not before landing on an island at the entrance to the bay—named Hall’s Island after his sailing master, Christopher Hall—and picking up a black stone that seemed to possess metallic qualities. On his return to London, this lump of rock was assayed; two experts declared it to be marcasite (iron pyrites), but a third insisted it was gold ore. Back in London on 6 October, Frobisher appeared before a commission to discuss whether his voyage should be followed up. Lok reports that Frobisher, speaking with vehemence and conviction, persuaded those present that he had truly discovered an open sea channel to Cathay and the South Sea. Consequently, Lok was able, without too much difficulty, to incorporate Frobisher’s backers into the Company of Cathay, whose interest in a second venture veered more toward exploiting the supposed gold-bearing ore. Its hypothetical value rapidly soared to £240 a ton, and with talk of a possible return of 2,400 percent on capital invested, Queen Elizabeth furnished a 200-ton ship, the Aid, which joined the Gabriel and the Michael on Frobisher’s second expedition, departing on 25 May 1577. Frobisher’s orders were explicit: to set sappers and miners collecting gold ore on Hall’s Island; to search for the five men lost the previous year; and then to explore 50 or 100 leagues westward to make certain that he was, in fact, entering the South Sea. Should the mines not yield the riches anticipated, he was to send the Aid home before proceeding to Cathay in the Gabriel and Michael—employing a royal ship in the Northwest Atlantic to bring home auriferous ore was one thing, but risking it on a speculative and hazardous voyage of discovery, with dubious and uncertain profits, was quite another. No further geographical discoveries resulted from this voyage. Hall’s Island was disappointing in its yield of ore, although a substantial load of black rock was extracted from a small island, named Countess of Warwick, off the supposed coast of Asia. Otherwise, negotiations with the Inuit for the return of the missing men proved indecisive, there was some desultory trade, three captives were embarked following minor skirmishes, and English sovereignty was proclaimed before Frobisher returned to England. Thus far, apart from 200 tons of rock, which might or might not be gold ore, the return from Frobisher’s two voyages had been mea-

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ger. True, Frobisher was confident that he had found a passage to the South Sea, but as yet its exploration had not materialized. The socalled gold from Meta Incognita continued to exert a powerful influence, even though a series of assays had produced variable results. By this time, however, another factor—imperial ambition—was coming into play. It was high time that England established itself in the New World. And so the venture prospered. Frobisher’s third expedition consisted of an unprecedented 15 ships; its emphasis was strictly on mining and settlement. A royal commission, appointed to supervise the venture, issued him unequivocal instructions: he was to proceed to Countess of Warwick Island, find a safe harbor for his ships, put the miners to work, and station soldiers to defend them from Inuit attack. He was to search for a suitable location for a settlement, again to be defended, not only from the Inuit but also from European interlopers. One hundred men were to see out the winter there—40 able mariners, gunners, shipwrights, and carpenters; 30 soldiers; and 30 pioneers (diggers and miners), with sufficient supplies for 18 months before they were relieved in the following summer. If nothing else demanded his attention, Frobisher was given permission to engage in a modest voyage of exploration westward. Quite clearly, exploring a route to the treasures of the Orient was now subordinated to the prospect of profit nearer to home. The 1578 voyage was not entirely without geographical interest. Arriving off Queen Elizabeth Foreland in the middle of a July snowstorm, Frobisher judged himself to be at Hall’s Island. By the time the sun came out and a meridional altitude could be taken, the fleet was sailing up what Frobisher subsequently called the ‘‘Mistaken Straits’’—Hudson Strait—not Frobisher Bay. Fog, ice, and strong currents made sailing perilous, but the fleet continued westward before turning about. With a flood tide running for three hours against the ebb tide’s one, open water ahead was indicated, but the temptation to sail on and so likely discover a passage was sternly resisted. Although work on the settlement continued, the impractical notion of a northern settlement was eventually abandoned largely because much of the food and some of the timber for the barracks had been lost at sea. Short rations and ship fever plagued the expedition before Frobisher sailed back to England. When their cargoes of rock were

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found to be worthless, the Company of Cathay went into liquidation and Frobisher’s reputation rapidly declined. Nonetheless, advocates of the existence of a passage could take heart from the discovery of the Mistaken Streights, which promised a viable route to the South Sea. The hydrographical signs were favorable: strong westward currents, deep water, and long rolling waves through an apparently ice-free channel. A map of Terra Septentrionalis (Northern Land) in George Beste’s A True Discourse of the late voyages of discoverie, for the finding of a passage to Cathaya, by the Northweaste (1578) depicted ‘‘Frobishers Straightes’’ running east to west, with six islands at its eastern entrance and clear water through the Strait of Anian into the South Sea. See also META INCOGNITA PROJECT. FROZEN OCEAN. An 18th-century term for the Arctic Ocean. FROZEN STRAIT. After reaching Repulse Bay through Roe’s Welcome Sound in 1742, Christopher Middleton encountered ice blocking the channel between Melville Peninsula and the northeastern coastline of Southampton Island. Although a flood tide was running through, it was beneath the ice stretching from shore to shore. He calculated that even if the old ice were to break up, and this seemed unlikely in August, it would soon be replaced by new winter ice. He had no hesitation in concluding that the Frozen Strait could never be navigated on a regular basis. Eighty years later William Edward Parry managed to negotiate HMS Hecla and HMS Fury westward through the Frozen Strait from Foxe Channel to Repulse Bay but had no difficulty in accepting Middleton’s conclusion. Further confirmation came in 1836 when George Back’s HMS Terror, attempting to sail in Parry’s wake, faced a solid sea of ice, 18 feet high in places, before being frozen in near Cape Comfort at the eastern entrance of the strait. FUCA, JUAN DE. See DE FUCA, JUAN. FURIOUS OVERFALL. In nautical terminology, an overfall is a turbulent stretch of water with short breaking waves usually caused by very strong currents. Sailing south of Warwick’s Foreland, off the

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southeastern tip of Meta Incognita, in 1587, John Davis came to ‘‘a very great gulf, the water whirling and roring, as it were the meeting of tides.’’ This was the entrance to Hudson Strait, where an easterly current along its south shore encounters the southward-flowing Labrador Current. Davis reported the sea as falling down into a gulf with a mighty overfall and moving with divers circular motions like whirlpools. This subsequently became known as Davis’s ‘‘furious overfall.’’ FURY AND HECLA STRAIT. In May 1821 William Edward Parry sailed for the northern reaches of Hudson Bay with HMS Fury and HMS Hecla in an attempt to find a passage to the Pacific and to delineate the northern coast of North America. His main hope was to discover an ice-free southern channel to Prince Regent Inlet. After exploring the Frozen Strait to Repulse Bay and confirming Christopher Middleton’s report that no channel flowed west from the bay, Parry spent the 1821–1822 winter at the Igloolik Islands off the northeastern shoreline of the Melville Peninsula. Heartened by Inuit reports and maps that a strait existed along the peninsula’s north coast, he proceeded there in the summer of 1822. He removed any doubt that a passage existed—Fury and Hecla Strait runs for 105 miles between Foxe Basin and the Gulf of Boothia—but insisted it was impassable. Not until HMCS Labrador, commanded by Thomas Charles Pullen, powered her way through the ice in 1956 was a passage completed. FURY BEACH. On 31 July 1825, in treacherous ice-strewn seas, HMS Fury was driven ashore by ferocious winds on a narrow exposed beach on the east coast of Somerset Island at latitude 7246⬘ N, longitude 9147⬘ W. Although she was floated off by the next high tide, she was soon holed and forced aground again. When it became apparent that her pumps could not keep pace with the inrushing water, William Edward Parry had no option but to abandon her, but not before the bulk of her stores and provisions had been transferred to what became known as Fury Beach. John Ross, with his nephew James Clark Ross, who had been present when the Fury was abandoned, arrived at the beach on board the Victory on 12 August 1829. He promptly helped himself to 100

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tons of coal, a new mast, sails and rigging, and enough provisions for three years. The beached stores proved even more invaluable on Ross’s return journey, manhandling his boats overland in a desperate bid to replenish his supplies. Without them, the expedition would surely have perished. Subsequent visitors to the beach, looking for traces of Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition, included William Kennedy and Joseph Bellot early in 1852 and Francis Leopold McClintock in 1859. Both sledge parties took the opportunity to boost their food supplies. –G– ´ (1762–1805). An officer on AleGALIANO, DIONISIO ALCALA jandro Malaspina’s circumnavigation voyage, Galiano was appointed commander of the schooner Mexicana, which sailed with the Su´til (under Cayetano Valde´s) from Nootka in spring 1792 with orders to thoroughly examine the northern and eastern branches of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. If a passage were to be discovered, they were to identify its exact location and direct their course along it to Europe, if season and supplies permit, trying absolutely not to touch at any foreign ports, but if necessity obliges, attempt by any measures feasible to keep secret their derivation and undertaking, and above all the location of the passageway found. (viceroy’s instructions, Mexico City, 21 January 1792, quoted in Warren L. Cook, Flood Tide of Empire [1973], 331)

Following the Inland Passage north through the Strait of Georgia, they encountered George Vancouver’s two ships, the Discovery and Chatham, while negotiating the channels of the San Juan Islands. Despite Galiano’s instructions, the two commanders cooperated fully in exploring the various openings and inlets and pooling their information. They proceeded independently to emerge into the open sea by way of Queen Charlotte Strait, confirming the insularity of Vancouver Island. Galiano and Valde´s returned to Nootka on 31 August. GIBBONS, WILLIAM (fl. EARLY 17TH CENTURY). After considering Thomas Button’s report on his return from Hudson Bay in 1613, and perhaps influenced by Thomas Harriott’s Three Reasons To Prove That There Is A Passage From The Northwest Into The

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South Sea, the Company of the Merchants of London, Discoverers of the North-West Passage resolved to fit out the Discovery to complete the passage in 1614. Command was given to William Gibbons, a relative of Button’s, who had served as a volunteer on the 1612–1613 expedition. Despite Button’s strong testimonial to his character and capabilities, Gibbons failed dismally, not to say ignominiously, to live up to it. Beaten back by heavy seas at the entrance to Hudson Strait, he sought refuge in a bay on the Labrador coast at 57 N, which was designated by his crew as Gibbons His Hole. He remained there for five months before returning to England. GIBSON, WILLIAM (fl. EARLY 20TH CENTURY). The principal objective of William Gibson’s trek along the southern shores of King William Island from Gjøa Haven to the western entrance of the Simpson Strait in June and July 1931 was to search for the remains of members of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition that had recently been the subject of Inuit reports. Gibson, of the Hudson’s Bay Company, his colleague William Skinner, and a young Inuk traveled without dogs to allow them more freedom along a rugged coastline. They followed the western shore of Pedersen Bay to the Todd Islands, 18 miles from Gjøa Haven. A systematic search of the islands—in reality no more than five well-defined reefs, grouped in an area of roughly a half a mile square—recovered an almost complete skeleton. Scraps of blue naval cloth were also found, as were parts of a second skeleton a short distance away. The next target was the rocky islets in Douglas Bay. On the largest island there, 500 yards long by 150 yards wide, Gibson discovered the remains of seven Europeans together with small pieces of oak and shavings of Norwegian pine. He concluded that the island was a halting place on the retreat from Victory Point. The remains were carefully buried and a memorial cairn erected. Five miles from Talloch Point, Gibson came across the excavations carried out by Knud Rasmussen in 1923. No other traces of the Franklin expedition were found, but Gibson was convinced that a close examination of the island’s west coast as far as Victory Point would yield more physical remains.

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GILBERT, ADRIAN (fl. LATE 16TH CENTURY). A younger brother of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Adrian Gilbert was the driving force in the formation of the Collegues of the Fellowshipp for the Discoverie of the Northwest Passage. It was left to him to set in motion the necessary preliminaries in the preparation of a discovery voyage—the obtaining of a royal license, finding investors, and fitting out the ships—and it was his name on the letters patent granted by Queen Elizabeth I on 6 February 1585. See also DAVIS, JOHN. GILBERT, SIR HUMPHREY (1539–1583). A notable Elizabethan soldier of fortune and advocate of overseas colonies, Humphrey Gilbert first became concerned with a northwest passage in 1565 when he submitted a petition to the Crown offering to lead an expedition for its discovery at his ‘‘owne cost and charges with the help of my freindes and suche as by my procurement will assiste me in that behalf.’’ In return he asked for a life monopoly of trade through the passage and 25 percent of the customs duties on all commodities consequently brought into the country. In the 1565–1566 winter, he was summoned to the Privy Council to discuss his petition at the same time a case was being made for a discovery voyage to find a northeast passage. To underpin his advocacy, Gilbert circulated a manuscript of A Discourse of a Discoverie for a Newe Passage to Cataia, which, although not published in printed form for 10 years, undoubtedly influenced English mercantile opinion. Only the printed version (1576) survives, but it is likely that the major part remains unchanged from the earlier draft. The book is arranged in 10 chapters, of which the first eight encompass whatever historical, geographical, and oceanographical lore and arguments he could muster to prove the existence of a passage. Gilbert turned to the ancient geographers, beginning with Plato, who postulated that the lost continent of Atlantis was insular in the Western Ocean. Gilbert argued that since no large islands had been discovered, Atlantis could only be America, which was therefore an island with water to the north as well as to the east, south, and west. By abstruse oceanographical arguments concerning the flow of the world’s seas and oceans, he hypothesized a continuous circular water flow from east to west, which necessitated a northern strait. To follow up this not altogether bogus scientific theory, Gilbert

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quoted the voyages and travels of Marco Polo, Sebastian Cabot, Giovanni da Verrazzano, and Jacques Cartier, among others, to prove the existence of a passage and that a number of modern navigators had partially opened it. He outlined the advantages a western passage offered as opposed to a hypothetical eastern route: It was two-fifths nearer to the East Indies, making it feasible to voyage out with a convenient easterly wind and to return within a year aided by an equally convenient westerly wind, whereas all that might be expected from an eastward passage would be immense distances in high latitudes, contrary winds, and no safe haven in a temperate climate. Finally, he argued that a northwest passage offered a glittering and glorious economic future with gold, silver, precious stones, silks, and all manner of spices flowing into England at a price the Spanish and Portuguese would be unable to match. All that was needed was a final push to explore between latitudes 62 and 72 N. To add force to his contention that a northwest route offered a more open passage to the South Sea, Gilbert added to the printed version of his Discourse ‘‘General Map Made Only For The Particular Declaration Of This Discovery.’’ Its heart-shaped projection artfully emphasizes the shortness of the direct route to the East Indies through the passage as compared with the longer southern routes via the Cape of Good Hope or the Strait of Magellan. North America is depicted as terminating between 50 and 58 N with a wide-open sea to the north. Greenland, Labrador, and Canada are all represented as large islands at the eastern end, affording an apparently routine voyage entirely within temperate latitudes untroubled by ice. In contrast, a large northward peninsula looms over the northeastern route, which is unequivocally placed within the Arctic Circle. Coincidentally or not, Gilbert’s Discourse of a Discoverie for a Newe Passage to Cataia was published within a few weeks of Martin Frobisher sailing on his first expedition to find the Northwest Passage. Taking into account their close friendship, it seems probable that Gilbert’s Discourse was a prime influence on Frobisher’s decision to seek a passage and on the precise location where he expected to find it. Certainly, it was a powerful encouragement to English adventurers and discoverers for the next 60 years. GILLAM, ZACHARIAH (1636–1682). The son of a prosperous New England shipwright, Zachariah Gillam entered easily into a maritime

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career. He became interested in Me´ dard Chouart Groseilliers’s scheme to open a new fur-trading route through Hudson Bay, and it was he who captained the Nonsuch on Groseilliers’s historic voyage to the bay in 1668. After the Hudson’s Bay Company was incorporated in May 1670, Gillam made several other voyages there on company business. GILLAN, R. D. Captain Gillan, of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, commanded Project Franklin 1967, an operation carried out 4–25 August 1967 to seek further information on Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition as one of the events marking the centenary of the Canadian Confederation. Gillan’s command consisted of 52 officers and men, mostly infantrymen but with elements from No. 1 Field Squadron of the Royal Canadian Engineers, No. 1 Transport Helicopter Platoon of the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps, No. 408 Squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force, and air photography experts from the Defence Photographic Interpretation Centre. Also present was a civilian observer party, including a representative of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Establishing a base camp at Gladman Point on the south coast of King William Island, the aim was to locate Sir John Franklin’s grave and to recover documentary records or equipment. Five ‘‘tent groups,’’ each comprising four men and an observer, were formed and dispatched by helicopter to selected coastal localities. A sixth group of scuba divers investigated the waters around O’Reilly Island, off the west coast of the Adelaide Peninsula, where one of Franklin’s ships was reported to have sunk. Eleven mainly coastal areas were subjected to close examination, including the northwest coast of King William Island from Cape Jane Franklin to Cape Felix, the southeastern interior, Gjøa Haven, Prince George Bay on the northeast coast, the west coast of the Boothia Peninsula from Cape Victoria to north of Cape Adelaide Regina, the Taylor Islands, the Royal Geographical Society Islands, the Adelaide Peninsula, and Starvation Cove. Nothing specifically linked to Franklin was discovered but a number of previously marked areas were reexamined and several others were closely checked for the first time.

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GJØA HAVEN. After running his sloop Gjøa aground in Sir James Ross Strait and on a large submerged reef off Matty Island in 1903, Roald Amundsen was no doubt pleased to find a small harbor in Petersen Bay on the southeast coast of King William Island. He described it as quite sheltered from the wind and a veritable haven for weary travelers. Although the way ahead was clear, Amundsen acknowledged that his first priority was to obtain scientific data. Drawing the Gjøa close to the beach, he built a series of huts ashore in which to conduct his experiments, and it was not until 13 August 1905 that the Gjøa continued on her voyage. During the intervening period, a small settlement grew up around his camp. Its Inuit name is Ooqsootooq; to the rest of the world it is Gjøa Haven. GOLDER, STEPHEN (fl. MID-19TH CENTURY). See FOOD POISONING. ˜ O (c. 1474–c. 1528). An experienced Portuguese GOMES, ESTEVA navigator, Gomes persuaded Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (King Carlos I of Spain) that he could find a quick passage to the South Sea somewhere along America’s Atlantic coastline. He departed from La Corun˜a, Spain, on 24 September 1524 on La Anunciada with 29 men. After putting in at Santiago, Cuba, Gomes sailed to Florida and carefully examined all promising bays, inlets, and rivers up the entire Eastern Seaboard from Florida to Cape Race, Newfoundland, where he turned about and returned southward. In February 1525 he entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but because of the severe winter ice, he apparently concluded that the St. Lawrence River was impassable and so missed a golden opportunity of being the first to explore it. Instead he took a southerly course around Nova Scotia and sailed down the coast of Maine to the Penobscot River, which he explored as far as it was navigable. Details of where Gomes put ashore or of the extent of his southerly course are not clear. His 10-month voyage ended when he returned to La Corun˜a on 21 August 1525. GOSS, TOM. Enraptured by Owen Beattie and John Geiger’s Frozen in Time (1987), Goss made a close study of all aspects of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition and the search for its remains and records. In the summer of 1997, while investigating his hypothesis that Frank-

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lin’s ships had in fact been enveloped in the ice of the northeast coast of King William Island rather than its northwest coast, his attention was caught by a line of cairns, each visible from the next. He concluded that this line pointed to Franklin’s final resting place and that that place was Victory Point. GREAT BEAR LAKE. Lying on the Arctic Circle and stretching between longitudes 116 W and 125 W, equidistant from the Coppermine and Mackenzie Rivers, the 12,000-square-mile Great Bear Lake is the largest lake in Canada and fourth largest in North America. Fort Franklin, in the Keith arm of the lake, its southwest corner, was John Franklin’s winter quarters on Franklin’s Second Arctic Land Expedition. A 20-strong fishing party was able to haul in 300–800 fish daily, a very welcome replenishment of protein to the expedition’s diet. Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson’s 1837–1838 and 1838–1839 winter base was situated at Fort Confidence on the diagonally opposite northeast corner of the lake at the mouth of the Dease River. John Richardson and John Rae spent the 1847–1848 and 1848–1849 winters there, but first had to rebuild it. Apart from one cabin, Dease’s buildings had been burned to the ground. In their place, a storehouse, the main living accommodations, a separate log house for the laborers, and an observatory were erected. GREAT FISH RIVER. See BACK RIVER. GREAT SLAVE LAKE. North America’s fifth largest lake, the Great Slave extends from longitude 109 W to 117 W north of the 60th parallel. It is frozen for most of the year and drains into the Mackenzie River near Fort Providence in the southwestern corner. On 12 August 1833, George Back started off from Fort Resolution, near the Slave River delta on the lake’s southern shore, to find the Great Fish River, later renamed the Back River. On his return, he spent the 1833–1834 winter at Fort Reliance, a purpose-built base erected at the eastern end of McLeod Bay, Great Slave’s northeastern extension. He also stayed there the following winter. James Anderson and John Stewart Green followed the same pattern in 1855, de-

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parting from Fort Resolution on 20 June and returning to Fort Reliance on 12 September. GREENLAND PILOTS. See ICE-MASTERS. GRENVILLE, RICHARD (1540–1591). Almost simultaneously with Martin Frobisher’s preparations for a northwest voyage in 1574, another project was taking shape under the direction of Richard Grenville to search for the western entrance of the Strait of Anian. This stemmed from a previous plan of Grenville’s to mount a discovery voyage in the South Sea for the great southern continent, Terra Australis (Southern Land). Conscious that Frobisher’s campaign to attract commercial backers was gaining momentum, Grenville issued a trenchant polemic tract, A Discourse Concerninge A Straighte To Be Discovered Towarde The Northweste, Passinge To Cathaia And The Orientall Indians, With A Confutacion Of Their Errour That Thinke The Discoverye Therof To Be Most Convenientlie Attempted To The Northe of Baccalaos (Newfoundland). This examined at some length where a search for a passage should be directed: whether by the open sea north of Newfoundland, passing under the ‘‘congealed’’ (i.e., frozen) Arctic Circle, or by sailing through the Strait of Magellan and proceeding north. With the help of some deft mathematical calculations, the Discourse claimed that the South Sea route, although longer, was in fact quicker and would allow more time for exploration. More favorable climatic conditions by the southern route were quoted and the commercial potential of trading for precious gems and metals, spices, and other commodities was also underlined. Grenville’s plans almost came to fruition, but the queen could not bring herself to permit him to sail in the politically sensitive South Sea. Relations between England and Spain were temporarily improving, and it would have damaged English interests had Grenville been let loose in waters Spain had long regarded as her own. Within three years, the political climate changed dramatically, but it was Francis Drake who sailed from Plymouth in November 1577 bound for the South Sea. GRINNELL, HENRY (1799–1874). When Lady Jane Franklin made a personal appeal to Zachary Taylor, the president of the United

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States, for American assistance in the search for her husband, Sir John Franklin, she received a reply from Secretary of State John M. Clayton, who promised her all the help the U.S. government could properly provide within its constitutional powers. In practice, this help largely came from the pocket of a private citizen, Henry Grinnell, a leading shipping merchant and a prominent philanthropist. Grinnell undertook to buy two ships and fit them out for Arctic service if the United States Navy would provide the crews, the necessary supplies, and the appropriate scientific instruments. The various difficulties and complications, the accusations that Grinnell was attempting to promote his own commercial interests, outcries over public money being spent on non-American individuals, and any embarrassment at the Navy accepting ships from private finance were all set aside, and Lt. Edwin Jesse De Haven set sail with the Advance and Rescue on the First United States Grinnell Expedition on 22 May 1850. At the beginning of a correspondence that was to endure for 20 years, Grinnell wrote to Lady Franklin: ‘‘Should they be so fortunate as to rescue your husband and his companions I shall feel as though my work was done on this earth.’’ Three years later, Grinnell was again actively organizing funds and provisions for Elisha Kent Kane’s 1853–1855 expedition. He put the Advance into dry dock in New York to be overhauled for another Arctic voyage, secured financial support, and arranged for 2,000 pounds of pemmican and a large quantity of meat biscuit to be made available. In 1860 Grinnell took Charles Francis Hall under his wing, providing him with research facilities, agreeing to become treasurer of Hall’s fund-raising, settling a demeaning legal dispute, and generally smoothing his path. In his journal, Hall described Grinnell as ‘‘the one to whom the world owes a debt of gratitude for his spirit in sending forth two Expeditions to recover those who had gone into the unknown North for the purpose of doing good to mankind’’ (quoted in Chauncy C. Loomis, Weird and Tragic Shores [1971], 54). GRINNELL PENINSULA. Lt. Edwin Jesse De Haven, USN, named the northwestern extremity of Devon Island after Henry Grinnell on 20 September 1850 when his Franklin Rescue Expedition was drifting northward up Wellington Channel in the grip of the ice

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pack. A year later, after William Penny had returned to England, he reported that one of his officers, Erasmus Ommaney, had sighted the same peninsula on 26 August and had named it Albert Land. When this name appeared on a British map, a number of rancorous reports appeared in some sections of the American press that threatened to sour the cordial relationships De Haven and the British captains had established in the Arctic. The gracious and well-balanced remarks of an American writer, George W. Corner, put this minor verbal fracas into a proper perspective: With a dozen search vessels in the region that summer and the next, new islands, headlands, bays, sounds, and channels were being named right and left. Unfortunately sometimes two explorers, ignorant of each other’s routes, gave different names to the same geographical feature. This happened in the case of De Haven’s Grinnell Land. . . . Because the American expedition had little more to report, in the way of geographical discovery, than this new land, the English claim irritated American geographers. Kane devoted more than seven pages of his published narrative to defense of De Haven’s priority, closing, however, with a warm tribute to the noble character of his British friends of the Arctic, and to the honorable gentlemen of the British Admiralty, whom he did not blame for the error or officiousness of a cartographer. In fact, the Admiralty later handsomely acknowledged the American discovery. British as well as American maps have ever since kept the name of Grinnell Peninsula for this land, since found to be a northwesterly extension of Devon Island. (Doctor Kane of the Arctic Seas [1972], 95)

GROSEILLIERS, ME´ DARD CHOUART, SIEUR DES (1618– 1696). A renowned coureur de bois and a leading fur trader of New France, Groseilliers traveled far and wide in the western Great Lakes and south and southwest of Lake Superior in the 1650s. In the spring of 1659, he and his brother-in-law Pierre-Esprit Radisson departed from Quebec on a highly successful fur trade expedition to the far end of Lake Superior, where they established a trading post at Chequamegon Bay. During their travels, they heard Indian reports of a north-flowing river that ran into a ‘‘great sea,’’ which Groseilliers believed to be either James Bay or Hudson Bay and which might lead to a northwest passage. Having opened a vast new territory for French fur traders to exploit, they were met on their return to Montreal and Quebec in Au-

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gust 1660 with heavy fines and imprisonment for flouting the bureaucratic system of licenses imposed by the colonial authorities on traders venturing into the interior. Incensed by the treatment they received, and frustrated and angry at their inability to obtain redress in France, they contracted with English shipowners in Boston to convey them to Hudson Bay. It was this that heralded the intense commercial rivalry between the French on the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, and the English on the western shores of Hudson Bay. In 1663 Groseilliers and Radisson sailed as far as Hudson Strait in a New England ship, but they were prevented from entering the bay when icebergs forced them back. Back in Boston, their plans came to the attention of the governor of Massachusetts, who dispatched them to England. There they were given a sympathetic hearing by wealthy City of London merchants, powerful noblemen, government ministers, and King Charles II. Plans were put in hand to fit out a voyage in 1666, but preparations were not completed until two years later. It was on 3 June 1668 that two ketches, the Eaglet and the Nonsuch, weighed anchor at Gravesend on the River Thames bound for Hudson Bay on one of the most crucial northern voyages ever commissioned. Out in the Atlantic, the Eaglet was dismasted and had to return home, but Groseilliers sailed on in the Nonsuch, commanded by Zachariah Gillam. Trade undoubtedly enjoyed priority over discovery in Gillam’s instructions, but he was ordered to give thought to the uncovering of a passage into the South Sea and to obtain as much information as would allow a discovery voyage to be mounted the next year. The Nonsuch anchored in a little harbor at the bottom of James Bay. It was drawn into the estuary of Rupert’s River for the winter, when a substantial cargo of furs was obtained at a low cost from Indians inexperienced in trading with Europeans. When the Nonsuch returned to England in October 1669, it carried a cargo of furs that realized £1,379. To the adventurers who backed the voyage, it was proof that the speculative project was in fact a reasonable commercial venture. This led to the incorporation of the Hudson’s Bay Company on 26 May 1670.

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GULF OF BOOTHIA. The southern continuation of Prince Regent Inlet, the Gulf of Boothia is connected to Foxe Basin by Fury and Hecla Strait. –H– HAKLUYT, RICHARD (1552–1616). In October 1584 Richard Hakluyt, then a minor official, presented A Particular Discourse Concerning the Greate Necessitie and Manifolde Commodyties that are like to Growe to this Realm of Englande by the Westerne Discoveries lately Attempted to Queen Elizabeth I in an attempt to enlist royal support for English colonial enterprises on the eastern seaboard of the North American continent. He was convinced that these ventures were inextricably linked to the discovery of a northwest passage. John Davis was not long returned from his third Arctic voyage, and in the prevailing optimism he perhaps expected the imminent discovery of a passage northward around the proposed area of settlement. In these circumstances, he perceived no incongruity in devoting a whole chapter to contend ‘‘That by these colonies the northwest passage to Cathaia and China may easely quickly and perfectly be searched oute as well by River and overlande as by sea.’’ Although the discovery of a northwest passage constituted just one chapter in the Discourse of Western Planting, as it is known today, its inclusion is significant. The search for a passage was not dismissed as a wild, impractical venture but was promoted as a valid and solid proposition in an all-embracing economic program. In that light, it is not difficult to understand why the London merchants, despite many disappointments, continued to back voyages of discovery well into the next century. Hakluyt’s Discourse survives only in one manuscript, now in the possession of the New York Public Library. It was first printed in the Documentary History of the State of Maine in 1877. More conveniently, it is included in its entirety in New American World (vol. 3 [1979], 71–123). A facsimile edition edited by David Beers Quinn and Alison M. Quinn was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1993. Hakluyt is now best known for his three folio volumes, entitled The Principal Navigations, Voyages Traffiques & Discoveries of the

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English Nation Made by Sea or Over-Land to the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth or at any Time within the Compasse of these 1600 Yeares (1598–1600). HAKLUYT SOCIETY. Established at a small meeting of distinguished men of letters and science held at the London Library in December 1846, the Hakluyt Society’s objective is to advance the understanding of world history by the publication of scholarly editions of primary sources of voyages and travels in all parts of the globe. Many of the early members were also members of the Royal Geographical Society, and there has always been a close relationship between the two societies. The Hakluyt Society was formed when interest in the search for the Northwest Passage was at its height, and from the beginning its publications have reflected this. In fact, the society’s 1865 Annual Report claimed that its publications had been helpful in the search for Sir John Franklin. See also HAKLUYT, RICHARD. HALKETT AIR BOAT. An oval-shaped inflatable India rubber boat, roughly eight feet long and four feet across, designed by Lt. Peter Alexander Halkett, RN. Seating two or three people, it was fitted with an umbrella sail, which in times of need also served as a cloak shelter. John Rae used one of these very useful craft on his 1846–1847 Boothia expedition. HALL, CHARLES FRANCIS (1821–1871). A more unlikely commander of an Arctic expedition than Charles Francis Hall, a former blacksmith, journalist, and newspaper owner, could hardly be imagined. On the other hand, his lack of seafaring or Arctic land expedition experience was offset by his ambition, physical strength, and single-minded enthusiasm. Hall’s interest in the Arctic was aroused by the disappearance of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition and sustained by the accounts of the various Franklin rescue expeditions. His applications to join Edwin Jesse De Haven’s First United States Grinnell Expedition and Francis Leopold McClintock’s 1857–1859 voyage were both turned down. But, at length, in 1860, he contrived to gain the support of Henry Grinnell, who rescued him from financial and legal embarrassment, allowing him to embark

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on a whaling ship, the George Henry, on a free passage to Baffin Island. Reasoning that if any members of Sir John Franklin’s expedition were still alive, they must be living with the Inuit, his purpose was to travel to Baffin Island, learn the Inuit language and the survival techniques that were so necessary in the hostile Arctic environment, and then proceed via Frobisher Strait into the Foxe Basin and thence to Igloolik, near the Fury and Hecla Strait, across the Melville Peninsula, and so to the Adelaide Peninsula and King William Island, where he hoped to finally determine the fate of Franklin’s expedition. Sailing from New London on 20 May 1860, the George Henry stopped over at Holsteinsborg, on Greenland’s west coast, from 7 to 24 July before dropping anchor in what Hall named Cornelius Grinnell Bay. The grandiosely titled New Franklin Research Expedition (consisting of Charles Hall and no others) had arrived at its first destination. Shortly afterward, he learned that Frobisher Strait was actually a bay and that the supposed inlets linking it with the Foxe Basin did not exist. Hall’s two-year stay on Baffin Island was to lead to unexpected information. Not only did he become aware of the Inuit’s long oral history—one of the stories they related was of five Kabloonas who had been separated from their ship, probably the men left behind by Martin Frobisher in 1576—but he also found traces of Frobisher’s sea coal, mine trenches, and the remains of a water tower on Kodlunarn Island. Hall returned to the United States on 7 September 1862 together with three Inuit: Ebierling (‘‘Joe’’), his wife Tookoolito (‘‘Hannah’’), and their baby son Tukerliktu (‘‘Johnny’’), who also accompanied him on his second bout with the Canadian Arctic. Even as he sailed in, he was planning to raise money by publicizing his exploits, embarking on a series of public lectures and publishing a book. Once more Grinnell stepped into the breach, organizing a lecture to the American Geographical and Statistical Society and putting Hall in touch with rich, powerful, and influential public figures. The Geographical Society and the New York Chamber of Commerce formed a joint committee to raise funds, but at the height of the Civil War, these failed to materialize. Eventually, sufficient donations and subscriptions were gathered, and on 1 July 1864 Hall sailed from New

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London on the whaling ship Monticello (commanded by Capt. Edward A. Chapel) bound for the northern reaches of Hudson Bay. On 20 August the Monticello arrived off Depot Island at the mouth of Roe’s Welcome Sound, a favorite anchorage and rendezvous for whaling ships. The Monticello’s tender set off with Hall’s party a few days later to take them to Repulse Bay, 100 miles up the west coast, but dropped them off 40 miles short of the bay, an error that cost Hall an entire season. Coasting north of the drop-off point in the expedition’s boat, Sylvia, Hall fell in with a band of Inuit. He immediately established cordial relations with Ouela, the Inuit leader, who dissuaded him from attempting to reach Repulse Bay and encouraged him to spend the winter with them. He also promised to supply furs and food and to accompany them to Repulse Bay in the spring. During the winter, Hall struggled to wrest accurate information on previous Kabloona expeditions across the huge region encompassing Roe’s Welcome Sound, the Foxe Basin, Wager Bay, Igloolik Island, Fury and Hecla Strait, the Melville Peninsula, and perhaps also the Boothia Peninsula and the waters around King William Island. Deteriorating relations with the Inuit, and the desertion of some of them to sail with the whaling and sealing ships from Depot Island, delayed Hall’s departure until 16 April 1865. After a month’s sealing at Wager Bay, he at last reached Repulse Bay on 10 June. Hall prepared his second winter’s camp on the North Pole River, not far from Fort Hope where John Rae had wintered in 1847 and 1854. His relations with the Inuit continued to fluctuate, but it was an extremely tedious time. For all his best intentions, Hall found Inuit customs and practices irksome, and he resolved to strike out for King William Island early in the spring. He broke camp on 31 March 1866 with 11 Inuit, including Ebierling and Tookoolito and six children. Intending to follow Rae’s route to Boothia, he set a course northward from Fort Hope to proceed across the Rae Isthmus to the head of Committee Bay. At the end of 28 days, he had reached Cape Weynton, on the west coast of the bay—a journey that Rae, without dogs, had completed in just five days. Encountering Inuit from Pelly Bay, Hall persuaded them to hand over various Franklin relics, cutlery, scissors, and a mahogany barometer case, all of which are now housed at the Smithsonian Institution. He listened eagerly to stories of two ships sinking and of finding

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the dead bodies of Kabloonas in boats, but his own Inuit party was intimidated by accounts of Seeneemiuts Inuit plundering and murdering all groups venturing into the Pelly Bay region. Hall, with deep reluctance, was left with no choice but to turn back, accompanied by the Inuit exiles, to Repulse Bay, where he arrived at the end of May. During the summer, he explored and mapped the bay. By this time, Hall was disillusioned with the Inuit, not least because of their seeming inability to travel quickly. He also had other problems to contend with. At best, all he could hope for was a fragile peace between the two Inuit groups, but violence was never far away. Early in August six whaling ships arrived, and Hall attempted to recruit men to join his party and to accompany him to King William Island the following spring. Because of a likely shortage of dogs, he left for Igloolik on 7 February 1867 with Ouela, his wife, and one of his sons. Throughout the outward and return journey, Ouela behaved in a harsh and truculent manner, causing Hall to fear for his life. At Igloolik, however, the local Inuit proved willing to trade their dogs and also showed Hall a number of localities associated with William Edward Parry’s 1822–1823 expedition. Hall returned to Repulse Bay on 31 March to find, as he feared, that the whaling skippers had no men to spare. Now he had a good team of dogs, but no men. Apart from a trek back to Cape Weynton to check the cache of food he had left there the previous year, the entire period, March 1867 through March 1868, was spent at Repulse Bay. In the fall of 1867, Hall enjoyed better luck with the whalers, and he was allowed to hire five men on a year’s contract for the 1868 season. Persuaded by Inuit reports that Francis Crozier and others were still alive, Hall traveled north in March 1865, but it was, of course, a fool’s journey and he returned once more to Repulse Bay, where tragedy struck. On 31 July two of his contracted seamen, on their own initiative, questioned some of the Pelly Bay Inuit, who told them they had witnessed a ceremonial funeral at which the dead man had been buried in a cement coffin. When Hall was told this, he flew into a rage that two common seamen had taken it into their heads to question the Inuit. Their confrontation ended with Hall shooting one of them, who died of his wounds a fortnight later. On the return of the whalers, the remaining four seamen promptly deserted.

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Still determined to complete his mission, Hall spent his fifth Arctic winter in succession before venturing north again in March 1869. This time he reached King William Island via Cape Weynton, across the Simpson Peninsula to Pelly Bay and Boothia, and then across the Rae Strait to his long-sought objective on 12 May. There he acquired more Franklin relics and found a skeleton, which later proved to be that of Lt. Henry Thomas Dundas Le Vesconte of HMS Erebus. He had hoped to spend the summer on the island searching for Franklin documents, but Ebierling and Tookoolito point blank refused to stay for longer than a week. The summer season was ending, and they wanted to return to Repulse Bay before winter set in. Accordingly Hall began his long journey back on 20 May. He embarked in the whaling ship Ansell Gibbs and sailed from Repulse Bay for the United States on 13 August 1869. Now able to take a cool, detached appraisal of the conflicting stories of the various groups of Inuit he had encountered, Hall at last acknowledged that it was straining the bounds of probability too far to expect survivors of Franklin’s lost ships still to be alive. He decided not to return to King William Island and to direct his next Arctic voyage toward the North Pole. HANSEN, GODFRED. See AMUNDSEN, ROALD ENGLEBRECHT GRAVNING. HARRIOTT, THOMAS (1560–1621). A noted mathematician and astronomer with a long-standing interest in overseas discovery, Harriott was encouraged by Thomas Button’s report on his return to England in 1613 to publish Three Reasons To Prove That There Is A Passage From The Northwest Into The South Sea. The first of the eponymous reasons was that the tides at Port Nelson, where Button wintered, 1612–1613, were constantly measured at 15 or 18 feet, a height found only in open seas and nowhere in the world within a bay. Second, every strong western wind brought into Port Nelson so much water that the lowest high tides equaled the spring tides even though the harbor was only open to the east-northeast. And, third, when emerging from the harbor and moving directly north, Button found a strong tide setting due east and west, which almost certainly signified that the tide ran from the west. But Harriott was nothing if not cau-

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tious: his last 10 words read, ‘‘the truth of the theory remains yet to be proved.’’ HARRIS, REBECCA (1968– ). Guided by David Qirqqut, Rebecca Harris’s eight-strong American Express Memorial Expedition set out in April 2003 on an 18-day, 200-mile sledge journey to retrace the 1848 route of the survivors of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition. Starting off from Victory Point, they followed the west coast of King William Island southward, and crossed Simpson Strait to Starvation Cove, at the bottom of Barrow Inlet on the Adelaide Peninsula. HAWKRIDGE, WILLIAM (fl. EARLY 17TH CENTURY). A shadowy figure in the annals of the exploration for a northwest passage, William Hawkridge accompanied Thomas Button on his 1612–1613 expedition to Hudson Bay. Either in 1619 or in 1625—the date cannot be ascribed with any certainty—he was selected to the command of two pinnaces to make another attempt to find a passage through Hudson Strait. His backers were a group of London merchants, most of them no doubt members of the Company of the Merchants of London, Discoverers of the North-West Passage, with the East India Company underwriting 10 percent of the costs involved. The only surviving account of his voyage is that in Luke Foxe’s North-West Fox (1635), which prints dates, distances, and directions so extensively that it may be concluded that Foxe had the advantage of at least an abstract of Hawkridge’s log. Although he sailed around the islands to the north of Hudson Bay near the entrance to Foxe Channel, his was a peculiarly wasted voyage that made no real contribution to geographical knowledge. HAYES, ISAAC ISRAEL (1832–1881). Medical officer on Elisha Kent Kane’s 1853–1855 Second United States Grinnell Expedition. HBC. An acronym for the Hudson’s Bay Company, or more colloquially, because of its long-standing and enduring character, ‘‘Here Before Canada.’’ HEARNE, SAMUEL (1745–1792). While serving as mate on the Hudson’s Bay Company’s whaling sloop Churchill, Hearne went

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ashore on Marble Island at the beginning of August 1767 when the graveyard of James Knight’s crews was found. The following year, a ship’s figurehead was recovered, and in 1769 Hearne heard from an elderly Inuk an account of the last days of the Knight expedition. After Moses Norton had persuaded the company to send a European to verify Chipewyan reports of a copper mine adjacent to a large river in the far northwest, Hearne was dispatched from Churchill on 6 November 1769. His objectives were to locate the mine, to judge the possibilities of increased trade, and to investigate whether a navigable waterway existed between Hudson Bay and the Pacific Ocean. This first journey was something of a fiasco: he carried inadequate supplies and was guided by incompetent Indians who had no sure idea of where they were going, and the inexperienced Hearne was back in Churchill within a month. Chagrined but undaunted, he set off again in February 1770, this time traversing a huge figure eight around Yathkyed Lake almost to the Thelon River, across the Dubawnt River, and along the shores of Dubawnt Lake, skirting Angikuni Lake, before returning to Churchill the following November, again without achieving either of his objectives. On his third journey, from 7 December 1770 through 30 June 1772, he accompanied Mattonabee, a respected and skilled hunter and guide who was leading a band of Indians home. From Churchill they went northwest to the headwaters of the Kazan and Dubawnt rivers and worked their way westward through the forests, from lake to lake, and across the Barren Lands to reach their destination in July 1771. Hearne’s exact route is a matter for study and speculation; this was not an exploring expedition in the strict sense, and Hearne was very much subject to Mattonabee’s choice of direction. To Hearne’s disappointment, the Coppermine River offered no real prospects of trade: copper was present only in small quantities, and the river itself proved almost unnavigable by canoe. But he had reached the northern coastline, demolishing all theories postulating the existence of a passage from the west coast of Hudson Bay. In the course of his journey, he had seen nothing of a channel or even a great river. He concluded that his discoveries were not likely to prove of any material advantage and that they had put a final end to all disputes concerning a northwest passage through Hudson Bay. This might be so, but the discovery of the Arctic Ocean opened up the

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possibility, if nothing more, of a navigable passage along the northern shore of the American continent. HEPBURN, JOHN (1794–1864). As an ordinary seaman, Hepburn accompanied John Franklin on his 1819–1822 Arctic Land Expedition when his energy, fortitude, and devotion to duty earned him promotion to second master in the Royal Navy. He sailed, as supercargo, on William Kennedy’s 1851 relief expedition at the special request of Lady Jane Franklin. Although illness prevented him from taking an active sledging role, he nevertheless won the respect of both Kennedy and Joseph-Rene´ Bellot. HEZETA Y DUDAGOITIA, BRUNO DE (1744–1807). Sailing in the Santiago from San Blas on 16 March 1775, in company with the Sonora (soon to be commanded by Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra), Hezeta had orders to make discoveries on the northwest coast and to consolidate Spain’s claim to sovereignty over the region, which was believed to be threatened by Russian explorers infiltrating south from Alaska. He attempted to emulate Francis Drake by sailing out to sea before turning his helm to starboard but the necessity to obtain wood and fresh water forced him back to coastal waters. With orders to reach 65 N before turning about, Hezeta lost contact with Bodega in severe weather shortly after a fierce encounter with Indians south of the Quinault River in present-day Oregon. His crew was ravaged with scurvy, and he had little option but to return to Mexico. Examining the coast closely as he sailed south, he inexplicably failed to spot the Strait of Juan de Fuca. However, on 17 August, he sighted a large bay penetrating inland as far as the eye could see. He believed this to be the strait discovered by Juan de Fuca, who, he reasoned, had miscalculated his bearings. In fact it was the Columbia River, discovered and named by Robert Gray in 1792. HOBSON, WILLIAM ROBERTSON (1831–1880). Lt. William Hobson, RN, was second-in-command to Francis Leopold McClintock on the Fox’s 1857–1859 voyage to Prince Regent Inlet. He led one of the depot-laying sledge journeys down the east coast of the Boothia Peninsula in the fall of 1858. The following spring, he and five others examined the western shore of King William Island

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searching for traces of Sir John Franklin’s missing expedition. At Cape Felix he discovered a campsite that at one time had been occupied by 12 officers and men. Three tents were found flat on the ground with bearskins and blankets beneath them. Boarding pikes had obviously been used as tent poles. On the western headland of the island, he found a boat, estimated to weigh 750 pounds, mounted on a huge sledge; two skeletons close to double-barreled guns; a vast amount of clothing; 40 pounds of chocolate; some tobacco; and an empty tin of pemmican. At Victory Point, 15 miles from where Franklin’s men, at that point commanded by Francis Crozier, had landed, Hobson found a profusion of all sorts of objects—cookstoves, curtain rods, and a collection of religious books among them—which had all too clearly been discarded as useless impedimenta by disillusioned seamen only three days after abandoning ship. It more resembled a houseboat junkpile than a desperate last effort to escape death by starvation or disease deep in the Arctic wilderness. See also FRANKLIN’S THIRD ARCTIC EXPEDITION; VICTORY POINT DOCUMENT. HOOD, ROBERT (1797–1821). A midshipman in the Royal Navy and already earning a reputation for his drawings and paintings, Robert Hood was appointed to Franklin’s First Arctic Land Expedition. His duties were to take navigational, geographical, and meteorological observations and also to make drawings of the country, its native peoples, and objects of natural history. In October 1821, with the rear party struggling back across the Barren Lands close to death from starvation and dehydration, he was shot in the head and killed after a violent quarrel with Michel Teroahaute´. HORN, MIKE. A South African living in Switzerland, Mike Horn set off westward from North Cape, on the northern coast of Norway, on 4 August 2002 to follow the Arctic Circle in a circumpolar journey. He arrived back at North Cape on 23 October 2004. During his 780day journey, he traveled across the Barren Lands of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, the northern coast of Alaska, and across the Bering Strait to Siberia.

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HORSE SAILORS. Royal Canadian Mounted Police personnel who served on the St. Roch and Nadon patrol vessels. See also BURTON, KEN; LARSEN, HENRY ASBJORN. HOWELL, J. T. In August 1985, Howell commanded the USCGC Polar Sea when it proceeded from Thule, Greenland, through Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, Melville Sound, Prince of Wales Strait, and Amundsen Gulf into the Beaufort Sea. Although the Canadian government was informed of this voyage in advance, its permission was not requested. This, Canada officially ‘‘regretted.’’ Consequently, the difference of opinion between Canada and the United States as to the precise legal status of the waters of the Arctic Archipelago was brought to a head: Canada regards these as its internal waters, the United States rejects this claim, stating that they are an international waterway. HOYT, AUSTIN. At the same time as Robert Cundy’s Cape Britannia Expedition, 12 July–21 August 1962, Austin Hoyt led a team of four Americans in canoes down the Back River from its source on Aylmer Lake to the headwaters of Chantrey Inlet, where they were picked up by a small aircraft. Despite Cundy’s dark suspicion that Hoyt was racing him to Cape Britannia, the reality was that Hoyt’s purpose fell within the ‘‘because it’s there’’ category. After many summers canoeing in the Canadian north, he was exhilarated at the prospect of descending the river and meeting its notorious rapids head on. The Americans and British leapfrogged all the way down, but Hoyt was well in front when he reached the inlet. HUDSON, HENRY (?–1611). Despite two fruitless northeast passage discovery voyages to Cathay along the Arctic coasts of Europe and Asia for the Muscovy Company of London in 1607 and 1608, the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company) employed Hudson to search for a northeast passage, sailing north around Russia before sailing south to a latitude of 60. He sailed from Texel Island off Holland in the Halve Maen (Half Moon) with a mixed English and Dutch crew on 6 April 1609; a month later, confronted by ice off Novaya Zemlya, the crew was in a state of near

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mutiny. Hudson proposed that the search northeastward be replaced by one to the northwest, either through the Davis Strait or through a promising waterway he had news of on the Virginia coast. Longing above all else for a release from the merciless cold, the crew opted for Virginia, and Hudson set a course for the New World. Touching in at the Faroe Islands, he then sailed to Newfoundland and past Cape Cod as far as the Chesapeake Bay before turning north again. He dropped anchor in the large bay that is now New York harbor on 3 September 1609, the first European known to have been in these waters since Giovanni da Verrazzano 85 years earlier. After establishing friendly relations with the Algonquian Indians of Manhattan Island, he sailed 150 miles up the river that is now named after him to a point just north of Albany. Finding himself sailing in fresh water, he realized that this could not be a western passage. Sailing back to Amsterdam, he put in at Dartmouth, England, where by command of King James I he was prevented from continuing in Dutch employment. In 1610 Hudson set out again on a new northwest voyage of discovery commissioned by a group of London merchants, drawn from the East India Company and the Muscovy Company, who in 1612 all became founder-members of the Company of the Merchants of London, Discoverers of the North-West Passage. Departing from Gravesend in the Discovery on 17 April, Hudson was by the end of June entering the turbulent waters described by John Davis and George Waymouth. July was spent crossing from the Isles of God’s Mercy off the coast of Martin Frobisher’s Meta Incognita, where a temporary harbor was found from the continuous battering of huge waves and loose ice, to Prince Henry’s Foreland (Cape Hope’s Advance) on the Ungava Peninsula. By 22 August he was off a headland he named Salisbury’s Foreland. Continuing westward, he encountered a great whirling sea and soon afterward reached what is now known as Hudson Strait. The next day he negotiated a southern channel between the mainland and a group of islands, running through two miles of water between two conspicuous headlands—naming them Cape Digges and Cape Wolstenholme—to emerge into a large sea (Hudson Bay) stretching a vast distance to the southwest. At this moment Hudson must have been convinced that success

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was about to crown his efforts. He coasted down the bleak west coast of Quebec, confident that he had safely traversed a perilous passage and had entered the South Sea. Soon, however, confidence waned and gave way to doubt, and by early September, when the Discovery reached James Bay in the southwest corner of Hudson Bay, it was clear that he had come to a dead end. The route to the riches of the East was not via this barren wilderness. On 10 November the Discovery was frozen in. The crew spent a long, hard, miserable winter icebound on a distant and unknown shore, and supplies were running low. It was not until 11 June 1611 that the ship was freed from the ice, and then a week later it was frozen in again. The crew, crucially weakened by their winter’s privations, was in no mood to follow Hudson westward. Their resolve snapped and exploded into mutiny. On 22 June, Hudson, along with his son John and seven others either loyal to him or considered too sick and useless to feed, was cast adrift in a small boat. All they were given was a fowling piece, some powder and shot, an iron pot, and some carpenter’s tools. It was a death sentence. Guided home by Robert Bylot, the Discovery’s erstwhile mate, after the leaders of the mutiny had been killed by Inuit when foraging on Digges Island, the survivors faced possible charges of murder and mutiny. An inquiry investigating the situation, while not entirely exonerating the crew, placed the main blame for the abandonment of Hudson and his companions squarely on the dead mutineers, thanks largely to the testimony of Abacuk Prickett, the onboard representative of the syndicate that fitted out the voyage. Of course, it would not have been expedient, on the eve of the launching of the Company of the Merchants of London, Discoverers of the North-West Passage, to highlight the mutiny. Ultimately, the crew was allowed to go free. Hudson’s fame in the history of geographical discovery is firmly based on his exploration of the river, strait, and bay that continue to bear his name. Good arguments can be made for prior discovery of Hudson Bay by Sebastian Cabot and by a number of Portuguese mariners, but Hudson’s voyage was the first to be properly recorded and printed. In the context of the search for a northwest passage, the discovery of Hudson Bay pointed the way for the next 200 years. HUDSON BAY. An extension of the North Atlantic Ocean through Hudson Strait, Hudson Bay is an inland sea bounded by Baffin Is-

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land, the Ungava Peninsula, the northern coasts of Ontario and Manitoba, the southwestern coast of Nunavut, and the Melville Peninsula. Including its main arms, Foxe Basin, Foxe Channel, and James Bay, it covers 480,000 square miles. It is thought that Sebatian Cabot may have discovered the bay in 1509, but it is generally accepted that Henry Hudson was the first European to penetrate the strait and explore the bay. Other early navigators who followed in his wake include Thomas Button, William Baffin, and Jens Munk. See also HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY. HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY (HBC). More correctly and more ceremoniously called the Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson’s Bay, this enterprise was incorporated by royal charter on 25 May 1670, after Me´dard Chouart Groseilliers’s successful return from Hudson Bay in October 1669. The charter’s preamble noted that various prominent London businessmen and royal courtiers had at their owne great cost and charge undertaken an expedicion for Hudson’s Bay in the Northwest part of America for the discovery of a new Passage into the South Sea and for the finding some Trade for Furrs Mineralls and other considerable Commodityes and by suche their undertakeing have already made such discoveryes as doe encourage them to proceed further in pursuance of theire said designe by meanes whereof there may probably arise very great advantage to us and our Kingdome.

This charter granted them and their successors the sole Trade and Commerce of all those Seas Streightes Bayes Rivers Lakes Creekes and Soundes in whatsoever Latitude they shall bee that lye within the entrance of the Streightes commonly called Hudsons Streightes together with all the Landes Countryes and Territoryes upon the Coastes and Confynes of the Seas Streightes Bayes Lakes Rivers Creekes and Soundes aforesaid which are not now actually possessed by any of our Subjectes or by the Subjectes of any other Christian Prince or State.

The full text of the charter is printed in appendix A of Minutes of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1671–1674, edited by E. E. Rich (1942). It is important to note what the charter did not state. Nothing within it compelled the company to establish settlements, and although the preamble specifically noted that the adventurers named had undertaken an expedition for the discovery of a northwest pas-

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sage, there was nothing stated to insist that the company should continue this exploration. Nevertheless, the HBC was directly involved in the search for a passage for the next 200 years, and what exactly its charter stipulated became a matter of bitter public controversy. In general the company was content to establish trading posts on or close to river mouths on the west shore of the bay and to expect the Indians to bring their furs and skins there, showing very little inclination to search for a passage to the South Sea that might or might not exist. This dormant period came to an end with the appointment as governor in Hudson’s Bay of James Knight, who prodded the company into a more proactive, if short-lived, policy of exploration for the purposes of trade. The company’s privileges came under severe scrutiny, and even threat, in the 1730s and 1740s when Arthur Dobbs’s campaign against its halfhearted efforts to find a passage came close to destroying its cherished monopoly. At this time the company’s policies clearly differed from those Dobbs proposed: his main object was to find a northwest passage—with trade, at this point, no more than a secondary consideration—whereas the company was primarily seeking trade, with discovery not much more than an afterthought. It was the company’s obvious reluctance to engage in further exploration that strengthened Dobbs’s resolve to seek government intervention. The company persisted in its attitude when Christopher Middleton’s 1741 voyage was being prepared. If a passage were discovered, the HBC fully grasped how difficult it would be to keep out interlopers and retain its royal charter privileges. As it turned out, Middleton’s report fully vindicated the HBC’s refusal to participate in wasteful and hazardous voyages in fruitless searches for a passage that was now shown to be nonexistent. But, employing an oblique approach, Dobbs argued that it was evident that a passage existed— why else would the company attempt to conceal it? Eventually, in 1745, the HBC was forced to defend its position at a parliamentary inquiry. After examining 22 witnesses, the inquiry ruled in its favor, declaring there was no case either for abrogating its charter or for interfering with its trade practices. Sensitive to criticism of its alleged failure to explore the hinterland beyond its trading posts and to accusations of secrecy or of obscuring actual discoveries, and alarmed by the publication of Alexander

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Cluny’s The American Traveller (1769), the HBC instructed Samuel Hearne to find out, if you can, either by your own travels, or by information from the Indians, whether there is a passage through this continent. It will be very useful to clear up this point, if possible, in order to prevent farther doubts from arising hereafter respecting a passage out of Hudson’s Bay into the Western Ocean, as hath lately been represented by the American Traveller. (Samuel Hearne, A Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort in Hudson’s Bay to the Northern Ocean [1795/1958], lxix–lxx)

Merging with the North West Company in 1821, although retaining its name, the HBC was granted by the British parliament a commercial trading monopoly stretching from Hudson Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Later in the 19th century, the company played a more proactive and prominent role in the exploration for a northwest passage. The travels of Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson (1837– 1839), John Rae (1846–1847, 1850–1851, and 1853–1854), and James Anderson (1855) were all crucially important either in outlining the configuration of the Canadian Arctic coastline where a navigable passage was most likely to be found or in establishing the fate of Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition. The British North America Act of 1867 included a provision for the admission of Rupert’s Land into the Canadian Confederation, and the deed of surrender was signed on 19 November 1869. Two hundred years of a private company’s unfettered sway over a huge expanse of North America was finally terminated, but the company has continued to flourish and prosper to this day. See also THE BEAVER; DALRYMPLE, ALEXANDER; GILLAM, ZACHARIAH; HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY ARCHIVES; NAPPER, JAMES; NORTON, MOSES; NORTON, RICHARD; SCROGGS, JOHN; STUART, WILLIAM. HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY ARCHIVES. ‘‘The Hudson’s Bay Company is probably the best documented institution in the world, next to the Vatican,’’ writes Peter C. Newman (Empire of the Bay [1998], 585). Newman’s statistics endorse his probability: 6,000 feet of books, journals, ledgers and accounts, letters and diaries, ships’ logs, maps, and photographs, weighing a massive 68 tons when the

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archives were transferred from Beaver House, London, to the Provincial Archives of Manitoba in Winnipeg in 1974. Twenty years later the Hudson’s Bay Company made one of the most generous public gifts ever when presenting the entire archive to the provincial archives at an appraised value of C$60 million. A charitable foundation funded through tax reliefs was established at the same time to finance the working operations of the archive, a magnet for all researchers into the history of Canada in general and of Rupert’s Land in particular. ‘‘The superb archives of the Hudson’s Bay Company have become a treasure-house of information for increasing numbers of researchers’’ (Glyn Williams, Voyages of Delusion [2002], xix). Today the documents stretch along the shelves of a custom-designed, optimum-condition storage vault in the Manitoba Archives building. Early records and historic maps down to 1900 are on microfilm, available in the Public Record Office, Kew Gardens, London, and in the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa. See also HUDSON’S BAY RECORD SOCIETY; RUPERT’S LAND RECORD SOCIETY. HUDSON’S BAY RECORD SOCIETY. This society owes its formation to the decision of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the early 1930s to throw open its incomparable archives to bona fide scholars, who were allowed access to all documents down to 1870. The Record Society was incorporated in April 1938 with the express purpose of publishing documents in full, together with fair comment and criticism by way of introductions and notes. The first 12 volumes were in fact published in collaboration with the Champlain Society, and it was not until 1950 that they appeared independently under the sole imprint of the Record Society. Its outline history may be read in Glyndwr William’s preface to volume 30. Volume 31, the first to be edited in Winnipeg, where the company’s archives are now situated, is the first to include documents originating after 1870. Titles of interest include James Ischam’s Observations on Hudson Bay (1949); John Rae’s Arctic Correspondence with the Hudson’s Bay Company on Arctic Exploration, 1844–1845 (1953); and The History of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1670–1870 (2 vols., 1958–1959), all edited by E. E. Rich.

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HUDSON STRAIT. Possibly sighted by Sebastian Cabot in 1509, Hudson Strait leads off the North Atlantic Ocean, between Baffin Island and the Ungava Peninsula, into Hudson Bay and Foxe Channel. Martin Frobisher followed the northern shore for 200 miles in July 1578 in the mistaken belief that he was again sailing into Frobisher Strait (now Frobisher Bay), and in 1602 George Waymouth ventured even further. Henry Hudson was the first navigator known to have completed its passage into the bay. See also FURIOUS OVERFALL; MISTAKEN STRAITS. –I– ICE. Polar ice is not uniform in form, nature, or appearance. For example, an ice field is a continuous sheet of ice so extensive that it reaches the horizon unbroken; an ice floe is a portion of floating ice that has become severed from the main pack. An iceberg is a truly massive piece of ice that has broken off from a mainland glacier at the sea edge and is floating in the sea, its course determined by the currents; only one-seventh of its actual bulk is visible above water. Old ice is the term for ice formed in previous seasons; it is heavier and more dense than young ice, which is newly formed when the temperature is sufficiently low. Pack ice consists of broken ice floes driven together by varying winds and currents and may cover many miles. But these six thumbnail definitions merely constitute the tip of one of them. No fewer than 183 ice-related terms are listed in chapter 6 of Sailing Directions, Arctic Canada (4th ed. [1994], 1:88–110), which also deals with the formation of sea ice, icebergs, and ice islands; preparing a vessel for ice operations; ship handling in ice; navigation in Arctic waters; and ice conditions in the Canadian Arctic. See also LEADS; PINGOS; PERMAFROST; POLYNYAS. ICEBLINK. Shafts of light on the horizon reflecting off the pack ice to the clouds above, sometimes causing a polar mirage showing a large sheet of open water ahead. See also FATA MORGANA. ICE-MASTERS. Most Royal Navy ships sailing in Arctic waters carried an experienced whaling captain well versed in handling and ma-

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neuvering ships in hazardous icebound seas. An unofficial alternative term for these officers was ‘‘Greenland pilots.’’ INGLEFIELD, EDWARD AUGUSTUS (1820–1894). After commanding Lady Jane Franklin’s 150-ton schooner Isabel to the northern reaches of Baffin Bay in 1852, the initiative and Arctic service potential of Edward Inglefield were largely ignored by the Admiralty, which employed him solely as the commander of HMS Phoenix, a supply ship sent to reprovision Sir Edward Belcher’s 1852–1854 expedition. The purpose of the Isabel voyage was to investigate Adam Beck’s account of events in 1846 and to check the April 1850 sighting of two ships resembling HMS Erebus and HMS Terror embedded in the ice pack near Newfoundland, giving rise to fears that Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition was stranded on the western shores of Baffin Island. Sailing from Peterhead, Scotland, with a crew of 17 officers and men, Inglefield proceeded up the west coast of Greenland, past Cape Alexander, and entered Smith Sound, the first European navigator to do so since William Baffin in 1616. There he saw stretching before him an open Polar Sea, giving him ‘‘wild thoughts’’ of reaching the North Pole, advancing to the Bering Strait, and perhaps finding Franklin. Resisting this romantic impulse, he turned south as ordered, searched Jones Sound farther westward than Horatio Austin had done the previous year, and then sailed to Beechey Island to give Belcher an account of his voyage. INUIT. Formerly known as Eskimos—a term derived from a Cree Indian word signifying meat-eaters—the Inuit are the native peoples of the North American Arctic. The first Inuit contact with Europeans in the northwest passage region was their encounter with Martin Frobisher’s voyages in the mid-1570s. It was not until the 19th century that they became more heavily involved with European explorers, first with Royal Navy discovery ships and then with Hudson’s Bay Company traders as they advanced farther and farther north. John Ross established a friendly relationship with the Inuit on his 1818 voyage to Baffin Bay when his interpreter was instrumental in persuading a group to visit HMS Isabella on the far northwest coast

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of Greenland. He gave them the name ‘‘Arctic Highlanders’’ and distributed knives and hand mirrors to their great satisfaction. Ten years later he successfully gained their confidence on the southeast coast of Boothia Peninsula when his seamen and the Inuit made frequent visits to each other’s camps and cooperated in friendly rivalry in hunting seals and musk oxen and netting fish together. Relations with the Inuit deteriorated sharply from this friendly, though not to say idyllic, first contact after John Rae’s reports, based on Inuit testimony, of cannibalism among the survivors of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition. Public opinion in England at the time was far more ready to condemn the Inuit for murdering starving, emaciated, scurvy-ridden, and totally debilitated seamen staggering desperately down the west coast of King William Island, or at least callously deserting them and leaving them to starve, than to credit that Royal Navy crew members would resort to eating their comrades in their final despair. David C. Woodman’s Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony (1991) exhaustively examines these racially tinted calumnies. His close investigations prove that the Inuit stories stood up and underline that at all times the Inuit struggled to survive in the harsh conditions of the Arctic and could never have sustained such a large number of men from their own resources. An avalanche of anthropological, sociological, and environmental studies preceded and followed the establishment of Nunavut in 1999. These have no place here, but readers wishing to learn more are referred to Jonathan Waterman’s Arctic Crossing: A Journey through the Northwest Passage and Inuit Culture (2001), which includes a comprehensive bibliography. See also BECK, ADAM; HALL, CHARLES FRANCIS; INUK; INUKSHUK; IRWIN, COLIN; KABLOONA; KAYAKS; RANFORD, BARRY; RASMUSSEN, KNUD JOHAN VICTOR; UMIAKS. INUK. An individual Inuit. INUKSHUK. Translated as a cairn in the shape of a man, Inuksuit (the plural form) testify that such structures in the Arctic were not a European innovation. Standing tall but with no mortar or similar substance between the stones, they were often built on hilltops at regular

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intervals to shepherd migrating caribou along selected routes toward waiting Inuit huntsmen. Very ancient in origin, they also mark campsites and fishing spots. IRWIN, COLIN (1946– ). The principal objective of Colin Irwin’s trek across the frozen littoral of the Northwest Passage from Repulse Bay in the east to Point Barrow in the west was to adopt and record the fast-disappearing traditional Inuit way of life before it vanished altogether in the face of an alien industrialized culture. He started off from Repulse Bay on 10 February 1973, accompanied by Joe Etibloena, one of three Inuit guides he hired on his journey, and a dogsled team, heading in the first instance for Pelly Bay. His plan was to retrace much of the route taken by Knud Rasmussen 50 years earlier. At Pelly Bay, Etibloena took a plane home and another old friend, Tipana, signed up to act as guide as far as Cambridge Bay, which was reached via Gjøa Haven, the south coast of King William Island, the Irvine and Royal Geographical Society Islands, and the southern stretches of Victoria Strait. Irwin’s third guide was Napaseekadlak, who accompanied him on the last stage to Point Barrow. Leaving Cambridge Bay at the end of April, their route now took them to the Richardson Islands, along the mainland coast to the DEW Line site at Clinton Point, and through the Amundsen Gulf to Tuktoyaktuk. At this point the dog team was dispersed, replaced by a 22-foot canoe with two 25-horsepower outboard motors. Clearly they were now committed to travel by water as winter relaxed into spring and summer. Setting off again at the end of June, Irwin took the canoe up the Blow River and camped for a week to allow the remaining ice to flow out to sea. The next camp was at Herschel Island, where ice once more enwrapped them until favorable winds swept it away. Then it was full motor-power to Demarcation Point, Barter Island, and Prudhoe Bay, where they arrived on 15 July. Eight days later they reached Point Barrow, Irwin having traveled 2,500 miles by dogsled and canoe in 22 weeks. Irwin’s trek was the antithesis of an organized, high-powered expedition. He relied on traditional Inuit skills and basic equipment. At times he existed on an unfamiliar diet of rancid seal remains left by a polar bear, rotten fish taken from a fox trap, soup made from a

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frozen caribou stomach left by wolves, and sundry other unpalatable items. He was instructed by his guides in the art of building igloos and shelters when these skills were vital to his survival. Irwin remained in the Arctic: in 1998 he authored Lords of the Arctic, Wards of the State: The Growing Inuit Population, Arctic Resettlement and Their Effects on Social and Economic Change, a report for Health and Welfare Canada. –J– JAMES, THOMAS (1593–1635). At the same time that Luke Foxe’s plans were coming to fruition, similar preparations for a northwestern voyage were in hand on behalf of the Bristol Society of Merchant Venturers, who wished to be given the same privileges as the London merchants backing Foxe. Thomas James, a lawyer by profession, with a sound education in mathematical navigation, and son of a prominent Bristol citizen who had twice been mayor of the city, was employed to present the Bristol merchants’ case at Court and to command their voyage of discovery. His instructions are not extant, but there can be little doubt that they were identical to Foxe’s. James sailed from Bristol in the 70-ton Henrietta Maria on 3 May 1631. He declined to take seamen with Arctic experience on the curious grounds that they might disagree with his conduct of the voyage and so diminish his authority as captain. After encountering ice in Davis Strait on 5 June, it was not until 16 July that James managed to sail through Hudson Strait. He then traveled southwest across Hudson Bay, sighting Hubbert’s Hope (near modern-day Churchill) on 11 August. Cruising down the coast, he named its hinterland the New Principality of South Wales, a name that, perhaps understandably, has not survived. He discovered the Severn River and, at the end of August, by chance fell in with Luke Foxe near Cape Henrietta Maria, halfway between Port Nelson and James Bay. James attempted to induce Foxe to remain with him for the winter, but Foxe declined and sailed north. In September James embarked on an exploration of James Bay, first discovered by Henry Hudson 20 years earlier, in the hope of finding a waterway to the St. Lawrence River. By October, arduous weather conditions, ice, and treacherous shoals had forced James to

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deliberately beach his ship on Charlton Island, at the bottom of the bay, in order to secure its moorings. There he spent a gloomy and uncomfortable winter, and it was July 1632 before Henrietta Maria was again in open water. James followed in Foxe’s wake, sailing northward to seek a passage through Foxe Channel. He reached latitude 6530⬘ N before ice forced him back. Following his return to England in October, James was quick off the mark in publishing The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captaine Thomas James, in his intended discoverie of the Northwest Passage (1633), which preceded Foxe’s account by two years. His narrative aroused considerable public interest, especially in his account of the winter on Charlton Island, but even his long stay in James Bay failed to improve on the geographic detail brought back by the survivors of Hudson’s 1610–1611 voyage. Unlike Foxe’s jaunty optimism that a navigable passage would be found, James’s disenchantment was total. He listed four reasons why no passage existed: the constant flood tide from the east through Hudson Strait; the absence of small fish, very few great fish, and the absence of driftwood; borders of ice everywhere, which a great ocean would have broken up; and the fact that ice was driven eastward. If a strait existed, he argued, it would be very long and passing through it would entail sailing in August and September when the nights were long and the weather was unendurably cold. Moreover, the great merchant ships would be in considerable danger from ice and ‘‘other discommodities.’’ The truth of his argument regarding the feasibility of a commercial route to the Orient merited close attention. After all, he was writing at the close of a fruitless 60-year period of almost continuous exploration. Ice-choked channels and inhospitable and fog-shrouded coastlines were poor return for the amount of treasure expended and a dismal prospect for successful commercial endeavor. JASON, VICTORIA. A grandmother who had survived two strokes, Victoria Jason kayaked almost 4,720 miles between Churchill on Hudson Bay and Tuktoyaktuk on the Beaufort Sea from 1991 through 1994. With Don Starkell and Fred Reffler, the first stage to Repulse Bay was completed in 1991, although Reffler soon had to drop out because of injury. The next stage to Gjøa Haven via Com-

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mittee Bay, across the Simpson Peninsula to Pelly Bay, and the southern base of the Boothia Peninsula was successfully accomplished in 1992. But, at Gjøa Haven, Jason herself abandoned all hope of reaching Tuktoyaktuk when she collapsed through edema, a muscle breakdown caused by excessive fatigue. Starkell struggled on before being rescued from the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula suffering from severe frostbite. Regaining her initiative, Jason determined to attain her goal by paddling her kayak in the reverse direction. She traveled from Fort Providence down the Mackenzie River and reached Panlatuk, at the bottom of Darnley Bay, in 1993. She continued through Amundsen Gulf, Dolphin and Union Strait, Coronation Gulf, and Dease Strait, along the shores of Queen Maud Gulf to the Adelaide Peninsula, and across Simpson Strait to Gjøa Haven, where she arrived on 22 August 1994. –K– KABLOONA. An Inuit term usually translated as ‘‘white man’’ or ‘‘foreigner.’’ Jonathan Waterman provides a different interpretation, however, in his Odyssey among the Inuit (2001): ‘‘Unlike the racial epithets heard in our world, being called a Kabloona did not mean that I was inferior or that I had a different skin colour. It merely tells of my bushy eyebrows’’ (3). KANE, ELISHA KENT (1820–1857). As medical officer on board the Advance during Edwin Jesse De Haven’s First United States Grinnell Expedition in search of Sir John Franklin’s long overdue ships, Kane distinguished himself for taking a firm grip when rampant scurvy threatened to take its toll on the crew. Although De Haven prepared the official report of his voyage, it was left to Kane to wrestle with the popular account at a time when his own dreams of Arctic glory were burgeoning. Sensible of the disappointments experienced in the Lancaster Sound and Prince Regent Inlet areas, he planned to sail farther north up Baffin Bay, where, he was convinced, exciting and important geographical discoveries would be made. In a skillfully mounted campaign, Kane enlisted the goodwill of the secretary of the navy,

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the superintendent of the U.S. Coast Guard, the Smithsonian Institution, and various American learned societies as well as the influential support of Henry Grinnell for an expedition to Smith Sound. His plan was to establish a string of advance depots by dogsled and small boat in his first year there and then, in the second summer, to head overland by sledge to the open sea and navigate it in his boats. Following Edward Augustus Inglefield’s survey of Smith Sound in 1852, Kane was eager to forestall others in the north Baffin Bay region. Ostensibly, his plans were to search for Franklin, who Kane asserted had sailed up Wellington Channel, penetrated the ice barrier, and advanced into the temperate circumpolar sea. In a letter to his brother Thomas after departing from New York on the Advance on 31 May 1853, Kane assured him that the object of his voyage was to find Franklin and that neither science nor the glory of reaching the unknown sea would divert him. But few people really believed Franklin had sailed in the direction Kane claimed, and there was always a niggling suspicion that he was using the magic of Franklin’s name to gain support for his own ambitions. Kane’s Second United States Grinnell Expedition arrived at the entrance to Smith Sound in the summer of 1853, but to the northwest it was blocked by ice. Setting a course to the northeast, Kane sailed to Rensselaer Harbor on the northwest coast of Greenland, where he established his winter quarters. In the spring, Kane dispatched a party under Isaac Israel Hayes westward across Smith Sound, while he himself penetrated Smith Sound into Kane Basin to discover the 60-mile-long Humboldt Glacier. Another party explored north of the glacier and reached a channel opening northward from Kane Basin, which they named the Kennedy, following it to Cape Constitution at its northern end. All intentions of advancing on the Pole were abandoned when Kane’s ship was held fast in the ice for a second winter and eventually the crew was compelled to make an adventurous journey in three of the ship’s boats to the Danish settlement at Upernavik, 1,300 miles down the Greenland coast. On their arrival, they were welcomed by a relief expedition under Lt. Henry J. Harstene, USN, that had recently sailed in. Kane returned to New York on 11 October 1855 to find himself a national hero. In truth, his expedition had more to do with reaching

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the North Pole than searching for Franklin or the discovery of a northwest passage—unless, that is, the discovery of a circumpolar sea offered a viable direct route to the Bering Strait. KAYAKS. Used for fishing and other purposes, Inuit kayaks were constructed of a framework of light driftwood covered with sealskins sewn together and waterproofed by layers of seal oil. They were powered by a single kayaker sitting in a hatch in the middle with a double-bladed paddle. Around the kayaker were laced skins to prevent water from entering and capsizing him. Adapting the traditional kayak in 1907, Johann Klepper used a folding frame skeleton to strengthen a rubber and canvas hull, providing stability and allowing the craft to be packed into bags and portaged. On his descent of the Back River in 1962, Robert Cundy used light, decked-in armed services kayaks similar to those navigated by Royal Marines on their celebrated upriver raid on the French port of Bordeaux in World War II. See also UMIAKS. KELLETT, HENRY (1806–1875). A vastly experienced Royal Navy officer, Kellett was conducting survey work off the Pacific coast of Central America in HMS Herald when, in summer 1848, he received instructions from the Admiralty to proceed to Kotzebue Sound. There he was to coordinate search operations for Sir John Franklin’s lost ships with Thomas Moore of HMS Plover. Waiting for the Plover to join him, Kellett sailed 100 miles to the north of Point Barrow, through uncharted, seemingly impenetrable waters, to the Wrangel and Herald Islands, tracing the complete line of the ice barrier between North American and Asian waters. In doing so, he reached farther north and farther west than any other ship hitherto. But he found no sign of Franklin. While stationed off Cape Lisburne, it was Kellett who on 1 August 1850 bid Robert McClure godspeed after unsuccessfully attempting to persuade him to wait for Richard Collinson. As fate would have it, Kellett and McClure would meet again three years later, under very different circumstances, in the eastern Arctic. When Sir Edward Belcher’s squadron was fitted out in the early months of 1852, Kellett was given command of its western division, consisting of HMS Resolute and HMS Intrepid (commanded by

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Francis Leopold McClintock), which was ordered to proceed west of Barrow Strait and to keep a weather eye open not only for Franklin but also for McClure. On 16 August the Resolute ran aground attempting to enter Assistance Bay on Cornwallis Island. Tons of provisions had to be moved to the shore before the Intrepid managed to refloat her. By early September, Kellett’s ships had arrived at Winter Harbor, the first to do so since William Edward Parry with the Hecla and the Griper in 1819. But unable to remain there, Kellett retreated to Skene Bay on Dealy Island, 40 miles to the east. With winter approaching, Kellett sent out sledge parties to reconnoiter. McClintock prepared for an expedition the next spring across Melville Island to the north, convinced that it was in that region where Franklin would most likely be found. Of more significance, however, was the journey of Lt. George Mecham, who was instructed to place a record of Kellett’s expedition at Winter Harbor. On his return journey, in a second examination there, Mecham found McClure’s record and chart, the first indication that a northwest passage had been found, if not actually traversed. By now winter had set in and a full-scale relief party had to wait until the following spring. It was not until 10 March 1853 that Bedford Pim departed on his momentous sledge journey. Kellett had given him a letter for McClure ‘‘requesting’’ him to ascertain by a full medical examination whether his men were fit enough to spend another winter in the Arctic. For his part, McClure was anxious that he be allowed to complete his mission, and if the Investigator was to be abandoned, it would be Kellett’s decision and not his. McClure set out with Pim for Dealy Island on 9 April. By 16 May he was back at his ship together with Kellett’s doctors, who declined to give approval for the Investigator’s crew to continue their voyage. At this stage, Kellett displayed his ability to take a broad view of events and to accept responsibility for making far-reaching decisions. In addition to Pim’s party, he had dispatched McClintock to Melville Island and to the Prince Patrick Islands, Mecham to another area of these islands, and Lt. Richard Vesey Hamilton to Melville Island. In aggregate, these expeditions explored 3,200 miles. He had also found sufficient personnel to conduct Samuel Cresswell and the most unfit of the Investigator’s crew to Beechey Island. The harsh winter of 1853–1854 prevented Kellett from rejoining

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Belcher. The Resolute and the Intrepid, both packed with officers and men from the Investigator, could make only 150 miles eastward before being hemmed in by the ice. In the spring of 1854, on Belcher’s orders and under protest, Kellett abandoned his ships and made his way to Beechey Island, to be picked up by HMS North Star (commanded by William Pullen). It was an ignominious ending, but Kellett’s well-organized expedition and search parties had succeeded in rescuing McClure, who for all his protestations was on the brink of disaster. KENNEDY, WILLIAM (1814–1890). A former Hudson’s Bay Company fur trader, Kennedy was recommended by a former colleague to Lady Jane Franklin as a suitable commander of her 1851–1852 private expedition in search of her husband Sir John Franklin. On 3 June 1851, he sailed from Stromness in the Orkney Islands on the Prince Albert with a crew of 17. Despite Admiralty opposition, his second-in-command was Joseph-Rene´ Bellot of the Imperial French Navy. In July the Prince Albert was trapped in the ice off Upernavik, Greenland, in company with Edwin Jesse De Haven’s Advance and Rescue, with whom he quickly established very cordial relations. The Prince Albert was unable to enter Lancaster Sound until 26 August, by which time the travel season was virtually over. His instructions were to sail down Prince Regent Inlet, to find a winter harbor, and then to cross Somerset Island and sledge down the west coast of Boothia Peninsula. While engaged on a reconnaissance of Port Leopold on Somerset Island’s northeastern shore in September, Kennedy and four of the crew were separated from the Prince Albert by shifting ice, which carried the ship south. The party was rescued by Bellot, at the third attempt, five weeks later. Frozen in for the winter at Batty Bay, south of Port Leopold, Kennedy’s rugged approach to winter sledging was evident when he set off on 28 February 1852 to explore southward. After a stop at Fury Beach, he continued down the coast and arrived at Brentford Bay on 5 April. At this point, he intended to follow instructions and cross to the western side of the peninsula. Eight men returned north to the Prince Albert, and the traveling party of Kennedy, Bellot, and four

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others proceeded southwest. Two days later, they discovered a channel leading west that at first they thought was an extension of Brentford Bay. In fact it was Bellot Strait, dividing Somerset Island from the Boothia Peninsula. At the western end of the strait, where Peel Sound meets Franklin Strait, Kennedy, in poor visibility, imagined he saw continuous land across Peel Sound to the north and concluded that Franklin could not possibly have sailed from that direction. So, instead of exploring Boothia’s west coast as ordered, he moved west across the ice, attempting to find open sea. Not for the first time, it had proven difficult to distinguish frozen sea from land—especially when both were covered by snow. But it was a crucial error: a first-class opportunity to discover what had happened to Franklin was allowed to go begging. If only they had pushed south to the east side of King William Island, they might well have picked up vital information from the Inuit. Kennedy returned to the Prince Albert via Cape Walker on 30 May, having completed 1,100 miles on foot. KING, RICHARD (1810–1876). Appointed surgeon-naturalist and second-in-command of George Back’s 1833–1835 Arctic land expedition, whose primary objective was to find and relieve John Ross’s long-overdue 1829 voyage to Prince Regent Inlet, Richard King had long been convinced that the best prospect of discovering a northwest passage was by land. When news arrived that Ross had safely returned to England, Back was instructed to concentrate on his second objective—completing an examination of the continental coastline of the northeastern extremity of Canada. On their arrival at Point Ogle on the northwestern tip of Chantrey Inlet, King assessed the situation rather differently than Back. While agreeing that the channel ran westward, he considered the eastern shoreline to trend northeastward to the horizon, rightly judging that Back’s ‘‘Ripon Island’’ was part of a continuous mainland coast. After returning to England, King submitted a plan to the Colonial Office for himself and six men, based at the eastern end of Lake Athabasca, to travel via a chain of small lakes and a tributary river to the Great Fish River, slicing off 200 miles from Back’s route, and to arrive at the coast a clear month earlier. There would be time to spare, King argued, to make direct for Point Turnagain and then to return

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eastward to settle the geography of southern Boothia. Although unsuccessful in his bid for government support, King distributed 500 pamphlets to influential members of the public and simultaneously opened a subscription for £1,000 to finance his project. His campaign culminated in a large public meeting at the Literary Institution on 15 January 1836, where he outlined his proposals, arguing: The long agitated question of a north-west passage by Prince Regent’s Inlet will be set at rest for ever . . . one day’s sail, or two days labor and another anxious night beyond the ground I have already passed over, may lead to the discovery which has been a favorite project with England for nearly three centuries (Times [London], 16 January 1836, 6)

King’s next step was to approach Sir John Barrow in his capacity as president of the Royal Geographical Society. He could have had no realistic expectation of winning Barrow’s influential support: if he was correct, then the channel to be discovered bore no relation to Barrow’s dream of British naval squadrons sailing through the passage with pomp and majesty. For the moment, King departed from the Arctic debate, although, to some extent, the merit of his land approach appeared to be confirmed by Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson’s 1837–1839 expedition. Dramatically, and without a vestige of tact, King reappeared when preparations were in hand for Sir John Franklin’s 1845 voyage of discovery. In a series of open letters printed in the influential journal Athenaeum under the title ‘‘Polar Sea Expeditions and Polar Land Journeys,’’ King remonstrated with Barrow for his persistent support for 10 uneconomic and unsuccessful Royal Navy voyages. ‘‘Had you advocated in favor of the Polar Land Journey, with a tithe of the zeal that you have the Polar Sea Expeditions, the North West Passage would have long since ceased to be a problem.’’ He continued: ‘‘But what use have you made of the Polar Land Journeys? You have invariably made use of them to stir up a Polar Sea Expedition. . . . If you are really in earnest upon this subject, you have but one course to pursue, search for the truth, and value it when you find it’’ (Athenaeum, 11 January 1845). King’s own proposal was for a party of two officers, one of them a doctor, a boat carpenter, and 13 men to set out from Montreal sufficiently early to reach Lake Athabasca by July in time to prepare two

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expeditions for the following summer: one to descend the Coppermine River to trace Victoria Land westward ‘‘with a view of testing its value relatively to the north-west passage,’’ the other to go down the Great Fish River ‘‘to ascertain the connexion of the main land with that of North Somerset, or with Melville Island’’ (Athenaeum, 1 February 1845). But, as a civilian, King was up against the whole might of the naval establishment that was further angered by his all too public verdict that ‘‘Another fruitless Polar Sea Expedition, and fruitless it will assuredly be . . . will be a lasting blot in the annals of our voyages of discovery’’ (Athenaeum, 15 March 1845). King reemerged once more when it became clear that something disastrous had happened to Franklin’s expedition. He insisted that the Great Fish River route offered the best chance of rescuing Franklin in time, reasoning that Franklin had probably been blocked by ice between Banks Land and Melville Island and would make for the west coast of Somerset Island in his boats and follow it south to the Boothia Peninsula and the estuary of the Great Fish. Inuit reports to John Rae of 35–40 bodies being found on a seashore within a day’s march of the mouth of a large river suggested Point Ogle as the location and appeared to conform to King’s theory. It was King’s misfortune never to be heeded, although he was proved right more often than not. He remains one of the most curious and complicated individuals in the discovery and exploration of the Northwest Passage, whose talents were largely ignored because of his own personality and shortcomings. KING GEORGE’S SOUND. See NOOTKA SOUND. KING GEORGE’S SOUND COMPANY. Richard Cadman Etches founded the King George’s Sound Company in 1785 together with his brother, John Etches, a leading figure of the day famous for calling for projects to convert the discoveries of James Cook to practical national benefit. Their aim was to establish trading posts on the northwest coast of America to obtain furs that could be sold at vast profits in China or Japan. George Dixon, Charles Duncan, and Nathaniel Portlock all sailed to the northwest coast primarily to engage in trade and only secondly to examine the coastline for possible channels across the continent.

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KING WILLIAM ISLAND. Situated north of the Canadian mainland between the Boothia Peninsula and Victoria Island and forming the southeastern corner of the Unexplored Quadrilateral, this 5,000square-mile island was first sighted and partially explored by James Clark Ross in 1830. He named it King William Land, believing it to be a peninsula. Its insularity was virtually determined by Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson in 1839 and confirmed by John Rae in 1854, although Richard King had long suspected and proclaimed this to be so. The first reliable information pointing to King William Island as the location site of the final days of the ill-fated 1845–1848 expedition of Sir John Franklin emerged from Rae’s 1853–1854 exploration of southern Boothia. Five years later, Francis Leopold McClintock and William Hobson discovered the campsites and some relics of the Franklin survivors on the island’s northwestern coast. Since then, continuing in the early years of the 21st century, King William Island has attracted numerous expeditions to its shores either to recover more remains of Francis Crozier’s retreat to the mainland or to retrieve Franklin’s logbooks and journal. See also FRANKLIN’S THIRD ARCTIC EXPEDITION; VICTORY POINT DOCUMENT. KING WILLIAM LAND. See KING WILLIAM ISLAND. KNIGHT, JAMES (1640–1721?). In his late sixties but with a lifetime’s service to the Hudson’s Bay Company behind him, including a 1692–1700 spell as governor in Hudson Bay, James Knight sailed to York Factory, the most northerly of the company’s trading posts, between the Hayes and Nelson Rivers, for a second term as governor in 1714. Officially his prime objective was to reestablish the fur trade on a sound basis after the disruption caused by the French wars, which had recently been ended by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). But equally significant was the prospect of locating valuable deposits of mineral ore, copper, and perhaps gold that were persistently rumored to be there for the taking far into the interior. During Knight’s first winter at York Factory, Thanadelthur, a Chipewyan woman, sought refuge there. She was to play an important part in Knight’s plans and greatly influenced his thinking by her

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account of a land rich in fur animals washed by a ‘‘Large River or Streights.’’ In June 1715, desperately needing more precise information, Knight dispatched William Stuart, accompanied by Thanadelthur as an interpreter, on a mission to persuade the Chipewyan and Cree Indians to cease their unremitting hostilities. Stuart was also instructed to investigate the rumors of mineral deposits and to assess the fur trading potential in Chipewyan territory. Reports from Indians who accompanied Stuart back to York Factory in May 1716 convinced Knight that copper and gold could be mined in commercially viable quantities in a remote region far inland from the bay but in close proximity to a large sea. Thanadelthur’s story appeared to be confirmed and corroborated. In reality, it was probably Great Slave Lake that the Chipewyan were referring to, but with growing excitement, Knight began to surmise that a sea route to Asia was within his grasp. He established a trading post at the mouth of the Churchill River, farther up the bay, that could serve as a forward base for land or sea expeditions. At first he toyed with the idea of persuading the Indians to bring their furs and minerals to Churchill, sending Robert Norton on a new reconnaissance and diplomatic mission, but in view of the vast distances involved, Knight concluded that the quickest and most convenient trading route would be by sea if a passage could be found. He was encouraged by Indian maps, drawn at his instigation, showing 17 rivers emptying in the sea to the north. He regarded the most distant and largest of these rivers, flowing through the copper country, as the probable channel to the Pacific Ocean. Knight sailed for England in 1718 to prevail upon the Hudson’s Bay Company to act on his plea to fit out a voyage of discovery in search of precious metals through a northwest passage. It is not certain whether he was able to convince the company of the merits of his proposals outright or was forced to threaten an approach to the Crown. In any event, an agreement was sealed on May 1, 1719, by which Knight contributed one-eighth of the expedition’s cost. Two ships, the Albany and the Discovery, were placed at his disposal. He departed the Thames in June 1719 together with two regular company supply ships. Knight’s orders were stark, uncluttered with detail: he was ‘‘to find out the Strait of Anian by order to Discover Gold and Other Valuable Commodities to the Northward.’’ It is likely

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that he intended to make his initial search for a seaway in the vicinity of Roe’s Welcome Sound, north of 64 N, since it was there that Luke Foxe had conjectured the passage was to be found. Within the bay, the supply ships sailed to the company’s trading posts, while Knight set a more northerly course and disappeared into the mists forever. When Knight failed to return by the end of the year, it was assumed in London that he was wintering in the bay, and when 1720 passed without a word, hopes were raised that he had found a passage to the Pacific. But eventually the truth had to be faced: the expedition had ended in disaster. The first scraps of information were received from Henry Kelsey, Knight’s successor as governor, who had observed various items belonging to the Albany in the sea while on a voyage north but who had apparently not exerted himself overmuch to find out more. In 1767, two whaling ships, the Success and the Churchill, set up a temporary camp on Marble Island and found a previously unknown harbor together with the ruins of a building whose foundations measured 47 feet by 29 feet. Scattered about were clothing, a great mass of bricks, and piles of wood chips. Samuel Hearne, mate in the Churchill, examined a number of graves and discovered the wrecks of two ships in five fathoms of water. Two years later Hearne was again on the island and found an old man who vividly described the last days of the wreck’s survivors. All had eventually perished from starvation. Two centuries elapsed before archaeological fieldwork by Ralph Smith and Owen Beattie pieced together a credible account of what had actually happened. See also SEVENTEEN RIVERS FROM CHURCHILL. KNIGHT, JOHN (?–1606). The inconclusive results of George Waymouth’s 1602 voyage did not deter the merchants of the East India Company from persevering with their attempts to discover a viable northwest passage. In 1605 they formed a syndicate with the Muscovy Company under the name of the Society of English Merchants for the Discovery of New Trades. John Knight, an experienced Arctic mariner, was commissioned to make a further search. Knight set sail from Gravesend on 18 April 1606 in the Hopewell, a small 40-ton bark. Land was eventually sighted at latitude 5685⬘

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N. The Hopewell was made fast to an iceberg but foul weather on 14 June caused severe damage. A temporary haven was found on shore and the ship made fast, but another storm 10 days later led to further damage. On 26 June, hoping to find a more convenient harbor to repair his ship, Knight, together with his mate and three seamen armed with muskets, set out in a small boat to explore a large island near Cape Grimington. On landing, two men remained to guard the boat and Knight and the rest of the exploring party disappeared over a hill and were never seen again. It was assumed they had been killed by Inuit. The Hopewell managed to limp back to England. KOTZEBUE, OTTO VON (1787–1846). The Russian reasoning behind Kotzebue’s exploration of the Bering Strait and Alaska regions on his circumnavigation in the Rurik in 1815–1818 is outlined in Adm. Ivan Krusenstern’s introduction to the printed account of the voyage. With regard to the attempt to find a passage from the south of Kamschatka to the Atlantic Ocean, or from west to east, the endeavor of Captains Cook and Clerke in Bering Strait, left but little hope of penetrating farther to the north . . . but there were parts of the coast of America, both to the north and south of Bering Straits, which those celebrated navigators could not explore; a circumstance which, at least, left a spark of hope that some inlet might be found in those parts, connecting if not directly with Baffin’s Bay, yet with some river falling into the Frozen Sea. (Otto von Kotzebue, A Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Beering’s Straits, for the Purpose of Exploring a North-East Passage [1821])

Although John Barrow took heart from Kotzebue’s observation that the constant northeastern current in Bering Strait proved that the water met with no opposition and that, consequently, a passage must exist, he was appalled at the prospect of a Russian ship emerging out of the ice into the North Atlantic. Even the possibility accelerated British preparations for a discovery voyage. –L– LA CHINE RAPIDS. A series of impassable rapids, falling 42 feet in two miles, situated near Montreal on the St. Lawrence River, 1,000

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miles from the open sea, that put paid to Jacques Cartier’s hope that the river would prove to be the passage to the Pacific he was seeking. It is said that it was Rene´ Robert Chevalier, Sieur de La Salle (1643– 1687), not Cartier, who bitterly named them La Chine (China). LADY FRANKLIN MEMORIAL EXPEDITION. See WADHAMS, PETER. LA FRANCE, JOSEPH (c. 1704–c. 1749). A renowned coureur de bois, La France arrived at York Factory in 1742 by a roundabout route from Montreal. Since all Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts were off-limits to French nationals, he was promptly shipped off to England. La France caught the imagination of Arthur Dobbs with a map of his travels he chalked out on the floor of a London house, and Dobbs obtained a post for him at the Admiralty on the curious premise that he would prove useful in the discovery of a passage westward. See also MAPS AND MAPMAKING, INDIAN AND INUIT. LANCASTER SOUND. Together with Davis Strait and Baffin Bay, Lancaster Sound constitutes the eastern approach to the Northwest Passage. It runs for 160 miles west from the bay, between Devon Island and Baffin Island, to Prince Leopold Island, making it the direct route through the Canadian Arctic into the Beaufort Sea. It was first discovered by William Baffin in 1616, although its significance as the channel he was seeking passed unnoticed at the time. After John Ross’s Croker Mountains fiasco, William Edward Parry was the first to sail through the sound in 1819. LA PE´ ROUSE, JEAN-FRANC ¸ OIS DE GALAUP, COMTE DE (1741–1788?). La Pe´rouse first entered the history of the Northwest Passage in 1742 when he commanded a naval squadron that successfully attacked the Hudson’s Bay Company post at Churchill. The fort surrendered without offering any resistance, and among those captured was Samuel Hearne. But it was on the other side of the continent that La Pe´rouse made a deliberate search for a transcontinental waterway. His expedition in the Boussole, accompanied by Paul-Antoine-

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Marie Fleuriot de Langle in the Astrolabe, that sailed out of Brest harbor on 1 August 1785 was mounted by the French government in order to follow up James Cook’s explorations in the Pacific, to keep a close eye on Russian expansion on the northwest coast of America, and to explore those parts of the coast missed by Cook. In particular he was to examine in some detail the coastline between latitudes 45 N and 55 N where the channel supposedly discovered by Juan de Fuca might be located. Sighting Mount St. Elias on 23 June 1786, La Pe´rouse sailed eastward and, at latitude 5852⬘ N, discovered an uncharted inlet he named Port de Franc¸ais. It was not a channel that initially promised easy navigation, but it opened into two branches that gave rise to notions of a meaningful discovery. Even La Pe´rouse himself, a decided skeptic as to the probability of a passage eastward to either Hudson Bay or the Atlantic Ocean, was encouraged to believe that the longsought passage had at last been found. However, shortly afterward, both channels closed. Sailing south past the Alexander Archipelago and the Queen Charlotte Islands, La Pe´ rouse missed both Nootka Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca because of poor visibility in thick fog. The Boussole and Astrolabe arrived at Monterey on 14 September 1786. LARSEN, HENRY ASBJORN (1899–1964). A Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant, Larsen was the first man to navigate the Northwest Passage in both directions, west to east and east to west. He departed from Vancouver in the St. Roch, a trimasted auxiliary schooner with a single 150-horsepower diesel engine, on 23 June 1940 to deliver supplies to RCMP outposts in the western Arctic and to reassert Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic Archipelago. He passed through the Bering Strait and rounded Point Barrow a month later. Because of heavy ice conditions, Larsen took three weeks to arrive at Herschel Island. He pushed on to Cambridge Bay, off the southeastern coast of Victoria Island, the St. Roch’s customary winter quarters, but fears of being crushed in the ice there prompted him to turn about to the more sheltered, western side of the island and Walker Bay, where he was frozen in from 25 September 1940 through 31 July 1941. Routine police duties delayed him, but Larsen left Cambridge Bay

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on 20 August 1941 and threaded his way through the islands of Queen Maud Gulf to arrive at Gjøa Haven a week later. Despite ice coming south, Larsen steered the St. Roch northeast across the sound, now named after him, to Pasley Bay on the west coast of the Boothia Peninsula, where, after running aground, he anchored inshore. There he remained until 3 August 1942, when he used explosives to break out of the ice and so avert another winter incarcerated. Constantly ramming the ice and hampered by a cracked cylinder, it took the St. Roch almost four weeks to complete the 60 miles north to Bellot Strait. An equally perilous journey through the strait brought Larsen to the Hudson’s Bay Company post at Fort Ross. From here he was able to head up Prince Regent Inlet, racing the re-forming ice into Lancaster Sound and Baffin Bay to reach Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 11 October. The laconic Larsen confirmed that it had not been an easy trip! Sailing from Halifax on 22 July 1944, Larsen returned to Vancouver again through the Northwest Passage, but by a different route. From the west coast of Greenland, he crossed Baffin Bay and entered Lancaster Sound via the RCMP post at Pond Inlet, Eclipse Sound, and Navy Board Inlet. He sailed north across Lancaster Sound to the southern shore of Devon Island and inspected the deserted RCMP post at Cape Dundas before heading for Beechey Island. Anchoring in Erebus Bay, Larsen and his detachment went ashore to the Franklin Monument dedicated to Sir John Franklin’s 1845– 1848 voyage and examined William Pullen’s store depot, Northumberland House, which had been prepared for Edward Belcher’s squadron. They also found Joseph Bernier’s 1906 cairn and records before leaving on 22 August. Larsen’s course next took him past Cape Hotham, Cornwallis Island, and Wellington Channel, north of Griffiths, Somerville, and Brown islands, to Bathurst Island, dropping anchor off Cape Cockburn. On Byam Martin Island, he erected a small cairn and deposited a record of his visit. By 26 August he was on his way to Melville Island, where he positioned another cairn before sailing to Dealy Island. There Henry Kellett’s cairn, built in 1853, and the scattered remains of his cache were inspected. Rifles, ammunition, and the records left by Bernier in 1909 were also found. Next it was to Winter

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Harbor, where they visited Parry’s Rock and Bernier’s sovereignty memorial. At the end of August, the St. Roch was at the entrance to McClure Channel. Larsen changed course southward down Prince of Wales Strait to reach Walker Bay, where he had spent the 1940–1941 winter on his outward voyage. By now his westward passage was virtually completed, but the St. Roch was pushed to the limit to win a race with the ice to round Point Barrow. Passing through the Bering Strait on 27 September, Larsen reached Vancouver Harbor on 16 October 1944, having sailed 7,300 miles in just over 12 weeks. It was an amazing achievement. Larsen was garlanded with honors, including the Polar Medal from King George VI, the Patron’s Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, a fellowship of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and a similar honor from the Arctic Institute of North America. Half a century later, it was revealed that when Larsen departed from Vancouver in 1940 he had orders to establish a secret Canadian presence in Greenland to deter a possible German invasion in order to sabotage the only supply of cryolite available to Great Britain in World War II. This mission was eventually canceled, but it remains a curious episode in the history of the Northwest Passage. See also BURTON, KEN. LEAD POISONING. The first serious claim that lead poisoning was a major factor in the death of so many crew members of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition in 1845–1848 was put forward by Owen Beattie after detecting ‘‘elevated bone lead levels’’ in the bodies he exhumed on Beechey Island in 1984 and 1986. He believed these toxic levels of lead were derived from flawed soldering of the canisters containing preserved meats and soups supplied to the Admiralty for use by the Sir John Franklin’s expedition. Since then, a corpus of scientific opinion has lined up against Beattie’s conclusion. Crucial to this contrary opinion is that the early loss of three crew members was not an unusually high death rate among northern expeditions. Moreover, all three bodies exhumed showed unmistakable signs of other diseases, exposing them to a high risk of death in Arctic conditions. In fact, the counterargument runs, the surprise lies in the fact that so few men met an early death rather than

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that three had died in the first winter. No doubt there are powerful arguments on both sides. See also FOOD POISONING. LEADS. Narrow channels in a sea ice field through which trapped ships might sail to safety. Leads are transient phenomena, not permanent exits from the ice. LENTZ, JOHN W. (1936– ). A member of Austin Hoyt’s 1962 canoe party down the Back River, Lentz led a team of his own 170 miles down the Hood River from Lake 1595 to its mouth, 14 July–7 August 1983. At Wilberforce Falls, using metal detectors, he recovered three ax heads and some other John Franklin artifacts. At the river’s mouth on Bathurst Inlet, a three-day search to locate a box known to have contained Franklin’s planned return route to Fort Enterprise was unsuccessful. LEWIS, MERIWETHER (1774–1809), AND WILLIAM CLARK (1770–1838). The epic story of the 1803–1806 Corps of Discovery Expedition of the U.S. Army belongs more properly to the history of the United States advance westward across the continent after the Louisiana Purchase than to the discovery of a northwest passage. But significantly, President Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) had read Alexander Mackenzie’s 1801 account of his journeys to the Arctic and Pacific oceans, which ended with chapters on the rise, progress, and present state of the North American fur trade. Jefferson immediately realized that a practicable waterway across the United States’ newly purchased territory, if one could be found, would enable it to control this highly lucrative fur trade. Consequently, in the detailed instructions the president drew up for Captain Lewis, he expressed his hopes that an overland water route, a northwest passage to the Pacific, would be discovered. In the event, Lewis and Clark’s travels proved conclusively, once and for all, that a transcontinental passage did not exist. LOBSTICKS. A peculiarly Canadian form of trail blazing. In country below the tree line, early explorers lopped off all except the topmost branches of prominent trees to provide a guide to later travelers.

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LOK, MICHAEL (1532–1615). A prominent London merchant and trader, Lok was instrumental in obtaining the necessary financial backing for Martin Frobisher’s three voyages, from 1576 through 1578, forming the Company of Cathay for this purpose in March 1577. He was a member of the Muscovy Company committee that turned down Frobisher’s 1574 proposal, but later changed his mind and invested heavily in the voyages himself, much to his detriment. At one stage he was imprisoned for debt, but perhaps the unkindest cut of all was Frobisher’s accusation that he had cozened the company of £3,000. LOW, ALBERT PETER (1861–1947). After conducting several missions for the Geological Survey of Canada—Lake Winnipeg and the Hudson Bay region (1886); Labrador (1892–1894); and the eastern shores of Hudson Bay (1902)—Low was dispatched in 1903 in DGS Neptune to patrol the waters of Hudson Bay and the Arctic Archipelago. Prompted by the explorations of Roald Amundsen, Robert Peary (1856–1920), and Otto Sverdrup (1855–1930), the prime purpose of his voyage was to plant the flag at various localities throughout the Arctic and so assert Canada’s sovereignty. Accompanied by Major Moodie and a detachment of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, as well as a scientific team, Low was appointed a justice of the peace with authority to enforce Canada’s fishery laws. In 1904 the Neptune passed through the Northwest Passage as far as Port Leopold on the northeastern shore of Somerset Island. LYON, GEORGE FRANCIS (1795–1832). A Royal Navy officer with experience of exploration in the Sahara Desert (!), George Lyon was appointed commander of HMS Hecla on William Edward Parry’s 1821–1823 voyage to the northern recesses of Hudson Bay. It is said that he played a significant part in creating friendly Anglo–Inuit relations on that otherwise undistinguished expedition. In 1824 Lyon was given the 180-ton HMS Griper and instructed to sail to Repulse Bay, cross the Melville Peninsula, and continue westward along the coast to Point Turnagain on the Kent Peninsula, the easternmost point reached by John Franklin on 18 August 1821 after his epic voyage by canoe from the mouth of the Coppermine

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River. This was a tall order—even taller in the light of modern geographical knowledge. Unknown to the Admiralty, the route put forward involved crossing not only the Rae Isthmus but also the continental hinterland of the Boothia Peninsula. In fact, the Griper was prevented from ever reaching Repulse Bay. Described by Parry as ‘‘a vessel of such lubberly shameful construction as to baffle the ingenuity of the most ingenious seaman in England to do anything with her’’ (Ann Parry, Parry of the Arctic [1963], 95), the Griper was towed across the Atlantic to face the rigor of Hudson Bay alone. Her deficiencies and misfortunes were many and varied: inaccurate charts, unreliable compasses, hurricane-force winds, pitching seas, menacing ice floes, dangerous shores, and parted cable anchors. On 13 September the Griper faced a cold dismal morning, laying broadside to the sea without an anchor and with an exhausted crew—to say nothing of a fresh water shortage. Lyon and his officers unanimously decided to return to England. Apart from the seamanship displayed by Lyon to coax the Griper across the North Atlantic, pounded by the autumn gales, and back to Portsmouth, this was not an auspicious voyage. –M– MACINNIS, JEFF (1962– ). Driven by a sense of history and an ambition to become the first to traverse the Northwest Passage by wind power alone, Jeff MacInnis fitted out a fiberglass 18-foot catamaran, the Perception, with a ‘‘tonnage’’ of just 700 pounds, and with Mark Beedell, an experienced Arctic photographer, he sailed from Inuvik, above the mouth of the Mackenzie River, to Pond Inlet on the northern coast of Baffin Island over three summer seasons, 1986–1988. In the first season, MacInnis and Beedell left Inuvik on 20 July and followed the mainland coast before slipping across the eastern entrance to Dolphin and Union Strait and sailing along the south coast of Victoria Island to reach Cambridge Bay on 29 August. Resuming their voyage in the spring of 1987, the Perception was trapped in the ice in the southern reaches of Victoria Strait and taken on an involuntary 80-mile circular detour before being released. Despite this setback, the two sailed and hauled their craft more than

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1,000 miles through Queen Maud Gulf, around King William Island, and up James Ross Strait, Franklin Strait, and Peel Sound. On 7 September, after the Perception’s hull was punctured and she began shipping water, MacInnis and Beedell were forced ashore at Cape Anne on Aston Bay on the northwest coast of Somerset Island. This perilous episode marked the end of the 1987 summer sailing season. The comparatively short stretch to Pond Inlet was completed by 17 August 1988. A final entry in MacInnis’s journal for that day reported that the Perception had been the ideal craft for the voyage. In light wind she glides along swiftly and in storms she is stable, though frighteningly wet, and she can be beached when the going gets too tough. When ice is an obstacle she can, with considerable effort, be hauled up and over the ice by her crew. In fact, she embodies the watchword for survival in the Arctic—adaptability. (‘‘Braving the Northwest Passage,’’ National Geographic 175, no. 5 [May 1989], 584–601)

MACINNIS, JOSEPH BEVERLEY (1937– ). In August 1970, Joseph MacInnis camped on the eastern shore of Resolute Bay to investigate and examine systems and techniques that would allow divers to work safely and efficiently underwater. Five years later, with photographer Rick Mason, he dived in the waters of Erebus Bay, off Beechey Island, where Mason retrieved a piece of wood, hammered with four copper nails, from the ocean floor. This spurred MacInnis’s ambition to find a shipwreck beneath the ice to provide a definite objective for a scientific research program into marine biology in Arctic waters, using modern diving techniques aided by the latest cameras and underwater lighting equipment. After desk research at the Scott Polar Research Institute, MacInnis embarked upon a dogged campaign for funds and equipment to find the Breadalbane, lost in the ice in Erebus Bay in 1853. With a fully equipped expedition and a film crew, he conducted a search of the seabed in August 1978, using a side-scan sonar, but with no positive results. Plans for a second expedition in 1979 matured when MacInnis’s three-man team flew to Resolute Bay on 19 September. An immediate crisis awaited them: the icebreaker scheduled to take them to Beechey Island was forced to steer back to base lest the gathering ice ahead prevent them from returning home at all that season. Fortu-

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nately, the Canadian Coast Guard agreed to put the Labrador (commanded by Capt. Claude Green) at their disposal, on the condition that the MacInnis Foundation would cover her fuel costs, estimated at $5,000–9,000 a day. MacInnis successfully appealed to Dome Petroleum for extra funding, and the deal was done. The Labrador arrived from Pond Inlet on 27 September, battering her way through heavy ice to open water south of Beechey Island. After several days of unremitting exertion, it became all too apparent that no more could be attempted that year. In 1980 MacInnis pulled out all the stops for what would have to be the final attempt at locating the Breadalbane. The Ministry of Transport agreed that Canada’s newest icebreaker, the John E. MacDonald (under Capt. Steve Gomez), would assist him for three days, provided that she was not required for other duties. Telefax Equipment of Toronto provided, on an expenses-only basis, its yardstick finding equipment by which two onshore stations, two miles apart, received a constant signal from the computerized master station on board the John E. MacDonald. This triangular measuring system signified that, if the Breadalbane was located, its precise position could be plotted to within a yard. On 12 August MacInnis was on his way to Resolute once more. The next day, they were in position in far more favorable weather conditions than in previous years. As it happened, the Breadalbane was located almost at once. Twelve separate passes were made over the sunken ship, each providing a different view etched on the recorder’s printout paper. A large red marker buoy was placed on the surface before the triumphant MacInnis returned home, vindicated at last. A scientific expedition was planned for 1981 with marine geology, sea-ice study, marine biology, maritime archaeology, and maritime history all to be represented, but officialdom—in the shape of the Interdepartmental Committee on Archaeology, which incorporated federal and territorial agencies responsible for archaeological protection and research in the Northwest Territories—refused to license the project. But this did not stop MacInnis from taking photographs. For this, he used a small remotely controlled underwater vessel equipped with two searchlights and a television camera hoisted over the side of another icebreaker, the Pierre Radisson (under Capt. Paul

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Pelland), by a nine-ton deck crane and lowered 50 fathoms to examine the Breadalbane at close quarters. At last, in April and May 1983, Phil Nuytten made the first manned dives on the submerged ship. By 5 May the underwater vessel had made five dives, resulting in 1,200 still-frame photographs. A slight tension existed between MacInnis’s team and Robert Grenier of Parks Canada and Charles Arnold from the Prince of Wales Heritage Center, but both acquiesced in the recovery of the Breadalbane’s wheel, which was subsequently presented to Parks Canada for conservation. Joe MacInnis’s odyssey was finally completed. In May 1993, following up David C. Woodman’s Project Ootjoolik, MacInnis went to King William Island to search for one of Sir John Franklin’s lost ships believed to be in the vicinity of Kirkwall Island, but all that was revealed by his sector scanning sonar system was a flat muddy seabed. MACKENZIE, ALEXANDER (1764–1820). In October 1784 the Montreal-based North West Company announced its intention to extend its fur-trading operations to all that country between latitudes 55 and 65 N west of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s sphere of activities. Alexander Mackenzie, who had taken over the North West Company’s trading post 40 miles up the Athabaska River from Peter Pond in 1788, was ordered to search for a waterway through the continent from Athabaska to the Pacific Ocean. Both the company and Mackenzie were deceived by Pond’s seriously underdistanced maps into thinking that by following the great river flowing from the western end of Great Slave Lake, he would soon reach the Pacific. Setting off on 3 June 1789 from Fort Chipewyan on the southern shore of Lake Athabaska, along with four French-Canadian voyageurs and a number of Indian guides, Mackenzie made slow progress, delayed first by the large number of rapids on the Slave River and then by ice on Great Slave Lake. But once they entered the great river now known as the Mackenzie River, the expedition quickened speed, averaging 75 miles a day. For the first 300 miles, the river continued westward much as Pond had predicted, but at Camsell Bend, it turned north and continued northward until it emptied into the Frozen Ocean, which was reached on 12 July. After spending four days on an offshore island,

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Mackenzie returned upriver, arriving back at Fort Chipewyan on 12 September. The expedition had voyaged 3,000 miles in just 102 days. Mackenzie—and the company—was disappointed at the outcome of this momentous descent of the river, whose exploration at the time appeared to have no practical use for the company. From a northwest passage perspective, though, it was of the utmost importance. It quashed all speculation that the river linked up with Cook’s River and confirmed—if confirmation was necessary after Samuel Hearne’s discovery of the Coppermine River—that no passage extended westward from Hudson Bay. Mackenzie resumed his search for a river passage when he departed from Fort Chipewyan on 10 October 1792 to explore up the Peace River to its source in the Rocky Mountains in the hope of finding a parallel river flowing down the western slopes. He established a winter camp at the junction with the Smoky River, 250 miles west of Fort Chipewyan, before resuming his journey with seven men on 9 May 1793 to where the Parsnip and Finlay rivers unite to form the Peace River. Acting on Indian advice, he took the southern (Parsnip) branch and, after being enmeshed in a tortuous river system and forced to make laborious portages, he eventually descended the Dean River to reach the Pacific on 21 July. The next day, to commemorate his journey, the words ‘‘Alexander Mackenzie, From Canada, By Land’’ were painted in huge characters on a prominent rock in Dean Channel using a mixture of vermilion and animal grease. By 24 August the whole expedition party was back at Fort Chipewyan. Mackenzie’s expedition to the Pacific was a landmark in the exploration of North America, but for a second time there was disappointment: The many portages he had experienced undeniably presented a formidable barrier to commercial exploitation of the route he had pioneered. MACKENZIE, HERBERT. See RAE, JOHN. MACKENZIE, JOHN. See BREADALBANE. MACKENZIE RIVER. First discovered and explored by Alexander Mackenzie in 1789, the Mackenzie is the second-largest river in

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North America. Its ultimate headwater is the Finlay River in British Columbia, which flows eastwards into the Peace River and discharges into Lake Athabaska. As the Slave River, it continues into Great Slave Lake and then, as the Mackenzie, it wends its way northwestward for 1,100 miles before emptying into the Beaufort Sea through a 4,400-square-mile delta. MAGNETIC POLE. See NORTH MAGNETIC POLE. MAGUIRE, ROCHFORT (?–1867). Described as ‘‘a quick-witted man’’ (Noel Wright, Quest for Franklin [1959], 205), Comdr. Rochfort Maguire replaced T. E. Laws Moore as captain of the HMS Plover for 1852–1854, when she was stationed off Point Barrow acting as depot ship to Admiralty expeditions seeking intelligence on Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition. He later served on Lady Jane Franklin’s Fox under Francis Leopold McClintock. MALASPINA, ALEJANDRO (1754–1810). Appointed leader of the Spanish scientific circumnavigation voyage of 1789–1794, Malaspina sailed from Cadiz on 30 July 1789 with two corvettes, the Descubierta and the Atrevida. In addition to its scientific program, the expedition was to inquire into the true position of Spanish bases in North America vis-a`-vis Russian, British, and American incursions and to press home Spanish claims to sovereignty in the Pacific Ocean. The voyage also signaled that Spain had belatedly recognized that political advantages could be derived from large-scale exploring expeditions. Geographical and cartographical secrecy was no longer profitable. Malaspina arrived at Acapulco in May 1791, where fresh instructions from Madrid awaited him. The publication of Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado’s account of his alleged 1588 voyage through the Strait of Anian energized Spanish interest in a northwest passage. Malaspina was ordered to examine the coastline of America between latitudes 59 and 60 N to ascertain if a passage actually existed where Maldonado claimed. The Descubierta and the Atrevida sailed into the Gulf of Alaska exploring westward along the coast to the entrance of Yakutat Bay. With two longboats, Malaspina threaded his way toward the shore-

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line, attempting to avoid huge blocks of ice barring their way, until coming to a glacier. One seaman took audacious but unauthorized action, climbing a high point to look beyond the glacier, only to establish that no passage penetrated the mainland. Malaspina named this waterway Bahı´a del Desengan˜o (Disappointment Bay). After exploring other possible channels, he concluded that a passage simply did not exist in the latitudes that Maldonado reported. Malaspina voyaged south to Nootka Sound, where he made a search for an inland passage but his oceangoing ships were too cumbersome to explore the innumerable shallow inlets. In December 1791, when on the point of departing from Nootka Sound to continue his circumnavigation across the Pacific, he was alerted to the unnumbered waterways to be found in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. His enthusiasm for the discovery of a northwest passage was immediately reawakened, and he persuaded the viceroy that Francisco Antonio Mourelle, the designated leader of a forthcoming discovery voyage to the strait, should be replaced by two of his own officers, Dionisio Alcala´ Galiano and Cayetano Valde´s. MALDONADO, LORENZO FERRER. Rifling through the Archive of the Indies in Seville in June 1789 when engaged on preliminary desk research before Alejandro Malaspina’s 1789–1794 scientific expedition, a young naval officer stumbled on an account written by Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado, who claimed to have embarked on a northern expedition in February 1588. Studded with precise sailing directions, distances, and latitude measurements, this intriguing document narrated Maldonado’s voyage in detail. According to this document, after entering the 290-league-long Strait of Labrador (Davis Strait) and attaining a northernmost latitude of 72 N, Maldonado turned south and west-southwest before sighting a high land. Whether this was an island or mainland was uncertain, but, Maldonado stated unequivocally, if it was part of the mainland then it must be the opposite coast of New Spain. From here it was another 400 leagues, south to 60 N, where the Strait of Anian was to be found, 1,710 leagues distant from Spain. Entering the South Sea, Maldonado continued down the American coast to latitude 55 N without sighting any other strait, convincing him that if he followed the coast any farther, he would arrive at known points

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on the western coast of New Spain. Maldonado turned westward, and after four days’ sailing, at a rate of 30 leagues a day, he discovered ‘‘a very great country and grand sierras with a long coastline . . . according to good cosmography it seemed to us to be the country of the Tartars, or Catai [Cathay].’’ Following this coast northeastward, he found himself back at the strait. At its South Sea entrance was a harbor that he estimated could hold 500 ships. He dropped anchor and remained there for two months before retracing his route back to Spain. Contemporary Spanish opinion at the time Maldonado’s document came to light was divided: some thought it authentic; others were convinced that there was not a word of truth in it. Malaspina seems initially to have kept an open mind, but when Maldonado’s description of the northwest American coastline was not borne out by more recent English and Spanish voyages, or by his own explorations, his readiness to take Maldonado seriously could not be sustained. The document is printed in its entirety in English translation in Glyn Williams, Voyages of Delusion (2002), 423–30. ‘‘THE MAN WHO ATE HIS BOOTS.’’An affectionate and admiring sobriquet for John Franklin, who had been forced to eat, if not his boots, at least his worn-out moccasins, when journeying across the Barren Lands back to Fort Enterprise in October 1821. MAPS AND MAPPING, EUROPEAN. Speculative and fabricated cartography was prevalent in mapping the search for a northwest passage in its initial stages, before authentic discovery maps finally swept aside fanciful notions at the end of the 18th century. All other channels and passages having been dismissed as chimeras, the search for a passage was concentrated along and off the northern shores of Canada and through the islands of the Arctic Archipelago. 16th- and 17th-Century Maps. The North American coastline and its adjacent islands, sighted by English and Portuguese mariners in the late 15th and early 16th century, was at first considered to be an eastern extension of Asia, and it was not until cosmographers and cartographers groped to the conclusion that a previously unknown continent lay between western Europe and the easternmost shores of

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Asia that a passage, either to the north, or to the south, became ingrained on the European consciousness. Martin Waldseemu¨ller (1470?–1518?) was the first cartographer to depict a recognizable American continent. His 1507 world map showed a narrow channel dividing its northern and southern components, swathes of ocean to east and west and uncluttered open sea to the north. His authority for this, especially for the mountain range stretching all the way up the northwest coast, remains unclear. Was it based on factual reports—and, if so, what was their provenance?—or was it no more than fortuitous guesswork? Two cartographers working in the Netherlands influenced geographers and would-be discoverers in Tudor England. Gemma Frisius (1508–1555) believed Greenland to be an eastward extension of Asia. He thought that the Arctic Ocean was a horseshoe-shaped gulf centered around the North Pole and that a strait existed between Greenland and the northwest by which it was possible to sail to the southern parts of Asia. On his terrestrial globe, produced in collaboration with Gerard Mercator (1512–1594) at Louvain in 1537, northeastern Asia is joined to northwestern Europe by a land bridge across Greenland; America is depicted as an island, separated from the polar land bridge by the Fretum Arcticum sive Fretum Trium Fratrum (Arctic Strait or Strait of Three Brothers) in the region of latitudes 64–66 N. This strait broadens into a gulf trending westward, whose southern shores are described as Terra per Britannos Inventa (Lands Discovered by the British). The globe’s inscription strongly suggests the existence of a passage discovered either by Miguel and Vasques Corte-Real or possibly by John and Sebastian Cabot. Mercator copied Frisius’s configuration on his own 1538 world map and 1541 globe. The Arctic Strait also appeared on a 1540 world map drawn by Sebastian Munster (1489–1552), bearing the legend ‘‘Per Hoc Fretum Est ad Mouccas’’ (Through this strait there is a way to the Moluccas). English belief in the existence of a passage was greatly encouraged by these apparently authoritative maps, and there can be little doubt that they were instrumental in the promotion of discovery voyages in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods. In 1562 there appeared a geographical will o’ the wisp that was to confuse cartographers and navigators for the next two centuries. Giacomo Gastaldi (c. 1500–c. 1565), the official cartographer of the

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Venetian Republic, published a pamphlet, Universale Descrittione del Monde (A universal description of the world), that included a world map depicting the Strait of Anian separating the northeastern tip of Asia from the northwest promontory of America almost precisely where the Bering Strait is located. Only two years earlier, Gastaldi had drawn a map showing northeast Asia merging solidly with America. Eight years later the Strait of Anian appeared in the world’s first atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theater of the lands of the world), compiled by Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598). Incorporating the recent European voyages of discovery, mixed with 15th-century toponymy, here too is a recognizable though unnamed sea stretching westward above the Arctic Circle from a miniaturized Greenland. It passed between a circumpolar Terra Septentrionalis Incognita (Unknown Northern Land) and the unbroken shoreline of Nova Francia (New France), conjoined to America sive Nova India (America or New India), and on to Regnum Anian (the Kingdom of Anian) in a suspiciously straight line apart from a southern indentation that, with a little cartographic license, is vaguely reminiscent of Prince Regent Inlet and Peel Sound. Undoubtedly influenced by Ortelius, Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s ‘‘General Map Made Only For The Particular Declaration Of This Discovery,’’ which was included in his Discourse of a Discoverie for a Newe Passage to Cataia [Cathay] (1576), was obviously designed to illustrate the supposed advantages of a northwest rather than a northeast passage for English merchant adventurers, delineating an uncluttered passage around the southern tip of Greenland, through the Strait of Anian, and into the Pacific. George Best’s 1578 schematic map of Martin Frobisher’s discoveries, which depicted an uninterrupted passage through Frobisher’s Straits, showing ‘‘the way trending to Cathaia’’ around the northern tip of the ‘‘supposed firmeland of America,’’ further promoted the existence of a northwestern sea route to the Orient. Michael Lok, another Frobisher associate, attempted to collate and to map existing knowledge and conjectures relating to North America and a northwest passage in a map printed in Richard Hakluyt’s Divers Voyages (1582). This represented Frobisher’s route as leading into a great sea extending south from the North Pole

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as far as latitude 45 N, including the Sea of Verrazzano, just north of the Appalachian Mountains and separated from the Atlantic Ocean by a very narrow strip of land. Portuguese, Spanish, and English navigators are said to have reached the western approaches of this sea during the period 1520–1580. ‘‘Humfray Gylbert Knighte, His Charte,’’ drawn by John Dee in 1583, was designed to persuade potential subscribers to invest in Gilbert’s proposed colony on America’s eastern seaboard, firmly placing it conveniently adjacent not only to a northern passage but also to a number of transcontinental passages. Cornelius Wytfliet’s Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum (Supplement to Ptolemy’s descriptions), first published in Louvain in 1597, exemplifies the transitional stage from best guesses and optimistic geographical conjectures to a more cautious and discoverybased appraisal. His map of Labrador, Davis Strait, and Greenland makes no extravagant claims for the strait to be a route northwestward. The early 17th-century voyages of Henry Hudson, Thomas Button, Robert Bylot and William Baffin, Luke Foxe, and Thomas James resulted in a more accurate geographical record, although Baffin’s narrative and chart of his 1616 voyage was a casualty of Samuel Purchas’s decision to limit the first and omit the second entirely from his Hakluytus Posthumus; or, Purchas His Pilgrimes (4 vols., 1625). But Henry Briggs’s map of North America, which was printed in Purchas His Pilgrimes, still hankers after a transcontinental passage and hints strongly that one existed along the 45th parallel from Hudson Bay to the island of California. 18th-Century Maps. At the beginning of the 18th century, knowledge of the North American continent was far from complete. The northwest coast was barely known, and in the north the Arctic west of Baffin Bay and Hudson Bay was still wrapped in mystery. In fact, no sea captain or armchair geographer could estimate with any acceptable degree of accuracy how long a northwest passage would prove to be or how far distant the Pacific was from the Atlantic Ocean. Improbably, a number of Russian expeditions to the northeast and east of the Kamchatka Peninsula of Siberia—notably by Vitus Bering in 1728–1741, when the Alaskan coast and the Aleutian Islands

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were sighted—added to, rather than lessened, the uncertainty as to the configuration of the coastline. In these circumstances, cartography relapsed once more into fantasy. In 1747 Joseph Nicolas Delisle (1688–1768) returned to France after 20 years at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, bringing with him maps and manuscript records of the Russian voyages. Three years later, he read a paper to the Academy of Sciences in Paris on the Russian discoveries, accompanied by maps drawn by his uncle, Phillipe Buache (1700–1773), the principal geographer to Louis XV, which lent undeniable authority to Delisle’s claim that the Russian explorers had verified the alleged voyage of Bartolome de Fonte. Buache’s map, ‘‘Carte des Nouvelles De´couvertes au Nord de la Mer du Sud’’ (Map of the new discoveries in the north of the South Sea), published in 1752, linked the Russian discoveries at latitude 63 N with de Fonte’s at 53 N. Farther south, he depicted the promising river openings found by Jean de Fuca in 1592 and by Martin de Aguilar in 1603 as leading into the Mer de l’Ouest. Three months later, Delisle published his own map version of the Russian discoveries and restored de Fonte’s supposed finds to latitude 53 N. Delisle’s Explication de la Carte des Nouvelles De´couvertes au Nord de la Mer du Sud (Explanation of the map of the new discoveries in the north of the South Sea; 1752) and Buache’s Conside´rations Ge´ographiques et Physiques sur les Nouvelles De´couvertes au Nord de la Grande Mer (Geographical and physical reflections on the new discoveries in the Great Ocean; 1753) added force to their misleading cartographic detail, although Buache argued that the Strait of Anian must now give way to the Bering Strait. In the mid-18th century, Paris was the acknowledged world center for the geographical sciences, and consequently the views of French cartographers greatly influenced the mapping of the new discoveries. In this instance, however, they were challenged by John Green (a pseudonym of Braddock Mead [?–1757]) in his Remarks in Support of the New Chart of North and South America (1753): ‘‘I shall venture . . . to say that the Discoveries attributed to Admiral de Fonte have no real existence in nature and that however commodiously they may help to fill-up a map of the North-West Part of America, they ought in reality to have no place there’’ (148). Whatever opinions were held by French or English geographers

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and cartographers, both sides lacked the ultimate authority that could be afforded only by official Russian maps and accounts. But it was not until 1761, when Gerhard Friedrich Mu¨ller’s Voyages from Asia to America, for Completing the Discoveries of the North West Coast of America was published, that an authentic approach was assured. Mu¨ller (1705–1783), the secretary of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, had been closely connected with Bering’s Great Northern Expedition of 1732–1740. He confirmed that a narrow strait existed between Asia and America and posited that the Russian discoveries had lessened the chance that a passage leading from Hudson Bay would be found, since the continuous trend of the coast from California was to the northwest. He also poured cold water on Buache’s integrated system of inland rivers, straits, lakes, and seas. Later Russian maps were not so reliable, as James Cook found to his cost. He concentrated his ire on Jacob von Sta¨hlin’s map in An Account of the New Northern Archipelago, Lately Discovered by the Russians in the Seas of Kamtshatka and Anadir (1774), reputed to be a true account of the 1767 voyage commanded by Lt. Ivan Sindt. What Sta¨hlin claimed to be a very accurate little map drawn from original accounts depicted Alaska as a large island twice as far from America as from Asia! More accurate and reliable mapping on both sides of the continent reflected a more scientific approach to the discovery of a passage: Christopher Middleton’s 1741–1742 voyage to Hudson Bay and Samuel Hearne’s maps of his 1770–1772 journey to the mouth of the Coppermine River played a significant part in laying the myth of a transcontinental passage in northern regions. Peter Pond’s 1787 map of the Great Slave Lake region, very much a working fur traders’ guide to operations, had a legend across the northern coastline to the effect that ‘‘Here according to the account of the natives, the water ebbs and flows and they know of no land further to the northward,’’ which not only enhanced the region’s cartography but also encouraged further exploration for an ice-free passage. Alexander Mackenzie’s maps of his 1789 voyage downriver to the coast confirmed Hearne’s conclusion as to the nonexistence of a passage through the interior. And, in the Pacific, George Vancouver’s meticulous and singularly accurate survey of the north-

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west coast added solidity to the cartographical record of that hitherto dubious coastline. 19th-Century Maps. Another geographical delusion—and consequent wishful thinking—marked the resumption of the British search for a northwest passage in 1818. John Barrow believed that Davis Strait and Baffin Bay would lead into a circumpolar sea and offer an open passage to the Pacific. But neither this nor John Ross’s error in reporting Lancaster Sound to be blocked by the Croker Mountains was allowed to hinder for long the progress of discovery, as the Royal Navy steadily advanced into the Arctic Archipelago. As the various commanders, on land and sea, published their narratives, all equipped with professionally drawn maps and charts, confidence increased that a passage would soon be discovered. The gaps in geographical knowledge were gradually but inexorably closing. This confidence was at an all-time high when Sir John Franklin departed on his fateful voyage in 1845. After Franklin’s ships disappeared and the unprecedented and concerted Franklin rescue expeditions were mounted, the deep recesses of the Unexplored Quadrilateral were explored and mapped by the navy, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the Henry Grinnell expeditions. Accurate maps of the new discoveries encompassed and outlined more seas and islands in increasing detail. Even charts of sledge journeys were printed and published. This rapid 19th-century geographical and cartographical progress is demonstrated to excellent effect in Hugh N. Wallace’s The Navy, the Company and Richard King: British Exploration in the Canadian Arctic, 1829–1860 (1980), wherein a chronological succession of maps illustrate the unveiling of the Arctic from 1818 through 1859. Three notable individual examples appear in Derek Hayes’s Historical Atlas of the Arctic (2003): ‘‘Discoveries in the Arctic Sea between Baffin Bay, Melville Island & Cape Bathurst: Showing the Coasts Explored by the Officers of the Various Expeditions . . . in Search of Sir John Franklin’’ (100–101), ‘‘Map of the Arctic Expedition from which Resulted the First Information of Sir John Franklin’s Missing Party by Dr. John Rae 1854’’ (103), and ‘‘Arctic Seas Shewing the North-West Passage: The Coasts Explored by the Several Searching Expeditions, and the Spot Where The Remains of Sir John Franklin Have Been Discovered’’ (104–5).

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Also deserving mention are two folded, pull-out maps inside the back cover of Richard J. Cyriax’s Sir John Franklin’s Last Arctic Expedition (1939), illustrating the known regions before and after the Franklin search expeditions, and a third outlining King William Island and the route followed after the retreat from HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. MAPS AND MAPPING, INDIAN AND INUIT. Midway through the cartographical history of the discovery of a northwest passage, Indian and Inuit maps began to exert a direct influence on the advance in geographical knowledge. The Chipewyan Indians’ Seventeen Rivers from Churchill map that James Knight persuaded them to draw undoubtedly excited him and motivated him to press the Hudson’s Bay Company to mount a discovery voyage northward in 1719. When in London in 1742, Joseph La France chalked out on the floor of a London house a map that was later printed in Arthur Dobbs’s Account of the Countries Adjoining to Hudson’s Bay (1744) as ‘‘A New Map of Parts of North America From The Latitude of 40 to 68 Degrees: Including the late discoveries made on board the Furnace Bomb Ketch in 1742: And the Western Rivers or Lakes falling into Nelson River in Hudson’s Bay as described by Joseph La France, a French Canadese Indian who Travailed thro these Countries and Lakes for 3 Years from 1739 to 1742.’’ And, in 1767, Mattonabee’s deerskin map of northern Canada so impressed the Hudson’s Bay Company that it commissioned Moses Norton to investigate the region for precious metals. In the 19th century, Inuit maps were equally useful and informative. William Edward Parry’s 1821–1823 expedition to the Frozen Strait was greatly assisted by Iligluik, a remarkable woman of many accomplishments, who first drew a large-scale map on 12 sheets of paper and then a smaller-scale map of the coast of the continent lying to the north, beyond her own locality, bringing it around to the west and southwest to within three to four days of Repulse Bay. This ‘‘Esquimaux Chart The Shades Parts Drawn by Iligluik at Winter Island 1822’’ was published in Parry’s Journal of a Second Voyage (1824) and is conveniently included in Ann Savours’s The Search for the North West Passage (1999).

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An even more striking example of Inuit geographical and cartographical expertise became evident on John Ross’s 1829 expedition to Prince Regent Inlet. Embayed in Felix Harbor on the Gulf of Boothia in January 1830, Ross showed two Inuit, Tulluahien and Tiagashu, his own and Parry’s charts of the region. Without hesitation, Tiagashu added an unknown coastline to the southwest and its accompanying capes and bays, rivers, and adjacent islands. Tulluahien then proceeded to mark a nine-day overland march westward that would bring Ross to a salt sea. The following day Tiagashu returned with Ikmallik, a renowned geographer within his group, who promptly drew numerous coastlines to the south, east, and west with named geographical features, including Wager Bay 340 miles south of Felix Harbor. Subsequently known as Ikmallik the Hydrographer, he was adamant that no open passage to the west existed and that Prince Regent Inlet’s only opening was to the north. Tirikshiu, Tulluahien’s wife and Ikmallik’s sister, was able to draw charts even more detailed than her brother’s. MARBLE ISLAND. A small island less than 10 miles long and 3 miles wide, roughly oriented east–west, about 15 miles off the Keewatin coast on the western shores of Hudson Bay. As is so often the case, there are conflicting views, evidence, and opinion as to whether the last days of James Knight’s ill-starred 1719 expedition were played out there or not and, if they were, what the precise circumstances were. See also BEATTIE, OWEN; PALFREY, DON; SMITH, RALPH. MATTONABEE (1737–1782). A Chipewyan Indian, Mattonabee played a major role in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fur trade in the 1750s and 1760s. His responsibilities included the collection of furs from groups of Indians diffident of making the long and arduous journey to Hudson Bay, the organization and supervision of Indian porters to carry the furs to Churchill and to return with trade goods and supplies, and the distribution of these to the fur hunters. In the course of these duties, Mattonabee spent long periods in the Barren Lands, often enduring great privations. In 1762 he was dispatched by Moses Norton to explore the Chipewyan heartlands. He returned five years later with reports of a

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large river flowing through wooded fur country, with three copper mines at its mouth. Even more exciting than the sample of copper ore he brought with him was a map he had drawn on deerskin showing a large lake (Great Slave Lake) and a river, the Kis-ca-che-wan, flowing to the Pacific (in fact, the Mackenzie River flowing to the Northern Ocean). This map was of great significance: not only did it illustrate the extent of Chipewyan knowledge of a vast expanse of the Canadian north and cartographic skills but it was also seized upon by the Hudson’s Bay Company when Norton took a copy to London in 1768. Strongly motivated by the prospect of exploiting the copper mines, the company instructed Norton to send a European to pinpoint the exact location of the mines and to investigate whether the river was navigable. Mattonabee accompanied Samuel Hearne on his epic 1770–1772 expedition to the Northern Ocean, guiding him, smoothing his path, and generally acting as a route master and chief of staff. See also MAPS AND MAPPING, INDIAN AND INUIT. McCLINTOCK, SIR FRANCIS LEOPOLD (1819–1907). In 1848 Lieutenant McClintock sailed on HMS Enterprise, which was ordered to the Lancaster Sound/Boothia region under the command of James Clark Ross to search for Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition. When Ross marched westward along the north coast of Somerset Island to Cape Bunny and then south down the west coast to Cape Coulman, McClintock followed hard upon his heels with two six-man sledges. This was his first experience of Arctic sledging, in which he was to become an acknowledged expert. It was a considerable achievement, by Royal Navy standards, to travel 500 miles in 40 days, at the time the longest journey ever undertaken in the Canadian Arctic by inexperienced British seamen. McClintock’s next tour of duty in the Arctic was aboard HMS Assistance with Horatio Austin’s 1850–1851 Franklin rescue expedition. Early in October 1850 he advised Austin that laying down supply depots would be essential if the overland search parties planned for the next year were to maximize their search potential. Accepting the wisdom of his advice, Austin sent out a number of sledge parties. McClintock himself laid such a depot 40 miles out in the direction of Melville Island, his intended destination in 1851.

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Full-scale sledging operations started on 12 April 1851. At this point, Austin paid a warm tribute to McClintock for his foresight before sailing from England in preparing the sledges, putting to good use the knowledge he had gained on Somerset Island. McClintock’s five sledges reached Melville Island; passed Cape Dundas, William Edward Parry’s farthest west advance on his 1819–1820 discovery expedition; proceeded up Liddon Gulf to Bushnan Cove; and crossed to Winter Harbor. No traces of Sir John Franklin were found, but McClintock’s search party had traveled 770 miles in 80 days and discovered 160 miles of coastline. McClintock returned to the Arctic as commander of HMS Intrepid on Sir Edward Belcher’s 1852–1854 search expedition. In August 1852, at Beechey Island, Belcher’s squadron was split into two divisions. The Intrepid was placed under the command of Henry Kellett on HMS Resolute to form the western division, with orders to winter on or close to Melville Island, search for Franklin, and also keep a weather eye open for Richard Collinson’s HMS Enterprise and Robert McClure’s HMS Investigator. In the event, base camp was set up at Dealy Island, rather than Winter Harbor, because of the prevailing weather and ice conditions. Once again reconnaissance and depot-laying journeys were embarked upon in the fall. McClintock made two journeys, one of 12 days, another of 18, in preparation for his expedition to Melville Island. He was firmly of the opinion that the island would be astride Franklin’s route westward, and he chose it as his destination in the hope of catching him there. In the spring and summer sledging season, McClintock traveled 1,400 miles in all to Melville Island, discovering Eglington Island and, on the extreme western edge of the Arctic Archipelago, Prince Patrick Island, bordering the Beaufort Sea. The zenith of McClintock’s Arctic career came in 1857 when he was granted leave of absence from the navy to fit out and to command the Fox, Lady Jane Franklin’s 177-ton auxiliary steam yacht. He sailed from Aberdeen, Scotland, on 30 June, with orders to rescue any survivors of Franklin’s missing ships, to recover his logbooks and journals, and if possible, to find proof that the men who had perished near the Back River had traveled from Beechey Island by sea,

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a crucial point in confirming whether they had completed a northwest passage. Progress at first was swift, but by 17 August the Fox was stuck in the ice off the west coast of Greenland. Not only was she not advancing but she was in fact drifting down Baffin Bay and Davis Strait to almost opposite the entrance to Hudson Strait, where she at last broke free of the ice on 25 April 1878. After a laborious and sometimes perilous voyage northward again, the Fox eventually reached Beechey Island on 15 August, where the Franklin Monument was erected. McClintock next steered for Peel Sound, but 25 miles into it, ice forced him back. He then determined to round Somerset Island and sail down Prince Regent Inlet to Bellot Strait, only to find its western exit blocked by solid pack ice four miles wide. He spent the 1858–1859 winter at Port Kennedy, a small harbor at the eastern entrance to the strait. Fall and winter depot-laying sledge parties prepared for long-distance journeys on King William Island and elsewhere in 1859. In February Allen Young crossed to Prince of Wales Land, while McClintock set off south down the west coast of the Boothia Peninsula. At a spot near Cape Victoria on James Ross Strait, he set up a trading post for Franklin relics, acquiring silver forks and spoons, a silver medal, a gold chain, buttons, and other unmistakable Franklin items, recovered from an island situated in a river estuary, which he took to be Montreal Island. He also heard of a three-masted ship crushed out at sea off the west coast of King William Island, although none of the Inuit he interviewed had witnessed this. McClintock returned to the Fox, having traveled 360 miles, added 120 miles to the map, and completed the outline of the northern continental coastline. He departed again on 2 April, accompanied by his second-in-command, William Hobson. At Cape Victoria the two men separated, Hobson to search the northwest coast of King William Island while McClintock continued south to Montreal Island, where he uncovered no further information. Crossing to the southern shore of King William Island, McClintock marched westward toward Cape Herschel, reversing the direction of the route taken by the crews of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. Past Cape Herschel he found Hobson’s cairn containing his momentous news, and on 29 May he reached and

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named Cape Crozier, the island’s western headland. On the following day, he found the boat Hobson had discovered. From the position of the boat, pointing toward Victory Point, he concluded that the crew was returning to their ship. Continuing up the coast, McClintock reached Francis Crozier’s landing place on 2 June. Two weeks later, he was back at his ship, finding Hobson and his precious Victory Point document already there. At the end of the month, he set sail for England, where he arrived on 23 September. Fourteen years after Sir John Franklin had sailed down the Thames, his fate was at last established. McClintock had also surveyed 800 miles of new coastline. McCLURE, ROBERT LE MESURIER (1807–1873). Having previously sailed in Arctic waters with George Back on his abortive 1836 voyage to Hudson Bay and with James Clark Ross on the 1848–1849 expedition to Lancaster Sound and Somerset Island, Robert McClure was appointed commander of HMS Investigator to accompany Robert Collinson to the Bering Strait, where they were to act in concert with Henry Kellett in HMS Herald and Thomas Moore in HMS Plover. The expedition left England in January 1850 but the Investigator was soon outsailed by Collinson in HMS Enterprise. Although McClure rejoined Collinson in the Strait of Magellan, the two ships were soon separated again. McClure reached Hawaii the day after Collinson left. Fearing that he would be left behind once Collinson kept the rendezvous with Kellett at Cape Lisburne, McClure chose to sail through the perilous channels of the Aleutian Islands rather than detour round them. Fortune favored the brave, and McClure arrived at the rendezvous before Collinson. Never a team player, McClure blithely put it to Kellett, who was senior in rank, that Collinson had probably missed them in the fog and had sailed east. Kellett advised him to wait another 48 hours. Conveniently forgetting that it was Admiralty policy to dispatch expedition ships in pairs for obvious safety reasons, and stretching his discretionary powers as the junior officer to the limit, McClure signaled that he could not neglect his duties and responsibilities and had no time to waste before winter set in, and he slipped away to the east. He followed the coastline past Point Barrow and the mouth of the

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Mackenzie River and then, off Cape Parry, changed course to the northeast and made a landing at the southern tip of Banks Island. From there, he discerned open water to the north. In a rare state of excitement, McClure sailed northeastward up the Prince of Wales Strait between Banks Island and Victoria Island in the sure knowledge that he could not be more than 60 miles from Melville Sound and a known route eastward through Barrow Strait, Lancaster Sound, and Baffin Bay to the Atlantic. But McClure was not destined to be the first to navigate a passage between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans by the Arctic route: it was September, winter was almost due and, within 30 miles of Melville Sound, he prepared to go into winter quarters. At the end of October 1850, McClure set off over the ice with seven of his crew members and, after three days march, climbed a peak and caught an unmistakable glimpse of Melville Sound, frozen now but surely navigable the following summer, or so he thought. In the spring of 1851, several sledging parties reconnoitered along the coasts of Banks and Victoria islands hoping to find some trace of Sir John Franklin’s expedition. It was mid-August before the Investigator was released from the ice. McClure had time only to struggle to within 25 frustrating miles of the sound before ice barred his way. Not a whit deterred, McClure worked his ship round the west coast of Banks Island in the hope of reaching Melville Sound from the west, but again he was thwarted within tantalizing sight of its waters. A second and then a third winter were spent locked in the ice in Mercy Bay on the northeast coast of Banks Island. By early 1853, their predicament was stark: hunger of famine proportions, scurvy, and severe depression, even madness, had left the crew in desperate straits. McClure could not contemplate a fourth winter in the ice and so divided his crew into two parties: one to go south, the other east toward Lancaster Sound. Just as they were about to abandon ship and set off, in a last-throw-of-the-dice gamble, they glimpsed a solitary figure rapidly approaching. Back in England, there had been mounting concern over McClure’s (and Collinson’s) safety. A squadron of five ships, under the overall command of Sir Edward Belcher, had been dispatched to the Arctic. Two, HMS Resolute (under Kellett) and HMS Intrepid (under Francis Leopold McClintock) formed the Western Division,

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with orders to search for McClure. Reaching William Edward Parry’s 1818–1819 quarters at Winter Harbor on Melville Island in September 1852, Kellett deposited food, fuel supplies, and clothing there before establishing his own winter quarters on nearby Dealy Island. Numerous reconnaissance parties were sent out during the winter. Earlier that year, McClure had journeyed overland by sledge to Winter Harbor to deposit a record of the Investigator’s position, and now one of the searchers found McClure’s note. On 10 March 1853 two search parties marched out: one headed northward; the other, led by Sublt. Bedford Pim, was ordered to cross the strait (now McClure Strait) to Banks Island. Traveling conditions were arduous so early in the season, and Pim’s sledge lost one of its runners. Taking over the accompanying dogsled, Pim pressed on with two men, and on 6 April sighted the Investigator. The next day McClure departed with Pim for Dealy Island to discuss the next step with Kellett. He wanted to send his sick men back to England and, the next season, to sail through the passage. But Kellett insisted that Dr. Alexander Armstrong, the Investigator’s surgeon, and Dr. W. T. Domville of the Resolute should conduct a medical inspection of all the Investigator’s crew. Only two showed no signs of scurvy, and McClure reluctantly abandoned his plans. McClure returned to England, technically the first man to have completed the Northwest Passage—albeit on two ships, one not his own, with a middle stage on foot. He was promoted to captain and given a knighthood and the £10,000 Parliament reward. McCLURE STRAIT. Defeating the attempt of the powerful SS Manhattan (commanded by Roger A. Steward) and its attendant icebreaker, the CCGS John A. Macdonald, to penetrate its almost yearround ice in 1969, the McClure Strait is the westernmost continuation of Lancaster Sound from Baffin Bay to the Beaufort Sea. The USS Seadragon (commanded by George P. Steele) and USS Skate (Joseph L. Skoog) had proceeded under its ice in 1960 and 1962, respectively. McCORMICK, ROBERT (1800–1890). Qualified as a surgeon in 1822, McCormick gained experience in polar conditions on William

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Edward Parry’s attempt on the North Pole from Spitsbergen in 1827 and on James Clark Ross’s 1839–1848 Antarctic expedition. In 1851 he was appointed surgeon on HMS North Star, the depot ship of Sir Edward Belcher’s expedition to Lancaster Sound and Beechey Island of 1852–1854. McCormick was the officer in command of the boat Forlorn Hope that explored north up Wellington Channel in August and September 1852. McGOOGAN, KEN. In mid-August 1999 Ken McGoogan, a Calgary Herald journalist, and Carl Treleaven, an antiquarian bookseller, flew from Edmonton, Alberta, to Gjøa Haven to meet up with Louie Kamookak, an Inuk scholar and housing manager. Their mission was to locate the cairn that John Rae had erected on the spot at the tip of the Boothia Peninsula from where he had distinguished that King William Land was, in fact, King William Island and to place there an anodized-aluminum memorial plaque on a slab of Honduran mahogany reading, ‘‘This plaque marks the spot where Arctic explorer John Rae (1813–93) discovered the final link in the Northwest Passage.’’ From Gjøa Haven, this improbable trio took a motorboat across Schwatka Bay and up the east coast of King William Island, before crossing Rae Strait to the west coast of Boothia and establishing their camp. They marched across the tundra, locating the exact position of Rae’s cairn by a Global Positioning System receiver and finding that his longitude, calculated without benefit of satellite technology, was awry by 3⬘30 but that his latitude was accurate to within a few yards. McGoogan authored Fatal Passage: The Untold Story of John Rae, the Arctic Adventurer Who Discovered the Fate of Franklin (2001). MEARES, JOHN (1756?–1809). With experience in both the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy, John Meares founded a company in Calcutta in order to develop trade between India and the northwest coast of America. On 12 March 1786 he sailed to Prince William Sound, where he wintered and accumulated a cargo of furs before heading for Canton. In 1788 he sailed south from Nootka Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, in all probability carrying with him William Bark-

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ley’s charts and journal. By the end of June, Meares was at a great inlet he supposed to be the Strait of Juan de Fuca. He claimed to have sailed in a longboat for 30 leagues into the strait before hostile Indians forced him back at a point where a clear horizon could be seen extending for another 15 leagues. He reported ‘‘such an extraordinary circumstance filled us with strange conjectures as to the extremity of this Strait, which we concluded could not be at any great distance from Hudson Bay.’’ This daydreaming was far from reality. Even if Meares’s sailing figures were anywhere near accurate, the bay was still 1,000 miles away. Moreover, Robert Duffin, who was in charge of the longboat, reported sailing only 11 leagues into the strait. On his 1789 voyage, Meares concentrated four of his company’s ships in Nootka Sound, where they were seized by a Spanish warship on the grounds that all the adjacent seas belonged to Spain and that any non-Spanish ship trading there was guilty of smuggling. When news of this reached Meares in Canton, he hurried to England and laid the facts of the matter before the government. On 13 May 1790, his memorial was presented to the House of Commons. Had Spain not backed down after a large Royal Navy fleet was assembled, there can be little doubt that a full-scale maritime war would have erupted. Political uproar and the unrelenting public interest in the search for a northwest passage made it a good time for Meares to publish his Voyages Made in the Years 1788 and 1789, from China to the North West Coast of America: To which are Presented . . . Observations on the Probable Existence of a North West Passage (1790). Meares was a persuasive writer, not too extreme in his views, with the ability to argue from seemingly sound and cogent geographical premises that the question of a navigable passage had not finally been resolved. In his judgment, the practicability of a passage still remained open either to the north or to the south of Samuel Hearne’s Coppermine River. Although the eastern side of America had mostly been explored, the numerous sounds, bays, and inlets still unexplored afforded hope that a passage would be found. On the northwest coast, successive voyages, particularly his own, had apparently proved that the accounts of Juan de Fuca and Bartolome de Fonte were based on fact and that a channel ran through the continent either to Hudson

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Bay or the southernmost part of Baffin Bay. He was confident that the geography of Hudson Bay was imperfectly known and that European seamen were as yet totally unacquainted with Baffin Bay. To support his argument, Meares included ‘‘A Chart of the Interior Part of North America Demonstrating the Very Great Probability of an Inland Navigation from Hudson’s Bay to the West Coast.’’ On the west, a Northern Archipelago behind Princess Royal Island and Nootka Sound is depicted, with the Oregon River running right across the continent from Lake Winnipeg. The east side shows a river connecting Chesterfield Inlet with Lake Dubawnt, which is also linked to Churchill. Hearne’s tracks to Lake Athabaska are sketched in and a river runs northwest from that lake to Slave Lake, and then to Cook’s River. If the map was viewed as being accurate, then the puzzle was solved: There was a navigable passage. But there was by no means universal agreement on Meares’s hypothesis. George Dixon, for one, was damning in his criticism, being especially severe on the way Meares casually altered latitudes and longitudes to support his argument. MECHAM, GEORGE FREDERICK (1828–1858). Serving under Henry Kellett on HMS Resolute, berthed at Dealy Island, Lieutenant Mecham was dispatched in the fall of 1852 to explore overland to Liddon Gulf, or as far as was possible before winter set in, as a preparation for a full-scale expedition along the southern shore of Melville Island the following spring. With 16 men, two sledges, and a handcart, he set out with orders to deposit records of the Kellett expedition at his farthest point, at Winter Harbor, and at other prominent points. It took eight days to cross from Winter Harbor to Liddon Gulf, only 20 miles away but with innumerable ravines to cross en route. On 7 October at Cape Hoppner on the southern shore of the gulf, his farthest point, Mecham erected a cairn and deposited a record. Six days later, on his return journey, he found a record left by Robert McClure relating the current whereabouts of HMS Investigator. After a forced march of 41 miles, Mecham arrived back at the Resolute on 14 October. He had been out for 23 days and had traveled 184 miles.

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But this paled in comparison with his 1853 journey. Setting out on 4 April, Mecham searched the southwest coast of Melville Island, crossed Kellett Strait to Eglington Island, continued across Crozier Channel to the southeast point of Prince Patrick Island—now named Cape Mecham—and advanced to Cape Manning and Cape Tullett. He returned to the Resolute on 6 July, having been away for 91 days in which time he had covered more than 1,000 miles, much of it over hitherto unexplored territory. On 6 April 1854 Mecham led out a sledge party of seven men whose purpose was to gain information on Richard Collinson in HMS Enterprise or, failing that, to deposit information for him. Because of an unwelcome combination of floes of old ice and newly formed pack ice, McClure Strait that season was particularly difficult to negotiate, and because of heavy falls of snow, Mecham found it difficult to distinguish the entrance to Prince of Wales Strait between Banks Island and Victoria Island. He discovered 1851 and 1852 records of the Enterprise in a cairn on the Princess Royal Islands. After being guided to another cairn, he began his return journey to Dealy Island on 10 May, arriving there on 27 May. Mecham was compelled to call upon all his considerable experience to comply with instructions left at the depot to make every exertion to reach Beechey Island, but undaunted he sledged his way there by 12 June. He had completed the longest-ever sledge journey of the Franklin rescue expeditions and, in all probability, the longest man-hauling journey to date. In 69 days, he had traveled 1,200 miles. MEE, DOM (1971– ). A Royal Marines reservist, Dom Mee set out from Gjøa Haven on 20 August 2003 in a 17-foot collapsible Klepper kayak on a 450-mile journey by land and sea to retrace John Ross’s footsteps on the Boothia Peninsula. He hoped to identify at least one of the cairns where Ross left messages and to reach Victory Bay where Ross’s expedition foundered. Mee traversed the area where James Clark Ross located the North Magnetic Pole, and by mid-September he had crossed the peninsula to the mouth of an inlet into Lord Mayor Bay, only 35 miles from Victory Bay. Here a Force 8 blizzard, roaming polar bears, and impenetrable pack ice stranded him, forcing him to abandon his journey and to seek shelter in the Inuit settlement at Talyoak.

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MELLIS, ROBERT. See BURTON, KEN. MELVILLE BAY. Leslie H. Neatby memorably described Melville Bay as ‘‘a great ice reservoir’’ (The Search for Franklin [1970], 124). It extends up the northwest coast of Greenland from Holms Island (latitude 74 N) to Cape York (76 N), and crossing it can be both slow and hazardous. An ice-free zone, the North Water, opens up early in spring to the north of Cape York and stretches across Baffin Bay to Bylot Island, marking the southern entrance to Lancaster Sound. John Ross took a month to get past the ice in Melville Bay in 1818. Horatio Austin’s squadron took 40 days to maneuver itself free in 1850, and Edward Belcher’s ships required almost as long. Francis Leopold McClintock’s Fox was seized by the ice in August 1857, forced south, and not released until the following April, by which time she was in Davis Strait. MELVILLE ISLAND. North of Banks Island across McClure Strait, Melville Island was first sighted by William Edward Parry, who spent the 1819–1820 winter there. In June 1820 he made an overland journey to Liddon Gulf, the first instance of a Royal Navy ship being used as an advance exploration base in the Arctic. See also EVANS, MARK; PARRY’S MONUMENT; WINTER HARBOR. MELVILLE PENINSULA. Situated north of Southampton Island and separated by Fury and Hecla Strait from northwestern Baffin Island in the north, Melville Peninsula juts out from the northeast coast of mainland Nunavut. It was first sighted by Christopher Middleton in 1742 when he was confronted by the Frozen Strait. William Edward Parry sailed up its west coast in 1822. Both George Lyon (1824) and George Back (1836) were ordered to traverse it but were prevented from doing so, by a near shipwreck and seizure in the ice, respectively. It was left to John Rae to cross the peninsula in April 1847. MELVILLE SOUND. Initially named Viscount Melville Sound, in honor of Lord Melville, the first lord of the Admiralty, Melville

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Sound opens out the narrow east–west channel from Baffin Bay westward through Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait before it narrows again into McClure Strait. Open water in the sound is normally restricted to August and the first two weeks of September. It was first navigated by William Edward Parry in 1819; when he passed longitude 110 W, he and his crew in HMS Hecla and HMS Griper qualified for an Admiralty award of £5,000 for advancing so far west. MERCY BAY. A sheltered harbor on the north coast of Banks Island where Robert McClure moored HMS Investigator, initially to spend the 1851–1852 winter. His ship was held fast in the ice for the next two winters, however, and disaster was staring him in the face before Bedford Pim arrived from HMS Resolute (commanded by Henry Kellett) in April 1853. It should be borne in mind that the Bay of God’s Mercy is hundreds of miles away. MER DE L’OUEST (WESTERN SEA). Drawn as a huge gulf of the South Sea, the inland Mer de l’Ouest was the brainchild of Guillaume Delisle (1675–1726) and was generally adopted by speculative French 18th-century geographers, who became as fixated with a French route through the North American continent as the English were with a northwest passage. No doubt originating in Indian reports, perhaps garbled in translation, and eagerly seized upon by French explorers and merchants, the Mer de l’Ouest was perceived to extend over a huge region of North America, taking its waters from western-flowing rivers from an eastern watershed. For reasons of secrecy—maps were knowledge, and knowledge was power—Guillaume Delisle never allowed the Mer de l’Ouest to appear on a printed map, but a generation later, no such restrictions applied as the sea became inextricably connected with other fanciful topographic features. A map drawn by Phillippe Buache (1700– 1773), ‘‘Carte des Nouvelles De´couvertes au Nord de la Mer du Sud’’ (Map of the new discoveries in the north of the South Sea), printed in June 1752, depicted a vast Mer de l’Ouest entered by the channels purported to have been discovered by Juan de Fuca in 1592 and by Martin Aguilar in 1603. Joseph-Nicolas Delisle’s (1688–1768) map of the same title, is-

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sued just three months later, markedly reduced the sea’s outline to more modest proportions. Buache, too, appears to have had second thoughts in his portfolio of 11 maps, published with a descriptive text, Conside´rations Ge´ographiques et Physiques sur les Nouvelles De´couvertes au Nord de la Grande Mer (Geographical and physical reflections on the new discoveries in the north of the Great Ocean), not only reducing the extent of the Mer de l’Ouest but also linking it to Bartolome de Fonte’s supposed discoveries. See also MAPS AND MAPPING, EUROPEAN. META INCOGNITA. On Martin Frobisher’s return from his 1577 voyage, Queen Elizabeth I decreed that the land he had discovered— the southeastern headland of present-day Baffin Island—should be named Meta Incognita, the Unknown Frontier. It is known today as the Meta Incognita Peninsula. META INCOGNITA PROJECT. In 1990 the Canadian Museum of Civilization sent a party to investigate the historical value of the Martin Frobisher sites on the Kodlunarn Islands off Baffin Island. The effect of uncontrolled tourism, souvenir hunting, and natural erosion was noted and the museum concluded that the sites should be guarded against commercial exploitation and that the quality of the historical environment should be preserved. It set up an advisory committee to recommend an appropriate course of action. The committee, now known as the Meta Incognita Project Committee, after the name Meta Incognita bestowed by Queen Elizabeth I on Frobisher’s discoveries, now includes representatives of the northern communities, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut governments, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, Parks Canada, and the Department of Canadian Heritage. Launched on 20 August 1991, the project guides a concerted program of research and conservation relating to the Frobisher sites, identifying research needs and promoting a better understanding of his interest in the Arctic. The committee was given the further responsibility of advising the government on the granting of archaeological and scientific research permits in the region. The Archival Research Task Force was created and a series of publications began to appear, notably Thomas H. B. Symon’s two-volume Meta Incog-

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nita: A Discourse of Discovery; Martin Frobisher’s Arctic Expeditions, 1576–1578 (1999). MIDDLETON, CHRISTOPHER (1700?–1770). Entering the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) in 1721, Middleton spent the ensuing winter in Hudson Bay in the hope that he might be allowed to sail with John Scroggs on his northern expedition in the summer of 1722. However, Scroggs refused to take him. Nevertheless, Middleton maintained a strong interest in the commercial potential of a northwest passage. When Arthur Dobbs determined to seek the views and opinions of an experienced HBC sea captain as to the probability of a passage, it was Middleton whom he approached, seemingly on the basis that they had both contributed to the same issue of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions. Middleton confided to Dobbs the company’s reluctance to pursue James Knight’s proposals, the incompetence of Scroggs, the inconclusive nature of the HBC’s 1719–1722 voyages to the north of Hudson Bay, and the disappointing outcome of James Napper’s 1737 expedition. After Dobbs’s proposals for a discovery voyage received royal approval in 1740, Middleton was commissioned in the Royal Navy and appointed commander of the expedition. The next obstacle to be overcome was the HBC’s obdurate refusal to cooperate with the Admiralty, very reluctantly conceding that its trading posts in the bay would assist Middleton—but only if he should demonstrably find himself in difficulties and in danger of losing his ship and his life. Eventually, after heavy government and royal pressure, the company relented. It was not until 8 June 1741 that HMS Furnace, a bomb vessel of 265 tons, and the Discovery, a pink of 65 tons commanded by William Moor, set sail for Hudson Bay. Middleton’s sailing orders, probably drafted by Dobbs, instructed him to proceed to Carys Swan Nest, on the southeastern corner of Coats Island in the bay, and then steer northwest to Roe’s Welcome Sound 400 miles north of Churchill. When abreast of Whalebone Point, he was to search for a strait or an open sea to the southwest. If he continued to find open water as far south as latitude 50 N, he was to decide whether to winter on the western side of America or to

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make his passage home ‘‘in order to prosecute the Discovery to advantage next season.’’ In reality, the actual voyage bore no resemblance to these instructions. Middleton did not arrive at Swan Nest until the end of July. There, thick fog led to a decision to seek a winter harbor at once, justifying Middleton’s determination that his ships should be allowed to shelter in one of the HBC’s posts. Fortunately Middleton and James Isham, newly arrived to assume command at Churchill, were old acquaintances and agreed to work in harmony, a decision that was misinterpreted in England by the suspicious Dobbs and the equally suspicious Hudson’s Bay Company. The 1741 season passed without serious exploration. Middleton sailed northward from Churchill on 1 July 1742, pushing through drifting ice and passing Whalebone Inlet 11 days later. Behind a headland, named Cape Dobbs, an inviting inlet was found, six to eight miles wide with a depth of 15 fathoms, which was named after Sir Charles Wager, the first lord of the Admiralty. Once at anchor, the two ships were iced in for three weeks, but despite his belief that it was nothing more than a river, Middleton launched four boat expeditions, the last of which sailed into the inlet for some distance. At the farthest point, samples of water were found to be only slightly brackish. Hopes of finding a passage revived after steering northeast into Roe’s Welcome Sound. The presence of whales, with a strong flood tide from the east and northeast, suggested they were approaching a strait. But the next day brought only disappointment: ‘‘When the Sun cleared away the Haze . . . we saw the Land from the Low Beach quite round to the Westward of the North which met the Western Shore and makes a very deep Bay. Thus our Hopes of a Passage that Way were all over.’’ Middleton marked his dismay by naming it Repulse Bay. He set a course to the eastern end of Hudson Bay in search of the source of the strong tides flowing down Roe’s Welcome Sound and encountered a 20-mile-wide strait still partially blocked by ice. Even if the ice were to disperse, it was clear that the season was too far advanced to proceed farther. Middleton named it the Frozen Strait. Returning southward, he inspected the coastline from nine miles out to sea, mistaking Chesterfield Inlet for a deep bay. After watering on Marble Island, he sailed for England.

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On Middleton’s return, all was harmony between him and Arthur Dobbs at first. But Dobbs was intent on destroying the credit, reputation, and integrity of the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose charter stood in the way of his grand design of superseding the French on the Great Lakes and penetrating to the heartland of North America toward the Mississippi River. After a close inspection of Middleton’s journal, Dobbs confided to him, ‘‘You have made a much greater Progress in the Discovery of the Passage, than you imagined when there.’’ He reasoned the Wager Inlet was in fact a strait, widening and deepening to the west, and that Middleton had explored only the most northerly and narrowest entrance. Farther south, between Whalebone Point and Marble Island, there was a wider entrance. Melting ice was the explanation of the low salinity of the water and the lack of a tide from the west. Dobbs seized the chance to discredit Middleton and the HBC by accusing them of collusion in obstructing the discovery of a passage. Middleton’s report, if accepted, would vindicate the company’s refusal to engage in wasteful and hazardous voyages in a fruitless search for a nonexistent passage. Dobbs’s credibility would plummet. But if the failure to discover a passage could be attributed to Middleton’s corruption, then the issue could be clouded sufficiently to establish a momentum to be maintained for another voyage. A number of highly dubious letters were suddenly produced. Shipboard witnesses came forward to accuse Middleton of concealing the existence of a passage by hurriedly departing from Wager Inlet when a discovery was imminent and by inventing an imaginary Frozen Strait to account for the height of the tides in Roe’s Welcome Sound. Even William Moor, previously convinced that no passage was to be found within Hudson Bay, added his support to Dobbs’s campaign. An increasingly bad-tempered war in print erupted, Dobbs and Middleton being responsible for eight short books and pamphlets of accusation and justification. Middleton’s reputation took a pounding under Dobbs’s vituperative attacks. As an honest and capable seafarer, it was his misfortune to become embroiled in political issues when inexpedient geographical truth was sacrificed to commercial ambition. MISTAKEN STRAITS. This was Martin Frobisher’s memorable name for the channel into which he sailed for 200 miles in July 1578

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in the mistaken belief that he was proceeding deeper into Frobisher Strait (in reality a bay, not a strait) discovered on his first Arctic voyage two years earlier. In fact, he was in Hudson Strait. George Best, who had participated in all three of Frobisher’s voyages and who was captain of the Anne Frances on this third voyage, gave Frobisher the benefit of the doubt. In his opinion, Frobisher soon realized that he was following a promising route to the South Sea. What evidence Best had for this charitable view is not clear. ‘‘MR. ARCTIC.’’ A sobriquet for Thomas Charles Pullen. MONSON, SIR WILLIAM (1568–1643). Not everyone in 1611 was persuaded that Henry Hudson had been within a whisker of finding a navigable passage, or shared the general optimism that the great secret was about to be revealed. Sir William Monson, a senior naval officer, expressed severe doubts about the evidence of a passage in his ‘‘Discourse concerning the North-west Passage.’’ As he saw it, three questions needed to be resolved: the probability of a passage; whether it veered northward or to the south; and, crucially, what Eastern commodities would be likely to exclusively benefit English merchants. He was also doubtful of relying on philosophical arguments or imaginary cartography for evidence of a passage. Yet, despite these doubts and strictures, Monson acknowledged that Hudson’s last voyage had explored 1,200 miles farther than any before and that arguments in favor of a passage now carried more weight. Old sea dog that he was, he immediately realized the significance of the flood tide from the northwest that Hudson had observed: what needed to be accomplished on the next voyage was to discover its sources and to ascertain whether a strait ran south or an open sea stretched to the north. He called upon all his experience at sea to warn that, if the flood tide ran down the main channel, then it indicated a strong chance of a passage west, but that if it flowed from broken land or from among islands, then it would be unwise to rely on it for a successful discovery voyage. Also of concern were the actual and comparative distances involved. If the northern part of the American continent that was shown to be land on contemporary maps should, in fact, prove to be open sea, or if a southerly course should be found possible, then the pas-

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sage to the Orient would still be farther than around the Cape of Good Hope. If much of North America proved to be land and there was no sea running south before the Strait of Anian, the passage could not be run in a single summer. China and Japan would be nearer than the Cape route but the hazards of cold, ice, and unknown seas would still stand in the way of viable commerce. Above all, Monson was skeptical that a passage through Hudson Strait would fall into the South Sea somewhere on the California coast. But Monson was not entirely destructive in his comments, and he outlined how a northwest passage might be attained. Most of his suggestions were obvious enough—the crew must be able to endure the cold, the captain must be a skilled mariner, and so forth—but one was nothing short of revolutionary, in the context of the times: he recommended that an experienced Spanish pilot be employed, on the grounds that he would be better able to judge the potential of any sizeable river or strait that might be discovered. MOOR, WILLIAM (?–1765). After over 10 years’ hard voyaging in Hudson Bay, mostly in ships commanded by his cousin Christopher Middleton, Moor departed the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1741. He was immediately appointed commander in the Discovery, which accompanied HMS Furnace on Middleton’s voyage to the northern stretches of the bay in 1742. At the end of this expedition, Moor recorded in his journal, ‘‘There is no Passage into the other Ocean between Churchill and the Latitd. 67 N.’’ His conviction of this was seemingly reinforced in the summer of 1743 when he denied that Wager Inlet, discovered on the 1742 voyage, offered a passage westward. Two years later, however, Moor publicly supported Arthur Dobbs’s accusation that Middleton had colluded with the company to conceal the existence of a passage. No doubt his appointment as leader of the North West Committee’s expedition to Hudson Bay influenced this apparent about-face. Moor sailed in the galley Dobbs on 20 May 1746, in company with Francis Smith in the California. His instructions were to search for a passage either in the Pistol Bay–Marble Island region or up Wager Inlet to the farthest point reached by the Middleton expedition. He was encouraged:

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In case you meet the Flood Tide, and pass the narrow Part of Wager Strait; upon getting into an open Sea, you may depend upon an open Passage, and boldly proceed South Westerly . . . as the Lands may lie, keeping the American Land in view to the Larboard. . . . If you find a South West Tide of Flood, as far as 62 North Latitude beyond Wager Strait, then you may be sure you have passed the most Northerly Cape of the North West Continent of America.

If he reached the west coast of America, he was to get to the southward of latitude 40 N, which would complete his task. Then, on his return voyage, he was to closely observe and chart the whole coast of the northwest of America! The reality was that the 1746–1747 winter was spent at York Factory and was marked by constant friction between Moor and Smith. The following summer, the Dobbs and the California often sailed and explored independently and not in company. The Whale Cove area was reexamined and Chesterfield Inlet was discovered, but despite its initial promise as a westward passage, it proved to be no more than a huge bay. Farther north, Moor took a longboat 150 miles into Wager Inlet as far as Brown Lake only to find that it ended at the mouth of two impassable rivers. After examining almost the entire west coast of Hudson Bay between latitudes 61 N and 65 N with no result, the expedition sailed for England. In 1749, when giving evidence before a parliamentary committee investigating the condition and trade in the bay, Moor expressed the opinion that if a northwest passage did exist, it was located farther to the north. MOORE, THOMAS EDWARD LAWS (1819–1872). Captain of HMS Plover, a depot and store ship, Moore sailed from England on 1 January 1848 with orders to search the coast of Alaska eastward to the Mackenzie River for traces of Sir John Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition. By 13 October he was approaching the Bering Strait, near St. Lawrence Island, when the Plover was caught in strong gale-force winds and forced to the Siberian shore. The local Chukchi inhabitants directed him to a safe winter haven at Port Emma, on the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula, where he spent the winter surveying the harbor and boiling oil from whale blubber. To investigate Chukchi reports of ships being seen in the vicinity,

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Moore sent three of his officers on a dogsled journey to East Cape (Cape Dezhnev), 100 miles or so to the north. Leaving on 8 February 1849, with two Chukchi guides and 12 days’ supplies, two of the officers succeeded in reaching the cape before returning to the Plover at the end of March. Moore was freed from the ice on 13 June and set sail for Kotzebue Sound to rendezvous with HMS Herald (commanded by Henry Kellett). Together with the Nancy Dawson (under Robert Shedden), they sailed northeastward up the west coast of Alaska, past Icy Cape, to Wainwright Inlet. From there, William Pullen embarked on his search expedition along the coast to the Mackenzie River. MORGAN LE FAY. See FATA MORGANA. MOURELLE, FRANCISCO ANTONIA (1755–1820). Appointed pilot on board Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra’s Sonora in 1775, Mourelle also accompanied Bodega in the Favorita four years later. With years of distinguished service on voyages to China and the Philippines, with a spell as commandant of the San Blas Naval Department, and with experience in the viceroy’s secretariat restoring order to the mass of official records relating to discovery and exploration, no other senior officer could rival his experience and breadth of knowledge of Spanish maritime affairs in North America. At the end of December 1791, Mourelle was designated the leader of an expedition to sail directly to latitude 56 N and explore the coastline south to San Francisco. He was to conduct a close examination of the many channels still awaiting exploration in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, especially the bays, ports, rivers, and inlets of its inner reaches, determining once and for all whether they returned to the western coastline or penetrated the continent eastward to Baffin Bay or Hudson Bay. But, at Alejandro Malaspina’s insistence, Mourelle was replaced by Dionisio Alcala´ Galiano. MUD. In arctic terminology, ‘‘mud’’ consists of muskeg or decayed mosses. Planed smooth and covered with a coating of ice, it was used extensively by the Inuit to lubricate their sledge runners, enabling them to glide quickly over snow-covered ground. For this purpose, the mud had to be totally free of sand or grit.

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MUNK, JENS (1579–1628). In 1619 King Christian IV of Denmark and Norway, anxious to forestall the English merchants in the discovery of a viable commercial route to the South Sea, fitted out the Enhio¨ rningen (Unicorn) and the Lamprenen (Lamprey) for an exploration voyage to Hudson Bay. Perhaps they might succeed in finding a passage where the English had failed. The man selected to command this expedition was Jens Munk, commissioned in the Royal Danish Navy in 1611, who had Arctic experience in the Spitsbergen region with Danish whaling ships. Sailing on 9 May, Munk sighted Cape Farewell on 30 June, and by 8 July he was approaching Davis Strait when foul weather closed in. After a false start up Frobisher Bay, the weather cleared, and Munk turned about and sailed for Hudson Strait. Landing on its northern shore, he made contact with wandering Inuit and took possession in the name of Denmark. On 19 August he resumed his voyage, steering a course westsouthwest only to find himself in Ungava Bay. Contrary winds lost him six days before he regained the strait and at last entered Hudson Bay in the vicinity of Digges Island. He crossed the bay to its southwestern shores and sought a safe harbor for his ships near Cape Churchill. The onset of winter persuaded Munk to spend the winter on board ship in the estuary of the Churchill River and to postpone his search for a passage until the spring. Despite a program of exercise and a constant hunt for fresh meat, by January 1620 the first signs of scurvy were becoming all too apparent. One by one the crew succumbed. By 4 July only Munk and two others were still alive. On 16 July the three of them weighed anchor in the Lamprenen in a desperate bid to sail home. In his account of the expedition, Navigatio Septentrionalis (A voyage north), published in Copenhagen in 1626, Munk included few details of the crossing of the North Atlantic, completing surely one of the most remarkable and astounding voyages of all time when the Lamprenen limped into the Norwegian port of Alden on 21 September. Back in Copenhagen by Christmas, he was commanded by the king to prepare for a second voyage to the bay. But the horror story of the 1619–1620 expedition made it impossible to find a crew, and the project was abandoned.

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MUSCOVY COMPANY. The Company of Merchant Adventurers, chartered in 1551, changed its name and was incorporated on 6 February 1555 as the Muscovy Company with a monopoly of trade with Russia and all areas to the north, northeast, and northwest. In 1574 Martin Frobisher allied himself to Michael Lok, the company’s London agent, to persuade its governors to allow him to sail for a northwest passage. The company refused, and Lok quit to throw in his lot with Frobisher. The company perhaps underestimated Frobisher’s influence at court, and in quick time it was forced to reconsider its decision and reluctantly acquiesce in his proposals. When the Company of Cathay was incorporated in 1577, the Muscovy Company retained its monopoly of trade only eastward, but with the demise of its rival in 1578, it seems to have regained its earlier rights. On 6 March 1584 Adrian Gilbert and John Davis applied unsuccessfully to the Muscovy Company for a license, and for a second time, the company was frustrated by the queen’s letters patent allowing the formation of the Collegues of the Fellowshipp for the Discovery of the Northwest Passage the following year. The Muscovy Company’s continual failure to protect its interests was again evident in 1602 when George Waymouth was dispatched on a northwest discovery voyage by the East India Company despite its objections. However, the voyages of John Knight (1606) and Henry Hudson (1610) were joint ventures by the two companies. MUSHERS. Dogsled travelers. See SLEDGES AND SLEDGE TRAVEL. MUSKEG. Marshland bordering the rim of many of Canada’s lakes, consisting of watery peat bogs often covered by an unpleasant green slime. MUSK OX. A large member of the cattle family, standing about five feet high, with a thick blanket of shaggy hair descending almost to its feet and an undercoat of dense wool that is disposed of in summer. Now confined to Arctic America, it is usually found in herds of up to 30 oxen.

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–N– NAPPER, JAMES (?–1737). Appointed to lead the Hudson’s Bay Company’s 1737 voyage of exploration along Hudson Bay’s western shoreline to Roe’s Welcome Sound, Napper was ordered to search for a safe harbor there and to take careful observations of the bearings and distances of prominent headlands. He was to take soundings and measure the tides and currents. After engaging in trade with the Inuit and encouraging them to hunt for seals and whales, he was to proceed to Whale Cove. If a ship arrived without orders to the contrary, he was expected to sail as far northward as possible and make whatever discoveries he could. However, Napper died at Whale Cove, and the expedition returned to Churchill. NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM. Opened in 1937 and located at Greenwich, on the River Thames between London and the sea, the National Maritime Museum includes an Arctic gallery dedicated to the voyages of Sir John Franklin and the Franklin rescue expeditions. The museum has a large research library housing more than 70,000 printed books and pamphlets, and its manuscript collection extends along three miles of shelving. The five-volume Catalogue of the Library was published in 1968–1977. ‘‘NAVIGATOR.’’ In a letter to the Times of London, printed in its 27 March 1818 issue, shortly before John Ross sailed on his first Arctic expedition, this disgruntled pseudonymous correspondent wanted to know why the voyage was being undertaken and what benefit would accrue from a successful discovery. Every person is enquiring what object is in view by fitting out this northern expedition. . . . The grand design appears to be . . . that our ships are to sail by Hudson’s-bay, Baffin-bay, or northward of Greenland, and running westwards, to pass through Behring’s-straits. Now, Mr. Editor, what will commerce, navigation, or science gain by such discovery? Nothing! Those navigators . . . will merely report they have sailed along such a coast, and probably may delineate its situation more correctly on the charts. Provided the summer is moderate, and the ice disperse, the passage may be attempted with success; and other navigators may attempt it 99 times out of a hundred without succeeding.

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He continued, ‘‘[Even] allowing our ships to gain the Northern Pacific Ocean . . . what is commerce to gain by the discovery of a few paltry islands?’’ Apparently not everyone in England at this time was convinced of the value of the discovery of a northwest passage. NE ULTRA (NO FURTHER). See ROE’S WELCOME SOUND. NEW ALBION. The site of Francis Drake’s landing on the California coast on 17 June 1579. Drake annexed the country in the name of Queen Elizabeth before his departure on 26 July. The precise location of New Albion has long exercised historians’ minds. Six prime possibilities have been identified: Bodega Bay, Bolinas Bay, Drake’s Bay, San Francisco Bay, Tomales Bay, and Trinidad Bay. The latest claim is for Vancouver Island, a hypothesis strenuously argued in Samuel Bawlf’s The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake (2003). What intrigued later cosmographers was how far New Albion extended. No doubt to Drake and Elizabeth it signified much more than Portus Novae Albionis (the Harbor of New England) and its immediate hinterland. As early as 1581, a world map displayed Nova Albion as stretching halfway across the North American continent. Although half-forgotten, the name was revived 300 years later when the northwest voyages of James Cook and George Vancouver made it expedient for Great Britain to do so. NEW BRITAIN. In the 18th century, Labrador was often designated New Britain. NEW DENMARK. An alternative name for New North Wales. NEW FRANKLIN RESEARCH EXPEDITION. See HALL, CHARLES FRANCIS. NEW NORTH WALES. The 18th-century name for the land behind the west coast of Hudson Bay north from Rankin Inlet to Wager Bay; also known as New Denmark. NEW PRINCIPALITY OF SOUTH WALES. This was Thomas James’s name for the region later known as New South Wales.

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NEW SOUTH WALES. Sailing down the western shores of Hudson Bay in August 1631, Thomas James named the hinterland ‘‘The New Principality of South Wales.’’ As New South Wales, the name lingered on into the 18th century. NEW SPAIN. The Spanish colonial name for Mexico and California. NEW WALES. The name given by Thomas Button (a Welshman) to the lands discovered on the west coast of Hudson Bay in 1612. See also NEW NORTH WALES; NEW SOUTH WALES. 1989 FRANKLIN SEARCH EXPEDITION. See TRAFTON, STEPHEN J. ‘‘NO LAND UNINHABITABLE, NOR SEA INNAVIGABLE.’’ This brave doctrine was first enunciated by Robert Thorne in the first half of the 16th century. He argued that nothing prevented a northern voyage across the North Pole and a drop down to the equator on the other side of the world to steal a march on the Spanish and Portuguese to the riches of the Indies. Eagerly embraced by John Barrow in the 19th century, this hypothesis exerted a profound influence on English Arctic explorers, sometimes with tragic consequences. NOOTKA INCIDENT. The full story of the Nootka Incident, a diplomatic crisis from 1790 through 1794 in which John Meares was heavily and ignominiously involved and which almost led to war between Great Britain and Spain, is not directly relevant to the search for a northwest passage. For a reliable and authoritative account of the crisis, see Warren L. Cook’s Flood Tide of Empire (1973). NOOTKA SOUND. First known to the English as Friendly Harbor— soon changed to Friendly Cove—and to the Spanish as Santa Cruz de Nuca, Nootka Sound is located on the west coast of a small island, 25 miles long by 14 miles wide, that is separated from Vancouver Island by a channel running into the open sea through Esperanza Inlet. In the late 1780s Spain briefly contemplated establishing a garrison and an advance naval base there to assert its sovereignty over

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the northwest coast of America and to coordinate exploration for a northwest passage. NORTHERN INDIANS. The name given to the Chipewyan by James Knight. NORTH MAGNETIC POLE. During a series of sledge patrols on the Boothia Peninsula during John Ross’s 1829–1833 Arctic expedition, James Clark Ross established the exact position of the North Magnetic Pole. As of 8:00 a.m. on 1 June 1831, it was located at 705⬘17 N, 9646⬘45 W, that is, on the southwest coast of the peninsula. He celebrated the moment by erecting a cairn and hoisting the Union Jack. The cairn is still standing, and the original jack staff used to fly the flag is now in the collections of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, England. In 1904 Roald Amundsen calculated that the North Magnetic Pole, which is constantly moving in accordance with the earth’s magnetic fields, had shifted 40 miles to the northeast. NORTH POLE VICTUALLING YARD. A lower-deck term on John Ross’s Victory for Fury Beach. NORTH SOMERSET. See SOMERSET ISLAND. NORTH WATER. See MELVILLE BAY. NORTH WEST COMMITTEE. Formed in 1745 after the Arthur Dobbs–inspired dispute with Christopher Middleton, the North West Committee consisted of Dobbs and seven leading London merchants, all eager to break the Hudson’s Bay Company’s trading monopoly and privileges in Rupert’s Land. The objective was to establish a joint stock company comprising eminent public figures who would leave the organization and management of a discovery expedition through a northwest passage to experienced overseas merchants. Because subscribers did not come forward quickly enough or in sufficient numbers, it was 1746 before the committee’s expedition was dispatched under the command of William Moor. After the voyage’s disappointing outcome, the committee submit-

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ted a petition to the Privy Council asking for a royal charter to subscribers of the 1746 voyage and to new investors, who would enjoy the same privileges as the Hudson’s Bay Company in all lands that might be discovered. For a while, the committee’s prospects were boosted by the publication of Henry Ellis’s A Voyage to Hudson’sBay by the Dobbs Galley and California (1748), whose final section was headed ‘‘The Great Probability of a Passage.’’ But the law officers of the Crown refused to accept the notion that the losses incurred in fitting out Moor’s expedition signified that the committee was entitled to a compensatory royal charter. The tide was now flowing against Dobbs—too many unsuccessful voyages to discover the passage, too many disappointments, too many extravagant claims unrealized. Moreover, it was dawning on the London merchants that the Northwest Passage was irrelevant: even if a passage existed, its commercial potential was limited. The North West Committee silently furled its sails. Its hour had come and gone. NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE. See ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE. NORTH-WEST PASSAGE COMPANY. A frequently used abbreviated name for the Company of the Merchants of London, Discoverers of the North-West Passage. NORTON, MOSES (c. 1735–1773). A long-term servant of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Moses Norton was appointed chief factor at Churchill in 1762. His appointment carried responsibility for northern exploration, and he accompanied William Christopher’s voyage to the deepest recesses of Chesterfield Inlet in the same year, going ashore at frequent intervals in search of minerals. Sailing into the inlet for 230 miles, they entered a freshwater lake (Lake Baker) and, on 9 August, landed on Despair Island, where it became all too obvious that there was no waterway west. To be absolutely certain, Norton closely examined the lake’s western shoreline in a small boat. After this disappointing approach by sea, Norton turned his attention to overland exploration. He personally placed Mattonabee’s report and map before the company in London and was instrumental in

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securing its approval for Samuel Hearne’s 1770–1772 journey across the Barren Lands to the Coppermine River. NORTON, RICHARD (1701–1741). Appointed to an apprenticeship with the Hudson’s Bay Company at the age of 13, Norton was dispatched from Churchill by James Knight on 18 July 1717 to persuade the Chipewyan Indians to bring their skins and furs there to trade. With two Indians, he traveled up the coast by canoe to approximately latitude 60 N before marching inland to the southwest across the Barren Lands. He claimed to have accomplished a great sweep of the land, but his exact route remains unclear. What is known is that he experienced very arduous conditions and was fortunate to return alive in the 1717–1718 winter. Norton also sailed with John Scroggs in 1722, and it was he who went ashore near Wager Inlet and reported an open sea to the west. He was also one of the shore party on Marble Island. NUNAVUT. ‘‘Our Land’’ in the native Inuktitut language of the central and eastern Arctic, Nunavut was created on 1 April 1999 out of the eastern and northeastern parts of the Northwest Territories. It is divided into three traditional regions—Qikiqtaluk, Kitikmeot, and Kivalliq—with its capital at Iqaluit (formerly Frobisher Bay). See also INUIT. –O– OMMANEY, ERASMUS (1814–1904). At the time captain of HMS Assistance, one of the ships forming Horatio Austin’s rescue expedition of 1850–1851, it was Ommaney who, on 23 August 1850, found the first traces of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition: fragments of naval stores, preserved meat tins, and items of clothing on Beechey Island. Nine months later, he was in charge of a sledge party that explored down the west coast of Prince of Wales Island, discovering Ommaney Bay. He concluded that no ship could have negotiated the ice west of the island. OPERATION BELLOT. On completion of the United States Hydrographic Survey for the DEW Line in August 1957, the three U.S.

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Coast Guard vessels Storis, Bramble, and Spar were placed under the operational command of Capt. Thomas Charles Pullen, RCN, on HMCS Labrador to take part in Operation Bellot, a joint Canadian– U.S. scientific study of the region from Shepherd Bay, the northern extension of Rae Strait, through James Ross Strait, Franklin Strait, and Bellot Strait into Prince Regent Inlet. Pullen arrived at the northern end of the inlet on 18 August and proceeded south to Bellot Strait, where a shore base was established at Fort Ross for the scientists who were to investigate tidal measurements and undertake various smallboat surveys. A reconnaissance through Bellot Strait by the Labrador’s 36-foot aluminum sounding boat failed to locate any major hazard, and Pullen made the first of a number of passages through the strait before circumnavigating Somerset Island. Meanwhile the three U.S. Coast Guard vessels set out from Gjøa Haven to make their way to Bellot Strait. At Matty Island, between the Boothia Peninsula and King William Island, Comdr. H. L. Wood, aboard the Storis, like Roald Amundsen and Henry Larsen before him, elected to negotiate a course off its eastern shoreline. Progress was slowed by ice, but 17 miles northwest of Cape Victoria, where James Clark Ross had located the North Magnetic Pole in 1831, he rendezvoused with the Labrador, whose power was able to break the ice for the much smaller U.S. ships. Following two days’ intense hydrographical work off the western entrance to Bellot Strait, on 6 September all four vessels proceeded through the strait in line-ahead formation, an impressive sight, especially bearing in mind that more ships negotiated the strait on this one occasion than ever before. At this point, Operation Bellot was over; the two contingents went their separate ways, the Labrador to continue her Arctic duties and the Storis, Bramble, and Spar home to Boston, the first U.S. ships to complete the Northwest Passage. OSBORN, SHERARD (1822–1875). A serving officer in the Royal Navy, Osborn involved himself in the clamor for mounting further search expeditions to find Sir John Franklin’s ships when the dismal results of James Clark Ross’s 1848–1849 voyage became known. As a consequence, on putting his name forward, he was appointed captain of HMS Pioneer, one of four ships that sailed for

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Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait under the command of Horatio Austin on 3 May 1850. In spring 1851, with Erasmus Ommaney, he led a sledge party to Prince of Wales Island and down its western shores. Never an establishment man, Osborn courageously sided with William Penny, a whaling skipper, in his dispute with Austin, which became public after Austin’s premature return to England. It can be no coincidence that Osborn was the only one of Austin’s captains whom he did not recommend for promotion. Conversely, he was the only captain to be reappointed to his ship on Edward Belcher’s 1852–1854 voyage. On 14 August 1852 the Pioneer accompanied Belcher’s HMS Assistance up the open waters of Wellington Channel, through Queen’s Channel, then farther north to discover Northumberland Strait on the northwest coast of the Grinnell Peninsula of Devon Island. In April 1853 Osborn crossed Penny Strait with George Richard’s sledge expedition and explored the northern shore of Bathurst Island and the northeast coast of Melville Island. Separating from the main party, Osborn then traveled down Bathurst Island’s eastern coast. During the period from 10 April through 15 July, he sledged more than 900 miles, often in atrocious conditions and over previously unexplored lands. If anything, Osborn’s relations with Belcher were even more tumultuous and precarious than those with Austin. Eventually Belcher stripped him of his command and confined him to his cabin. On Belcher’s return to England, Osborn demanded a court-martial to defend his conduct and clear his name. The Admiralty declined a courtmartial and promoted Osborn to the rank of commander. Sherard Osborn authored Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal (1852), which quickly went through four editions, and The Career, Last Voyage and Fate of Sir John Franklin (1860). He also saw Robert McClure’s and Leopold McClintock’s journals through the press. –P– PALFREY, DON (1949?– ). Diving in 1991 in the vicinity where Ralph Smith’s party had discovered James Knight’s schooner Al-

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bany 20 years earlier, Palfrey also located the sloop Discovery. The two ships lie close together, perhaps where they were moored. The Albany is on its port side and the Discovery rests upright. Palfrey is of the opinion that Knight lived on board, not in the house on shore. If he is right, that suggests that at least one ship was in good working order and poses the question, why did Knight and his crew perish? See also BEATTIE, OWEN. PARLIAMENT AND ADMIRALTY REWARDS. In 1745 Parliament underlined the importance of a northwest passage for England’s strategic and commercial interests by legislating for the sum of £20,000 to be awarded to any British subject who completed a voyage to the Pacific to the northwest through Hudson Strait. This sum probably exceeded the expectations of Arthur Dobbs, who had been making strenuous efforts behind the scenes to persuade Parliament to make such a move. In fact it conformed with the amount offered in the 1714 Longitude Act for a practicable method of accurately determining longitude at sea to within half a degree of a great circle. Thirty years later it was Daines Barrington who put himself forward in similar fashion to prevail upon Parliament to extend the terms of the previous legislation. A similar sum was now offered for a passage north of latitude 52 N—without the stipulation that it had to be via Hudson Strait—and for the first time, the reward was extended to ships of the Royal Navy. What effect the introduction of this financial incentive had is uncertain, although it is known that more than one of James Cook’s officers in HMS Resolution became disaffected when he declined to investigate Prince William Sound more fully in July 1778. Marking the navy’s concentrated effort to discover a passage at the end of the second decade of the 19th century, in 1818 Parliament instigated a sliding scale of reward, according to the longitudes reached: £5,000 to the first ship sailing across 110 W within the Arctic Circle and £10,000 for crossing 130 W. William Edward Parry in HMS Hecla claimed the £5,000 for reaching Cape Bounty, halfway along the southern shore of Melville Island, on 4 September 1819, but this was the only disbursement before the enabling legislation was repealed in 1828. Nevertheless, a select parliamentary committee appointed to in-

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quire into the circumstances of John Ross’s 1829–1833 expedition to the Arctic Seas had no hesitation in recommending that £5,000 be voted to Ross. And then, at the height of the public interest in Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition at the beginning of the 1850s, the Admiralty offered £20,000 for rescuing Franklin, £10,000 for ascertaining the fate of his expedition, and £10,000 for the first ship to traverse the Northwest Passage. Amid some controversy and conflicting claims, John Rae was eventually awarded £10,000 for bringing back indisputable evidence of Franklin’s fate, and Robert McClure a similar sum for having been ‘‘the first to perform the actual passage over water.’’ PARRY, WILLIAM EDWARD (1790–1855). After accompanying John Ross’s 1818 expedition, Parry was given command of the follow-up voyage. In May 1819 he sailed from Deptford, on the River Thames, in HMS Hecla, a 375-ton bomb vessel. He was accompanied by HMS Griper, a 180-ton brig under Lt. Matthew Liddon. Parry’s orders were to proceed to Lancaster Sound and pass through the strait expected to be found there. If this should prove impossible, he was to make for Alderman Jones Sound and then to Smith Sound, the other two promising openings to the west that Ross had apparently neglected. Parry arrived at the entrance to Lancaster Sound on 30 July and, with high hopes of finding a channel westward to open sea, passed through, but within a week he was confronted with an impenetrable ice mass. He turned south through Prince Regent Inlet for 100 miles or so before reversing course back into Lancaster Sound and steering west again through the Barrow Strait, past Wellington Channel and Cornwallis Island, into Viscount Melville Sound, reaching the 130th meridian and thereby qualifying for the £5,000 Parliament reward for the first ship’s crew to reach that far west. Winter was now almost upon them, and the search for a haven became desperate. Eventually a suitable anchorage at Winter Harbor off the south coast of Melville Island was found in the nick of time. Parry could be well pleased with his efforts: he had sailed 700 miles west of Lancaster Sound, which a year earlier Ross had declared to be but an inlet. In June, after a not uneventful winter, he set off northward across the ice with a party of 11 men, reaching the north coast

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of Melville Island after a six-day march. Two months later, his ship was freed from the ice, and Parry sailed a further 50 miles to the west, but was then enmeshed in the ice again: it was time to go home. He returned with the conviction that a passage existed, but that it would be discovered farther south, along the unexplored northern shores of continental America, and not through the ice-choked islands nearer the Pole. Parry’s successful advance westward positively demanded that he be given a second expedition. When he sailed from the Nore in the Thames with HMS Fury (under Lt. Henry Parkyns Hoppner) and HMS Hecla (under George Francis Lyon) in May 1821, his instructions were to make the western shore of Hudson Bay, steer northward along the coast, and investigate every inlet that promised to lead to the west. Sailing through the Foxe Channel, he first explored the Frozen Strait north of Southampton Island into Repulse Bay, until it became clear no passage existed there, and then explored the inlets of the eastern shores of the Melville Peninsula before pack ice barred the way. They anchored at Winter Island, off the peninsula’s south coast, and set off exploring by boats, but the onset of winter soon prevented further investigation. Maps drawn by the Inuit in the vicinity suggested they were not far from the Polar Sea, and Parry was persuaded that by sailing around the peninsula’s northern cape, they would emerge into open water. In July, he headed northeast, around Cape Wilson, to sight an island to the north that the Inuit maps had placed at the entrance to the Polar Sea, but the strait was blocked by ice; although the two ships tilted at it under full sail, they were brought to a standstill after only a few hundred yards. Reconnaissance parties sent overland reported no navigable channels and their second Arctic winter was spent amid the ice off Igloolik Island. In the spring, Parry intended to send one ship home and continue the search with a volunteer crew in the other, but spring was late that year, scurvy began to afflict the crew, and there was no apparent break in the expanse of ice confronting them, so he decided to bring his ships home. Although he had added much to the map of the Canadian Arctic, he had come no nearer to the discovery of the Northwest Passage. Parry’s third expedition, also in the Hecla and Fury, aimed to find

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a route through Lancaster Sound and Prince Regent Inlet. The 1824– 1825 winter was spent at Port Bowen on the inlet’s eastern shore, at a point north of the 73rd parallel, but disaster struck in July: both ships, just freed from the ice, were forced aground again by high winds. Despite all their labors, it became obvious that the expedition had to be abandoned, and they returned in the one ship, the Hecla, that could be made seaworthy. Many of the Fury’s stores and supplies were landed on what became known as Fury Beach, on the east coast of Somerset Island. They were to prove of crucial importance in later years. See also MAPS AND MAPPING, INDIAN AND INUIT. PARRY CHANNEL. A collective designation for (from east to west) Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, Melville Sound, and McClure Strait. It forms the classic eastern route for the Northwest Passage. PARRY’S MONUMENT. A massive, house-shaped sandstone rock, 10 feet high, 22 feet long, and 8 feet wide, that William Edward Parry had inscribed to mark his 1819–1820 winter on Melville Island. The legend, for the most part still legible, reads: ‘‘His Britannic Majesty’s Ships Hecla & Griper Commanded by W.E. Parry & M. Liddon Wintered in the Adjacent Harbour 1819–1820.’’ It was an important landmark, where later visitors left messages, one of which proved crucial in extricating Robert McClure and the crew of HMS Investigator from Mercy Bay in 1853. The monument is sometimes referred to as Parry’s Rock. PARRY’S ROCK. See PARRY’S MONUMENT. PECKHAM, SIR GEORGE (fl. LATE 16TH CENTURY). Toward the end of 1583, Peckham issued a prospectus, A True Report of the Late Discoveries, in an attempt to persuade investors ‘‘of the great hope and likelihood of a passage by the Grande Bay in the South Seas, confirmed by sundry authors to be found leading to Cataia [Cathay], the Moluccas and Spiceries,’’ adding that ‘‘it is well known to all men of sound judgement that this voyage is of greater importance, and will be found more beneficial to our country than all other voyages at this day in use and trade amongst us.’’ The full text of this

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document is printed in volume 3 of New American World, edited by David Beers Quinn (1979, 34–36). PEEL SOUND. At the very heart of the Arctic Archipelago, the 15mile-wide Peel Sound runs from Barrow Strait, between Prince of Wales Island to the west and Somerset Island to the east, to the western exit of Bellot Strait, where it merges into Franklin Strait. Its waters are open usually from late August to the end of September. Sir John Franklin sailed down the sound in 1846, when the ice allowed HMS Hecla and HMS Terror through before locking behind him with a barrier so extensive that the best Royal Navy minds searching for him thought it impossible that he could have penetrated the ice there. Wherever his route took him, they reasoned, it had not been down Peel Sound. But Franklin had sailed down the sound, into Franklin Strait and then Victoria Strait, before disaster overtook his expedition. While serving with James Clark Ross’s Franklin rescue expedition in HMS Enterprise and HMS Investigator, Francis Leopold McClintock had sledged down Peel Sound’s east coast as far as Four River Point, halfway between Cape Bunny and Bellot Strait, in spring 1849. He had discerned Cape Bird, a prominent landmark some 50 miles farther south, but could not distinguish whether land or sea extended beyond it. Two years later, Lt. William H. Browne, commanding a sledge party of Erasmus Ommaney’s western search division from HMS Resolute (commanded by Horatio Austin) examined the sound’s west coast and concluded that no navigable channel existed southward. Only Lady Jane Franklin was convinced that her husband had, in fact, sailed south down Peel Sound in the mistaken belief that open water would take him to the continental coastline and so prove to be a passage. Her privately dispatched expedition in Fox, under McClintock’s command, attempted to follow in Franklin’s wake through the sound in 1848. But after only 25 miles, ice blocked the way from shore to shore. Peel Sound kept its secret to the end. PELLY, DAVID F. (1948– ). The objective of the 1977 Pelly Lake Expedition, comprising David Pelly, his younger brother Brian Pelly, and two friends, was to retrace George Back’s 1834 route across the

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Barren Lands, down the Back River as far as Pelly Lake, which was named after their great-great-great-grandfather, Sir John Henry Pelly, governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company from 1822 through 1852. Starting off on 16 July from Mackay Lake, 200 miles north of Yellowknife, they canoed 418 miles downriver, mostly shooting the numerous rapids but occasionally having to resort to laborious portages. On 21 July they rediscovered the river’s source at Sussex Lake. They reached their destination, the Pelly Lake Peninsula, from where they were airlifted back to Yellowknife on 13 August. PEMMICAN. Thin-sliced, lean meat (or fish), dried and pounded so that six pounds of fresh meat became one pound of dried meat, packed with fat to form a paste, and flavored with currants or berries, this highly nutritious food was Indian in origin. Rich in vitamin C, and so a precaution against scurvy, it was light, portable, and longlasting and could be quickly prepared as a hot soup or stew, fried, or even chewed frozen on the march. A traditional sustinance food for fur trappers, in the 19th century pemmican was produced in large quantities for Arctic expeditions. Without it, in fact, long-distance Arctic land exploration would have been more arduous than it actually was, slow and perhaps impossible. PENKEVELL, RICHARD (fl. EARLY 17TH CENTURY). Described as a gentleman of Rossorowe, in the county of Cornwall, who ‘‘by divers meanes endeavoureth and laboreth, that the Passage unto China, Cathay, and the Molucos and other regions of the East Indies, by the Northward, Northwestward, or Northeastward . . . maie be discovered, known and frequented,’’ Richard Penkevell and a group of London merchants, incorporated under the name of the Collegues of the Fellowshipp for the Discoverie of the Northwest Passage, were granted a license on 9 June 1607 to discover a northern passage to the Orient (the license is printed in Calendar of State Papers Colonial Series, East Indies, China and Japan 1513–1616, ed. W. Noel Sainsbury [London: Longman Green, 1862], 146). According to the license, if the venture should prove successful within seven years, Penkevell and the merchants would enjoy a 21-year monopoly. In return, the Crown would harvest its usual 20 percent of all gold and silver ore, pearls, jewels, and other precious stones brought into En-

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gland through London or the West Country ports of Bristol, Dartmouth, or Barnstable. The project came to naught, however. It may have followed too closely upon John Knight’s voyage, or it may have been frustrated by the well-entrenched City of London trading companies. PENNY, WILLIAM (1809–1892). With vast experience as a whaling captain in the Greenland Sea, Davis Strait, and Cumberland Sound fisheries, William Penny claimed to have been the first man to make a search for Sir John Franklin’s lost ships. In 1849, when the whales had apparently disappeared, he resolved to enter Lancaster Sound on a dual mission: to catch up with the elusive whales and to conduct a search for the missing expedition. Subsequently, he offered his services to Lady Jane Franklin. Then preparing her own private expedition, Lady Franklin accepted Penny’s offer and appointed him as its commander. When she persuaded the Admiralty to underwrite the expedition, Penny was part of the package. The Admiralty was not eager to appoint a whaling skipper to command Royal Navy vessels, even if they were far from being fighting ships of the line, but in the end, as was her habit, Lady Franklin got her way and Penny sailed in April 1850 in command of the Lady Franklin and the Sophia (under Alexander Stewart). But an unfortunate harbinger of the future was a fractious discussion between Horatio Austin and Penny even before they sailed. The two ships wintered in Assistance Bay in close proximity to Austin’s squadron, and in the new year, it was agreed that Penny would be responsible for exploring up Wellington Channel. In May and June 1851 a sledge party under Stewart searched the channel’s eastern shore as far as Cape Belcher, on the west coast of North Devon Island, and the eastern and northern shores of Cornwallis Island on the other side of the channel. Penny himself set out on 9 May with two dogsleds northward up the coast of Cornwallis Island, discovering Baillie Hamilton Island across the ice to the north of Wellington Channel, naming Prince Albert Land (later renamed Grinnell Peninsula), and finding open water at Port Surprise at latitude 70 N. He returned to the Lady Franklin on 20 May. Building a sledge large enough to carry his six-oared whaleboat,

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Penny ventured out northward again on 11 June. On reaching the open sea, he loaded the boat with enough provisions to last seven men for six weeks and proceeded to the north of Baillie Hamilton Island to name Queen Victoria Channel and Maury Strait, the latter after the distinguished American oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806–1873). He also sighted Penny Strait dividing the northern coasts of Devon and Bathurst islands. With only one week’s supplies remaining, Penny was forced to return to the Lady Franklin. In a short summer season, his men had traveled 2,000 miles, on foot or by boat, 700 of them over previously unknown territory or across uncharted waters. Austin was reluctant to spend a second winter in the Arctic, but Penny argued that there was much to be explored north of Wellington Channel. He was convinced that there was an open Polar Sea beyond the channel and that Franklin had sailed that way. He requested Austin to let him have one of his steam-powered ships, but Austin refused. The acrimonious dispute over this issue at length reached the Arctic Committee. PERMAFROST. Ground maintaining a temperature of 0 C (32 F) or lower for two or more seasons, beneath a surface layer perhaps only four to six inches in depth that may thaw in warm summers. A zone of continuous permafrost exists everywhere north of the Arctic Circle; in lower latitudes to 55 N is a zone of discontinuous permafrost. See also ICE; TUNDRA. PICKERSGILL, RICHARD (1749– ). To assist James Cook’s 1776–1780 exploration voyage to the northern Pacific Ocean, the British Admiralty dispatched Richard Pickersgill in HMS Lyon in May 1776, with orders to explore the west coast of Baffin Bay. The plan was to investigate those inlets that might conceivably penetrate westward, which could be more closely scrutinized the following year. If Cook should find a passage, he could be guided back to England. Of course, it could be argued that if such a renowned navigator as Cook succeeded in negotiating a passage eastward to Baffin Bay, he could be relied on to find his own way home. But the perils of the Arctic were well chronicled, even at this date, and whatever assis-

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tance the Admiralty could afford would no doubt have been welcomed. From the start, Pickersgill’s voyage was ill fated. He was given an inexperienced crew, no warm clothing, and no precise instructions, and his ship was in a parlous condition. He arrived late in the season and an experienced whaling master gave him discouraging reports on the prevailing ice conditions. He returned to England after sailing only as far north as 6826⬘. It was an unrewarding voyage, and on his arrival back in England Pickersgill was court-martialed for frequent drunkenness. The Lyon returned to Baffin Bay in 1777 under the command of Lt. Walter Young. PIM, BEDFORD CLAPPERTON TREVELYAN (1826–1880). HMS Herald, commanded by Henry Kellett, was charting the coasts of Central America and southern California in the summer of 1849 when orders were received to sail north and join HMS Plover (under Capt. Thomas Moore) stationed at Kotzebue Sound to assist Sir John Franklin should his ships win through to the Beaufort Sea. Bedford Pim, a junior officer on the Herald, was temporarily posted to the Plover, and in the 1849–1850 winter, he led a dogsled party to Egg Island, Alaska, on an unsuccessful mission to obtain information from the Inuit on Franklin’s whereabouts. Two years later, acting at his own initiative but with Royal Geographical Society support, Pim traveled to St. Petersburg, the Russian capital, to gain approval for a Franklin search expedition on the northern coast of Siberia. Pim’s hypothesis was that Franklin had sailed up Wellington Channel to enter the Polar Sea, whence he had made his way to the Russian Arctic. He argued that Franklin was not to be found in the Canadian Arctic at all and that Siberia was the only alternative place to investigate. But the Russian authorities were not persuaded. They pointed to the enormous distances that Pim would have to travel, over land perpetually buried in snow, to a savage region effectively beyond Russian control or restraint peopled by potentially hostile tribesmen. They also calculated that he would need up to 1,500 dogs, with their provisions, to mount such an ambitious but unpromising expedition. The project was quietly abandoned. Pim returned to the Arctic in HMS Resolute, one of five ships forming Sir Edward Belcher’s squadron in 1852. In Barrow Strait,

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the Resolute (under Kellett) and HMS Intrepid (under Francis Leopold McClintock) constituted Belcher’s western division, with orders to search the Melville Island region—not only for traces of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition but also looking for Robert McClure in HMS Investigator. After George Frederick Mecham returned to the Resolute with news of McClure’s whereabouts, a rescue expedition was put in hand. Because of the onset of winter, it was not possible to send help immediately but, on 10 March 1853—a very early start for the Arctic traveling season—Pim was dispatched with two sledges, one large and man-hauled, the other a much smaller dogsled. Heavy going along the Melville Island shore and very poor weather conditions severely slowed their advance. The large sledge eventually broke down, and Pim pushed on with two crew members and the dogsled. Another cause for delay was that the record found at Winter Harbor failed to give the Investigator’s precise location, forcing Pim to follow the Banks Island coastline. It was not until 6 April that he arrived at Mercy Bay. A journey of 160 miles had taken 28 days to complete. Pim appeared not a moment too soon: that very day, McClure intended to abandon ship. His crew was physically at the end of their tether, though, and an overland journey of any distance, without adequate food supplies, would undoubtedly have seen many of them perish. As it was, their fourth Arctic winter awaited, because their transport ship HMS North Star was held in the ice pack in Barrow Strait; it was not until 28 September 1844 that they returned to Britain. Yet no promotion, nor any other public recognition, came Pim’s way for the major role he played in averting another Arctic disaster. PINGOS. Usually less than 325 yards in diameter, pingos are ice mounds rising from the sea bottom to within 11 yards of the surface. PLACE NAMES. Writing of Charles Hall’s naming of Grinnell Bay after Henry Grinnell’s son, Chauncey C. Loomis remarks, ‘‘He was often thus to take the prerogative of an explorer; in the years that followed he scattered the names of his friends and patrons around the Arctic landscape with largesse’’ (Weird and Tragic Shores [1971], 79). This was also a time-honored practice of the Royal Navy that

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was even more profligate in strewing the names of the British royal family, members of the Board of Admiralty, their brother officers, and their boats and ships on bays, islands, peninsulas, inlets, straits, sounds, channels, capes, and rivers all over the Arctic Archipelago. Perhaps the most bizarre example is John Ross’s commemoration of Felix Booth (1775–1850), a London gin magnate who contributed £18,000 toward the cost of his 1829–1830 voyage to Prince Regent Inlet. As a result, Boothia Felix, Cape Felix, Felix Harbor, the Gulf of Boothia, and the Boothia Peninsula were all added to the map. See also GRINNELL PENINSULA. POCTES BAY. Returning across the ice from King William Island, south of Matty Island, back to Boothia Peninsula on 5 June 1830, James Clark Ross, in very poor visibility with haze obscuring the horizon, thought he discerned land stretching across the ice to the south. Back aboard the Victory, Sir John Ross, the young Ross’s uncle and expedition commander, simply closed the strait with a dotted line on his map and named it Poctes Bay. In so doing he missed, and effectively dismissed, the northern entrance to James Ross Strait, which leads to St. Roch Basin and Rae Strait and would have proven King William Land to be an island. POINT VICTORY. See VICTORY POINT. POLAR AND GLACIOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS. Published quarterly since 1990, Polar and Glaciological Abstracts is prepared by the library and information service of the Scott Polar Research Institute in association with the World Data Centre for Glaciology, also based in Cambridge, England. It replaced Recent Polar Literature and Glaciological Literature (1981–1989), which incorporated ‘‘Recent Polar Literature,’’ a regular feature in the Polar Record (1939–1972) and subsequently a separate publication, and ‘‘Glaciological Literature,’’ printed in the Journal of Glaciology (1949–1979). Abstracts are selected from the Scott Polar Research Institute’s bibliographical database and are grouped in broad subject categories defined in its list of subject headings and, within each category, alphabetically by author. Each issue includes author and subject/geographic indexes.

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POLAR CONTINENTAL SHELF PROJECT. Convened in 1958 to address the misgivings of a number of Arctic scientists, a Canadian government committee recommended the end of the hitherto ad hoc, casual approach to Arctic expeditions and the adoption of a longterm, coordinated Arctic research and exploration program. Consequently, the Polar Continental Shelf Project was established within the government’s Department of Mines and Technical Surveys (now the Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources). No longer confining its attention to the continental shelf—that part of the continental landmass submerged beneath its coastal waters—it now provides scientists and explorers with invaluable air and logistical support throughout the entire Arctic Archipelago. POLAR MEDAL (UK). Constituted in 1904, the Polar Medal replaced the Arctic Medal and was intended to cover service in both polar regions. Clasps to the medal indicate the relevant region and the year(s) of the expedition concerned. Sir Ranulph Fiennes was awarded the medal for work on the 1979–1982 Transglobe Expedition, the first to qualify for the Polar Medal in both the Arctic and Antarctic. Henry Larsen was another recipient. POLAR RECORD. First published by the Scott Polar Research Institute in 1931, the Polar Record now appears quarterly. It contains scholarly, well-researched articles on virtually all subjects of polar interest, including extremely well-documented accounts of the discovery voyages and land expeditions for a northwest passage. POLYNYA. A large area of open water surrounded by ice. POND, PETER (1740–1807). A celebrated New England–born Montreal fur trader, Peter Pond was instrumental in opening up the Saskatchewan Valley region when, in 1778, he reached a point 30–40 miles south of Lake Athabasca, making his way up the Churchill River with four canoes to the Iˆle-a`-la-Crosse Lake, through Clear and Buffalo Lakes, and to the Clearwater River to establish a post on the Athabaska River. He became convinced that a waterway to the Pacific was to be found, having heard from the Athabaskan Indians of a river that flowed from the Rocky Mountains. From these moun-

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tains it was but a short distance from the ‘‘salt lake’’ (Pacific Ocean). In a paper entitled ‘‘A proper route, by land, to cross the great Contenant of America,’’ presented to Sir Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society, in 1781, Pond volunteered to lead an expedition that would set out from Montreal in May of one year and arrive on the Pacific coast in July of the following year. There, he would build a small boat to explore the coast and discover the strait separating America from Asia. Nothing came of this scheme, but Pond never accepted defeat easily. In 1785 he drew the first comprehensive map of the Canadian Northwest but placed Lake Athabasca 700 miles west of its true location, less than 400 miles from the Pacific. This map was presented to Henry Hamilton, lieutenant governor of Quebec, in an attempt to gain support for a discovery and exploration expedition to the northwest of the American continent. Hamilton unsuccessfully urged the British government to back Pond’s proposed expedition, not least in order to thwart U.S. ambitions. Pond also submitted his map to the U.S. Congress, again without success. Following exploration west of Lake Athabasca to Great Slave Lake in 1785–1788, Pond produced ‘‘A Map shewing the communication of the Lakes and the Rivers between Lake Superior and Slave Lake,’’ once again misplacing the two lakes. He claimed that a river running from Great Slave Lake emptied into the North Pacific at about latitude 59 N and was, in fact, the river James Cook had penetrated for 70 leagues. To some extent, Pond was forced to rely on Indian sources of information; he lacked an instrument to measure longitude and may charitably be exempt from criticism for his cartographical inaccuracies. He had, undeniably, a far clearer picture of Canadian Northwest geography than any of his contemporaries, and it is known that his maps greatly influenced Alexander Mackenzie’s 1789 and 1793 expeditions. See also MAPS AND MAPPING, EUROPEAN. PORTAGE. A place where it was necessary to carry boats or canoes and their contents overland between two stretches of water, or from one part of a river to another, in order to avoid rapids and other insurmountable obstacles. Also, the act of transporting goods and equipment from one stretch of water to another.

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PORTLOCK, NATHANIEL (1748?–1817). An experienced Royal Navy officer who had sailed on HMS Discovery (commanded by Capt. Charles Clerke) on James Cook’s third Pacific Ocean expedition, Nathaniel Portlock was appointed by the King George’s Sound Company to command a voyage to the northwest coast of America. He departed from Gravesend, England, on 29 August 1785 in the King George, accompanied by George Dixon in the Queen Charlotte. Essentially this was a commercial voyage—the King George’s Sound Company had whaling and fur-trading interests—but Portlock’s instructions mentioned exploring for a northwest passage through the inlets in Prince William Sound or Cook’s River that Cook himself had no time to investigate. This was probably no more than window dressing in order to attract trading privileges, rather than any intention to engage in serious exploration. Portlock sailed into Cook River on 26 July 1786, but turned back 50 miles short of the point Cook had reached. Remaining in this general region for some weeks, they eventually worked their way south to King George Sound (Nootka Sound) before heading for the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), where they wintered. Back on the Alaska coast in the spring of 1787, they encountered John Meares in Prince William Sound. Portlock and Dixon then separated and sailed independently. Their cruise had been profitable in the number of furs they acquired, but Portlock enjoyed no significant geographical discoveries. Dixon’s voyage was more eventful. ‘‘POST OFFICE OF THE NORTH POLE.’’ Richard King’s descriptive term for Parry’s Monument. PRINCE ALBERT LAND. See VICTORIA ISLAND. PRINCE OF WALES ISLAND (ALEXANDER ARCHIPELAGO). Laying off the southeastern corner of Alaska, Prince of Wales Island stretches from Summer Strait in the north to Dixon Entrance (to Heceta Strait) in the south. PRINCE OF WALES ISLAND (ARCTIC ARCHIPELAGO). The largest island west of Peel Sound and east of the McClintock Channel, which separates it from Victoria Island.

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PRINCE OF WALES STRAIT. Separating Banks Island to the west from Victoria Island to the east, the 145-mile-long, 10-mile-wide channel links Melville Sound in the north to Amundsen Gulf in the south. Robert McClure discovered and penetrated the strait to within 30 miles of the sound in 1850. He wintered near the Princess Royal Islands in the middle of its southern reaches and was not released from the ice until mid-August 1851. PRINCE REGENT INLET. First entered by William Edward Parry in 1819, Prince Regent Inlet stretches southward from Lancaster Sound between Somerset Island and the Brodeur Peninsula of Baffin Island. It leads into the Gulf of Boothia and ultimately to Committee Bay and was a deceptively attractive approach to a northwest passage. However, apart from Bellot Strait—a narrow, perilous, icechoked channel to the west, separating Somerset Island and the Boothia Peninsula, whose existence, although suspected, was not confirmed until 1858—and Fury and Hecla Strait, which remained impenetrable until Thomas Pullen crashed the Labrador through the ice in 1956, there is no southern exit. PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND. First named Sandwich Sound by James Cook in May 1778 in honor of the first lord of the Admiralty, it was Lord Sandwich himself who insisted on it being renamed Prince William Sound. On the coast of Alaska at latitude 60 N and longitude 147 W, the sound appeared to be a promising but tortuous route—if not a 1,500-mile passage to Baffin Bay or Hudson Bay, at least a way to the Arctic Sea discovered by Samuel Hearne. At one point, Cook was tempted to investigate the sound more fully, but, keeping in mind his instructions not to lose time in exploring rivers and inlets, on 17 May he stood out to sea again. Jean-Nicolas Buache de la Neuvelle’s 1781 ‘‘Carte de la Partie Septentrionale du Globe’’ (A map of the northern part of the globe) identified the sound with Bartolome de Fonte’s Rı´o los Reyes. PROJECT FRANKLIN 1967. See GILLAN, R. D. PROJECT OOTJOOLIK. See WOODMAN, DAVID C. PROJECT SUPUNGER. See WOODMAN, DAVID C.

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PULLEN, THOMAS CHARLES (1918–1990). During his time as captain of HMCS Labrador, Thomas Pullen navigated her through channels previously considered unsuitable for deep-draft ships, including Fury and Hecla Strait, while engaged in hydrographic and oceanographic work in Arctic seas in 1956 and 1957. Pullen retired from the Royal Canadian Navy in 1968, but a year later he was the official Canadian representative on the SS Manhattan during its momentous voyage to Prudhoe Bay under the command of Roger A. Steward. Pullen was also ice-master of the MV Lindblad Explorer when it became the first passenger ship to traverse the Northwest Passage in 1984. Not for nothing was Thomas Pullen sometimes referred to as ‘‘Mr. Arctic.’’ PULLEN, WILLIAM JOHN SAMUEL (1813–1887). In 1847 William Pullen was appointed first lieutenant to Capt. Thomas Moore in the 215-ton depot and store ship HMS Plover. Moore’s orders were to proceed to the Bering Strait, where the Plover would await the arrival of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror should Sir John Franklin have successfully discovered and sailed through a northwest passage. In June 1849 the Plover set sail from the Siberian shore of the Bering Strait, where she had wintered, and joined Henry Kellett in HMS Herald in Kotzebue Sound. Also at the rendezvous was Robert Shedden in his private yacht, the Nancy Dawson. All three ships sailed to Wainwright Inlet, halfway between Icy Cape and Point Barrow. Here Pullen was selected to lead a search expedition of two officers and 22 men, together with the Herald and Plover’s pinnaces and two whaleboats, along the coast eastward to the mouth of the Mackenzie River. Accompanied by the Nancy Dawson, by 2 August the expedition had arrived at Point Barrow, where, it was thought possible, Franklin might have left a record of his voyage. At this point the Nancy Dawson turned back because of the dangerously shallow coastal waters, and shortly afterward Pullen sent back his two pinnaces for the same reason. Despite unrelenting severe ice and weather conditions and a hostile encounter with the Inuit at Point Berans, Pullen safely reached the Mackenzie on 2 September. After an inadvertent detour up the Peel River to the Hudson’s Bay Company post at Fort Mc-

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Pherson, he returned to the Mackenzie and made his way to Fort Simpson, where he spent the 1849–1850 winter. On 20 June 1850, accompanied by John Rae, Pullen set out for York Factory to embark for England, but en route dispatches, dated 25 January, caught up with him and authorized the continuation of the search for Franklin by way of Cape Bathurst and Banks Land if he considered this practicable. Not loath to the prospect, Pullen turned around for Fort Simpson, and on 11 July he started down the Mackenzie for the Beaufort Sea. At the river mouth, he headed east for Cape Bathurst. With zeal undiminished, Pullen harbored the ambition to reach Banks Land and then to head east to link up with Horatio Austin in Barrow Strait, but beyond Cape Bathurst the sea was no more than jumbled heaps of broken ice, making further progress out of the question. His plans thwarted, he returned once more to Fort Simpson. In the spring of 1851, he started the long journey back to England. Promoted to captain, Pullen commanded HMS North Star, the depot ship of Sir Edward Belcher’s squadron, for three Arctic seasons. Berthed at Beechey Island, he constructed a substantial wooden shore depot, Northumberland House, the remains of which can still be seen today. PURCHAS, SAMUEL (1577–1626). Samuel Purchas came into the possession of the mass of material accumulated by Richard Hakluyt concerning English voyages to the Indies and to Virginia and the various expeditions mounted to search for northeast and northwest passages after the publication of the second folio edition of Hakluyt’s Voyages (1598–1600). They amounted in all to 175 manuscripts, many of them of substantial length. These he included in a massive work entitled Hakluytus Posthumus; or, Purchas His Pilgrimes Contayning a History of the World, in Sea Voyages, and Lande Travels by Englishmen and Others . . . published in four volumes in 1625. To modern eyes, the Pilgrimes has all the appearance of a botched job; in his attempt to compile and edit accounts of voyages that would appeal to the general public, he pruned much that would have been of value, yet retained much irrelevant material available elsewhere. Nevertheless, his work carries much that would in all probability otherwise have been lost. It was reprinted by James MacLehose of Glas-

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gow in 20 volumes for the Hakluyt Society, in the ‘‘Extra series’’ of publications, 1905–1907. –Q– QUEEN ELIZABETH ISLANDS. The name given by the Canadian government in 1953 to all islands in the Arctic Archipelago north of latitude 7430⬘, to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. They include Devon Island and Melville Island. QUIMPER, MANUEL (fl. LATE 18TH CENTURY). Ordered to investigate the interior waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the channel between Vancouver Island and today’s Washington State, Quimper sailed from Friendly Cove on 31 May 1790. After spending 10 days in Clayoquot Sound, he followed the coast south, taking meticulous soundings and charting Puerto de San Juan, Sooke Inlet, and Esquimalt Harbor on the strait’s north shore. Learning from the local Indians of a large inlet, he sailed along the southern shore and discovered New Dungeness Bay. Ens. Juan Carrasco explored east through the strait in a longboat, but turned back before establishing that it ran into Puget Sound. An opening to the north was named Estrecho de Lo´pez de Haro (Haro Strait) after Quimper’s experienced pilot, who was responsible for the first maps of the coastline inside the strait. Exploration of this promising channel to the northwest was deferred because of a potential shortage of provisions. Neah Bay, on the southern side of the strait, was discovered before Quimper sailed back to Monterey and San Blas. –R– RADISSON, PIERRE-ESPRIT (1636–1710). A former captive of the Iroquois Indians, Radisson shared many of the fur-trading activities and explorations deep into Indian country in the western Great Lakes region of his brother-in-law, Me´dard Chouart Groseilliers. On the pioneering voyage to Hudson Bay in 1668 on behalf of a syndicate of London merchants and courtiers, Radisson sailed on the Eaglet,

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which became dismasted in a storm and was forced to return to England. RAE, JOHN (1813–1893). It was Sir George Simpson, overseas governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who recognized that Rae’s overland travel endurance and speed, and his boat expertise, singled him out as a potential Arctic explorer of mark and distinction. He invited Rae to prepare a detailed plan to fill in the cartographical gaps of Canada’s northern coastline and to present them at his house over Christmas 1843. To remedy his pronounced lack of surveying expertise, Rae attended the magnetic observatory in Toronto before receiving his orders for his 1846–1847 expedition. 1846–1847. In contrast to Thomas Simpson’s plan to descend the Great Fish River and then to explore eastward, Rae preferred to reverse this route by setting out from Churchill up the west coast of Hudson Bay and then sledging westward to Boothia, exploring, surveying, and charting the land north of Fury and Hecla Strait. His plans were probably based on unconfirmed Inuit reports that a channel connected Repulse Bay with an arm of the Arctic Sea, which would transform Melville Peninsula into Melville Island, defying the evidence of Christopher Middleton’s observations in 1742. Departing from York Factory on 13 June 1846, Rae endured 14 days of hard sailing, battered by northerly winds as he clawed his way up the coast to Churchill. It was late July before he reached Repulse Bay. Once there, he acted with the utmost urgency before winter set in. He crossed the isthmus now named after him to Committee Bay, putting to rest all notions of a convenient channel. Returning to Repulse Bay, preparations were made for winter. Never before had European explorers or seamen spent a winter in the Canadian Arctic without the relative comforts that a berthed ship afforded. A stone house, resplendently designated Fort Hope, was constructed under a roof of sails. With provisions for only four months, Rae was forced to rely on local resources. Fortunately, Repulse Bay was on the main migratory route for caribou, and sufficient meat was available to replenish his supplies. On 15 April 1847 Rae set out overland across the Simpson Peninsula to Helen Island, in Pelly Bay, and on to Lord Mayor Bay, where he was able to confirm that Boothia was in fact a peninsula, albeit

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only a mile or so wide at its narrowest point. He also satisfied himself that there was no waterway west from Pelly Bay to Simpson Strait. On his return journey, he traced the Simpson Peninsula coastline before arriving back at Fort Hope on 5 May. Eight days later Rae marched out again to explore the Fury and Hecla Strait region. He reached Cape Crozier, where he was able to observe Cape Ellice, persuading him that he had linked his discoveries to those of William Edward Parry in August 1822. On both these overland expeditions, Rae had adopted the technique of setting out with a party that was reduced in numbers along the way. He was back at Fort Hope by 9 June, but his boats could not be extricated from the ice for his return voyage to Churchill until 11 August. Although he had not completed the survey of the northern coastline nor discovered a northwest passage, Rae had added 655 miles to the map—even if the Admiralty in London was reluctant to accept that no channel ran west from Pelly Bay. More positively, Boothia was confirmed as a continuation of the mainland. 1849. Rae’s self-sufficiency, speed of progress, and overall competence prompted Sir John Richardson to nominate him as his second-in-command on the first land-based search for Sir John Franklin’s lost ships. When Richardson subsequently departed from Fort Confidence for England on 9 May 1849, Rae took over the leadership of the expedition. Exactly a month later, Rae set out with a party of seven men. With winter lingering on that year, the Dease River was still frozen and they were forced to haul their boat for 30 miles. At the Coppermine River, they were delayed for a week before the late thaw allowed them to continue. Ice still confronted them at the mouth of the Rae River, and Rae took the opportunity to trace its course westward for two days. At last open water began to appear and he was able to embark for Cape Kendall, where two boats had been abandoned the previous fall. Recovering the equipment and supplies left there, they sailed along the coast and arrived at Cape Krusenstern on 30 July. Here they were delayed for two weeks until, on 19 August, they attempted to row to Douglas Island. After two hours amid the ice, in thick fog with almost zero visibility, they were fortunate to find their way back to land. For once, Rae was defeated, and on 23 August, with winter not far off, he turned back. A boat accident at Bloody Falls, on the Cop-

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permine, led to the death of his Inuit interpreter, the only man he ever lost in the Arctic. The exhausted party reached Fort Confidence on 1 September. 1851. In contrast to the dismal foray of 1849, Rae’s journeys in 1851 produced more impressive results. During the 1850–1851 winter, Rae had two boats built to his own design, and early in April 1851 he dispatched four sledges, laden with 2,700 lbs of supplies, to the Kendall River. Leaving his second-in-command, Hector Mackenzie, in charge of the main party, he set off with two men in an attempt to remedy his failure of two years earlier. His objectives were to find traces of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition and to ascertain the existence of a strait between Victoria Island and Wollaston Land that might prove to be the final link in a northwest passage. Starting across the frozen Coronation Gulf on snowshoes on 2 May, they reached Wollaston Land, near Cape Lady Franklin, four days later. Rae headed eastward, and by 10 May they had passed the farthest point attained by Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson in 1839. As yet having found no channel, Rae rightly began to suspect that Wollaston Land and Victoria Island formed one and the same island. He decided to return westward, traveling past his landing place, and continued to within sight of Prince Albert Sound, 10 days after a party from Robert McClure’s HMS Investigator had reached its northern shore. The coming thaw now threatened to maroon the three men on the wrong side of the gulf, and on 23 May they began the long journey back to the Kendall River, where they arrived on 10 June via Cape Krusenstern and the Richardson River. No trace of Franklin had been found, and no news of his expedition was to be had from the Inuit. Mackenzie arrived with eight men, and the two boats departed from Fort Confidence on 13 June. After a difficult voyage down the Coppermine and a training interval in the handling of boats at sea, they sailed east along the southern shores of Coronation Gulf and Dease Strait, rounding Cape Barrow on 16 July, and reached Cape Alexander on the northern lip of the Kent Peninsula eight days later. At this point, Rae contemplated continuing eastward before crossing to Cape Franklin on King William Island. Had he followed this first inclination, he would almost certainly have discovered remains of the Franklin expedition, probably including its logbooks, journals, and

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other records, thus changing the whole chronology and course of Arctic exploration. However, as it happened, Rae decided not to deviate from his instructions and accordingly crossed the Dease Strait at its narrowest point to arrive once more on Victoria Island. He explored its southeastern shoreline, previously visited by Dease and Simpson, before heading north to within sight of Pelly Point, just north of the 70th parallel. Unsuitable weather conditions prevented Rae from crossing Victoria Strait to King William Island, so he returned west along the coast, sailing close inshore, to Cape Lady Franklin. He crossed Coronation Gulf on 29 August and then made a perilous ascent of the Coppermine in full flood, returning to Fort Confidence on 10 September. During this summer voyage, he had sailed 1,400 miles and had charted 630 miles of previously unexplored coastline. Following these exertions and achievements, Rae returned to England on leave in March 1852. He presented reports of his recent explorations to the Hudson’s Bay Company and to the Admiralty. On 24 May he was awarded the Royal Geographical Society’s Founder’s Medal. 1853–1854. Probably encouraged by the Hudson’s Bay Company, Rae proposed a new expedition that would sail from York Factory to Chesterfield Inlet, sledge overland to the Great Fish River, descend it to the Arctic sea, and complete the survey of the northern shores of the American continent in the southwest corner of Boothia Peninsula, which, it was thought, might be joined by an isthmus to King William Land. Both the company and John Rae had scores to settle. The company was eager to put one over on its archrival, the Royal Navy, by forestalling it in establishing the final north–south link in the discovery of a northwest passage, while Rae was annoyed at the Admiralty’s refusal to acknowledge his 1847 exploration of Pelly Bay. Rae set out from York Factory with 12 men on 24 June 1853. Instead of sailing to the head of Chesterfield Inlet as planned, he made a detour down the Quoich River, which ran first northeast and then northwest from the inlet’s northern bank. But eventually the river petered out and, no doubt regretting the delay caused, Rae was forced back the way he came. Following his familiar pattern, he reduced his expedition by six men before advancing north to Roe’s Welcome

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Sound and Repulse Bay, where he found his 1846 house still standing. On 31 March 1854 Rae and four others hauled their sledges out of Fort Hope heading for Pelly Bay and the Castor and Pollux River, aiming to reach Bellot Strait. At Pelly Bay, dense fog meant that he was forced to travel by compass, and he headed southwest across the Boothia Peninsula. En route he encountered an Inuk who, although he had no personal knowledge, had heard reports of 35–40 Kabloonas who had died of starvation west of a large river up to two weeks’ journey away—the first glimmer of information indicating the true location of the Franklin disaster. Resuming his march, Rae discovered and named the Murchison River. At its mouth, he found an empty cairn, which he deduced had been erected by Thomas Simpson. It was in the right latitude, but its longitude was a trifle puzzling. In spite of unfavorable weather, Rae marched north up Boothia’s western coastline, crossing and naming Shepherd Bay, and reaching Point de La Guiche at 6757⬘ N, 9432⬘ W. The coastline continued northward with no sign of an isthmus running west. Because of injuries to two of his sledging team members, Rae was compelled to abandon his intention of reaching Bellot Strait and the North Magnetic Pole, which were otherwise well within his capabilities, but in his bones, he knew he had truly discovered the long-sought north–south link of a navigable northwest passage. The ice conditions in James Ross Strait and what became known as Rae Strait were totally different to those appertaining in Victoria Strait off the west coast of King William Island. A much quicker return journey, including a reexamination of Pelly Bay and charting of its coastline, saw Rae back at Fort Hope by 26 May. He now had ample opportunity to question at length various Inuit who had arrived from the Pelly Bay–Boothia region. They related how, four winters earlier, some Inuit families hunting for seals on a large island had encountered 40 or 50 thin, starved-looking Kabloonas manhandling a boat and some sledges southward. Neither party included an interpreter, but the Inuit understood that their ships had been crushed by ice and that they were traveling to where they might hunt deer. The following season when the Inuit returned, they found 30-odd corpses. Graves were found on an island near the

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mouth of a great river. Other bodies were in tents, some under an overturned boat. From the Inuit reports, Rae had deduced that the localities in question were King William Island, the Great Fish River, Point Ogle, and Montreal Island. Fragments of guns, compasses, telescopes, watches, silver forks and spoons, and a small silver plate engraved with ‘‘Sir John Franklin KCH’’ and the insignia of his Royal Hanoverian Guelphic Order were recovered from the Inuit. There could be no doubts as to their authenticity. The Reaction in London. Rae hurried back to England—according to him, to communicate his information as speedily as possible to the Admiralty and Parliament in order to prevent more lives being put at risk on further search expeditions. His detractors claimed it was to get his hands on the £10,000 Admiralty reward for news of Franklin’s fate (see PARLIAMENT AND ADMIRALTY REWARDS). He arrived in London on Sunday, 22 October 1854, and repaired immediately to the Admiralty. In his official report, not intended for publication but which was leaked to the Times, he commented that it was evident that, at the last, on the estuary of the Back River, the survivors of Franklin’s expedition had resorted to cannibalism. Despite a campaign mounted by the horrified Lady Jane Franklin, Rae eventually received his reward. But his claim to have discovered the final link of the northwest passage was never seriously entertained; Robert McClure was credited with that achievement. It was not until the early years of the 20th century, when Roald Amundsen sailed the Gjøa through the passage via Rae Strait, that Rae’s priority of discovery was individually recognized. RAE ISTHMUS. A narrow strip of land connecting Repulse Bay and Committee Bay, the southern extension of the Gulf of Boothia, Rae Isthmus was first crossed by John Rae in 1847. RAE STRAIT. Usually free of ice during the summer, Rae Strait is a channel between King William Island and southwest Boothia Peninsula that was discovered by John Rae in 1854, thus finally proving the insularity of that island. Roald Amundsen sailed through the strait in 1903, as did Henry Larsen in 1941.

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RANFORD, BARRY. In August 1992 Barry Ranford and Mike Yarascavich retraced the 1848 route of the men of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror as they plodded their way south down the west coast of King William Island. They embarked on their journey without first obtaining the necessary approval of the Prince of Wales Heritage Centre, thereby attracting hostile and critical comment. Their purpose was to investigate the circumstances of Francis Crozier’s last desperate attempt to cross the Simpson Strait and reach safety at the nearest Hudson’s Bay Company’s post at Fort Resolution, some 630 miles inland. From Gjøa Haven they set out with two Inuit guides, George Canona and Elijah Takkiruq, in a four-wheel drive vehicle, traveling 75 miles across the island before following the coastline south, transporting their equipment on a light two-wheeled cart, crossing Gore Peninsula, and rounding Terror and Washington bays to Gladman Point on the south coast. Their journey was arduous; an energy-sapping 25-knot wind often restricted the distance traversed to less than 10 miles a day. When Yarascavich’s health took a turn for the worse, forcing them to indulge in a rest day, Ranford seized the opportunity to systematically examine a wide area around their campsite. He discovered the skeletons of at least 11 men at a previously unknown site near Erebus Bay and carefully recorded their exact location and distribution. Some were scattered across the rocky ground, others were partially buried. Although Ranford’s 1992 exploration was unauthorized, his results were truly remarkable. His four-week visit to King William Island had uncovered significant relics that had passed unnoticed by all previous expeditions. A year later, this time armed with a permit and accompanied by a professional archaeologist, Margaret Bertulli, and a physical anthropologist, Anne Keenleyside, Ranford returned to the site. Bertulli explained why it was that he had found such a quantity of remains missed by so many others. The topography of the region was low and uneven, and the beaches composed of coarse shingle and limestone slabs offered natural camouflage. Not resting upon his laurels, Ranford made a new find, not far away from his first, consisting of three undisturbed graves, each containing a skull and scraps of rope. Three boxes of bones were shipped

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out to be analyzed by a university physical anthropologist before being returned to the island for Christian reburial. Other items recovered on this occasion included two tent rings, weathered ship’s tackle, small pieces of rope, sail and canvas, and canned food containers. Of the 400 human bones Ranford recovered in his two summer seasons, 100 showed evidence of knife marks, leading Keenleyside to conclude that the Inuit testimony of cannibalism reported by John Rae was true in every respect. RASMUSSEN, KNUD JOHAN VICTOR (1879–1933). An ethnographer of Danish-Inuit descent, Rasmussen conducted four pioneering explorations in Greenland between 1902 and 1912, studying the life and culture of the Inuit, before embarking on his longest, most ambitious, and best-known Fifth Thule Expedition. This trek took him across northern Canada into Alaska, from Baffin Bay to the Bering Strait, traveling by dogsled and sharing the life of the native inhabitants in order to confirm his hypothesis that the Inuit of the eastern and western Arctic shared a common Asian heritage. After two winters’ preparation on Denmark Island on the northwest coast of Hudson Bay, putting in a number of long-distance marches, honing his survival skills, and pursuing his anthropological studies among the Inuit of the Barren Lands, west of Chesterfield Inlet, Rasmussen left his base on 11 April 1923 with two Inuit and two dogsleds loaded with clothing, ammunition, and a 24-day supply of food. He made his way to Repulse Bay, the southern stretches of the Boothia Peninsula, and Rae Strait. The summer was spent on King William Island and on the mainland opposite. At Richardson Point, to the east of Starvation Cove, he found human bones and scraps of clothing and leather, undoubtedly relics of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition, exactly where the Inuit had indicated. In spring 1924, Rasmussen crossed to Victoria Island and then proceeded west along the mainland shoreline. By 5 May he was in Alaska, having traversed the entire length of the Canadian Arctic coastline. Along the way, he diligently devoted himself to his studies, with the result that he was able to trace Inuit migrations for the first time.

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RASTELL, JOHN (?–1536). A lawyer, printer, and brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More, John Rastell succeeded in capturing the attention of King Henry VIII to a proposed colonizing venture to North America in 1517. It is not known for certain what detailed knowledge he had of America, what maps were available to him, or whether the discovery of a northwest passage played any part in his plans. Possibly, he had in mind that a foothold on the North American coast could be exploited as a base for further exploration. In the event, because of dissent on board, Rastell sailed only as far as Waterford in Ireland. After the collapse of his enterprise, Rastell composed an account of his experiences in dramatic form, The Interlude of the Four Elements, which may have been printed as early as 1519. This provides a clue to his geographical knowledge of the position of North America in relation to Asia: But eastward on the sea side A Prince there is that rules wide Called the Khan of Catowe And this is called the great east sea Which goes all along this way Towards the new lands again But whether that sea go thither directly Or if any wilderness between them do lie No man knows for certain But these new lands by all cosmography From the Khan of Catowe cannot lie Little past a thousand miles But from those new lands men may sail plain Eastwards and come to England again.

If Cathay was but a little more than a thousand miles distant from the New World, a northwest passage remained a viable commercial proposition. REDCOATS. Troopers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, so called because of their scarlet dress uniforms. REPULSE BAY. Its northern shoreline resting on the Arctic Circle at the southern end of Rae Isthmus, stretching across to Committee

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Bay, and linking the Melville Peninsula with today’s Kivalliq region of Nunavut, Repulse Bay was discovered by Christopher Middleton in 1742. Having navigated the hazardous waters of Roe’s Welcome Sound, he discerned land trending from the northeast to the northwest, raising hopes of a passage. But the passage proved to be a deep bay offering no western opening. Eighty years later William Edward Parry confirmed Middleton’s topographical assessment. John Rae spent the 1846–1847 and 1853–1854 winters there, and Charles Hall became increasingly despondent about his chances of ever reaching King William Island at Rae’s old campsite during four consecutive winters, from 1865 through 1869, stranded on the bleak shores of the bay. RESOLUTE. Located on the southern tip of Cornwallis Island in Resolute Bay, 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle facing Barrow Strait, the settlement of Resolute is Nunavut’s northernmost airstrip and supply depot. RESOLUTE DESK. Commanded by Horatio Austin on his 1850– 1851 Arctic Searching Expedition and by Robert Kellett when she sailed with Edward Belcher’s 1852–1854 Arctic Squadron, HMS Resolute was abandoned in Melville Sound on Belcher’s orders on 15 May 1854. Her future history was, to say the least, curious. Somehow, the Resolute was released from the ice and was taken by the wind and tide, drifting through Barrow Strait and Lancaster Sound, down Baffin Bay, and into Davis Strait—a voyage of some 1,200 miles—until she was spotted by the crew of an American whaler, the George Henry, on 10 September 1855. Six days later, the George Henry’s master, Capt. James Buddington, sent his mate, George Tyson, to board her. Scenting a profitable salvage claim, Buddington decided to sail the Resolute to the United States, leaving Tyson to bring home the George Henry. The British Admiralty waived all claim to the Resolute and, at the instigation of Henry Grinnell, the U.S. Congress appropriated $40,000 to acquire her. The United States Navy repaired and refitted the ship, which was then presented to Queen Victoria at a formal ceremony at Portsmouth on 30 December 1856. When the Resolute was finally broken up in 1880, the queen reciprocated the American

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gesture by ordering that a large writing table be constructed from the ship’s timbers and presented to the president of the United States. The Resolute Desk was used for years in the White House library. It is said that First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy had the desk restored for President John F. Kennedy’s use in the Oval Office, where it has remained to the present day. RICHARDSON, SIR JOHN (1787–1865). A former surgeon in the Royal Marines, Richardson was appointed in that capacity, and as a naturalist, to John Franklin’s Arctic Land Expeditions in 1819– 1822 and 1825–1827. Late in September 1821, when almost at its last gasp on the arduous return journey from Point Turnagain to Fort Enterprise, Franklin’s First Arctic Land Expedition was confronted with the seemingly impossible task of crossing the 120-yard-wide, fast-flowing Coppermine River without boats and with only an uncontrollable rudimentary raft. ‘‘At this time,’’ in Franklin’s words, Dr. Richardson proposed to swim across the stream with a line, and to haul the raft over. He launched into the stream with the line round his middle, but when he had got a short distance from the bank, his arms became benumbed with cold, and he lost the power of moving them; still he persevered, and, turning on his back, had nearly gained the opposite bank, when his legs also became powerless, and to our infinite alarm we beheld him sink. We instantly hauled upon the line and he came again on the surface, and was gradually drawn ashore in an almost lifeless state. Being rolled up in blankets, he was placed before a good fire of willows, and fortunately he was just able to speak sufficiently to give some slight directions respecting the manner of treating him. (Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea [1824/1998], 423–24)

In October, Richardson was entrusted with the conduct of the rear party while Franklin and nine others pressed on in an attempt to obtain supplies believed to be awaiting them at Fort Enterprise. With good reason, Richardson came to the conclusion that one of the members of his party, an Iroquois Indian named Michel Teroahaute´, deranged by hunger, had murdered his companion, Jean-Baptiste Beranger, in order to eat his flesh and had also cold-bloodedly killed Midn. Robert Hood. Fearing that he and John Hepburn were in

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grave danger, Richardson took upon himself the responsibility to shoot Teroahaute´ dead. On Franklin’s Second Arctic Land Expedition, Richardson commanded the 11-strong eastbound party, in the boats Dolphin and Union, with orders to examine Canada’s northern shoreline for 900 miles from the mouth of the Mackenzie River to the Coppermine River, a mission he accomplished in five weeks. Then, abandoning his boats, he led his men back overland to the expedition’s advance base at Fort Franklin on Great Bear Lake, having traveled more than 2,000 miles in 10 weeks, one-third of which had never before been explored by Europeans. While waiting for Franklin to return, he completed a canoe survey of Great Slave Lake. One sexagenarian started off in 1848 to look for another in adversity somewhere deep in the Arctic wastes when Richardson, accompanied by John Rae, led an expedition down the Mackenzie River. His mission was to explore the southern and western coastline of the Wollaston Peninsula of Victoria Island and to deposit caches of food for boat parties from HMS Plover (commanded by Thomas Moore) and from HMS Enterprise and HMS Investigator under Sir James Clark Ross. Debouching from the Mackenzie Delta, the expedition’s three boats (with a total crew of 16 voyageurs) sailed along the coast of the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula past Cape Bathurst, but by the time the boats reached Dolphin and Union Strait, all hope of crossing to Victoria Island had vanished as winter set in. Leaving one of the boats provisioned with 10 blocks of pemmican on a prominent position on the coast in the hope that it would prove of service to Franklin, the expedition sailed past Cape Krusenstern to Icy Cove. By now, the two remaining boats were in poor shape and had to be abandoned. It became obvious that the resources for the expedition for the following summer required only one officer. There could only be one realistic choice: Rae, a much younger man than Richardson, would assume command in 1849. In the meantime the expedition marched overland, discovering the Rae River, to the Richardson River and reached the Coppermine on 5 September. Building a raft, they crossed the Kendall River and headed for Fort Confidence on the northern shore of Great Bear Lake, where a reduced party spent the winter. In the spring of 1849, Richardson left for England.

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RIVER OF DISAPPOINTMENT. Alexander Mackenzie’s own name for the river—subsequently named the Mackenzie River—that took him to the Arctic rather than the Pacific Ocean in 1789. ROBERTSON, OWEN CONNOR STRUAN. The first warship to complete the Northwest Passage was HMCS Labrador, a 6,500-ton Arctic patrol vessel and icebreaker, under the command of Capt. O. C. S. Robertson, RCN, in 1954. Departing from Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 23 July, the Labrador called at Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Island eight days later, before returning to Craig Harbor bound for Alexander Fjord, on the east coast of Ellesmere Island in the northern reaches of Baffin Bay, with supplies for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police post there. Back at Resolute Bay by 15 August, the Labrador continued west into Melville Sound and met up with the USS Burton Island and the USCGC Northwind. The three ships sailed in company down Prince of Wales Strait into Amundsen Gulf and headed west for the Bering Strait. The Labrador arrived at Esquimalt, on the southeastern tip of Vancouver Island, on 27 September. During the voyage, her crew carried out a scientific program for the National Research Council of Canada that included magnetic observations, gyromagnetic compass trials, and oceanographic and marine surveys. At the invitation of the United States Navy, Commodore Robertson was on board the USS Seadragon as an advisor on the Canadian Archipelago during the submarine’s underwater voyage through the Northwest Passage to the North Pole in 1960. It says a lot for both men that Robertson got on famously well with George P. Steele, the commander of the Seadragon, although Robertson was the ranking officer. ROE’S WELCOME SOUND. A channel running south from Repulse Bay and the Frozen Strait, between the west coast of Southampton Island and the mainland, and into the northern reaches of Hudson Bay. When Thomas Button saw the sound, he described it as a large bay and named it Ne Ultra (No Further) in the conviction that a northwest passage was not to be found in that direction. In 1621 Luke Foxe discovered a small island, possibly one of a number of islands off Cape Fullerton, and named it Sir Thomas

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Rowe’s Welcome after one of his voyage’s backers. It seems that because this island could not be positively identified by later navigators, the name was transferred to the whole channel. In the course of time, this was shortened to its present form. Foxe, James Knight, Christopher Middleton, and Arthur Dobbs all thought that a passage through it might be found. Archaeological investigations conducted by Charles F. Merbs in 1967 support the hypothesis that Foxe’s island was either Inuksivik or Silumiut, now islands only at high tide, on the coast north of Chesterfield Inlet. ROGERS, ROBERT (1731–1795). A well-known irregular soldier in the English colonies of North America, Maj. Robert Rogers met with Arthur Dobbs, then governor of North Carolina, in 1761. Dobbs favored him with his long-established views that a northwest passage either ran around the northern continental shores of America or through the heart of the continent. Rogers was immediately enthused, but the complicated and uncertain political and military situation prevented any practical steps in finding such a passage at the time. It was not until September and October 1765 that Rogers, then in London, submitted proposals for a land expedition to locate the passage. Based on his observations and experiences over a period of eight years in the least known parts of the continent, and on reputable Indian reports of a great river known as the River of the West, Rogers’s suggested route was from Fort Michilimackinac, at the juncture of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, toward the head of the Missouri River; from there, he would travel overland to the river the Indians called the Ouragon and follow this great river through a vast tract of Indian country to the Strait of Anian. The following spring, the expedition would inspect every inlet or bay from the Strait of Anian to Hudson Bay in the expectation of discovering a navigable passage. His star in the ascendant, Rogers returned to Fort Michilimackinac in 1766 and placed James Tute in nominal command of the expedition, but with explicit instructions as to the route he was to follow: the old trade route from Michilimackinac along the northern shore of Michigan, up the Fox River, and then by portage to the Wisconsin River, to winter at the Prairie du Chien. There he was to wait for

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the arrival of Jonathan Carver before proceeding westward. Tute’s mission was to discover the passage or, failing that, the great Ouragon River that fell into the Pacific Ocean in the vicinity of latitude 50 N. As it turned out, Tute and Carver got no further than the northeastern tip of Minnesota on Lake Superior. ROSS, SIR JAMES CLARK (1800–1862). As a junior Royal Navy officer, James Clark Ross sailed on his uncle John Ross’s 1818 expedition to Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound, and on all three of William Edward Parry’s northwest passage voyages between 1819 and 1825. In June 1820, he participated in Parry’s exploration of Melville Island by sledge. Ross gained further experience with sledges, this time with husky dogs, on the Melville Peninsula in 1822. On Parry’s third voyage, Ross was in command of four men on a 75-mile overland journey southward from Cape York, on the northwest tip of the Brodeur Peninsula, and reported back that Prince Regent Inlet was clear of ice some 20 miles north of Port Bowen. Ross’s most arduous Arctic expedition was without doubt the four years spent in Prince Regent Inlet and on the Boothia Peninsula from 1829–1833, when he was second officer on his uncle’s privately sponsored voyage. By the end of September 1829, it became impossible for the Victory to sail farther down the inlet, and she was laid up for the winter in an anchorage John Ross named Felix Harbor. He had improved on Parry’s farthest advance south by 150 miles, but he had not determined the existence of Bellot Strait between Somerset Island and the Boothia Peninsula. Putting his sledging experience to good use, in March 1830 Ross made two trial daylong dogsled journeys before embarking on a series of more ambitious explorations. On 5 April, accompanied by the Victory’s chief mate, two Inuit, and provisions for 10 days, he ventured westward and, three days later, reached the sea at Padliak before turning south and arriving at Lake Neitchilee. Information provided by the Inuit suggested that a large sea lay to the northwest and southwest and was ice-free in the short summer season, that a large island lay to the west, and that farther south there was a large landmass whose coastline ran southeast and southwest. Ross could now report that Boothia Felix was almost certainly a peninsula and not an island.

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A second reconnaissance party set out on 21 April and reached Shagavoke Inlet, across the peninsula to the southwest of Felix Harbor where, the Inuit had told them, a strong current ran westward through a narrow strait. This had to be investigated lest it prove to be the passage they were seeking. However, Ross concluded that the rushing water was due to snow melting in the highlands surrounding the inlet and did not signify a potential passage to the open sea. He commanded another exploring party that departed on 27 April, heading north to corroborate Inuit reports that the coast veered to the northwest. He reached the mouth of the Agnew River, to the north of Elizabeth Harbor, on the Gulf of Boothia before returning to the Victory on 4 May. With provisions for three weeks and a skin boat loaded on two sledges, one of which was drawn by dogs, Ross set out westward for Padliak on 17 May. He was leading a party of six men, but these were soon reduced to four, depriving him of a man to haul one of the sledges and putting at risk a proposed cache of provisions for his homeward journey. From Padliak, Ross marched past Cape Isabella and came to a large inlet, which, to his disappointment, was not the western end of a channel, and continued northwestward along the eastern coast of James Ross Strait. Relying on the Inuit reports of land to the west, the exploring party threaded its way across the ice for 16 miles until, on 23 May, a landing was made on Matty Island. At this point, Ross was uncertain whether he was on the continental mainland or was negotiating a chain of islands. When land and sea are frozen, it is often very difficult to tell one from the other. After proceeding northwestward to Cape Felix and finding a vast extent of ocean stretching away from him, though, with the coastline now trending to the southwest, seemingly toward John Franklin’s Point Turnagain, only 200 miles distant, Ross was assured that he had reached the northernmost point of the North American continent. He allowed himself one day’s march to the southwest before the precarious state of his provisions forced him to turn back. On his return journey, Ross detoured to the south of Matty Island to confirm that King William Land (as he named it) was connected to Boothia. Poor visibility deceived him into judging that he was at the entrance to a

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closed bay—an error that misled Franklin 18 years later to head away from the only navigable strait in that section of the Arctic. Apart from his exploits in the Antarctic in 1839–1843, James Ross’s best-known feat of exploration started on 15 May 1831, when he departed from the Victory in Sheriff’s Harbor to take a small sledge party southwest down the Saumarez River to Krusenstern Lake, and then west to the Frozen Ocean. His objective was to locate the exact position of the North Magnetic Pole. He traveled up the southwest coast of Boothia until, on 1 June, his compass needle indicated that he had arrived at the exact spot, at 705⬘17 N, 9646⬘45 W. In May 1848 Ross sailed once more to the Arctic in command of an Admiralty expedition in search of the long overdue Franklin. He arrived in Lancaster Sound in August, but solid ice blocked Prince Regent Inlet and he was forced to winter in Leopold Harbor on the northeastern corner of Somerset Island. The expedition met with no success in its search, although Ross mapped 150 miles of Somerset Island’s western coastline on Peel Sound before returning to England. ROSS, SIR JOHN (1777–1856). Following William Scoresby’s 1817 discovery that 2,000 square miles of the Greenland seas, between 74 N and 80 N latitude, were unusually free of ice and the subsequent pressure on the British government to fit out northern voyages of discovery, the Royal Navy embarked on a series of Arctic voyages that was to last for 35 years. Two ambitiously conceived expeditions put to sea in 1818. One squadron comprising the 382-ton Dorothea (under Comdr. David Buchan) and the 250-ton Trent (Lt. John Franklin) sailed northward from Lerwick in the Shetland Islands, passing between Greenland and Spitsbergen and heading for the Bering Strait by way of the North Pole, across a supposed open circumpolar sea. A second, more senior squadron formed by the 385ton Isabella (Comdr. John Ross) and the 252-ton Alexander (Lt. William Edward Parry) was to follow the west coast of Greenland through Davis Strait and northward through Baffin Bay. Having no knowledge of the Arctic Archipelago, the Admiralty anticipated that once Ross had reached the northeasternmost point of the American continent, he would have little difficulty in proceeding.

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If the sea were free of ice, he would stand well to the north before turning westward to the Bering Strait and Pacific Ocean. On arrival in Kamchatka, he was to place his journal in the hands of the Russian governor for dispatch to London and return through the passage he had discovered. Should Buchan and Ross both reach the Bering Strait, Buchan was to place the Dorothea and the Trent under Ross’s command. 1818. Departing from Lerwick on 3 May 1818, by early July the two ships were in high latitudes off the west coast of Greenland. After making contact with an isolated Inuit community, Ross continued northward up the coast, identifying Cape Dudley Digges, Wolstenholme Sound, and Whale Sound, all named by William Baffin. He sailed west to Jones Sound, sighting Sir Thomas Smith Sound to the north. Ross claimed that these bays and sounds in the innermost reaches of Baffin Bay were impenetrable because of thick ice so that, even if a narrow strait ran through these mountainous shores, it would remain forever unnavigable. He turned about and sailed south down the eastern coast of Devon Island until, on 30 August, the Isabella and Alexander arrived on the northern edge of Lancaster Sound, which Parry, for one, considered to be worth investigating, remembering that Baffin had been uncertain whether it was a sound or a strait. In the early hours of 1 September in foggy and variable weather, officers of the watch observed land at the bottom of the sound, but as the wind continued favorable, Ross pressed on under full sail. Eight hours later Ross was called on deck and, according to his published account, the fog ‘‘completely cleared for ten minutes, and I distinctly saw the land, round the bottom of the bay, forming a connected chain of mountains with those which extended along the north and south sides. This land appeared to be the distance of eight leagues . . . and being now perfectly satisfied that there was no passage in this direction. . . . I tacked about to join the Alexander.’’ Ross justified his action by pointing out that his official instructions directed him to pay special attention to tides and currents for clues to finding a passage and that no current existed in the inlet. Furthermore, he was to search for the northeast point of America in the region of 72 N, he was to be clear of the ice by the beginning of

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October at the latest, and more than 400 miles of the eastern shoreline of Baffin Island remained to be explored. A different view was held not only on the Isabella, notably by Edward Sabine, but also on the Alexander, eight miles astern. Parry recorded in his journal: ‘‘The swell comes from the N.W. and continues just as it does in the ocean. It is impossible to remark these circumstances, without feeling the hope that it may be caused by this inlet being a passage into a sea to the Westward.’’ It was Ross’s misfortune that his crucial blunder was not defended by his officers, who on the voyage home, and after their return, began to express their doubts as to what exactly Ross had seen at the bottom of the sound. Only he had seen the mountains—which he went so far as to name the Croker Mountains—when the fog cleared, all the other officers having been at dinner. John Barrow, his hopes of a Royal Navy squadron sailing triumphantly through the Northwest Passage dashed, and his pride sorely dented, seized on some inconsistencies in Ross’s report and the doubts of his officers. Biding his time, he penned a damning indictment of Ross’s A Voyage of Discovery (1819) in the pages of the Quarterly Review. Although Ross was promoted to captain—on his overall service record, not for commanding a successful Arctic voyage—his career in the navy was effectively over. The implacable Barrow saw to that. Nevertheless, hoping to restore his reputation, Ross submitted a plan to the Admiralty in 1828 for another exploration voyage using a ship with a supplementary steam engine, which, he argued, could take advantage of windless stretches of open sea and whose shallow draft would allow her to approach unknown coasts with less danger than a conventional ship. The Admiralty rejected his proposal, but eventually Ross gained the support of Felix Booth, the manufacturer of Booth’s Gin, who backed him to the tune of £18,000. 1829–1833. Ross embarked on the paddle steamer Victory on 13 June 1829 with his nephew, James Clark Ross, as his second-incommand. His intention was to make his way down Prince Regent Inlet to seek a passage west along the continental mainland to Point Turnagain, thereby avoiding the ice barrier Parry had encountered off Melville Island. Delayed by adverse weather conditions in Davis Strait, it was not until 23 July that he reached Holsteinsborg (Sisi-

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miut), Greenland, where the Danish governor informed him that the season had been the mildest in living memory. Ross took the opportunity at Holsteinsborg to refit his ship as a sailing schooner in order to reduce his dependence on the steam engine that suffered one defect after another. After a smooth crossing of Baffin Bay, the Victory entered Lancaster Sound on 7 August, and five days later Ross was at the entrance to Prince Regent Inlet. Sailing down the east coast of Somerset Island, he found an anchorage five miles south of Fury Beach, where provisions landed by Parry four years earlier were taken on board. Continuing south, he entered Creswell Bay, landed near Cape Garry, and farther south described the entrance of a great inlet closely packed with ice. This was, in fact, the entrance to Bellot Strait leading to Peel Sound, though it was not recognized as such until William Kennedy’s 1851 expedition. Following the coast of what Ross named Boothia Felix (now Boothia Peninsula), he found a winter anchorage at Felix Harbor, latitude 70 N, 150 miles farther south than Parry had attained. Here, to everyone’s delight and satisfaction, Ross finally jettisoned his engines and boilers. In the expedition’s first winter, Ross enjoyed friendly relations with the Inuit, one of whom drew a chart indicating a large gulf extending south whose southeastern corner was separated from an eastern sea either by a strip of land or by a narrow strait. Compared to a modern map, this looks as if it might correspond to the Rae Isthmus. At the beginning of April 1830, James Clark Ross made a reconnaissance by sledge to the west and north across the peninsula, but found nothing of any consequence, and it was soon apparent that no channel to the west would be found south of the 70th parallel. A further exploration in May brought the younger Ross within sight of a channel to the west, but the sea was frozen over; he crossed the ice, over what is now known as James Ross Strait, to Matty Island in the Western Sea. After reaching Cape Felix, he returned to the ship, which was not freed from the ice until September. The release was short lived, however, as the ice soon closed in again, and the expedition’s second winter was spent only a short distance from its previous anchorage. In the spring of 1831, the two Rosses, each with a party of six men,

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crossed to the peninsula’s west coast: John followed the Saumarez River to the northern chain of lakes, while James pushed on to the North Magnetic Pole, whose coordinates at that time were latitude 705⬘17 N and longitude 9646⬘45 W. Once again the summer passed, and still the Victory was held fast. The pattern of the previous year was repeated, and their third winter saw the expedition only a few miles farther north. During the expedition’s third winter, Ross decided to abandon the Victory and set off overland by sledge, hauling the ship’s boats, in a desperate attempt to reach Baffin Bay, where he hoped to be picked up by the whaling fleet. From April through August 1832, the ship’s crew toiled across the ice, examining rivers along the coasts of Boothia, Cresswell Bay, and Somerset Island. Stores were recovered from Fury Beach after Ross organized a system of laborious relay marches, but all too soon, the onset of winter was again upon them. In July 1833 they set off again and at last were able to launch their boats to reach the opening of Lancaster Sound into Baffin Bay, where they were rescued by, of all ships, the Isabella. In four long years, they had advanced the search for a passage not one inch; the Victory had hardly moved since it was first gripped by the ice. But they had spent an unprecedented four winters in succession in the Arctic, and this time, Ross’s obduracy of purpose and resolution earned him a hero’s reception on his return to London. Although a rescue expedition led by George Back had been dispatched from England in February 1833, after four years out of sight Ross and his crew had all but been given up for dead. The government responded handsomely: Ross was awarded a knighthood, he and his crew shared £5,000 for making significant gains in geographical knowledge, and Felix Booth was recompensed for the funds he had placed at Ross’s disposal to mount the expedition. Franklin rescue expedition. As early as September 1846 Ross wrote to the Admiralty to inform the lords of his promise to Sir John Franklin that, if no word of him had been received by this time, he would lead a rescue expedition. The Admiralty replied that no expedition was contemplated; his services were not accepted in August 1847, throughout 1848, or in 1849. However, Ross was not to be denied a final stint in Arctic waters. The Hudson’s Bay Company agreed to launch an appeal for funds and to contribute generously

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itself. When the Admiralty officially wished the expedition Godspeed, it immediately influenced a steady flow of subscriptions. Ross sailed from Ayr in the Felix, a specially strengthened schooner, on 20 May 1850, towing his own personal 12-ton yacht Mary. By 13 August the indomitable old sea dog, now aged 73, was off Cape York, on the Baffin Island side of the entrance to Prince Regent Inlet. He wintered in the newly discovered Assistance Harbor, on the southeastern corner of Cornwallis Island, and at the mouth of Wellington Channel. In the spring of 1851, he led a sledge party on Griffith Island and his second-in-command, Charles Phillips, explored Cornwallis Island. Bad ice conditions prevented searching the Cape York region and the east coast of Baffin Bay. Ross returned to Scotland. It was a disappointing end to an Arctic career that had spanned over 30 years. ROYAL CANADIAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. Founded in 1929 to advance geographical knowledge and to make Canada better known to Canadians and to the world at large, the society concentrates its attention on Canada’s resources, environment, and history. In 1994 it sponsored and funded David Woodman’s Project Supunger expedition to King William Island. ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE (RCMP). Created as the North West Mounted Police (NWMP) in 1873 as a quasi-military force to maintain law and order in Canada’s Northwest Territories, it was renamed the Royal North West Mounted Police in 1904 and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1920. The NWMP’s first northern patrol occurred as early as 1890, when a small detachment crossed Lake Winnipeg and traveled east to York Factory; its purpose was to map the intervening territory. Another patrol, engaged on a similar mission, consisting of two NWMP officers and two dogsled drivers, departed from Fort Saskatchewan on 4 January 1897 to explore the Athabaska, Peace, and Slave rivers region. Traveling via Fort Chipewyan and Fort Smith and down the Slave River to Fort Resolution, on the southern shore of Great Slave Lake, by 14 February, they returned to Fort Saskatchewan by a different route, arriving on 5 April after traveling 2,000 miles in severe winter conditions.

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The year 1903 was a landmark in the NWMP’s history when two northern posts were established: one at Cape Fullerton, on the western side of Baffin Island in the northern reaches of Hudson Bay; the other at the American whaling station on Herschel Island, 90 miles inside the Canadian border with Alaska. Two NWMP officers, Sgt. F. S. Fitzgerald and Constable F. P. Sutherland, arrived to calm the Inuit–American tension and to underline that the laws of Canada would be enforced. In 1908 a four-man party commanded by Inspector E. A. Pelletier traveled more than 3,000 miles from Fort Saskatchewan—by steamer to Fort Smith, and then by canoe and snowshoe from Great Slave Lake across the Barren Lands—to Baker Lake at the western end of Chesterfield Inlet. Here they were met by the steamer McTavish to take them to Churchill, but early in the voyage, the ship was wrecked. This left Pelletier in a dilemma: it was too late in the year to reach Churchill in small boats, and so the decision was made to travel to Cape Fullerton, where supplies and equipment should be available. Leaving the Cape Fullerton post on 30 November, the party traveled south in horrendous conditions in the depths of winter, largely living off the land. Their epic journey ended at Churchill on 11 January 1909. The post–World War I period saw RCMP posts established at Pond Inlet on the northern shores of Baffin Island and at Cambridge Bay on Victoria Island. The RCMP’s purpose in the Arctic was, of course, one of crime prevention, not exploration. Nevertheless RCMP patrols were instrumental in filling in empty spaces on the map and, occasionally, finding evidence of the early Franklin rescue expeditions. On 27 March 1929, Inspector Joy, in the course of a patrol from Dundas Harbor to Melville Island, found a stone cairn erected by William Penny at Depot Point on Cornwallis Island. Inside was a document, dated August 1850, describing the discovery of the first traces of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition. See also BERNIER, JOSEPH ELZE´ AR; BURTON, KEN; LARSEN, HENRY ASBJORN. ROYAL CANADIAN NAVY. With the exception of the period 1948– 1957, ships of the Royal Canadian Navy have seldom been on duty in

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the waters of the Northwest Passage. See also PULLEN, THOMAS CHARLES; ROBERTSON, OWEN CONNOR STRUAN. ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. Formally instituted on 16 July 1830, it was King William IV, the ‘‘Sailor King,’’ who declared that it should be known as the Royal Geographical Society. A year later, the king instigated an annual gift of 50 guineas ‘‘to constitute a premium for the encouragement and promotion of geographical science and discovery.’’ Using its discretion as to how to make good use of this sign of royal favor, the society decided to award two gold medals of equal value, the Founder’s Medal and the Patron’s Medal. These and similar medals awarded by other national geographical societies were highly prized by explorers of all nationalities. Recipients of these medals among the land and maritime discoverers and explorers participating in the search for a northwest passage include Sir John Ross (1834); Sir George Back (1836); Thomas Simpson (1839); John Rae (1852); Edward Inglefield (1853); Robert McClure (1854); Elisha Kent Kane (1856); Richard Collinson (1858); Lady Jane Franklin (1860); Sir Francis Leopold McClintock (1860); Roald Amundsen (1907); and Henry Larsen (1946). The society’s £7.2 million ‘‘Unlocking the Archives’’ project came to fruition in July 2004, when members, and the public (at a modest fee), were able to take advantage of the library’s computerized catalog to enjoy access to its collection of two million maps, books, journals, photographs, and artifacts in the new Foyle Reading Room. See also ARCTIC MEDAL; POLAR MEDAL; ROYAL CANADIAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. ROYAL NAVY. Although its direct participation in the search for a northwest passage started in the 18th century with Christopher Middleton’s 1741 voyage to Hudson Bay and continued with James Cook’s third Pacific expedition in 1776 and George Vancouver’s detailed survey of the northwest coast of America in 1792– 1795, it was with the 19th-century overland journeys and voyages through the Arctic Archipelago from east and west that the Royal Navy became the instrumental force by which a number of possible

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passages were discovered—not that any of the ships engaged in the search ever sailed through the entire passage in either direction. Despite its achievements, however, the navy was subjected to continual criticism. Its obdurate refusal to adapt to the realities of the harsh and alien Arctic environment, in particular its inability to live off the land, its reliance on man-hauled sledging, and its efforts to encapsulate its expeditions and voyages within a comfortable, familiar, reassuring, and totally inadequate shipborne lifestyle, all were meat and drink to its landlubber critics. These ranged from Hudson’s Bay Company traders, notably John Rae, to others like Richard King, all of whom favored smaller, more rapid land expeditions that would be easier to mount and far less costly in terms of both treasure and lives. Revisionist historians of the 20th century, resolutely unimpressed by Victorian notions of the Royal Navy constituting an elite body of men who could be relied upon to carry out in some style whatever might be entrusted to its stout-hearted officers and crews, have seized on the earlier doubts and questionings, especially in regard to the disaster of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition. Writing with valid and pointed contradiction, Hugh N. Wallace comments: The attempt to sail without simultaneous cooperation by land had concluded in the party seeking escape, and possibly incoming assistance, by the most inland route of all. Objections to an inexpensive support party had led to a de´nouement which, it would turn out, would cost between half a million and two million pounds. Reliance almost entirely on canned and preserved foods had ended in what was likely a desperate search for fresh food. The attempt to carry a whole community in miniature had resulted in the survival of not one member of the community. . . . The location of the expedition that had found a passage was now itself unknown and the members of the party were deceased. Unable to tell its own tale, the expedition would itself become an object of search. (The Navy, the Company, and Richard King [1980], 63–64)

Yet, within 40 years the Royal Navy had discovered a number of passages—one or two navigable, others less accommodating—and had outlined the northern fastness. The maps of the Canadian Arctic of 1860 bore no relation to the rough guesses and surmises of the 1820s. Demonstrably, the ships’ crews were not natural land explorers; they struggled at times in what was bound to be an unfamiliar environ-

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ment. But, in time, their sledging techniques improved, their ability to winter in extreme conditions became more evident, and they gradually surveyed their discoveries. In truth, much had been accomplished by land and sea, and they had unquestionably earned their individual Arctic Medals. See also BARROW, JOHN. ROYAL NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE. See ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE. ROYAL SOCIETY. The United Kingdom’s oldest scientific society, the Royal Society was formally established in 1660, although a number of natural philosophers (that is, scientists) had already been regularly attending meetings at Gresham College, London, for many years. Throughout its history, the society has enjoyed the ear of the sovereign, the government, and the Admiralty in regard to scientific matters of national and international importance. In the 1770s it held discussions with the Admiralty on ice conditions in northern waters and on the prospects of sending expeditions to the Pacific to find the western exit of a northwest passage. In the 19th century, its advice was sought before the 1819 voyage of William Edward Parry and in the discussions at government level before Sir John Franklin’s fateful 1845–1848 voyage. See also ROYAL CANADIAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY; ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. RUPERT’S LAND. Under the terms of the royal charter granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1670, the company became ‘‘the true and absolute Lordes and Proprietors of Hudson Strait and Bay and all the country watered by the rivers flowing into them,’’ a monopoly and privilege it retained for 200 years. Comprising Ungava, the Red River Valley, the area around Hudson Bay and James Bay, and, it was generally accepted, lands on the north bank of the Saskatchewan River, this huge territory—forming 40 percent of modern Canada— was named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619–1682), the Hudson’s Bay Company’s first governor. Rupert’s Land was incorporated in the Dominion of Canada on 23 June 1870 and ceased to be a political entity. RUPERT’S LAND RECORD SOCIETY. Based at the Center for Rupert’s Land Studies at the University of Winnipeg, the Rupert’s Land

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Record Society, in conjunction with McGill-Queen’s University Press, publishes a series of bound volumes, including Richard I. Ruggles’s A Country So Interesting: The Hudson’s Bay Company and Two Centuries of Mapping (1991) and C. Stuart Houston’s Arctic Artist: The Journals and Paintings of George Back (1994). RUT, JOHN (fl. EARLY 16TH CENTURY). Acting on Robert Thorne’s cosmographical advice, and possibly prompted by Giovanni da Verrazzano’s cruise northward along America’s coastline, King Henry VIII dispatched a discovery expedition to the northwest in 1527. Two ships, the Samson (under Master Grube) and the Mary of Guildford, commanded by John Rut, slipped their moorings in the River Thames on 20 May. By 1 July they were encountering ice off the Labrador coast at latitude 53 N. Contact was lost during a storm, and Rut sailed south to reach St. John’s harbor, Newfoundland, on 3 August. Failing to meet with the Samson at the appointed rendezvous off Cape Spear, Rut continued southward, presumably according to instructions, until he reached the Spanish possessions in the West Indies. He informed the authorities that he had been commanded to explore for a passage between Labrador and Newfoundland in the belief that there was a strait in that region leading to Tartary. Rut’s insistence that he was seeking a northwest passage may have been an attempt to disguise a secondary phase of the expedition— searching for a passage through a more temperate zone of America. Why else would he follow the coastline all the way to the West Indies? And, according to Spanish reports, the Mary of Guildford was well provisioned and carrying trade goods. This suggests that Rut’s expedition was intended to do more than reconnoiter a northwest passage, if a strait or channel was found; he was expected to follow it to the South Sea. –S– SABINE, EDWARD (1788–1883). Serving officers in the Royal Artillery were not usually selected to sail on Royal Navy northwest discovery voyages, but Sabine had a lifelong interest and competence in astronomy and terrestrial magnetism. Recommended by the Royal

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Society as ‘‘a gentleman well skilled in astronomy, natural history and various branches of knowledge,’’ he accompanied John Ross on HMS Isabella during his 1818 expedition to Baffin Bay to assist him ‘‘in making such observations as may tend to the improvement in geography and navigation.’’ After Ross had failed to explore Lancaster Sound and had quoted Sabine as sharing his opinions, Sabine published Remarks on the Account of the Late Voyage of Discovery to Baffin’s Bay Published by Captain J. Ross (1819). The first sentence set the tone: ‘‘The following pages are solely designed to counteract the erroneous impression which a perusal of Captain Ross’ recent publication might produce concerning my employments, services, and opinions during the late voyage.’’ Ross was sufficiently stung to publish An Explanation of Captain Sabine’s Remarks (1819). Whether Sabine changed his opinions, swimming with John Barrow’s tide and mindful of his future career, has been the subject of comment. It may be that the two men were not on the best of terms: it cannot have been easy for Ross to be assisted in matters of navigation by an Army officer. Whatever the case, Sabine printed two papers, on the magnetic influence on the compass and on the intensity of the magnetic force in a region very close to the North Magnetic Pole, in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. He also sailed as astronomer on William Parry’s 1819–1820 voyage to Lancaster Sound. ‘‘SAILOR’S HOME.’’An unofficial name for Henry Kellett’s depot on Dealy Island in 1852–1854. ST. ROCH II VOYAGE OF REDISCOVERY. See BURTON, KEN. SAN BLAS. A Spanish naval base and shipyard on Mexico’s east coast, established in 1765, whose prime task originally was to maintain Franciscan missionary stations and the garrisons at Monterey and San Diego. Later known as the Naval Department of San Blas, after 1773 its priority switched to planning and fitting out voyages of discovery and exploration along America’s northwest coasts. SANTA CRUZ DE NUCA. See NOOTKA SOUND. SAUNDERS, JAMES (fl. MID-19TH CENTURY). Principally to avoid Sir John Ross having to return home in 1849, the Admiralty

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decided to send out HMS North Star under the command of James Saunders, an experienced Arctic officer, with stores and new instructions. He was ordered to call in at Disco and Upernavik in Greenland for news of Ross, and if he failed to meet him, he was to land the stores at Possession Bay, on the west side of Baffin Bay; Cape Hay, on the southern shoreline of Lancaster Sound; Cape Crawford; Cape York; or Whaler Point. Leaving the Thames on 16 May 1849, Saunders was delayed by ice in Melville Sound until he was able to disengage the North Star on 26 September. He was forced to spend the winter in Wolstenholme Sound at latitude 76 N. No other Royal Navy ship had ever wintered so far north. Freed from the ice on 1 August 1850, Saunders crossed to Possession Bay, where he left a record of his visit, entered Lancaster Sound, and sailed to Whaler Point. With further progress westward blocked, Saunders turned about for Baffin Bay. Near the entrance to Admiralty Inlet, he encountered William Penny’s expedition and learned that Ross had returned home. Penny persuaded him to land his stores at Navy Board Inlet, where they would prove valuable to other Franklin rescue expeditions. However, they were ransacked by Inuit sometime within the next four years. SCHWATKA, FREDERICK (1849–1892). Erroneous reports from whalers that the Inuit had found a cairn containing books and other printed material relating to Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition prompted Schwatka, who had long maintained an interest in Sir John Franklin’s fate, to mount an expedition to King William Island in order to recover whatever traces of Franklin remained there. Gaining the support of the American Geographical Society and sponsorship from the New York Herald, he planned to set up a base camp at Repulse Bay and to travel overland via the Back River estuary to the island. Schwatka sailed from New York on 19 June 1878, accompanied by Heinrich Klutsak, Frank Melms, and William H. Gilder, the Herald’s representative. Rough weather and adverse ice conditions forced Schwatka to locate his camp farther south, near Chesterfield Inlet. Spending the winter there, he took the opportunity to establish cor-

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dial relations with the Inuit, an early sign of his rapport with them that was to last for his entire period in the Arctic. On 1 April 1879, he set out northward, his party augmented by 12 Inuit. Descending the Hayes River, he proceeded overland via the Back River estuary to the Adelaide Peninsula. There he listened to Inuit reports of Kabloonas dying on its shores. He also learned that books and papers, in all probability the Franklin expedition’s official records, had been scattered to the winds from an abandoned boat near Cape Richardson. Schwatka traveled to the spot and graphically named it Starvation Cove. It was the final encampment of the last survivors of the expedition that had left the Thames on 19 May 1845. Reaching King William Island on 5 June, Schwatka was able to take advantage of the summer conditions. With the ground now clear of ice, it was relatively easy to find objects that previous search expeditions had missed. Exploring parties found a complete skeleton at Victory Point, and the boat Francis Leopold McClintock’s party had found in May 1859 was rediscovered. The whole of King William Island was explored as far as Cape Felix, its northernmost point. Special attention was given to examining the Franklin survivors’ route across the island, which led to the discovery of several graves. After a fruitful summer finding Franklin expedition relics, though fruitless in recovering its records, Schwatka made a remarkable return journey to his base camp in the depth of winter, with the temperature dropping to more than 100 F below freezing. He was a leading exponent of practicing Inuit methods of travel and survival, living off the land in regions where others reported a complete lack of game. He returned with the boat reported by McClintock in Erebus Bay, the sledge it was mounted on, some items of clothing, and some human skeletons. He had moreover confirmed, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the Franklin expedition records were irretrievably lost. SCORESBY, WILLIAM (1789–1857). Son of William Scoresby, senr. (1760–1829), an Arctic whaling captain, William Scoresby junr. accompanied his father’s whaling voyages. He also busied himself in the study of meteorology, oceanography, and natural history. On their 1817 annual voyage, they found that the Arctic ice pack north of Spitsbergen was receding. This information was passed to Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, who asked for a

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full report. In his reply, the younger Scoresby remarked, ‘‘Had I been so fortunate as to have had the command of an expedition for discovery, instead of fishing, I have little doubt but that the mystery attached to the existence of a north west passage might have been resolved.’’ (William Scoresby, The Polar Ice [1815], 333). Relayed to John Barrow, this eventually led to John Ross’s 1818 discovery voyage. In fact, Scoresby was interviewed for the command of this voyage, but Barrow exerted his influence to ensure that no whaling skipper, no matter how learned, would command a Royal Navy expedition. In turn, Scoresby doubted the ability of Royal Navy officers in navigating the ice-strewn seas of the Arctic. He also doubted that a northwest passage, if indeed it existed, would be navigable for more than six months during the year. SCOTT POLAR RESEARCH INSTITUTE (SPRI). Founded in 1920 the SPRI is a national and international center for research and information on both polar regions. Its comprehensive library forms a unique and unrivaled collection of books, pamphlets, maps and journals, historical studies, exploration and scientific reports, and archival photographs, covering every aspect of Arctic and Antarctic exploration. It was once famously described as ‘‘the largest single collection of its kind in the world’’ (Martha Andrews, Arctic and Alpine Research 10, no. 1 [February 1978], 147). In 1976 G. K. Hall (Boston) published The Library Catalogue of the Scott Polar Research Institute in seven author, seven subject, and five regional volumes. A First Supplement of five volumes followed in 1981. The institute, located at Cambridge, England, also houses a museum displaying historic maps, paintings, photographs, and polar clothing and equipment. Outside its doors stands an inukshuk. See also POLAR AND GLACIOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS; POLAR RECORD. SCROGGS, JOHN (fl. EARLY 18TH CENTURY). In the summer of 1722, Scroggs was ordered by Henry Kelsey, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s governor in Hudson Bay, to sail north from Churchill as far as latitude 66 N to search for a copper mine rumored to be in that vicinity. On his outward voyage, a ship’s foremast was recovered from the sea at latitude 4248⬘ N, off Marble Island. Reaching his

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farthest point, at latitude 6456⬘ N, Scroggs sent Robert Norton ashore on a reconnaissance mission. Despite Norton’s report of an open sea to the west, Scroggs, never the most resolute or adventurous of sea captains, made no attempt to investigate further. Returning south, Scroggs landed a boat on Marble Island, where a miscellany of nautical items was found in the hands of the Inuit. Rightly concluding that these could only come from James Knight’s lost expedition, wrecked in the island’s shoal waters, Scroggs jumped to the conclusion, with no supporting evidence, that the ship’s crew had been murdered by the Inuit. SCURVY. Hard blackened mouths, ulcerated and spongy gums, foul breath, emaciated limbs, pain and swelling in the joints, and extreme tiredness are all obvious symptoms of scurvy, a disease caused by a vitamin C deficiency, usually as a result of a lack of fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables in the diet. Scurvy was rife among oceangoing seamen from the 15th century on, when European ships first embarked on long trading voyages and sailed out of reach of fresh food. In 1753 a Royal Navy surgeon, Dr. James Lind (1716–1794), published A Treatise of the Scurvy in Three Parts: Containing an Inquiry into the Nature, Causes, and Cure of this Disease. He described the symptoms in detail and provided excellent directions on treatment; he also emphasized the need for oranges, lemons, onions, and greens in shipboard diets. The navy promptly added European and African lemons to ships’ stores, both of which were very effective antiscorbutics (that is, scurvy preventatives). By a deadly quirk of fate, however, these lemons were sometimes known as ‘‘limes,’’ and early in the 19th century, West Indian limes—which were nowhere near so effective—replaced lemons. It was a backward step: the dietary defense against the disease was unwittingly and dangerously weakened. The northwest passage expeditions most affected by scurvy were Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition (1845–1848) and that of Robert McClure in 1850–1854. It is no coincidence that apart from John Ross’s 1829–1833 expedition, these were the two of the longest duration without fresh food. Ross, of course, was able to help himself from the stores at Fury Beach.

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SECOND UNITED STATES GRINNELL EXPEDITION. See GRINNELL, HENRY; KANE, ELISHA KENT. SEVENTEEN RIVERS FROM CHURCHILL. On a manuscript map of the area north of Churchill drawn by Chipewyan Indians in 1716 for James Knight, 17 rivers were depicted as flowing into Hudson Bay. The eighth river from Churchill marked the beginning of Inuit territory; the farthest north reportedly ran through copper mine country; and the last, Knight chose to believe, represented the Strait of Anian. See also MAPS AND MAPPING, INDIAN AND INUIT. SHEDDEN, ROBERT (1820–1849). When Henry Kellett sailed into Petropavlovsk Harbor on 23 June 1849, he found the 163-ton schooner Nancy Dawson at anchor. Her owner was Robert Shedden, a wealthy sailing enthusiast, who offered to place his ship under Kellett’s command. He sailed north with Kellett (commanding HMS Herald) and Thomas Moore (in HMS Plover) to Wainwright Inlet before continuing east with William Pullen’s boats to Point Barrow. Here, after leaving a cache of provisions for Sir John Franklin, should he reach the Beaufort Sea, Shedden turned back. The Nancy Dawson’s draft clearly was not suited to the shallow coastal waters. SIDE-SCAN SONAR. In Joseph B. MacInnis’s words this is a small, torpedo-shaped electronic device towed slowly just above the sea floor. This device or ‘‘tow-fish’’ . . . emits short pulses of acoustic energy in fan-shaped beams on both sides of the towing boat’s path. The return signals, or echoes, are picked up, amplified, and transmitted up a tow-cable to the surface. Here, the echoes are electronically processed and displayed on a graph-paper recorder. What results is a ‘‘picture’’ of the sea floor along an eight-hundred meter path. (The Search for the Breadalbane [1985], 51)

SIMPSON, THOMAS (1808–1840). Appointed as second-in-command to Peter Warren Dease on the Hudson’s Bay Company’s 1837–1839 expedition to complete the discovery and survey of the northern coastline of the American continent, Simpson was the more adventurous of the two, Dease the more cautious. In August 1837,

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when their boats could go no farther than Return Reef on the Alaska coast, he persuaded Dease to allow him to continue westward to Point Barrow, 60 miles away. Borrowing an umiak from the local Inuit, he crossed and named Dease Inlet and reached Point Barrow on 4 August. For this exploit, he was awarded the Royal Geographical Society’s gold medal. At the end of March 1838, Simpson undertook a reconnaissance journey with two others from Fort Confidence on Great Bear Lake to the Coppermine River. Later that year, in circumstances remarkably similar to those on the Alaska shore the previous year, he again set off independently of Dease to explore 100 miles farther east, past Point Turnagain to reach Cape Alexander and sight Victoria Island. In August 1839 he advanced 40 miles east of Cape Britannia to the Castor and Pollux River, where poor visibility misled him to believe that the coastline turned south, thus misrepresenting the true geographical status of the Boothia Peninsula. Although hasty in temper and resenting Dease’s steadying influence, Simpson’s dash greatly contributed to the expedition’s success. His burning ambition to lead a discovery expedition prompted him to propose that the Hudson’s Bay Company allow him to complete a survey of the Gulf of Boothia, which he described as the only section of the Arctic coast still unknown. In March 1840 the company acknowledged that it was anxious to survey the coast eastward to Hudson Bay, and on 3 June it appointed Simpson to make a survey from the mouth of the Great Fish River to Fury and Hecla Strait. But, somewhere in North Dakota, while on his way to London to promote his cause, Simpson died under mysterious circumstances. Either he committed suicide in a fit of manic depression, or he was murdered by his guides, just three days after his proposals had been accepted in London. There can be no question that, if he had lived, the reality of Boothia’s geographical position would have been revealed much sooner than it was. SIR THOMAS ROWE’S WELCOME. See ROE’S WELCOME SOUND. SKOOG, JOSEPH L. In 1962, two years after the USS Seadragon (commanded by George P. Steele) completed a submerged transit of

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the Northwest Passage, from the U.S. East Coast via the North Pole to Hawaii, Skoog reversed Steele’s course in the USS Skate to become the second United States Navy commander to take his submarine through the passage. SLEDGES AND SLEDGE TRAVEL. It was William Edward Parry who first grasped the fact that, while Royal Navy ships could sail to strategic points in the Arctic for short periods of the year, once there they were of necessity transformed into depot barracks for up to 10 months. The only mobility then offered for exploration or search parties was overland travel—and for that sledges were required. On his second northwest discovery voyage, 1821–1823, he closely observed Inuit sledging techniques on the east coast of the Melville Peninsula, copying their flat sledges constructed of wooden staves, 61/2 feet long and 14 inches wide, fastened together with hide thongs. At first his seamen dragged their own individual sledges, but later dogs were purchased. At one point on this journey, James Clark Ross’s famished dogs ate his sledge, which because of a shortage of wood had been constructed from frozen salmon! Dog teams were used extensively on John Ross’s 1829–1832 expedition to Prince Regent Inlet, notably by his nephew James Clark Ross, who was experienced with dogsleds after Parry’s expedition. While exploring Somerset Island and Boothia, the younger Ross used sledges 7 feet long with solid wooden runners edged with iron and pulled by eight dogs. He made a 400-mile overland journey in 1830 and another of 230 miles when locating the North Magnetic Pole in 1831. Francis Leopold McClintock, the acknowledged Royal Navy expert on the use of sledges, gained his first experience of sledge traveling when he accompanied James Clark Ross’s 1849 overland journey down the east coast of Peel Sound to within 70 miles of where Sir John Franklin’s ships were icebound. Ross considered flat sledges 9 feet long and mounted on solid runners to be the most suitable for use on deep soft snow. For long-distance traveling, he used modified Greenland Inuit–type sledges, their wooden runners faced with iron and their ends curving upward. Despite Parry’s pioneering the use of dogs, Ross’s sledge parties reverted to manpower, setting a firm precedent the navy was to fol-

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low for the next 60 years. Frequently derided as one more example of British self-flagellation, deliberately but needlessly approaching a task the hard way, this practice was in fact partially based on sound thinking. The case for the defense is outlined in C. S. Mackinnon’s paper, ‘‘The British Man-Hauled Sledging Tradition,’’ in The Franklin Era in Canadian Arctic History, 1845–1859 ([1985], 129–40). In Mackinnon’s view, the use of manpower in the Franklin rescue expeditions was rational, justifiable, and successful. Sledgework conformed to well-understood and time-honored navy routine, seamen were accustomed to handling ropes, and in certain circumstances, masts could be fixed and fitted out with sails, thus converting the sledges to a near resemblance to miniature ships, each bearing its own name and flag and with its own crew. Trained seamen could not be expected to master Inuit methods overnight. In any case, the use of a large number of dogs involved major problems of training, housing, feeding, and hygiene. Moreover, the search for Franklin, when speed was essential, was not expected to last beyond a finite period. Once search expeditions evolved into the more prosaic task of charting and surveying unexplored territory in detail, a leisurely approach exemplified by a manhauled sledge was appropriate. But chairborne planning along these lines took no account of the immense long-term injury syndrome experienced by even the most sturdy and robust of seamen as they endlessly and laboriously struggled over ice hammocks or through frequent stretches of melt ice water, pulling a sledge weighed down by equipment and provisions and often also by their weakened comrades. When pressed into service to search for Franklin, the men of the Hudson’s Bay Company favored a different type of sledge from those employed by the Royal Navy. They were fur traders accustomed to act on their own initiative, not hierarchically disciplined oceanic explorers; they were essentially land travelers, although capable of long-distance canoe journeys when necessary. John Rae preferred the lighter, flat-bottom Indian toboggan type of sledge, carrying his bedding, gun, instruments, and pemmican and affording him the speed and maneuverability that he craved. He adopted the Inuit techniques of icing his runners and harnessing his dogs in a fan-out formation, not in the navy way of paired dogs in

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rows. In his opinion, the lighter and lower sledges traversed snow and ice terrain much easier than the Greenland sledges, which were apt to topple over hammocks into deep snow in the hollows below, requiring exhausting and time-consuming effort to release them. No doubt fur traders and seamen both preferred the transportation they were used to, but it bears repeating that Rae was the most accomplished Arctic traveler of them all. SMITH, FRANCIS (fl. EARLY 18TH CENTURY). An experienced master of Hudson’s Bay Company trading vessels in Hudson Bay, but with no obvious interest in exploration, Francis Smith was recruited by Arthur Dobbs as captain of the California, which sailed with William Moor’s galley Dobbs on the North West Committee– backed 1746–1747 voyage in search of a northwest passage. Sharp dissent between the two captains, each apparently exploring at his own discretion, resulted in some confusion in the naming of geographical features. Chesterfield Inlet was discovered and explored, and the Rankin and Wager Inlets were examined, but it was a peculiarly inconclusive and disappointing voyage. If Christopher Middleton’s findings were not accepted, the existence of a passage leading from Hudson Bay was still uncertain after their expedition. SMITH, RALPH. A Toronto businessman whose recreation was scuba diving, Ralph Smith led a team to Marble Island in 1970 to search for evidence of James Knight’s stay on the island in 1719–1721. Shortly before the team was to return home, it was successful in locating the remains of Knight’s house at the eastern end of the island. Smith returned the following year with a party of six traveling in various aircraft, of diminishing size, and was set down by a seaplane a few hundred yards from his proposed campsite. The aim was to carry out a preliminary examination of the house and to locate the wrecks of Knight’s ships, the schooner Albany and the sloop Discovery. Guided by Samuel Hearne’s 1767 description that the two ships were toward the head of the adjacent harbor, the waters there were systematically explored. On the second day, wooden shapes protruding from the silt were noticed and, sure enough, a 65-foot sunken vessel was discovered there. Meanwhile examination of the house, excavated under the super-

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vision of a professional archaeologist, Walter Zacharuk, resulted in glass fragments, a brass button, earthenware, clay pipes, shoe leather, and food remains being found. Nearby, they also recovered lead balls and shot, wood chips, pottery, and the rusted remains of a portable stove. See also BEATTIE, OWEN; PALFREY, DON. SNOW, WILLIAM PARKER (1817–1895). After a checkered career in and out of the Royal Navy, William Parker Snow volunteered to act as purser, surgeon, and first mate on the Prince Albert, commanded by Charles Forsyth, privately fitted out by Lady Jane Franklin in 1850 to sail down Prince Regent Inlet looking for signs of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition. Snow was at odds with Forsyth when the captain determined to go no farther than Fury Beach. In subsequent years, Snow was unsuccessful in numerous attempts to persuade the Admiralty to employ him in the Arctic. Snow reemerged as a freelance editor when given the manuscript of Charles Francis Hall’s Arctic Researches and Life Among the Esquimaux to prepare it for publication. He applied himself to this task only sporadically, and his once-bright relations with Hall rapidly dimmed. Later he was to suggest that he had actually written the book himself, but this is unlikely, as the published work was essentially an edited and cut version of Hall’s manuscript journal. SOCIETY OF ENGLISH MERCHANTS FOR THE DISCOVERY OF NEW TRADES. See KNIGHT, JOHN. SOMERSET HOUSE. The 31-foot-long, 16-foot-wide, and 7-foothigh ‘‘house’’ erected at Fury Beach on 2 July 1832 by Sir John Ross’s expedition. It was evacuated on 1 August when the Victory’s crew departed in three boats in the hope of reaching Baffin Bay, but on 25 September they were forced back to reoccupy the structure until 8 July 1833. SOMERSET ISLAND. First sighted off his port bow by William Edward Parry, who named it North Somerset, as he sailed HMS Hecla through Barrow Strait in 1819, Somerset Island is bounded by Prince Regent Inlet on its east and Peel Sound on its west coast. William Kennedy and Joseph-Rene´ Bellot discovered that a chan-

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nel (Bellot Strait) separated the island from Boothia Peninsula in 1853, although this was not confirmed until Francis Leopold McClintock arrived there in August 1858. See also FURY BEACH; ROSS, SIR JAMES CLARK; ROSS, SIR JOHN. SOUTHAMPTON ISLAND. Bounded by the Frozen Strait on its northern shores, by Foxe Channel to the east, and by Roe’s Welcome Sound to the west, Southampton Island was discovered by Thomas Button in 1613, although it was Luke Foxe who named it. SOUTH SEA. A 16th- to 18th-century term for the Pacific Ocean, deriving from the Spanish Mar del Sur (Sea of the South). STARVATION COVE. Situated on the northern Adelaide Peninsula a few miles to the west of Richardson Point, Starvation Cove was named by Frederick Schwatka in 1879. It marks the locality where the remaining 40 survivors of Francis Crozier’s last-ditch attempt to reach safety on the Canadian mainland in 1848 are likely to have perished. STEELE, GEORGE P. (1925– ). The commander of the USS Seadragon, a nuclear submarine, which departed from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on 1 August 1960 for a momentous voyage to the North Pole via the Northwest Passage. Two days later, the submarine entered Baffin Bay, where she dived under an iceberg that reached 822 feet below the surface and 313 feet above it. In all, six icebergs were passed under 22 times. At the western end of the Parry Channel, she submerged again, passing under McClure Strait, which had not yet been traversed by a surface ship because of its unbroken ice. The Seadragon continued to the North Pole before proceeding on to Pearl Harbor. At the invitation of the United States Navy, Commo. O. G. S. Robertson, RCN, was on board acting as an advisor on the navigation of the Arctic Archipelago. He had previously cooperated with the United States Hydrographic Survey for the DEW Line. See also SKOOG, JOSEPH L. STEFANSSON COLLECTION. Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879– 1962), an Arctic scientist, traveler, and writer, amassed a huge li-

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brary, the bulk of it relating to polar exploration before 1930. In 1951 he donated this collection to Dartmouth College at Hanover, New Hampshire, when it comprised some 25,000 volumes, almost as many pamphlets, and many manuscript diaries, journals, pieces of correspondence, and private papers. G. K. Hall published The Dictionary Catalog of the Stefansson Collection on the Polar Regions in eight volumes in 1967. ‘‘The Stefansson Collection at Dartmouth College’’ (Explorers Journal 38, no. 1 [February 1960]: 5–8) includes a description of important archival material. STEWARD, ROGER A. A veteran merchant marine officer, Steward commanded the 1,000-foot-long, 150,000-ton, 43,000-horsepower tanker SS Manhattan on its voyage through the Northwest Passage. Specially converted into an icebreaker at a cost of $39 million, the largest ship ever to be registered under the United States flag, the Manhattan entered the pack ice in Baffin Bay on 2 September 1969. Taking on gigantic ice floes and cutting through 60-foot-thick ice sheets, she advanced with barely a tremor. On board were 126 men, a volunteer crew, marine scientists, journalists reporting this stupendous event, and Capt. Thomas James Pullen, RCN. The story of the voyage began in 1968 when a massive underground lake of oil was discovered in northern Alaska by the Humble Oil and Refining Company. The Manhattan’s principal task was to establish the economic feasibility of transporting Alaskan crude oil through the Northwest Passage to the U.S. East Coast at a commercially viable rate. It was estimated that $600,000 a day could be saved in comparison with the cost of constructing and operating a transcontinental pipeline. From the initial contact with the ice pack, the Manhattan proceeded to Thule Air Base, on Greenland’s northwest coast, to check on the state of her propellers. Scuba divers from her accompanying ship, the CCGS John A. Macdonald (under Capt. Paul M. Fournier), carried out a thorough inspection and reported that the blades were unscathed despite the battering they had received. Reassured, Steward steered for Lancaster Sound, heading for the oilfields near Prudhoe Bay. Maintaining a steady and direct course, Steward took the Manhattan along the southern shores of Devon Island, past Beechey Island,

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and into Melville Sound. In the middle of the sound, she was stopped by multiyear ice, that is, ice that had been frozen, melted, and frozen again many times. Through the superb seamanship of both captains, Steward and Fournier, she was released and plowed on to McClure Strait. Here the Manhattan faced her sternest test yet, pack ice driven by storm-force winds. Despite laser beam and infrared photography profiling the ice ridges ahead and the temperature variations of the ice, it was plain that further progress was impossible. Not for the first time, nature triumphed over technology. Steward turned south, down Prince of Wales Strait into Amundsen Gulf, and on 14 September, the Manhattan emerged into 1,000 miles of open sea, stretching all the way to Prudhoe. There Steward took on board a symbolic barrel of oil, put into Point Barrow, and then retraced his course to Melville Sound, where four weeks were spent gathering scientific data from the ice. A spillage of 15,000 barrels of ballast in Lancaster Sound when ice penetrated an unarmored steel panel highlighted possible environmental problems. The Manhattan returned to New York harbor on 12 November. Icebreaking though the Manhattan’s voyage was, it has not been followed by the fleets of oil tankers that were envisaged at the time. A closer examination seems to have revealed that the economic benefits were not so certain after all. STEWART, ALEXANDER. See PENNY, WILLIAM. STRAIT OF ANIAN. Deriving either from a reference in Marco Polo’s Travels to a land named Ania on the eastern border of China or from Ainwa, the Japanese name for the strait between the Sakhalin Island and the Siberian mainland, the hypothetical Strait of Anian was first described in Giacomo Gastaldi’s pamphlet ‘‘La Universale Descrittione Del Monde’’ (Universal description of the world), published in Venice in 1562. Gastaldi gave the name to a stretch of water separating the easternmost point of Asia and the unexplored northwest coast of the American continent. The Strait of Anian was perpetuated by another Italian cartographer, Bolognino Zaltieri, whose map of North America, dated 1566, identifies the Fretum de Anian (Strait of Anian) running from the Golfo Chinan (Chinan Gulf) into a large Mare Septentrionale Incog-

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nito (Unknown Northern Sea). More significantly perhaps, nothing was shown to obstruct a voyage from the west coast of Greenland, along the shores of the North American continent, through the strait, and into the Pacific Ocean. In the latter half of the 16th century, Spanish navigators, sailing up the coast of California, endeavored to identify the entrance to the strait. However, the historical secrecy of the European powers as to the results of their exploration voyages, to which Spain was no exception, ensured that the existence of a strait, and its location, would remain veiled in mystery. Two seamen claimed to have navigated the strait: Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado in 1588 and Juan de Fuca in 1592. It was 200 years before it could be determined whether the reports of these voyages were fabrications or genuine accounts. Early in the 18th century, the Strait of Anian was relocated farther south in geographers’ minds, and in the 1740s, French cartographers linked it to an equally imaginative Mer de l’Ouest (Western Sea). Perhaps a southeast–northwest waterway existed from just north of California to Hudson Bay. In The Great Probability of a Northwest Passage (1768), Theodore Swaine Drage identified Bartolome de Fonte’s Archipelago of St. Lazarus and the Ronquillo Strait with the long-sought Strait of Anian. Twenty-five years later, the strait was given an extended lease on life in William Goldson’s Observations on the Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in Two Memoirs on the Straits of Anian (1793). Displaying a vividly creative turn of mind, Goldson included a map entitled ‘‘Chart on Mercator’s Projection exhibiting the Tracks of Maldonado and de Fonte in 1598 and 1640 and Compared with The Modern Discoveries,’’ which depicted a huge Sea of Juan de Fuca covering most of modern British Columbia and Washington State, behind a thin strip of coastline. It relied upon Indian accounts for another huge sea stretching from Repulse Bay to the Coppermine River and completed the picture by identifying Prince William Sound as the Strait of Anian, sailed through by Maldonado and Pedro de Barnarda in 1588 and 1640, respectively. By this time identified with the Bering Strait, the apotheosis of the mythical Strait of Anian and its related voyages and discoveries was still to come. Following the publication of William Edward Parry’s Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Pas-

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sage (1821), Pierre Lapie, the geographer to King Louis XVIII of France, published a map, ‘‘Carte d’Une Partie de l’Oce´an Arctique et de l’Ame´rique Septentrionale’’ (A map of part of the Arctic Ocean and North America), in an attempt to link Parry’s route and discoveries to those of the earlier fictitious navigators. Because of the prevailing uncertain knowledge of the North American coastline and the almost total ignorance of the Arctic Archipelago, let alone the Unexplored Quadrilateral, there was ample room for Lapie to maneuver. He postulated a large Polar Sea whose northern shores ran westward from the upper reaches of Baffin Bay to a sketchily formed Alaska. Its southern shore was the still largely unknown coastline of the North American continent. Parry’s discoveries are named and reasonably accurately situated but Maldonado’s reputed course of 1588 is traced through the Strait of Labrador (Hudson Strait), up a wide and imaginary passage to the east of Southampton Island and Repulse Bay, directly across the open southern end of Prince Regent (Inlet) and the waters south of Parry’s discoveries, past Bathurst, Melville, and Banks islands, westward to an extreme western peninsula of Alaska, and through a narrow southern channel into the Bering Sea. Also shown is Pedro de Barnarda’s alleged route eastward from the Bering or Anian Strait through an equally narrow channel, and his voyage further eastward to the north of Parry’s islands and to an unnamed bay not far from Jones Strait (Jones Sound). It was a worthy and fitting end to a longrunning and essentially distracting pipe dream. In truth, the late 18thcentury Spanish, English, French, and U.S. voyages of discovery along the northwest coast of America should have obliterated the Strait of Anian from the map. George Vancouver’s meticulous 1792–1794 coastal surveys had already established that no intercontinental strait or passage linked the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in the northern latitudes. See also MAPS AND MAPPING, EUROPEAN. STRAIT OF JUAN DE FUCA. In 1787 Capt. William Barkley, sailing in the Imperial Eagle along the coast of Vancouver Island, discovered a southern entrance to Puget Sound at the approximate location of the strait found by Juan de Fuca in 1592. On board was the newly married Mrs. Frances Barkley, who recorded in her diary:

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In the afternoon, to our great astonishment, we arrived off a large opening extending to the eastward, the entrance of which appeared to be about four leagues wide, and remained that width as far as the eye could see, with a clear easterly horizon, which my husband immediately recognized as the long lost strait of Juan de Fuca, and to which he gave the name of the original discoverer. (W. Kaye Lamb, ‘‘The Mystery of Mrs. Barkley’s Diary,’’ British Columbia Historical Quarterly 6, no. 1 [January 1942], 43)

The strait was examined by Charles Duncan in August 1778, and in March 1789 Robert Gray, sailing in the Lady Washington, penetrated it for 25 miles before bad weather forced him back. STRAIT OF THREE BROTHERS. See MAPS AND MAPPING, EUROPEAN. STRANGE, JAMES CHARLES STUART (1753–1840). A Madras merchant, James Strange secured the support of the East India Company for an expedition of two ships from Bombay to the northwest coast of America in 1786. His sailing instructions claimed that its principal purposes were, first, exploring for the benefit of navigation and, second, establishing a new channel of commerce with the coast from India and China. But despite what his instructions might say, his voyage was a straightforward fur-trading commercial venture no different from any others on the coast. This is not to say that Strange was entirely indifferent to exploration. He was well aware that James Cook’s 1776–1779 voyage had not succeeded in establishing the existence of a strait through the North American continent. Strange’s discovery of Queen Charlotte Sound, a huge expanse of water several leagues wide, with strong tides and currents, at latitude 51 N, revived speculation that Bartolome de Fonte’s alleged strait, the existence of which Cook had failed to disprove, had at last been found. Strange himself had no doubts, but trade took priority over geographical exploration and he did not pursue this potentially important discovery. STRUZIK, ED. With four others, writer and photographer Ed Struzik followed George Back’s 1834 route from Great Slave Lake and the mouth of the Hoarfrost River down the Back River in the summer of 1997.

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STUART, WILLIAM (1678–1719). Accompanied by Thanadelthur, Stuart was dispatched by James Knight on 27 June 1715 to explore northwest from York Factory on Hudson Bay. His instructions were to act as peacemaker between the warring Chipewyan and Cree Indians, to investigate the fur-trading prospects, and to inquire about copper and gold deposits. Stuart returned in May 1716 and claimed to have journeyed 1,000 miles across the Barren Lands, reaching latitude 67 N. Knight rightly suspected this to be an exaggeration, since a compass was the only navigation instrument Stuart possessed. It seems more probable that he had reached the region southeast of Great Slave Lake. Greatly assisted by Thanadelthur’s participation in the negotiations, Stuart succeeded in his main objective of securing peace between the Chipewyan and the Cree. He also determined that a profitable trade in furs could be effected, provided the difficulties of distance, terrain, and climate could be overcome. The privations Stuart had endured prevented him from undertaking another expedition in 1717, but he was the first European to have crossed the daunting Barren Lands. SUB-IGLOO. In November and December 1972, Dr. Joseph B. MacInnis led a team of 15 divers and underwater scientists to Resolute Bay to conduct a series of experiments whose principal purposes were to investigate the problems associated with Arctic diving expeditions and to learn how much skilled divers might achieve in waters with temperatures dropping to a mind-boggling –28 F, where exposure can lead to death in five minutes. Also on the agenda was what type of clothing, breathing gear, watches, and diver propulsion vehicles best suited this testing environment. Crucial to these studies was an underwater workshop, the first manned Arctic diving station, which MacInnis named a ‘‘sub-igloo.’’ Placed six fathoms down, he justifiably described it as ‘‘one of the most inventive technological advances in two decades of under-ice diving’’ (‘‘Diving beneath Arctic Ice,’’ National Geographic 144, no. 2 [August 1973], 248). The sub-igloo was a transparent ‘‘bubble’’ bolted on struts in the shape of a conical dome. Here, divers could relax in comparative warmth and comfort, free of their breathing apparatus, when pursuing their studies on the ocean floor. It also served as a base for their equipment, as a communications center both un-

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derwater and with the outside world, and as a refuge for a diver in difficulty. It carried eight tons of ballast in trays anchoring the dome. Easily maneuverable, it required no heavy equipment to move its position. More than 200 dives were undertaken in a grueling month’s underwater program. SUPUNGER CITY. The name given to David Woodman’s multicolored 11-tent camp on his 1994 expedition to King William Island. It immediately became the second largest ‘‘town’’ on the island. SWAINE, CHARLES (1712?–1744). Arriving in Maryland in 1750, Swaine received permission from the colony’s governor, Samuel Ogle, to embark on a search for a northwest passage. He also gained the support of Benjamin Franklin and his Northwest Company. However, because of political and commercial machinations in London, it was not until 15 April 1753 that Swaine departed in the schooner Argo from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the hope of penetrating Hudson Bay to make a further search there. After an almost unprecedentedly severe winter during which, according to the reports of two Danish ships he encountered, the ice in Davis Strait extended 40 leagues from the shore, Swaine had to press through the ice to the entrance of Hudson Strait. He managed to proceed as far as Resolution Island, but the vast quantity of ice forced him out to sea again. Failing in repeated attempts to reenter the bay, the Argo coasted down the shore of Labrador and examined six inlets in vain to disprove the theory that a waterway ran through to the bay. He returned to Portsmouth in mid-November. A second attempt in 1754 was halted on the Labrador coast after three men sent inland to explore were killed by the natives. The Argo’s crew lost confidence in the enterprise and came close to mutiny. Swaine had no option but to return to port. See also DRAGE, THEODORE SWAINE. –T– TEROAHAUTE´, MICHEL. See CANNIBALISM. THANADELTHUR (?–1717). A young Chipewyan woman, most probably still in her teens, Thanadelthur was captured by Cree Indi-

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ans on the shores of Great Slave Lake in 1713. With unusual courage, she escaped and set off across the Barren Lands in an attempt to return to her tribe, but she was eventually forced to seek refuge at York Factory on Hudson Bay. James Knight was intrigued by her account of a distant land rich in fur animals and minerals, washed by ‘‘a Large River or Streights’’ whose tides ebbed and flowed at such a fast rate that it was hardly ever frozen in winter. To his fevered imagination, this could only refer to the long-sought Strait of Anian. Impressed by Thanadelthur’s intelligence, Knight sent her on William Stuart’s 1715–1716 expedition as an interpreter. In fact, she acted more as intermediary and undoubtedly proved instrumental in securing a peace between the Chipewyan and Cree. THORNE, ROBERT (1492–1532). A prosperous Bristol and London merchant who, for many years, lived in Seville, Spain, supervising his family business, Robert Thorne had long been convinced that a commercially viable route to the South Sea lay northward. It was he who first uttered the doctrine that ‘‘there is no land uninhabitable, nor sea innavigable,’’ a geographical misstatement that was to recklessly encourage English Arctic explorers for the next three centuries. In 1527 Thorne expanded on his plan in a memorandum addressed (at Lee’s request) to Dr. Robert Lee, King Henry VIII’s special ambassador in Spain. Together with a roughly drawn map, the memorandum was eventually printed in Richard Hakluyt’s Divers Voyages (1582), where it appeared as ‘‘An Information of the Lands Discovered and of the Way to the Moluccas by the North.’’ This advocated a voyage over the North Pole and a descent to the Equinoctial Line (the equator) to arrive at the Spice Islands by a route 2,000 leagues shorter than by either the southwest (Spanish) or the southeast (Portuguese) routes. Hakluyt described the accompanying map as indispensable, saying that without it ‘‘his book could not be understood,’’ but in truth it fails to elucidate Thorne’s hypothesis at all adequately: the northern edge ends much too far south, and no route, east or west, is outlined, nor is there any conclusion on the distance between an ill-determined North America and Asia. By 1528 Thorne was back in England and, together with Roger Barlow, another merchant holding similar cosmographical and com-

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mercial views, prepared a prospectus of northern exploration intended for submission to the king, although it was destined never to be delivered. It was couched in vibrant terms, urging the king to extend his dominions by penetrating to the Orient via a northern route. Once over the Pole, an expedition could proceed either east or west. If the latter, they would ‘‘go by the backside of the new found land’’ until they came to the South Sea and the Spice Islands. This document, too, was included in Divers Voyages, where it was known as ‘‘A Declaration of the Indies.’’ Before leaving Spain, Thorne had purchased a ship, the Saviour, of Bristol, which he considered suitable for an Arctic voyage, and it would appear that the project outlined in the ‘‘Declaration’’ was not simply a rhetorical proposal but a definite expedition planned to depart as soon as resources were made available. In view of Thorne’s and Barlow’s reputations as merchants, these were likely to be forthcoming. But Thorne’s premature death in 1532 brought the project to an abrupt halt. THREE REASONS TO PROVE THAT THERE IS A PASSAGE FROM THE NORTHWEST INTO THE SOUTH SEA. See HARRIOTT, THOMAS. TOW-FISH. See SIDE-SCAN SONAR. TRAFTON, STEPHEN J. After closely examining the poor record of 20th-century searches on King William Island for evidence of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition, Trafton concluded that four vital factors had precluded their chances of success: insufficient experienced manpower; time constraints in the short summer season; treacherous weather conditions; and the lack of a systematic search plan. Conscious that he could do little about the weather pattern, he took steps to obviate the three other elements influencing an expedition’s success or failure. When assembling the 1989 Franklin Search Expedition, he organized its eight members into three teams, each supervised by an experienced mountain search-and-rescue leader. These teams were then assigned a specific locality, with a tight search plan, for every day of a two-and-a-half-week period. Five sites were chosen after a proba-

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bility-of-success audit based on whatever reliable information was available. The historical background of the camps and cairns located and investigated by Trafton’s search parties in 1989, the items recovered, and a map are outlined in his article ‘‘The Location and Mapping of the Camps and Cairns Associated with Sir John Franklin’s Last Arctic Expedition’’ (Mariner’s Mirror 77, no. 4 [November 1991]: 407– 15). TRANSGLOBE EXPEDITION. See FIENNES, SIR RANULPH. TRIPE DE ROCHE (ROCK TRIPE). Belonging to the genus Gyrophora, tripe de roche is an edible and slightly nutritious species of lichen that grows on rocks in the Barren Lands. In the absence of any other food, it was occasionally pressed into service, notably on Franklin’s First Arctic Land Expedition. In some instances, however, it proved to be indigestible, and in extreme cases, it acted as an enervating purgative. TUNDRA. The large circumpolar regions north of the treeline to the edge of polar ice. This area is not entirely without vegetation, in that mosses, lichens, and dwarf shrubs are present. Permafrost underlies most of the tundra so that ice, melting during the very short growing season, remains as surface water, providing a good breeding ground for mosquitoes and other insects that sorely afflict all overland travelers. TUTE, JAMES. See ROGERS, ROBERT. –U– UMIAKS. Constructed of wood and sea mammal skin, umiaks were large Inuit canoes used for whale hunting and for transporting women and children. They were powered either by oars or paddles, and they drew a very shallow draft. The word was also used for Kabloona ships. See also KAYAKS. UNEXPLORED QUADRILATERAL. A term for the crucial area to be explored by Sir John Franklin’s 1845 northwestern voyage of

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discovery, coined by Richard J. Cyriax in ‘‘Sir John Franklin’s Orders Considered in the Light of Geographical Knowledge When He Sailed, 1845,’’ his contribution to a joint paper with J. M. Wordie, ‘‘Centenary of the Sailing of Sir John Franklin with the Erebus and Terror,’’ printed in the November/December 1945 issue of the Royal Geographical Society’s Geographical Journal. In contrast to the lands and seas already discovered, he wrote: an unexplored quadrilateral intervened, the north-west corner being formed by Bank’s Land [Banks Island], the north-east by Cape Walker, the south-west by Wollaston Land [Victoria Island], and the south-east by King William Land [King William Island].

Cyriax estimated that the distance from Cape Walker to the eastern end of Banks Land . . . was about 200 miles, and from Cape Walker to King William Land about 360 miles, so that the whole unexplored region had an area of about 70,000 square miles. . . . If ships, sailing southwards and westwards from Barrow Strait or Melville Sound, could pass through this unexplored quadrilateral to the American mainland, the problem of the North West Passage would be solved.

This was as well understood by Sir John Barrow and the Admiralty in 1845 as it was 100 years later. The difference was that Barrow assumed that no landmass or ice impeded a direct sea route from Cape Walker to the North American continental coastline. That assumption had significant consequences. UNITED STATES HYDROGRAPHIC SURVEY FOR THE DEW LINE. Before the DEW Line chain of radar stations could be constructed, considerable hydrographic work was necessary, not least because it was intended for most of them to be supplied by sea. The U.S. Hydrographic Service therefore embarked upon an ambitious program to survey the Canadian Arctic coastline. The survey was phased over three summers: in the first year, survey ships were to reconnoiter and identify potential danger spots; in the second, geodetic parties would be airlifted into areas where more precise surveying was required; and in the third, the detailed hydrographic surveys would be completed. In 1955 the USS Requisite, a minesweeper converted for hydrographic operations, and vessels of the U.S. Coast Guard explored

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eastward from Alaska to Amundsen Gulf. The following year, this was extended to Dolphin and Union Strait, Queen Maud Gulf, and Simpson Strait. The program was completed by USCGC Storis (under Comdr. H. L. Wood), USCGS Spar (Lt. C. V. Crewing), and USCGC Bramble (Comdr. H. Carter), all of which joined Operation Bellot in August 1987 to become the first U.S. vessels to complete the Northwest Passage. UNITED STATES NAVY (USN). American interest in the Arctic was always more directed to the north polar region than the search for and discovery of a northwest passage. Nevertheless, the navy was not entirely without experience in its waters. The First United States Grinnell Expedition in 1850–1851, led by Lt. Edwin Jesse De Haven, the first official U.S. Arctic expedition, joined the search for Sir John Franklin’s lost ships, and Elisha Kent Kane’s Second United States Grinnell Expedition explored the Smith Sound region in 1853. And no doubt the navy’s repair, refit, and return of HMS Resolute to the United Kingdom in 1856 (see RESOLUTE DESK) gave it immense gratification and satisfaction. In the modern era, the submerged passages east to west and west to east by George P. Steele and Joseph L. Skoog, respectively, in the early 1960s were outstanding exploits of navigation. See also GRINNELL, HENRY. URDANETA, ANDRE´S DE (fl. 2ND HALF OF 16TH CENTURY). An experienced navigator turned Carmelite friar, Urdaneta pioneered a route from the Philippine Islands across the northern stretches of the South Sea to New Spain in 1565. Writing in A Discourse for the Discoverie of a Newe Passage to Cataia [Cathay] (1576), Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed that he had been informed by a Spanish nobleman that Urdaneta had shown him a chart of a voyage from the South Sea to the Atlantic Ocean undertaken in the early 1560s. No doubt this was a garbled account of Urdaneta’s 1565 voyage. –V– ´. VALDE´S, CAYETANO. See GALIANO, DIONISIO ALCALA VANCOUVER, GEORGE (1757–1798). A veteran of James Cook’s third Pacific voyage, Vancouver was appointed to the command of

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HMS Discovery and dispatched to the northwestern coast of America in 1791. His mission was twofold. He was to act as the British government’s representative at the restoration of British subjects’ land and buildings as had been agreed under the terms of the Anglo-Spanish (Nootka) Convention signed in Madrid in November 1790; and, second, he was directed to examine the northwestern coast between 30 and 60 N to resolve once and forever the authenticity of the Juan de Fuca and Bartolome de Fonte voyages. Sailing from England in company with HMS Chatham (under Lt. William Robert Broughton) on 1 April, his expedition was described as the last important voyage of discovery that would probably ever need to be undertaken in the Pacific Ocean. The object was to acquire accurate information as to the nature and extent of any waterway that might serve as a practicable commercial route from the northwest coast of America to the opposite side of the continent. The importance of finding an inlet, or even a large river, communicating with the lakes in the interior was underlined. Vancouver was left in no doubt that much was left to his discretion, but to save time he was not to follow any inlet or river beyond the point where it became unnavigable to oceangoing merchant ships. On the other hand, he was to closely examine the Strait of Juan de Fuca, supposedly situated between latitudes 48 and 49 N. In the absence of any inlet south of Cook’s River, Vancouver was to ascertain whether that river flowed from some of the lakes known to the Canadian traders and to the Hudson’s Bay Company, but it was stressed that the discovery of a river in lower latitudes would be much more advantageous. The influence of Peter Pond’s maps is clearly visible. The Discovery and Chatham arrived off the northwest coast in the vicinity of Cape Cabrillo on 16 April 1792. In three survey seasons, Vancouver charted the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Puget Sound, and the Strait of Georgia and circumnavigated the island that now bears his name. Longboat crews made numerous charts of the coast and the islands sprinkled offshore, from Diego Bay in the south to the Gulf of Alaska in the north. Possibly because of his instructions not to linger in rivers or inlets obviously closed to oceangoing vessels, he neglected various potentially promising river entrances. Even the mighty Columbia River received scant attention.

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The Admiralty had expected Vancouver’s exploration would be completed in two seasons, but his own intention was to trace every mile of the coastline. If a navigable passage existed in these sub-Arctic latitudes, which he doubted, then he would find it. The innumerable bays, inlets, channels, and rivers indenting the shores demanded a thorough examination, and this required a third summer. Even so, in 1791 and 1792, more than 1,700 miles of coastline were surveyed between latitudes 30 N and 56 N, with the continuous boat expeditions adding thousands of miles more. In 1793 Vancouver sailed from his winter harbor in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) to Cook’s River, the most northerly point his orders commanded him to investigate. He entered the ‘‘river’’ on 12 April, but soon encountered shoals strewn with huge boulders and great quantities of ice breaking up. His boats went far enough to disprove Cook’s conclusion that he had discovered a great river, which Pond had assumed to be the outlet of the Mackenzie River. Vancouver renamed it Cook’s Inlet. Proceeding southward and then eastward, Prince William Sound was surveyed, Yakutat Bay was explored, and the ships’ boats continually and meticulously traced the continental shoreline. On his return home, Vancouver reported that he had traced and determined the northwest coast from the latitude 2954⬘ N ‘‘through all the various turnings and windings, so far as its different inlets have been found safely navigable for our boats, to Cape Douglas.’’ In his printed account, he expressed his confidence that his close survey would ‘‘remove every doubt, and set aside every opinion of a north-west passage, or any water communication navigable for shipping, existing between the North Pacific, and the interior of the American continent within the limits of our researches’’ (William Kaye Lamb, ed., George Vancouver: A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and Round the World, 1791–1795 [London: Hakluyt Society, 1984], 3:295). VANCOUVER MARITIME MUSEUM. A center for the study of local and international heritage vessels, the Vancouver Maritime Museum opened in 1958. It includes the Royal Canadian Mounted Police auxiliary police schooner St. Roch, in which Sgt. Henry Larsen

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navigated the Northwest Passage eastward in 1940–1942 and westward in 1944. The primary focus of the museum’s public-access W. B. and M. H. Chung Library, built in 1993, is the maritime history of Vancouver and coastal British Columbia, but its 10,000 books, 550 pamphlets, 202 serials, and 80 yards of archival material also encompass Arctic exploration, Canadian history, naval architecture, and navigation. The Henry A. Larsen Rare Book Room houses the Larsen Collection, much of which accompanied Larsen on his historic Northwest Passage voyages. The collection, donated to the library by the Larsen family in 1996, is especially strong in 19th- and 20th-century accounts of exploration in the Arctic and also of Larsen’s contemporaries, Roald Amundsen, Knud Rasmussen, Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930), and Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879–1962). VERRAZZANO, GIOVANNI DA (1485–1528). A Florentine navigator, Verrazzano sailed from Dieppe late in 1523 to find a passage or perhaps an open sea to the shores of Asia in the region between Florida (explored by the Spanish) and the inhospitable coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland (explored by the English and Portuguese). His voyage was backed by a group of Lyons bankers and merchants and was under the patronage of the French king. Taking leave of the Old World in La Dauphine from Las Desertas in the Madeira Islands on 17 January 1524, he made his landfall in the New World at Cape Fear, North Carolina, at latitude 33 N. He immediately explored the coast southward, but after sailing 50 leagues without finding a suitable harbor, he turned back to Cape Fear. Boats were sent ashore at various points along the Carolina coast and contact was made with groups of Indians. Farther to the north, between Capes Lookout and Hatteras, Verrazzano appeared to be sailing along an isthmus a mile wide and 200 miles long. Across the isthmus could plainly be discerned the waters of Pamlico Sound, which he was convinced was the South Sea. The excitement and frustration can be imagined as he proceeded up the coast, expecting every moment to sight a passage through or a promontory around which he could pass into open seas. His next venture ashore was at a beautiful spot he named Archadia, possibly near Kitty Hawk at the mouth of Albemarle Sound, where he again made con-

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tact with the Indian inhabitants. Then, in order to avoid dangerous shoals, he stood out to sea and so missed the promising entrances to the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, which he must surely have otherwise explored. Along the New Jersey coast, however, Verrazzano felt able to sail closer inshore and he appears to have anchored in the narrows between Staten Island and Long Island in New York Bay. Inexplicably, he failed to explore the Hudson River and instead followed the coast eastward and northward to Narragansett Bay and into the shelter of Newport Bay, where he spent two weeks, establishing extremely friendly relations with the Wampanoag Indians and exploring inland to a distance of 30 miles. At the beginning of May, Verrazzano passed Sakonnet Point and sailed through Nantucket Sound and around Cape Cod into Massachusetts Bay. The Indians here were suspicious and hostile, and he named the area Terra Onde di Mala Gente (Land of Bad People). Still he continued northward along the coast of Maine and then out to sea northeastward to Newfoundland. Verrazzano returned to Dieppe convinced that the coasts he had explored were not an extension of Asia but belonged to a new continental landmass, although he remained hopeful of finding a strait into the Pacific. VICTORIA HARBOR. See VICTORY HARBOR. VICTORIA ISLAND. The southern shore of Victoria Island ranges along Dolphin and Union Strait, Coronation Gulf, Dease Strait, and Queen Maud Gulf. John Richardson sighted its southwestern shoreline in 1826 and named it Wollaston Land. Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson crossed to the southeast coast in September 1839, and in the spring of 1851, John Rae explored its southwestern coast—seemingly proving Wollaston Land to be a peninsula—and up the west coast to Prince Albert Sound, before returning to examine the eastern shoreline. It was Richard Collinson in HMS Enterprise who first identified Prince Albert Land, Victoria Land, and the Wollaston Peninsula (Wollaston Land) as one and the same island. VICTORIA LAND. See VICTORIA ISLAND. VICTORY HARBOR. The name given to the harbor on the southeast coast of Boothia Peninsula where Sir John Ross’s ship Victory

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spent the winter from 29 August 1831 through 29 May 1832, when she was abandoned. On Ross’s return to England, he renamed it Victoria Harbor by permission of Princess Victoria, who ascended the throne in 1837. VICTORY POINT. Situated at latitude 6937⬘ N and longitude 9341⬘ W, a few miles down the west coast of King William Island from Cape Felix, Victory Point was named by James Clark Ross when he arrived there on 30 May 1830. In David C. Woodman’s graphic words, he ‘‘could never have foreseen that this lonely point would become the most famous place in the Arctic. On this somber spring day the events which would make it so were far in the future’’ (Unravelling the Franklin Mystery [1992], 16). It was 18 years later that Francis Crozier and the crews of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror abandoned ship and landed at Victory Point. In a tin can deposited in a cairn, Crozier left a record of the event and a brief indication of his last-ditch plan for survival; the message was recovered by William Hobson in 1859. Before heading south, Crozier’s exhausted, scurvy-ridden crew discarded clothing and blankets, a cookstove, ropes, a sextant, and a medical chest. As late as 1879, when Frederick Schwatka examined their campsite, various items were still strewn about, adding to the melancholy of this fateful and isolated corner of the Arctic Archipelago. See also VICTORY POINT DOCUMENT. VICTORY POINT DOCUMENT. Found at Victory Point on King William Island’s west coast by Lt. William Hobson in May 1859, this document was a standard Admiralty printed form issued to discovery and hydrographic survey ships, intended to be inserted in a bottle or cylinder and cast into the sea. It requested, in English and five other European languages, that the finder return it to the secretary of the Admiralty in London or, if more convenient, deliver it to the British consul at the nearest port. The information provided on the form included the ship’s name, its current latitude and longitude, and the date. Written in all four margins of the document found at Victory Point were two messages, dated a year apart. The first read:

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28 of May, 1847. H.M. ships ‘Erebus’ and ‘Terror’ wintered in the ice in lat. 705⬘ N, long 9823⬘ W. Having wintered in 1846–7 at Beechey Island, in lat. 7443⬘28 N., long. 9139⬘15 W., after having ascended Wellington Channel to lat. 77, and returned by the west side of Cornwallis Island. Sir John Franklin commanding the expedition. All well. Party consisting of 2 officers and 6 men left the ships on Monday 24th May, 1847. Gm. Gore, Lieut. Chas. F. Des Voeux, Mate

The date given for wintering at Beechey Island was a mistake. It should have read 1845–1846. The second message told a much bleaker story: April 25, 1848.—H.M. ships ‘Terror’ and ‘Erebus’ were deserted on the 22nd. April. 5 leagues N.N.W. of this, having been beset since 12th September, 1846. The officers and crews, consisting of 105 souls, under the command of Captain F.R.M. Crozier, landed here in lat. 6937⬘42 N, long. 9841⬘ W. Sir John Franklin died on the 11th June, 1847; and the total loss by deaths in the expedition has been to this date 9 officers and 15 men. [Signed] F.R.M. Crozier, Captain and Senior Officer [Signed] James Fitzjames, Captain H.M.S. Erebus

An outline of Franklin’s Third Arctic Expedition could now be accurately pieced together. VIGNAU, NICOLAS DE (fl. EARLY 17TH CENTURY). One of the early voyageurs, Nicolas de Vignau informed Samuel de Champlain in 1612 that the previous winter he had traveled northward from Allumette Island in the Ottawa River of southwestern Quebec. After 17 days, he had reached what he called ‘‘the northern sea,’’ where he had seen the wreckage of English ships, leading Champlain to believe that Vignau had pioneered an inland route to Hudson Bay. To verify this, the two men set out up the St. Lawrence River to the Ottawa in March 1613 and, after negotiating numerous rapids, arrived at the island. There, the Algonquian Indians assured Champlain that Vignau’s account was a fabrication. Further progress was impossible because of hostile Indians settled around Lake Nipissing. Vignau had no option but to admit that he had concocted the whole

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story to persuade Champlain to take him with him on his next voyage to New France. VISCOUNT MELVILLE SOUND. See MELVILLE SOUND. ´ N (1550–1628). With previous experience of VIZCAI´NO, SEBASTIA a discovery voyage off the coast of Baja California, Sebastia´n Vizcai´no was appointed commander of a Spanish expedition north. In May 1602, he sailed from Acapulco on the San Diego, accompanied by the Santo Toma´s and the Tres Reyes. His orders were to follow the coastline from Cape San Lucas to Cape Mendocino, chart all bays and estuaries suitable for big ships to enter, and locate safe anchorages close to fresh water and firewood supply points. San Diego Bay, the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara, and Monterey Bay were charted but shortly afterward the Santo Toma´ s was forced to return to Acapulco because scurvy was rife among the crew. With favorable winds, San Diego and Tres Reyes advanced northward, reaching Cape Vizcaı´no and sighting Cape Mendocino, but violent gales and dangerous seas made it difficult for Vizcaı´no to control his ship. Scurvy and short rations weakened his crew, and when the wind shifted, he immediately steered for home. Vizcaı´no’s failure to attain higher latitudes underlined the dangers of attempting inshore navigation in the depths of winter and in the face of strong adverse winds and currents. See also AGUILAR, MARTIN DE. VOYAGEURS. The men who paddled the large transport canoes used in the Canadian fur trade. Even after the British conquest of Canada, the French term persisted. See also COUREURS DE BOIS. – W– WADHAMS, PETER (1948– ). Peter Wadhams was the leader of the 1993 Lady Franklin Memorial Expedition, so named to mark the indomitable efforts in the 1850s of Lady Jane Franklin to discover the fate of her husband, Sir John Franklin. The eight-strong expedition, drawn from five nations and including an archaeologist and a two-man French film crew, had two objectives. The first, which was soon accomplished, was to excavate the mounds discovered by Er-

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nest Coleman south of Cape Felix on King William Island in 1992. The second was to follow up information from an Inuk, David Oinoot, that some years earlier he had come across the wreckage of a boat and evidence of a campsite at Back Bay on Prince of Wales Island and had relayed this information to a meteorological officer at Resolute Bay. At Back Bay, Wadhams soon found the wreck of a 30-foot longboat on the south side of the bay, resting in sodden boggy ground whose acidity had probably helped to preserve its timbers. Clearly of European origin and dating back to the 19th century, it perhaps belonged to either HMS Erebus or HMS Terror. Wadhams’s hypothesis is that Francis Crozier, commanding the march southward from Victory Point in 1848, because of the slow progress of his ill-nourished, scurvy-ridden men, ordered some of them back to the imprisoned ships in order that they might find an opportunity to escape northward up Peel Sound. Taking advantage of a mild summer in 1848, they embarked in their boat (or boats), but for some reason, most likely bad weather conditions and their inability to sustain the necessary effort to keep sailing, they came ashore to find shelter in the ruin of an old Inuit dwelling nearby. They either perished there or set off to the north, perhaps on foot or in a second boat. Peter Wadhams was awarded the Polar Medal in 1987. WAYMOUTH, GEORGE (fl. EARLY 17TH CENTURY). Well versed in navigation and seamanship, George Waymouth persuaded the East India Company in 1601 to fit out two pinnaces for a northwest passage discovery voyage. Although five years had elapsed since John Davis returned from his third northern voyage without having found a passage, Waymouth seems to have had little difficulty in gaining the company’s support, sure evidence that the venture was still capturing the imagination of the London merchants. The company’s contract with Waymouth, however, was on a strict paymentby-results basis: if he succeeded in discovering a passage, he would be handsomely rewarded; if he failed, he would receive nothing for his pains and travel. Waymouth was allowed £100 for navigation instruments and was given sufficient supplies for 16 months. Sailing from the Thames on 2 May 1602 with the 70-ton Discovery and the 60-ton Godspeed, Waymouth sighted the southern coast of

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Greenland on 18 June. Two days later, he reached Cape Desolation, where he noticed the feature mentioned by John Davis: streams of black water intermixed with blue sea as clear as glass. He followed a westerly course and on 28 June sighted high land covered with snow at latitude 6230⬘ N. Fog prevented him from approaching the coast, however. On 8 July land was again seen, but he was once more obliged to stand off from the coast, this time because of ice. Hopes of exploration to the north, between latitudes 60 and 70, were shattered on 19 July when the crew refused to sail farther north because of the constant severe weather, cold, fog, or storms. But this was a gentle and conditional mutiny; the crew assured Waymouth that they would yield their lives to him if he thought it possible to make a discovery farther south. Reason rather than fear or cowardice was the cause of their protest. Sailing south, an inlet reasonably free of ice was discovered at latitude 6141⬘ N. This was Hudson Strait, which they penetrated for 300 miles west by south before turning back because of the lateness of the season and the ill health of many of the crew. Clearing the strait on 5 August, Waymouth continued south down the Labrador coast searching for an island believed to be at latitude 56 N, but nothing came of this and he set his course for England. The Hudson’s Bay Company exonerated him from all blame for not persevering with his course to the north. For his part, Waymouth reiterated to a Committee of Enquiry that he still retained a ‘‘hope of divers Inlettes that treat throughe the coast of America into the Southseas.’’ The company resolved that a second voyage should be made, with the same captain and the same ships, but financial problems forced the abandonment of these plans six months later. And so Waymouth faded from the scene. In truth, he had no more indicated the next route for exploration than had Martin Frobisher or John Davis a generation earlier, but his legacy was optimistic: ‘‘Truly there is in three severall places great hope of a passage, between the latitude of 62 and 54 degrees; if the fogge do not hinder, which is all the feare I have.’’ And, as Luke Foxe put it, he did ‘‘light (Henry) Hudson into his Streights.’’ WELLINGTON CHANNEL. Descending between the west coast of Devon Island and the east coast of Cornwallis Island, Wellington

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Channel debouches into Barrow Strait in the vicinity of Beechey Island. Because a northward route to find a passage west was a known predilection of Sir John Franklin, should his proposed southern route prove impracticable, and because records found on Beechey Island confirmed that in fact he had sailed up Wellington Channel, and perhaps also of the lingering belief that an open polar sea would afford a rapid westward route across the polar basin, Franklin rescue expeditions wasted precious time and resources investigating this highly improbable route. See also AUSTIN, HORATIO; BELCHER, EDWARD; DE HAVEN, EDWIN JESSE; PENNY, WILLIAM. WENTZEL, FERDINAND WILLARD (1777?–1832). Of Norwegian descent, Wentzel was working as a clerk at the North West Company’s post at Fort Providence, on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, when he agreed to accompany Franklin’s First Arctic Land Expedition down the Coppermine River as manager and supervisor of the Indian guides and voyageurs, with the added responsibility for the acquisition and distribution of the expedition’s food supplies. He is known to have strongly condemned John Richardson’s summary execution, without trial or proper investigation, of Michel Teroahaute´, who was strongly suspected of murdering and devouring his comrades on the horrendous last stages of Franklin’s return journey. In his opinion, perhaps influenced by dark hints from George Back as to some things being hushed up, Richardson deserved to be punished for acting so precipitately. See also CANNIBALISM. WESTERN ARCTIC. See ARCTIC. WESTERN OCEAN. An 18th-century term for the Pacific Ocean. See also MER DE L’OUEST. WILDER, JAMES (fl. LATE 18TH CENTURY). Fitted out by a number of Virginia merchants, Wilder sailed in command of the brig Diligence in search of a passage in 1772. On his return, he reported that he had reached an unknown bay at latitude 6911⬘ N. From the course of the tides, he conjectured that a waterway westward probably existed but, as it was beset by ice, would seldom, if ever, prove

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to be a navigable passage. From Wilder’s latitude, it would appear he had sailed to the lower reaches of Baffin Bay, halfway between Cumberland Sound and Lancaster Sound. WILLES, RICHARD (fl. 2ND HALF OF 16TH CENTURY). Shortly after Martin Frobisher’s return from his first voyage, Richard Willes published The History of Travayle in the Weste and East Indies . . . With a Discourse of the Northwest Passage (1577). In this dissertation, addressed to the Countess of Warwick, one of his backers, Willes described four ways to the Moluccas: the Portuguese route by way of the Cape of Good Hope; the Spanish route between the West Indies or South America and the southern continent; by the northeast beyond Europe and Asia; and the way Humphrey Gilbert advocated: by the northwest. He then proceeded to rehearse the historical, geographical, and cartographical arguments against the feasibility of the northwestern route. Perhaps his most striking objection to voyages seeking a northwest passage was that unknown land might prevent a through passage— America and Asia might be joined as one continent. And, if a passage existed and the Orient were reached, English travelers and merchants might find it impossible to return through the passage because of the force and fury of adverse tides and currents in the Strait of Anian beyond America (if any such strait or sea existed). Then, not at all dismayed by the arguments he had assembled against sailing to the northwest, Willes demolished them with equal vigor, instancing Frobisher’s recent and well-authenticated discovery. It was a clever polemic, relying more on assertion than on strength of argument, but it matched the questioning and optimistic spirit of the age. WINTER HARBOR. A cove on the east coast of Melville Island that William Edward Parry named as such in 1819 because that was precisely what it was. HMS Hecla and HMS Griper were man-hauled for two miles through a passage cut in the ice, their topmasts were dismantled, their decks were roofed by timber-supported canvas, and the two ships were ingeniously heated and ventilated. An observatory was constructed half a mile away, to avoid the magnetic attraction of the ships’ ironworks, and a program of magnetic and meteorological

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observations was maintained throughout the winter. In August 1820, after 10 months iced in, Parry worked the Hecla and Griper out of their winter quarters. Never before had ships’ crews spent a winter in such a remote and isolated spot, 2,000 miles away from the nearest European settlement. Various sledge parties ventured to Winter Harbor over the next 30 years in order to leave and receive messages relating to the search for Sir John Franklin’s and Richard Collinson’s expeditions, but it was not until September 1852 that Royal Navy ships were once again anchored in Winter Harbor. On that occasion, HMS Resolute under Henry Kellett and HMS Intrepid under Francis Leopold McClintock, belonging to Edward Belcher’s Arctic Squadron, paid a brief visit before returning to Dealy Island. Joseph Elze´ar Bernier emulated Parry by wintering there from August 1908 to August 1909. See also PARRY’S MONUMENT. WOLLASTON LAND. See VICTORIA ISLAND. WOLLASTON PENINSULA. See VICTORIA ISLAND. WOODMAN, DAVID C. (1956– ). When researching his book Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony (1991), Woodman became convinced that some of Sir John Franklin’s crew who evacuated HMS Erebus and HMS Terror in 1848 had returned to one of the ships and sailed farther south down the west coast of King William Island to a point close to Kirkwall Island in Simpson Strait where, according to Inuit testimony to Francis Leopold McClintock and Charles Francis Hall, it was wrecked in shallow waters. With the help of a Canadian Forces Maritime Proving and Evaluation Unit, in 1992 Woodman put this theory to the test in Project Ootjoolik, named after the Inuit term for the Queen Maud Gulf–Adelaide Peninsula region. A magnetometric survey of the seabed was conducted in the hope that the considerable amount of iron on board both the Erebus and Terror, notably the protective plating and the engine, would provide clues to the ship’s whereabouts. Three possible sites were located and were investigated by Joseph B. MacInnis. At Woodman’s instigation, an aerial hydrographic survey attempted to draw a detailed chart of the sea floor around Kirkwall Island.

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In July 1994 Woodman led a Royal Canadian Geographical Society expedition to King William Island. The venture was given the name Project Supunger after an Inuk hunter who informed Hall in 1866 that, four years earlier, he had come across some stone structures near Crozier’s Landing, including a broken pillar, possibly marking a cache, and a large grave containing a knife, a human leg bone, and a skull. The dimension of the grave led to excited speculation that it was Franklin’s. He also reported several large flat limestone slabs packed so tightly together on the ground that he was unable to separate or lift them. Woodman was of the opinion that these were cemented vaults housing the Franklin expedition’s logs and journals. Landed on the spot by a Twin Otter aircraft, Woodman and his team recognized Supunger’s large slabs of limestone, but they were strewn in terribly difficult terrain with precariously angled, fragmented pieces jutting upward, a nightmare to traverse. After 12 days, during which time much evidence of human activity, even (Inuit) human remains, was found, the expedition members reluctantly concluded that Supunger’s structures lay elsewhere. Woodman’s sonar investigations were resumed in 2000, 2001, and 2002, reducing his favored search area to a string of islets off the west coast of the Adelaide Peninsula, on the continental mainland opposite King William Island. WOODSMEN. See COUREURS DE BOIS. WORSHIPFUL FELLOWSHIP OF THE MERCHANTS OF LONDON TRADING INTO THE EAST INDIES. See EAST INDIA COMPANY. –Y– YORK BOAT. Similar in design to Orkney Island fishing boats— descended in line from Viking longboats—the double-ended, 40foot-long York boat was the Hudson’s Bay Company’s heavy goods transport vessel on the lakes and rivers of Rupert’s Land. Sturdier than canoes, the boat could carry a load of up to four tons.

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YORK FACTORY. Opened by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1682 as its first permanent trading post, York Factory is situated on the north bank of the Hayes River, commanding the outlet into Hudson Bay of the entire Saskatchewyan River–Lake Winnipeg waterway system. It provides easy access to the interior and was the starting point for Franklin’s First Arctic Land Expedition. The factory was closed in 1957 and was acquired by the Canadian government in 1968. It is now a designated national historic site. YOUNG, ALLEN WILLIAM (1827–1915). A wealthy seaman with a merchant navy background, Allen Young accompanied Francis Leopold McClintock as sailing master (navigator) on his 1857–1859 voyage in the Fox. Young played a major role in the overland sledging expeditions, surveying 380 miles of previously unexplored coastline, including the southern and western shores of Prince of Wales Island, and discovering McClintock Channel. He also explored both sides of Franklin Channel and sledged to Fury Beach to recover 1,200 pounds of sugar and a considerable number of cans of preserved vegetables. In May 1875 Young sailed in his private steam yacht, the Pandora, to Baffin Bay, where he collected dispatches from Capt. George Nares (1831–1915), then commanding the British Arctic Expedition’s attempt on the North Pole. He attempted to sail through the Northwest Passage, but was thwarted by heavy ice in Peel Sound. He had intended, if he penetrated to King William Island, to make yet another search for the records of Sir John Franklin’s 1845 voyage. YOUNG, THOMAS (fl. 1ST HALF OF 17TH CENTURY). ‘‘A Special Commission to Thomas Young to search discover and find out what parts are not yet inhabited in Virginia and America and other parts thereunto adjoining’’ was granted to Thomas Young on 23 September 1633. In detail, he was allowed ‘‘full libertie and licence and full power and authoritie . . . to discover, find out, search and view the Seas, Coasts, Bays, Straights, Creeks, Rivers and Passages in Virginia etc.’’ For his part, Young had undertaken ‘‘to enterprise the discovery of a navigable passage for ships from the Atlantic Ocean to the South

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Sea,’’ and seems to have diligently attempted the discovery of a passage. He made at least two voyages up the American coast north of Virginia, exploring the various river estuaries. A report from Jesuit missionaries in New France relates his arrival at their station on the St. Lawrence by canoe on 24 June 1640, escorted by 20 Abnaquiois Indians. Young informed the missionaries that he had ranged the whole southern coast for two years, from Virginia to Quinchequi, in an attempt to find a great river or lake that might lead to people who had knowledge of a sea to the north of Mexico. The Jesuits doubted he would succeed in finding a direct outlet to the South Sea, but thought it probable that a descent could be made via the Great Lakes. YOUNG, WALTER (fl. LATE 18TH CENTURY). Lt. Walter Young succeeded Richard Pickersgill as commander of HMS Lyon in 1777. His orders were to find a passage west from Baffin Bay, even if this entailed wintering in the Arctic. He was furnished with copies of Samuel Hearne’s journals and maps and instructed ‘‘to discover whether the Sea mentioned by Hearne communicated with Baffin Bay.’’ Young sailed from England in mid-March 1777, earlier in the season than Pickersgill, and on 8 June he reached latitude 7245⬘ on Hudson Bay’s east coast. After 14 days shuttling between his moorings and the edge of the pack ice preventing him from crossing to the west coast, and with thick fog barring his way north, he determined that his ship was in danger and accordingly steered for home. It was a second successive ignominious failure; no tangible result emerged from either Pickersgill’s or Walter Young’s voyage.

Bibliography

Contents Introduction General Reference Works Encyclopedic Works Maps and Atlases Place Names Biographies Chronologies Research Library Collections Journals Collected Voyages General Works The Inuit The Search Begins (1497–1553) The Strait of Anian (1542–1677) English Mercantile Endeavor (1526–1624) Hudson Bay Approach and Overland (1668–1806) Imperial Powers on the Northwest Coast (1761–1795) Arctic Search Begins (1815–1839) Sir John Franklin (1845–1848) Franklin Search and Rescue Expeditions (1846–1869) Success: The Passage Navigated (1903– ) Royal Canadian Mounted Police Search for the Franklin Records (1860– ) Additional Topics

299 312 315 316 320 321 322 323 326 326 328 331 333 339 345 352 363 376 384 386 403 407 409 412

INTRODUCTION John Campbell observed in the 1741 revised and updated edition of John Harris’s Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca (A library of 299

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voyages and travels), ‘‘We need not, therefore, wonder at all that so much has been written on this Subject, so many undertakings set on Foot, such a variety of Attempts made on all sides, and by all means, to come at this North-West Passage since in all respects to this Part of Europe, it would be a kind of maritime Philospher’s Stone.’’ Within the bounds of a single sentence, Campbell has underlined not only the importance of a northwest passage to 18th-century Europe, but also the burgeoning extent of the literature related to it. Two hundred and sixty years later, the discovery and exploration of the passage is largely, but not exclusively, a matter for the historians, and the corpus of literature associated with the passage has now reached astronomical proportions. Some measure of bibliographic control is now essential, especially as the flow of books and journal articles, many of them based on impeccable research, betrays no sign of slackening—a fact noted in the introduction to this present work. This is not likely to cease or to trail off in view of the looming bicentenary of so many of the crucial voyages and expeditions. No doubt this will initiate a number of new and perhaps revisionist studies. Although the search for a northwest passage spanned so many distant and distinct geographical regions along the east and west coasts of North America, including Hudson Bay and Bering Strait, its discovery and exploration is essentially restricted to the Canadian Arctic and is undeniably part of mainstream Canadian history. To place it within a sound historical context, some knowledge of the European settlement of Canada and its consequent political, economic, and social development is required. Fortunately, there is a more than adequate reference apparatus in place to meet these requirements. General Reference Works The finest single definitive reference source for all aspects of Canadian history is the three-volume Canadian Encyclopedia, edited by James H. Marsh, directing the efforts of 4,000 expert contributors (Edmonton, Alberta: Hurtig, 1983). This work has been updated frequently and is now freely available in electronic form from the Historical Foundation of Canada (Toronto) at www.canadianencyclopedia.com. The 1,624 A–Z cross-referenced entries of The Oxford Companion to Canadian History, edited by Gerald Hallowell (Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford

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University Press, 2004) describe the main events, places, and prominent people in Canada’s past, but its value to researchers is curtailed by its lack of any bibliographical apparatus. There are two shorter reference works of value. Barry M. Gough’s Historical Dictionary of Canada (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1999) is a handy source for Canada’s history, government, economics, culture, and settlement from the earliest colonial times to the North America Free Trade Agreement. A well-presented overview encompasses Canada’s geography, its imperial connections with the United Kingdom, and its two founding European peoples. The Collins Dictionary of Canadian History, edited by D. J. Bercuson and J. L. Granatstein (Toronto: Collins, 1988), is a guide to the people, institutions, movements, and events that have shaped Canadian history since confederation in sufficient detail to define key terms and to answer the most frequently asked inquiries. The three volumes of the Historical Atlas of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press)—volume 1, From the Beginnings to 1800, edited by R. C. Harris (1987); volume 2, The Land Transformed, 1800–1891, edited by R. L. Gentilcore (1994); and volume 3, Addressing the Twentieth Century, edited by D. Kerr and D. W. Holdsworth (1990)—present 193 two-page map features arranged in historical, geographical, and thematic sections. Most immediately relevant here are the four opening sections of volume 1: Prehistory, the Atlantic Realm, Inland Expansion, and the St. Lawrence Settlements, all introduced by a scholarly essay. Such is its range and depth that surely no other national historical atlas rivals this University of Toronto endeavor. Bibliographies and Research Guides A number of excellent bibliographies offer students and research workers ready access to the wealth of literature concerning Canadian history. Frances M. Staton and Marie Tremaine’s now-venerable A Bibliography of Canadiana (Toronto: Metropolitan Toronto Library Board, 1931) encompasses 4,646 numbered and annotated entries referring to books and pamphlets relating to Canada’s history and development published between 1534 and 1867 that are held in the collections of the Toronto Public Library. Author and subject indexes provide entry points to this

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huge accumulation. A further 1,640 titles are included in Gertrude M. Boyle’s First Supplement (1959). This remarkable work was again updated in Sandra Alston’s four-volume Second Supplement (1986– 1989). The first three volumes stretch the number of entries to 9,655, while the fourth is an index volume. A more recent work is Mary E. Bond and M. M. Caron’s Canadian Reference Sources (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press/ National Library of Canada, 1996). This contains 4,194 full bibliographical citations to general reference works and titles in history and the humanities, each bilingually annotated in English and French. It replaces D. E. Ryder’s Canadian Reference Sources (Ottawa: Canadian Library Association, [2nd ed.] 1981). A Reader’s Guide to Canadian History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), in two volumes—Beginning to Confederation, edited by D. A. Muise, and Confederation to the Present, edited by J. L. Granatstein and P. Stevens—employs subject experts to guide the reader through the maze of historical writing, with a critical assessment of the best and most useful books and journal articles. Of special interest in volume 1 is David Richeson’s ‘‘The North, Western Interior, and the Pacific Coast,’’ which includes subheadings for Arctic Exploration, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and Travelers Narratives and Survey Reports. These two useful volumes have been augmented by M. Brook Taylor and D. Owram’s Canadian History: A Reader’s Guide, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), a similar critical literature guide, with the emphasis on the most recent scholarship, arranged in 22 geographical and thematic chapters. Alan Edwin Day’s Search for the Northwest Passage: An Annotated Bibliography (New York: Garland, 1986) contains 5,160 entries arranged in 11 chapters. Introducing Canada: An Annotated Bibliography of Canadian History in English (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1998) contains 750 annotated entries divided into nine thematic sections each opening with a historiographical review. It was included in Choice’s list of outstanding academic titles for 1999. Ernest Ingles’s Canada (Oxford, England: Clio Press, 1990), in the World Bibliographical Series, has 1,216 annotated entries at short paragraph length, arranged in seven convenient sections, including History, Geography, and Aboriginal Peoples, along with author, title, and subject indexes. Also extremely useful is the latest edition of the regularly

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updated Fitzhenry Whiteside Book of Canadian Facts and Dates (Toronto), a chronological listing of more than 10,000 entries relating to events from geological times to date. Two specialist abstract journals cover serial literature. America History and Life (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 1954– ) draws upon 2,000 journals in 45 languages and provides abstracts of articles relating to U.S. and Canadian history. Since 1979 its five annual issues have been arranged in four parts: Articles, Abstracts, and Citations; Index to Book Reviews; American History Index (books, articles, and dissertations); and Annual Index. It is also available on CD-ROM and is published in an electronic version. Scanning more than 900 serials, relevant books, reports, and theses, Polar and Glaciological Abstracts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990– ) covers the world’s cold regions. It is divided into thematic sections, including History and Expeditions, and each issue carries author, subject, and geographic indexes cumulated annually. World and Arctic Discovery and Exploration Such a thin line separates encyclopedic works of discovery and exploration and specialist biographical dictionaries that it seems advisable to group them together. Most large and medium-size general libraries will hold at least one, if not more, of the titles that follow. Edited by Helen Delpar, The Discoverers: An Encyclopedia of Explorers and Exploration (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980) has 250 signed entries, each with a brief reference list, with the emphasis on European discoverers. Richard E. Bohlander’s well-documented World Explorers and Discoverers (New York: Macmillan, 1992) includes 313 profiles of the most prominent men and women in the history of world exploration. Carl Waldman and Alan Wexler’s Who Was Who in World Exploration (New York: Facts on File, 1992) is a more ambitious work, covering the lives of no fewer than 800 explorers, including some less well-known names. Daniel B. Baker’s Explorers and Discoverers of the World (Detroit: Gale Research, 1993) not only examines the historical significance of 320 explorers but also investigates the consequences of their explorations within their contemporary political, religious, and economic context. The latest volume to be published, Raymond John Howgego’s Ency-

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clopedia of Exploration: A Comprehensive Reference Guide to the History and Literature of Exploration, Travel and Colonization from the Earliest Times to the Year 1800 (Potts Point, N.S.W., Australia: Hordern House, 2003) promises to become a standard work of reference. This massive 1,168-page encyclopedia contains 2,300 major articles, 4,000 cross-references, and 20,000 bibliographical citations to record the achievements of every traveler who contributed to world geographical knowledge between 1800 b.c. and a.d. 1800. Howgego plans to publish a second volume to extend coverage to 1850. Devoted to the world’s cold regions, William James Mills’s Exploring Polar Frontiers: A Historical Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 2003) covers the entire history of Arctic and Antarctic exploration from 325 b.c. to the present day. Librarian and keeper of the collection of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Mills adopts a biographical, geographical, and thematic approach in his 511 cross-referenced short entries and longer articles. Listings of entries in chronological order and by category, a polar timeline for seven geographical regions, and a 26-page bibliography complement the text. An older magisterial work with a monstrously long but informative title, Henry Harrisse’s The Discovery of North America: A Critical Documentary and Historic Investigation, with an Essay on the Early Cartography of the New World . . . to which Are Added a Chronology of One Hundred Voyages Westwards, Projected, Attempted, or Accomplished between 1431 and 1504; Biographical Accounts of Three Hundred Pilots Who First Crossed the Atlantic and a Copious List of the Original Names of American Regions; Caciqueships, Mountains, Islands, Capes, Gulfs, Rivers, Towns and Harbours (London: Henry Stevens, 1892), belongs to an outmoded school of scholarship. The product of unflagging research, it offers well-documented studies of the early voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot, Gaspar and Miguel Coˆrte-Real, and Giovanni da Verrazzano. Two later companion volumes by W. P. Cumming et al., The Discovery of North America and The Exploration of North America (London: Elek, 1971, 1974), both with chapters by various hands, including Cumming, David Beers Quinn, R. A. Skelton, S. E. Hillier, and Glyndwr Williams, present the discovery and exploration of the North American continent from the earliest references down to the first permanent settlements, as described by the explorers themselves and delineated by con-

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temporary Europeans. The pattern of arrangement comprises six annotated historical chapters, each accompanied by extensive extracts from the narratives of those who first explored the North American coastline and those who ventured inland. Chapters of special interest include ‘‘Cabot to Cartier: The Discovery and Exploration of the East Coast’’ (Cumming) and ‘‘The North-West Passage’’ (Skelton) in the first volume and ‘‘The Fur Trade and Exploration North to the Arctic and West to the Rockies’’ and ‘‘The Pacific Coast’’ (both by Williams) in the second. Contemporary maps and manuscript records, engravings, and extensive bibliographies add their own authority to these two erudite volumes. Alan Cooke and Clive Holland’s The Exploration of Northern Canada, 500–1920: A Chronology (Toronto: Arctic History Press, 1978) is an annotated compilation of expeditions and historical events. It originally appeared in successive issues of Polar Record between May 1970 and September 1973. ‘‘Expedition’’ is used in the broad sense: it includes geographical discovery, the collection of scientific information, and even many journeys of no particular importance that, nevertheless, resulted in some form of publication. Events include political actions, dates of trading posts and of some settlements, epidemics, and other disasters, and so forth. Each entry cites the date of the expedition, its nationality, and the name of the leader and of the ship(s) concerned and is briefly set in its historical context. There is an index of individuals’ names, a list of approximately 4,000 settlers and explorers of the north, and a bibliography that extends to more than 160 pages. A 26-page atlas of Canada north of latitude 55 is supplemented by a full-color map of the whole of Canada. More than 1,900 voyages, expeditions, and historical events are arrayed in chronological order at suitable encyclopedic length in Clive Holland’s Arctic Exploration and Development, c. 500 b.c. to 1915: An Encyclopaedia (New York: Garland, 1994). Each gives appropriate details of the year of the expedition or event, the general and specific locality, the leader of the expedition or the ship’s captain, names of the ships, and the nationality and purpose of the expedition or voyage, together with a description of its achievements and results. Edited by John Logan Allen, the three volumes of North American Exploration (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997)—A New World Discovered, A Continent Defined, and A Continent Compre-

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hended—present a first-class, well-documented narrative history, each volume being furnished with an extensive bibliography and a good selection of maps. The first volume includes ‘‘The Northwest Passage in Theory and Practice,’’ ‘‘The Early Discoveries in the Northwest Atlantic,’’ ‘‘Early Theory and Cartography of the Passage,’’ ‘‘Theory and the Passage after Martin Frobisher’s Voyage,’’ ‘‘Early 17th Century Attempts to Find a Passage,’’ and ‘‘The Final Search for a Passage in the 17th Century,’’ providing as scholarly and analytic an introduction as the most demanding student or researcher could wish for. Michael Golay and John Bowman’s North American Exploration (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley, 2003) contains 400 A–Z entries arranged in seven geographical/chronological sections, including ‘‘The Spanish Enter the Northwest, 1492–1635,’’ ‘‘Atlantic Seaboard, 1497– 1680,’’ and ‘‘The Arctic and Northernmost Regions, 1576–1992.’’ Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia, edited by Jennifer Speake, 3 vols. (New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003), contains 600 signed A–Z essays of up to 5,000 words in length, each with a bibliography, having a history of travel writing from the Ancient World to the present day. Alphabetical and thematic indexes facilitate access to this huge work. Several Northwest Passage discoverers and explorers are featured. There are two preeminent bibliographies of discovery and exploration. The first is Edward Godfrey Cox’s A Reference Guide to the Literature of Travel including Voyages, Geographical Descriptions, Adventures, Shipwrecks, and Expeditions, 3 vols. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1935, 1938, 1949). The first two volumes list in chronological order relevant material printed in Great Britain, or translated into English, down to 1800. Volume 1, The Old World, begins with collections, circumnavigations, and general works. Volume 2, The New World, includes the North and South Pacific and Australia, with concluding sections on geography, navigations, maps and atlases, naval and military expeditions, fictitious voyages and travels, and general reference works and bibliographies. This Reference Guide is definitive in nature, many of its entries being extensively annotated. The second is the catalog of an extensive library of printed books, journals, pamphlets, maps, and atlases, now consisting of more than 50,000 volumes, housed at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, England. Its five-volume Catalogue of the Library (London:

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HMSO, 1968–1977) is indispensable. Volume 1, Voyages and Travel (1968), begins with collected voyages and circumnavigations and is then arranged by area of discovery. Volume 2, Bibliography, is in fact two volumes: the first comprises collective biography, navy lists, individual biography, and a general index; the second is a reference index to maritime biography. Volume 3, Atlases and Cartography (1971), also in two volumes, has its entries arranged into national groups according to recognized cartographic schools, with general sections on modern (post-1840) atlases, facsimile atlases, and cartography and historiography. Maps and Atlases Forty-seven magnificently illustrated, chapter-length map features— divided into 12 continent or ocean sections—covering 3,000 years of world exploration, with 180 facsimile maps and 130 specially commissioned topographical maps showing discovery and exploration routes ensure that The Times Atlas of World Exploration (London: Times Books, 1991) remains the most used atlas in its field. Section 4, The North Atlantic, comprises three chapters: ‘‘Routes of the North Atlantic, c825–1509’’ (74–79), ‘‘The East Coast of North America, 1513–1620’’ (80–83), and ‘‘The Northwest Passage, 1576–1632’’ (84–87). Incidental articles in these chapters include ‘‘The Ships of American Discovery,’’ ‘‘Mapping America the Native Influence,’’ and ‘‘Ice Navigation.’’ Section 5, North America, contains three relevant chapters: ‘‘The Pacific Coast of North America’’ (102–5), ‘‘To the Rocky Mountains and the Arctic’’ (106–9), and an unusually thin chapter, ‘‘The Northwest Passage Revealed, 1818–1906’’ (114–15). Other useful world atlases of exploration include Eric Newby’s The Mitchell Beazley World Atlas of Exploration (London: Mitchell Beazley, 1975) and Philip’s Atlas of Exploration (London: Philips, 1996). Peter Whitfield’s New Found Lands: Maps in the History of Exploration (London: British Library, 1998) investigates how explorers and those who backed them regarded the expanding world and concentrates on period maps illustrating contemporary geographical knowledge and belief. Coverage of the Northwest Passage is irritatingly diffuse, but, taken in its entirety, the atlas is useful and engaging. The recurring themes of gold, human vanity, national pride, and cal-

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lousness on the part of Renaissance explorers mingles with admiration of their maritime skills, courage, and resourcefulness in a relative newcomer, Angus Konstam’s Historical Atlas of Exploration, 1492–1600 (New York: Checkmark Books, 2000). Profusely illustrated in color, its 13 chapters include ‘‘The Coastline of North America’’ and ‘‘The Northwest Passage.’’ William H. Goetzmann and Glyndwr Williams’s The Atlas of North American Exploration: From the Norse Voyages to the Race to the Pole (New York: Prentice Hall General Reference, 1992) contains doublepage spreads arranged on a common pattern (an analysis of the exploration; historical and modern maps; illustrations; and an extract from the explorers’ original record) divided into five historical and geographical sections: American Continent on the Edge of the World, Opening of the Continent, Expanding Frontiers, Ocean to Ocean, and The Far North. Fernard Sadentiny’s Encyclopedia of World Explorers: From Armstrong to Shakleton (Cologne: Du Mont, 2002) has four sections: Conquerors, Adventurers, and Explorers; Seafarers and Explorers, A–Z (with reading lists at the end of the individual entries); The World of Atlases; and Timelines. Four historical atlases published in quick succession have earned Derek Hayes an enviable reputation not only for his cartographical skills but also for his vivid historical commentaries placing the aspirations and achievements of individual sea captains and explorers firmly within their historical context. Historical Atlas of the Pacific Northwest: Maps of Exploration and Discovery. British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Yukon (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1999) has 130 singleand double-page map features combining text, illustrations, and maps devoted to the Spanish and English voyages north of California and the speculative and influential maps of the period, supported by notes to the text, map sources, and a select bibliography. Much the same ground is covered in Hayes’s Historical Atlas of the North Pacific Ocean: Maps of Discovery and Scientific Exploration (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 2001), in which the 78 map features are divided into five chronological sections from the 16th century through the 20th century. The supporting apparatus here includes a catalog of the 285 maps illustrated and described. The themes and maps depicted in Historical Atlas of Canada: Canada’s History Illustrated with Original Maps (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002)

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were selected on the basis of their significance in outlining the advance of the geographical knowledge of Canada and the principal events in its history. The 87 map features include ‘‘Early English Attempts to Find a Northwest Passage,’’ ‘‘The Maps of Peter Pond,’’ and ‘‘The Canadian Arctic and the Northwest Passage Achieved.’’ Hayes’s latest work, Historical Atlas of the Arctic (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003) comprises 27 thematic chapters, longer than the map features of his previous volumes. Relevant chapters here include ‘‘A Passage to Cathay,’’ ‘‘To the Other Ocean,’’ ‘‘That Illusive Passage,’’ ‘‘Cook Probes the Ice,’’ ‘‘For Franklin—and Glory,’’ and ‘‘The Northwest Passage at Last.’’ The map catalog records 208 Canadian, U.S., Russian, Norwegian, and Greenlandic maps featured in the atlas. Philip D. Burden’s The Mapping of North America: A List of Printed Maps, 1511–1670 (Rickmansworth, Herts., England: Raleigh Publications, 1996) documents the printed record of the discovery of the continent, detailing all known printed maps of the United States and Canada, many previously unrecorded. The cartographical, printing, and publication background of each map is described alongside a photograph of the map. A section on lost maps, a chronology, and a full bibliography are also included. Kenneth A. Kershaw’s Early Printed Maps of Canada, 4 vols. (Ancaster, Ontario: Kershaw Publishing, 1993–1998) attempts to catalog all printed maps, in different editions, from 1540 on. Raleigh Ashlin Skelton’s Explorers’ Maps: Chapters in the Cartographic Record of Geographical Discovery (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958) reprints a series of articles first printed in Geographical Magazine, July 1953 through August 1956. In the author’s words: ‘‘The maps reproduced in this book reflect, in varying degree, the knowledge in which the early explorer set out, his hopes and expectations, and the discoveries which he made’’ (325). Contents include ‘‘The North-West Passage: Frobisher to Parry,’’ ‘‘Cathay or New World?,’’ ‘‘James Cook and the Mapping of the Pacific,’’ ‘‘The New World in the 16th Century,’’ ‘‘North America from Sea to Sea, 1600– 1800,’’ and ‘‘The Polar Regions in the 19th Century.’’ First printed in the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada in 1929–1937, W. F. Ganong’s Crucial Maps in the Early Cartography and Place-Nomenclature of the Atlantic Coast of Canada

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(Toronto: University of Toronto Press in cooperation with the Royal Society of Canada, 1964) concentrates on the 16th-century cartography associated with and resulting from the voyages of the Cabots, the CoˆrteReals, Esteva˜o Gomes, and Jacques Cartier. John Blake’s The Sea Charts: The Illustrated History of Nautical Maps and Navigational Charts (London: Conway Press, 2004) is both aesthetically and scientifically rewarding. Each of its 11 geographically organized chapters is supported by sumptuous plate sections of significant charts. Biographical Dictionaries Canada is well served by its national biographical dictionary. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966– ) comprises a series of self-contained chronological volumes, each confined to a specific period whose entries are determined by an individual’s date of death or, if this remains unknown, by the date the person was prominently active. These biographies, usually shorter than those in other English-language biographical dictionaries, are linked to others in the same volume or in adjacent volumes by a plentiful use of cross-references. All manner of persons who played a significant role in the history and development of Canada, including Arctic explorers and indigenous people so far as existing documentation allows, are included in DCB, which is strongly based on the bibliographic record. General bibliographies in each volume guide the researcher to appropriate archival and manuscript collections, newspapers and serials, and published source material. Concise lists of references are appended to each entry. In addition to nominal and geographical indexes, each volume also includes an identification index by occupation and profession. At the time of writing, the DCB extends to 14 volumes: the latest, 1911– 1920 (1998), contains 622 biographies from 459 contributors. A cumulated index volume covering the first volumes, for the period 1000–1900 (1991), has also been published. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online (http://www.biographi.ca/index2.html) provides access to the 14 volumes currently in print. Complementing the DCB is the Canadian Biographical Archive (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2001) in the World Biographical Information Sys-

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tem series of archives. Compiled by Laureen Baillie, this comprises 450 fiches containing 157,000 biographical entries on more than 150,000 individuals from 160 original printed reference works in 175 separate volumes published between 1848 and 1993. All these entries are furnished with detailed source references. A large number of individuals commemorated in the DCB also appeared, at greater length in the 63-volume British Dictionary of National Biography (London: Smith Elder, 1885–1900; later reprinted by Oxford University Press) plus 10 decennial supplements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912–1996). This venerable work was replaced by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, published in 60 volumes and online in September 2004. With 10,000 contributors, this new work includes all lives in the original DNB, either rewritten or revised, with 13,500 new lives, 3,000 of them of women. Modern bibliographical references and archival information enhance its scholarly apparatus. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (http://www .oxforddnb.com) is available by annual subscription. Arrangement of Information in the Bibliography The bibliography that follows can, of course, only be selective, but it should be remembered that many of the items cited include their own bibliographies. Although an exact, uniform pattern cannot be imposed on all items, they include contemporary accounts of a particular voyage or expedition, later narratives and biographies, and journal articles in order to present a general historical and geographical overview within a chronological framework. Within sections, the arrangement is general items first, followed by entries subdivided alphabetically by individual discoverers and explorers. Biographies and bibliographies relating to individuals are incorporated with their subjects and not in the form of sections at the beginning of the bibliography. Citation Abbreviations For convenience and space considerations, the following abbreviations have been employed within the citations: Arctic Bib Arctic Bibliography HCA&P House of Commons Accounts and Papers

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HCR&P JRGS PRGS PTRSC

House of Commons Reports and Papers Journal of the Royal Geographical Society Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society Proceedings and Transactions Royal Society of Canada

GENERAL REFERENCE WORKS Gough, Barry M. Historical Dictionary of Canada. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1999. Hallowell, Gerald, ed. The Oxford Companion to Canadian History. Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press, 2004. An Introduction to the Geography of the Canadian Arctic. Ottawa: Department of Mines and Technical Services, Geographical Branch, 1951. Story, Norah. The Oxford Companion to Canadian History and Literature. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1967. Swaney, D. The Arctic. Melbourne: Lonely Planet, 1999. Taylor, M. Brook, and D. Owram. Canadian History: A Reader’s Guide. 2 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. Toye, William, ed. Supplement to the Oxford Companion to Canadian History and Literature. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1973. Weihs, J. Facts about Canada: Its Provinces and Territories. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1995.

Bibliographies American Geographical Society of New York. Research Catalogue. 15 vols. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1962. Two supplements were also published: Regional Catalogue (2 vols., 1972) and Topical Catalogue (2 vols., 1974). Bond, M. E., and M. M. Caron, eds. Canadian Reference Sources: An Annotated Bibliography; General Reference Works, History, Humanities. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press/National Library of Canada, 1996. Current Geographical Publications: Additions to the Research Catalogue of the American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Libraries. 10 issues per annum since 1938. Hilton-Smith, R. D. Northwest Approaches: The First Century of Books. Victoria, B.C.: Adelphi Bookshop, 1969. First printed in British Columbia Historical Quarterly 32 (1969): 5–66. Ingles, Ernest, ed. Canada. World Bibliographical Series, no. 62. Oxford: Clio Press, 1990. Payne, Anthony. ‘‘The Publication and Readership of Voyage Journals in the Age of Vancouver.’’ In Enlightenment and Exploration in the North Pacific, 1741–

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1805, ed. Stephen Haycox, 176–86. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997. Speake, Jennifer, ed. Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia. 3 vols. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003. Staton, Frances M., and Marie Tremaine. A Bibliography of Canadiana, Being Items in the Public Library of Toronto Relating to the Early History and Development of Canada. Toronto: Metropolitan Toronto Library Board, 1931. Two supplements have also been published: First Supplement by Gertrude M. Boyle (1959) and Second Supplement by Sandra Alston (1986–1989), the latter in four volumes—1512–1800, 1801–1849, 1850–1867, and Index. Subject Catalogue of the Royal Commonwealth Society. 7 vols. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1971. Of particular relevance are vol. 5, The Americas, and vol. 7, Biography.

Northwest Passage and the Arctic Andrews, Martha. ‘‘Are We Information Poor? Limitations to Accessing Polar Literature.’’ In Bi-Polar Reference Initiatives: The Needs of Polar Research; Proceedings of the 15th Polar Libraries Colloquy, Cambridge, July 3–8, 1994, ed. D. W. H. Walton et al., 5–7. Cambridge, England: Bluntisham Books for Polar Libraries Colloquy, 1995. ———, ed. Arctic Information and Data: A Guide to Selected Resources. 2nd ed. Fairbanks, Alaska: Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, 1996. Cooke, Alan. ‘‘A Bibliographical Introduction to Sir John Franklin’s Expeditions and the Franklin Search.’’ In The Franklin Era in Canadian Arctic History, 1845–1859, ed. Patricia D. Sutherland, 12–20. Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1985. Day, Alan Edwin. Search for the Northwest Passage: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1986. Falk, Marvin D. ‘‘Full-text Arctic Databases: The Tool, Methodology and Research Potential.’’ In Bi-Polar Reference Initiatives: The Needs of Polar Research; Proceedings of the 15th Polar Libraries Colloquy, Cambridge, July 3–8, 1994, ed. D. W. H. Walton et al., 134–37. Cambridge, England: Bluntisham Books for Polar Libraries Colloquy, 1995. Firth, Edith G., ed. The North West Passage, 1534–1859: A Catalogue of an Exhibition of Books and Manuscripts in the Toronto Public Library. Toronto: Baxter Publishing in cooperation with the Toronto Public Library, 1963. Goodwin, Ross. ‘‘The Arctic Science and Technology Information System.’’ In Gateways: Archives and Libraries into the Next Millennium; Proceedings of the 18th Polar Libraries Colloquy Held at the Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 12–17 June 2000, ed. Barbara Kelcey, 63–67. Winnipeg: Polar Library Colloquy, 2001. Hodgson, Maurice. ‘‘19th Century Arctic Publicity.’’ North 18, no. 5 (September/ October 1971): 26–35.

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King, H. G. R. The Arctic. World Bibliographical Series, no. 99. Oxford, England: Clio Press, 1989. MacLaren, I. S. ‘‘From Exploration to Publications: The Evolution of a NineteenthCentury Arctic Narrative.’’ Arctic 47, no. 1 (March 1994): 43–53. Mills, William, and Peter Speak. Keyguide to Information Sources on the Polar and Cold Regions. London: Mansell, 1998. Neatby, Leslie H. ‘‘Arctic Journals.’’ Queen’s Quarterly 66, no. 4 (Winter 1960): 575–88. White, David C., and Patrick Morris. The Gerald F. Fitzgerald Collection of Polar Books, Maps and Art at the Newberry Library: A Catalogue. Chicago: Newberry Library, 2000.

The Arctic Bibliography Andrews, Martha, and Sharon H. Tahirkheli. ‘‘Preparation of an Arctic Bibliography Data Base.’’ In Gateways: Archives and Libraries into the Next Millennium; Proceedings of the 18th Polar Libraries Colloquy Held at the Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 12–17 June 2000, ed. Barbara Kelcey, 6–12. Winnipeg: Polar Library Colloquy, 2001. Smith, E. M. Arctic Bibliography. Occasional Paper no. 79. Ottawa: Canadian Library Association, 1970. Tremaine, Marie. ‘‘Arctic Bibliography.’’ Arctic 15, no. 4 (December 1962): 246–50. ———. ‘‘Bibliography of Arctic Research.’’ Arctic 1, no. 2 (Autumn 1948): 84–87. ———, ed. Arctic Bibliography: Prepared for and in Cooperation with the Department of Defense under the Direction of the Arctic Institute of North America. 16 vols. Vols. 1–12, Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1953–1965. Vols. 13–16, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1967–1971.

Arctic Blue Books Koolage, William. ‘‘Andrew Taylor’s Index to the Arctic Blue Books: British Parliamentary Papers Relating to Exploration and the Canadian North, 1818–1878.’’ In Gateways: Archives and Libraries into the Next Millennium; Proceedings of the 18th Polar Libraries Colloquy Held at the Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 12–17 June 2000, ed. Barbara Kelcey, 75–77. Winnipeg: Polar Library Colloquy, 2001. Taylor, Andrew. Arctic Blue Books: British Parliamentary Papers on Exploration in the Canadian North. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1959. Reprinted from ‘‘British Parliamentary Papers on Arctic Expeditions,’’ in Arctic Bibliography: Prepared for and in Cooperation with the Department of Defense under the Direction of the Arctic Institute of North America, ed. Marie Tremaine (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1959), 8:317–52.

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———. ‘‘A Preliminary Guide to the Arctic Blue Books and Parliamentary Papers of the Nineteenth Century.’’ Arctic Circular 8, no. 3 (March 1955): 2–30.

ENCYCLOPEDIC WORKS Allen, John Logan, ed. North American Exploration. 3 vols. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. The three volumes are A New World Discovered, A Continent Defined, and A Continent Comprehended. Burpee, Lawrence J. The Oxford Encyclopaedia of Canadian History. London: Oxford University Press, 1926. Cumming, W. P., et al. The Discovery of North America. London: Elek; New York: American Heritage Press, 1967. ———. The Exploration of North America, 1630–1776. London: Paul Elek; New York: Putnam, 1974. Delpar, Helen, ed. An Encyclopaedia of Explorers and Exploration. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980. Golay, Michael, and John S. Bowman. North American Exploration. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley, 2003. Harrisse, Henry. The Discovery of North America: A Critical Documentary and Historic Investigation, with an Essay on the Early Cartography of the New World, Including Descriptions of Two Hundred and Fifty Maps or Globes Existing or Lost, Constructed before the Year 1536; to which Are Added a Chronology of One Hundred Voyages Westwards, Projected, Attempted, or Accomplished between 1431 and 1504; Biographical Accounts of the Three Hundred Pilots Who First Crossed the Atlantic and a Copious List of the Original Names of American Regions; Caciqueships, Mountains, Islands, Capes, Gulfs, Rivers, Towns and Harbours. London: Henry Stevens; Paris: H. Welter, 1892. Holland, Clive. Arctic Exploration, c. 500 b.c. to 1915: An Encyclopaedia. New York: Garland, 1994. Marsh, J. H., ed. The Canadian Encyclopaedia. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1999. Mills, William James. Exploring Polar Frontiers: A Historical Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 2003. Quinn, David B., ed. New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612. 5 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1979. The five volumes are America from Concept to Discovery: Early Exploration of North America, Major Spanish Searches in Eastern North America: Franco-Spanish Clash in Florida; The Beginnings of Spanish Florida, English Plans for North America: The Roanoke Voyages; New England Ventures, Newfoundland from Fishery to Colony: Northwest Passage Searches, and The Extension of Settlement in Florida, Virginia, and the Spanish Southwest.

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Sadentiny, Fernard. Encyclopedia of World Explorers: From Armstrong to Shakleton. Cologne: Du Mont, 2002.

MAPS AND ATLASES General Binding, Paul. Imagined Corners: Exploring the World’s First Atlas. London: Review, 2003. Blake, John. The Sea Charts: The Illustrated History of Nautical Maps and Navigational Charts. London: Conway Press, 2004. Campbell, Tony. The British Library Map Catalogue on CD-ROM. London: Primary Source Media and the British Library, 1999. A printed guide that accompanies the associated disk. Catalogue of Admiralty Charts and Publications, 2005 Edition. London: U.K. Hydrographic Office, 2004. Crane, Nicholas. Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the Planet. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002. Farrington, Karen. Historical Atlas of Exploration. New York: Checkmark Books, 2000. Ferna´ndez-Armesto, Felipe, ed. The Times Atlas of World Exploration. London: Times Books, 1991. Grimbly, Shona, ed. Atlas of Exploration. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001. Konstam, Angus. Historical Atlas of Exploration, 1492–1600. New York: Checkmark Books, 2000. Nebenzahl, K. Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoveries. Chicago: Rand-McNally, 1990. Newby, Eric. The Mitchell Beazley World Atlas of Exploration. London: Mitchell Beazley, 1975. Philips Atlas of Exploration. London: Philips, 1996. Ritchie, G. S. The Admiralty Chart: British Naval Hydrography in the Nineteenth Century. London: Hollis & Carter; New York: American Elsevier Company, 1967. Reprint. Edinburgh: Pentland Press, 1995. Sua´rez, Thomas. Shedding the Veil: Mapping the European Discovery of America and the World, Based on Selected Works from the Sidney R. Knafel Collection of Early Maps, Atlases, and Globes, 1434–1865. Singapore: World Scientific, 1992. Whitfield, Peter. The Charting of the Oceans: Ten Centuries of Maritime Maps. London: British Library, 1996. ———. New Found Lands: Maps in the History of Exploration. London: British Library, 1998. Wigal, D. Historic Maritime Maps: Used for Historic Exploration, 1290–1699. New York: Parkstone Press, 2000.

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North America and the Arctic Allaby, Ian. ‘‘Joe Armstrong’s Canadian Map Collection.’’ Canadian Geographic 101, no. 6 (December 1981–January 1982): 36–41. ‘‘Arctic Ocean.’’ Washington, D.C., Cartographic Division, National Geographic Society, 1983. Issued with National Geographic 163, no. 2 (February 1983). Single-sheet map, 75 cm  571/2 cm, folded into 181/2 cm  141/2 cm. Scale 1: 8,721,000. On the reverse side is an informative pictorial map feature, ‘‘Peoples of the Arctic.’’ Arctic Pilot. Vol. 3, Davis Strait and Baffin Bay with the West and North-West Coasts of Greenland, the North Coast of Canada Including Hudson Bay and the Arctic Archipelago. 6th ed. London: Hydrographer of the Navy, 1976. Armstrong, Joe C. W. From Sea unto Sea: Art and Discovery Maps of Canada. Scarborough, Ontario: Fleet Publishers, 1982. Belyea, Barbara. ‘‘Inland Journeys, Native Maps.’’ Cartographica 33, no. 2 (Summer 1996): 1–16. Burden, Phillip D. The Mapping of North America: A List of Printed Maps, 1511– 1670. Rickmansworth, Herts., England: Raleigh Publications, 1996. ‘‘Canada Permafrost.’’ Map 21 in National Atlas of Canada, 5th ed. Ottawa: Energy Mines and Resources Canada, 1986. ‘‘Canada’s Northwest Territories Explorers’ Map.’’ Yellowknife: Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development, Government of the Northwest Territories, 2002. 68 cm  95 cm, folding into 25 cm  12 cm. The Canadian Gazetteer Atlas. Toronto: Macmillan; Montreal: Guerin; in cooperation with Energy, Mines and Research Canada and the Canadian Government Publishing Office, 1980. D’Anglure, Bernard Saladin. ‘‘The Route to China: Northern Europe’s Arctic Delusions.’’ Arctic 37, no. 4 (December 1984): 446–52. Reprinted in Unveiling the Arctic, ed. Louis Rey (Calgary, Alberta: Arctic Institute of North America, University of Calgary; Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1985), 446–52. David, Andrew. ‘‘From Cook to Vancouver: The British Contribution to the Cartography of Alaska.’’ In Enlightenment and Exploration in the North Pacific, 1741– 1805, ed. Stephen Haycox, 116–31. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997. Douglas, G. A. ‘‘Hydrographic Research in the Canadian Arctic.’’ Canadian Surveyor 33, no. 4 (1979): 373–82. ‘‘Explorations in Northern Canada and Adjacent Portions of Greenland and Alaska.’’ Ottawa: Department of the Interior, 1904. Map. Fite, Emerson D., and Augustus Freeman, eds. A Book of Old Maps Delineating American History from the Earliest Days Down to the Close of the Revolutionary War. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1926; New York: Arno Press, 1974. Ganong, W. F. Crucial Maps in the Early Cartography and Place-Nomenclature of

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the Atlantic Coast of Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press in cooperation with the Royal Society of Canada, 1964. Goetzmann, William H., and Glyndwr Williams. The Atlas of North American Exploration: From the Norse Voyages to the Race to the Pole. New York: Prentice Hall General Reference, 1992. Goodman, Edward J. ‘‘The Exploration and Mapping of the Arctic Coast of North America.’’ Terrae Incognitae 18 (1986): 55–72. Goss, John. The Mapping of North America: Three Centuries of Map-Making, 1500–1800. New Jersey: Wellfleet Press, 1990. Gray, David H. ‘‘Hydrographic Surveying and Charting.’’ In Mapping a Northern Land: The Survey of Canada, 1947–1994, ed. Gerald McGrath and Louis M. Sebert, 219–45. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press: 1999. Hamilton, A. C., and Louise M. Sebert. Significant Dates in Canadian Surveying, Mapping and Charting. Ottawa: Geomatica Press for the Canadian Institute of Geomatics, 1996. Harris, R. C., ed. Historical Atlas of Canada. Vol. 1, From the Beginning to 1800. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987. Hayes, Derek. Historical Atlas of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest: Maps of Exploration, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Yukon. Vancouver: Cavendish Books, 1999. Also published as Historical Atlas of the Pacific Northwest: Maps of Exploration and Discovery, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Yukon. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1999. ———. Historical Atlas of Canada: Canada’s History Illustrated with Original Maps. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002. ———. Historical Atlas of the Arctic. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. ———. Historical Atlas of the North Pacific Ocean: Maps of Discovery and Scientific Exploration. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2001. ‘‘How Early Map Makers Saw the West.’’ Maclean’s 68, no. 25 (December 1955): 27–33. Hrynyshyn, James. ‘‘On Thin Ice.’’ Up Here 17, no. 3 (April 2001): 28–32, 64. Ice Navigation in Canadian Waters. Ottawa: Canadian Coast Guard, 1992. Kershaw, Kenneth A. Early Printed Maps of Canada. 4 vols. Ancaster, Ontario: Kershaw Publishing, 1993–1998. Layng, Theodore E. ‘‘Early Cartographical Concepts of the Northwest Passage.’’ Cartographer 2, no. 2 (October 1965): 81–91. Reprinted in North 13, no. 4 (July/ August 1966): 30–35. ———. Sixteenth-Century Maps Relating to Canada: A Checklist and Bibliography. Ottawa: Public Archives of Canada, 1956. Marshall, Philip S., ed. Alaska Exploration Maps. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1987. McGechan, Alexander, and Coolie Verner. Maps in the Parliamentary Papers by the Arrowsmiths: A Finding List. 2 vols. London: Map Collectors’ Circle, 1973.

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McGrath, Gerald, and Louise M. Sebert, eds. Mapping a Northern Land: The Survey of Canada, 1947–1994. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999. McNeill, R. C. ‘‘Putting Canada on the Map.’’ Sentinel 6, no. 3 (March 1970): 16–21. Nicholson, Norman L. ‘‘The Contributions of Explorers to the Mapping of Arctic North America.’’ Photogrammetic Engineering 19, no. 3 (June 1953): 380–85. This article ‘‘contains a chronological summary of explorers and expeditions to the Canadian Arctic and an evaluation of their contribution to present maps’’ (Arctic Bibliography, 30,982). Nicholson, Norman L., and Louise E. Sebert. The Maps of Canada: A Guide to Official Canadian Maps, Charts, Atlases and Gazetteers. Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1981. Oppen, William A. ‘‘How Early Maps Portrayed North America.’’ Canadian Geographical Journal 90, no. 2 (February 1975): 30–35. Pearson, D. F. ‘‘An Historical Outline of Mapping in British Columbia.’’ Canadian Cartographer 11, no. 2 (December 1974): 114–24. Pierce, R. A., ed. Atlas of the Northwest Coast of America, from Bering Strait to Cape Corrientes, and the Aleutian Islands with Several Sheets of the Northeast Coast of Asia. Kingston, Ontario: Limestone Press, 1981. This atlas was compiled by 1st Capt. Mikhail Dmitriovich Teberikov in 1852. Porinaro, P., and K. Knirsch. The Cartography of North America, 1500–1800. New York: Facts on File, 1987. Quinn, David Beers. ‘‘Artists and Illustrators in the Early Mapping of North America.’’ Mariner’s Mirror 72, no. 3 (August 1986): 264–75. Ruggles, Richard I. ‘‘The Cartographic Lure of the Northwest Passage: Its Real and Imaginary Geography.’’ In Meta Incognita: A Discourse of Discovery, ed. Thomas H. B. Symons, 1:179–256. Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1999. Sailing Directions, Arctic Canada. Vol. 1. 4th ed. Ottawa: Canadian Hydrographic Service, 1994. This is complemented by volumes 2 and 3 for the Eastern Arctic and Western Arctic, respectively. Schuster, Carl G. ‘‘Mapping the North: Who Was Really Where When?’’ Explorers’ Journal 72, no. 4 (1994/95): 132–37. Skelton, R. A. Explorers’ Maps: Chapters in the Cartographic Record of Geographical Discovery. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958. Reprint. Feltham, N.Y.: Spring Books, 1970. A collection of illustrated articles that were first printed in Geographical Magazine July 1953 through August 1956. A Summary of Selected Manuscript Documents of Historical Importance Preserved in the Archives of the Department. London: Hydrographic Department Admiralty, 1950. Swithinbank, Charles. Ice Atlas of Arctic Canada. Cambridge, England: Scott Polar Research Institute, 1960. Thomson, Don W. Men and Meridians: The History of Surveying and Mapping in

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Canada. 2 vols. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer for the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, 1966–1967. Toolley, R. V. French Mapping of the Americas: The De l’Isle, Buache, Dezauche Succession, 1700–1830. London: Map Collectors’ Circle, 1967. Up North: The Discovery and Mapping of the Canadian Arctic, 1511–1944: An Exhibition held at the Royal Ontario Museum, April 1958. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1958. Verner, Coolie. Explorers Maps of the Canadian Arctic, 1818–1860. Toronto: B. V. Gutsell, Department of Geography, York University, 1972. ———. Maps by John Arrowsmith in the Publications of the Royal Geographical Society. London: Map Collectors’ Circle, 1971. Verner, Coolie, and Basil Stuart-Stubbs. The North Part of Canada: A Facsimile Atlas of Early Canadian Maps. Toronto: Academic Press Canada, 1979. Wagner, Henry Raup. The Cartography of the Northwest Coast of America to the Year 1800. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1937. Wallis, Helen. ‘‘Some New Light on Early Maps of North America, 1490–1560.’’ Wolfenbu¨tteler Forschungen (1980): 91–117. Winearls, Joan. ‘‘Thomas Jeffery’s Map of Canada and the Mapping of the Western Part of North America, 1750–1768.’’ In Images and Ikons of the North West: Essays on American Cartography, ed. Karen Sevarud Cook. London: British Library, 1996. First printed in British Library Journal 22, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 27–54. Winsor, Justin. The Kohl Collection of Maps Relating to America. Belonging to the Department of State, Washington, U.S.A. Cambridge, Mass.: Library of Harvard University, 1886. Wonders, William C. ‘‘The Mapping of Canada’s Arctic Islands.’’ Canadian Surveyor 36, no. 1 (March 1982): 36–41. Wood, Fergus J. ‘‘J. G. Kohl and the Lost Maps of the American Coast.’’ American Cartographer 3, no. 2 (October 1976): 107–15. Woodward, David. The Maps and Prints of Paolo Formani. Chicago: Newberry Library, 1990. Woodward, David, and G. Malcolm Lewis. The History of Cartography. Vol. 2, book 3, Cartography in the Traditional African, America, Arctic, Australia, and Pacific Societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

PLACE NAMES Armstrong, G. H. The Origin and Meaning of Place Names in Canada. Toronto: Macmillan Company of Canada, 1930. Benyk, Pearl. ‘‘Getting the Names Strait.’’ Up Here 4, no. 4 (June/July 1988): 44–50. Berton, Pierre. ‘‘The Chart of Immortality.’’ In The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the

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North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818–1909. New York: Viking, 1988: 627–31. Concise Gazetteer of Canada/Re´pertoire Toponomique Concis du Canada. Ottawa: Centre for Topographic Information, Geomatics Canada, Natural Resources Canada for the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names, 1997. Hobson, A., ed. The Cambridge Gazetteer of the United States and Canada: A Dictionary of Places. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Johns, Robert E. ‘‘A Toponymy of the North West Territories.’’ Musk Ox 6 (1969): 59–69. Kerfoot, Helen. ‘‘Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names and Canada’s Toponymy.’’ In Mapping a Northern Land: The Survey of Canada, 1947–1994, ed. Gerald McGrath and Louis M. Sebert, 587–99. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999. ———. ‘‘Northern Geographical Names: John Franklin’s Expedition, 1825–1827.’’ Arctic Circular 27, nos. 1/2 (March/June 1980): 5–6. Kerfoot, Helen, and Alan Rayburn. ‘‘The Roots and Development of the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names.’’ Names 3 (1990): 183–92. Hamilton, William B. The Macmillan Book of Canadian Place Names. Toronto: Macmillan, 1976. Merbs, Charles F. ‘‘Sir Thomas Roe’s Welcome.’’ Beaver 301, no. 4 (Spring 1971): 16–24. Principles and Procedures of Geographical Naming. Ottawa: Energy, Mines and Research Canada, 1993. Rayburn, Alan. Dictionary of Canadian Place Names. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997. Wallbran, John T. British Columbia Coast Names, 1592–1906, to Which Are Added a Few Names in Adjacent United States Territories: Their Origin and History. Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1908. White, James. ‘‘Place Names of Northern Canada.’’ In Ninth Report of the Geographic Board of Canada for Year Ending June 30, 1910 (Supplement to the Annual Report of the Department of Marine and Fisheries), 321–455. Ottawa: C. H. Parmelee, 1911. Additional relevant items in this report include ‘‘Expeditions to the Waters of Northern Canada and to Hudson Bay, 1576–1910’’ (237–70), ‘‘List of Explorers, Hudson Bay and Waters of Northern Canada’’ (271–99), ‘‘Ships Referred to in List of Arctic Officers’’ (300–309), and ‘‘Bibliography of the Principal Works Consulted in Preparing ‘Place Names of Northern Canada’’’ (310– 21).

BIOGRAPHIES Baillie, Laureen, ed. Canadian Biographical Archive. Munich: K. G. Saur, 2001. Contains 450 fiches accumulating 157,000 full-text entries from approximately

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160 original reference works published between 1848 and 1993, spanning Canadian history from the earliest period of European discovery and settlement. Baker, Daniel B., ed. Explorers and Discoverers of the World. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993. Biography Catalogue for the Library of the Royal Commonwealth Society. London: Royal Commonwealth Society, 1961. Bohlanders, Richard E. World Explorers and Discoverers. New York: Macmillan, 1992. Dictionary of Canadian Biography. 20 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966– . A French language edition is also published: Dictionnaire Biographique du Canada (Que´bec: Les Presses de l’Universite´ Laval). Both are available online at http://www.biographi.ca. See also Frances G. Halpenny, ‘‘The Dictionary of Canadian Biography/Dictionnaire Biographique du Canada,’’ in Canadian Studies, ed. Patricia McLaren-Turner, 133–43 (London: British Library, 1984). Garraty, J. A., and M. C. Carnes, eds. American National Biography. 24 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Harrison, Brian. ‘‘National Biography for a Computer Age.’’ History Today 51, no. 8 (August 2001): 16–18. ———, ed. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 60 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Kenyon, Walter. Arctic Argonauts. Waterloo, Ontario: Penumbra Press, 1990. ‘‘List of Officers and Seamen of the Several United States Expeditions, under Command of Lieutenant De Haven, Lieutenant Hartstein, and Lieutenant Kane, Entitled to Receive the Medal for Arctic Service.’’ In ‘‘Further Papers Relative to the Recent Arctic Expeditions,’’ HCA&P 41, no. 2124 (1856): 91–95. Loomis, Chauncy C. ‘‘Biography and the Preservation of Private Papers.’’ In United States Polar Expeditions, ed. Herman R. Friis and Shelby G. Bale, 127–33. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1970. Markham, Clements R. Arctic Navy List; or, A Century of Arctic and Antarctic Officers 1773–1873 Together with a List of Officers of the 1874 Expedition and Their Services. London: Griffin, 1875. Reprint. Portsmouth, England: Royal Naval Museum, 1992. Poulsom, Neville W., and J. A. L. Myres. British Polar Exploration and Research: A Historical and Medallic Record with Bibliographies, 1818–1919. London: Savannah Publications, 2000. This is an extended revision of Poulsom’s The White Ribbon (1968). Waldman, Carl, and Alan Wexler. Who Was Who in World Exploration. New York: Facts on File, 1992.

CHRONOLOGIES ‘‘Attempts to Discover a N.W. Passage.’’ Gentleman’s Magazine 24, no. 12 (December 1754): 542–43.

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Baillairge´, G. F. ‘‘Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Arctic Oceans. Arctic Voyages of Discovery in the North.’’ In Annual Report of the Minister of Public Works for the Fiscal Year 1889–90. Ottawa: Brown Chamberlin, Printer to the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty, 1891. Baird, P. D. ‘‘Expeditions to the Arctic.’’ Beaver 279, no. 4 (March 1949): 44–47; 280, no. 1 (June 1949): 41–47; and 280, no. 2 (September 1949): 44–48. Booth, P. M. ‘‘Arctic Exploration.’’ In To the Ends of the Earth: Transglobe Expedition, the First Pole-to-Pole Circumnavigation of the Globe, by Ranulph Fiennes, 299–311. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1983. ‘‘Chronological List of Explorations and Historical Events in Northern Canada, 1821–1845.’’ Polar Record 16, no. 100 (January 1972): 41–61. Cohn, James Edward. Towards the Poles. Prepared for the Arctic and Cold Weather Co-ordinating Committee of the Office of Naval Operations. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Navy, 1950. Cooke, Alan, and Clive Holland. The Exploration of Northern Canada, 500–1920: A Chronology. Toronto: Arctic History Press, 1978. First printed in part form in 11 successive issues of Polar Record, May 1970 through September 1973. Mills, William James. ‘‘Northwest Passage.’’ In Exploring Polar Frontiers: A Historical Encyclopedia, 2:474–77. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 2003. Entry includes four factbox tables: ‘‘Early Voyages, 1497–1632,’’ ‘‘Eighteenth-Century Expeditions,’’ ‘‘Expeditions, 1815–1859,’’ and ‘‘Northwest Passage Firsts.’’ ———. ‘‘Polar Timelines: A Chronological Listing of Polar Expeditions by Region.’’ In Exploring Polar Frontiers, 2:731–39.

RESEARCH LIBRARY COLLECTIONS General Bloomfield, Valerie. Guide to Resources for Canadian Studies in Britain, with Some Reference to Relevant Collections in Europe. 2nd ed. London: British Association for Canadian Studies, 1983. Bryon, Vita, and Terence N. Bryon, eds. Maritime Information: A Guide to Libraries and Sources of Information in the United Kingdom. 3rd ed. London: Maritime Information Association, 1993. Cameron, Ian. To the Farthest Ends of the Earth: The History of the Royal Geographical Society, 1830–1980. London: MacDonald & Janes, 1980. Corley, Nora T. Polar and Cold Regions Library Resources: A Directory. Ottawa: Northern Library Colloquy, 1975. Greenhill, Basil. The National Maritime Museum. London: Phillip Wilson and Summerfield Press, 1982. McLaren-Turner, Patricia, ed. Canadian Studies: Papers Presented at a Colloquium at the British Library, 17–18 August 1983. London: British Library, 1984.

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Mills, William James. ‘‘Expedition Indexing and the Organisation of Polar Material.’’ In Gateways: Archives and Libraries into the Next Millennium; Proceedings of the 18th Polar Libraries Colloquy Held at the Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 12–17 June 2000, ed. Barbara Kelcey, 103–8. Winnipeg: Polar Library Colloquy, 2001. ———. ‘‘Polar Libraries.’’ In International Directory of Library Histories, ed. David H. Stam, 134–36. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001. ———, ed. Universal Decimal Classification for Use in Polar Libraries. 4th ed. Cambridge, England: Scott Polar Research Institute, 1994.

Arctic Institute of North America ‘‘The Arctic Institute of North America.’’ Arctic 19, no. 1 (March 1966): 5–38. The subsections of this article are ‘‘The Origin of the Institute,’’ by Raleigh Parkin (5–18); ‘‘Yesterday and Today,’’ by John C. Reed (19–31); and ‘‘The Future,’’ by David C. Nutt (32–38). ‘‘Arctic Institute of North America Current Abstract Service.’’ Polar Record 14, no. 92 (May 1969): 678–79. Catalogue of the Library of the Arctic Institute of North America, Montreal. 4 vols. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1968. A First Supplement was published in 1971. Corley, N. T. ‘‘Bibliography of Books Printed before 1800.’’ Arctic 19, no. 1 (March 1966): 77–98. Comprises a list of books in the Arctic Institute of North America’s library.

Dartmouth College Library Dictionary Catalog of the Stefansson Collection on the Polar Regions in the Dartmouth College Library. 8 vols. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1967. ‘‘The Institute of Arctic Studies, Dartmouth College.’’ Polar Record 26, no. 156 (January 1990): 48–49.

Hudson’s Bay Company Archives Bercovski, Gerry. ‘‘From the Past to the Future: Issues, Options and Strategies for Preserving Electronic Records of the Hudson’s Bay Company.’’ In Gateways: Archives and Libraries into the Next Millennium; Proceedings of the 18th Polar Libraries Colloquy Held at the Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 12–17 June 2000, ed. Barbara Kelcey, 20–24. Winnipeg: Polar Library Colloquy, 2001. Coutts, Robert, and Katherine Pettipas. ‘‘The Hudson’s Bay Company Museum Collection.’’ Beaver 74, no. 3 (June/July 1994): 13–19.

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Geller, Peter, and Scott Reid. ‘‘Projecting Polar Images: The Hudson’s Bay Company’s Film Collection.’’ In Gateways: Archives and Libraries into the Next Millennium; Proceedings of the 18th Polar Libraries Colloquy Held at the Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 12–17 June 2000, ed. Barbara Kelcey, 47–52. Winnipeg: Polar Library Colloquy, 2001. Kappel, Tom. ‘‘Treasure Trove of History.’’ Canadian Geographic 111, no. 2 (October/December 1991): 70–76. Moodie, D. W. ‘‘The Hudson’s Bay Company Archive.’’ Archivaria 42 (Fall 1996): 67–78. Rekrut, Al, and Rob Ridgen. ‘‘A New Home for the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Records: Lessons Learned in Vault Design, Construction and Operations.’’ In Gateways: Archives and Libraries into the Next Millennium; Proceedings of the 18th Polar Libraries Colloquy Held at the Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 12–17 June 2000, ed. Barbara Kelcey, 109–14. Winnipeg: Polar Library Colloquy, 2001. Simmons, Deirdre. ‘‘Annals of the Fur Trade . . . the Making of the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives.’’ Beaver 74, no. 3 (July/August 1994): 4–10.

Scott Polar Research Institute Andrews, Martha. ‘‘The Library Catalogue of the Scott Polar Research Institute.’’ Arctic and Alpine Research 10, no. 1 (February 1978): 147–48. Bertram, G. C. L. ‘‘The Scott Polar Research Institute.’’ Arctic 5, no. 3 (October 1952): 153–56. Holland, Clive, ed. Manuscripts in the Scott Polar Research Institute Library, Cambridge, England: A Catalogue. New York: Garland, 1982. The Library Catalog of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, England. 19 vols. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1976. The five-volume First Supplement was published in 1981. Martin, C. ‘‘H. G. R. King and the Scott Polar Research Institute.’’ Arctic 45, no. 1 (1992): 93–95. Robin, Gordon de Quetteville. ‘‘The Scott Polar Research Institute, 1920–1970.’’ Polar Record 15, no. 97 (January 1971): 451–52. Scott Polar Research Institute. ‘‘The Library: An Introductory Guide.’’ Cambridge, England: Scott Polar Research Institute, n.d. Single sheet 29 1/2 cm  21 cm, folded to 10 cm  21 cm. Smith, Philippa. ‘‘The Scott Polar Research Institute Picture Library: Opening Up the Collections.’’ In Gateways: Archives and Libraries into the Next Millennium; Proceedings of the 18th Polar Libraries Colloquy Held at the Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 12–17 June 2000, ed. Barbara Kelcey, 129–32. Winnipeg: Polar Library Colloquy, 2001.

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JOURNALS America History and Life: Article Abstracts and Citations of Reviews and Dissertations Covering the United States and Canada. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-Clio, 1954– . ‘‘The Beaver: Seventy Years of History.’’ Beaver 70, no. 1 (February/March 1990): 4–5. Beaver Index, 1920–1995. Winnipeg: Hudson’s Bay Company, 1999. In print and CD versions. Dafoe, Christopher. ‘‘Annals of the Beaver.’’ Beaver 75, no. 2 (April/May 1995): 2–3. List of Canadian Native and Northern Periodicals Held by the Departmental Library. Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs, Canada, 1994. Mills, William. ‘‘Polar and Glaciological Abstracts: A New Publication.’’ Polar Record 26, no. 257 (April 1990): 126. Stonehouse, Bernard. ‘‘Polar Record 200: A Retrospective.’’ Polar Record 37, no. 200 (January 2001): 3–11.

COLLECTED VOYAGES General Arber, Edward, ed. The First Three English Books on America 1511–1555 A.D. Being Chiefly Translations, Compilations etc by Richard Eden, from the Writings, Maps etc, of Pietro Martire, of Anghiera (1455–1526), Sebastian Munster, the Cosmographer (1489–1552), from the Works of Other Spanish, Italian and German Writers of the Time. Birmingham, England: n.p., 1885. Churchill, Awnsham, and John Churchill. A Collection of Voyages and Travels, Some New First Printed from Original Manuscripts, Others Now First Published in English. 3rd ed. 8 vols. London: John Osborne, 1752. Cox, Edward Godfrey. A Reference Guide to the Literature of Travel Including Voyages, Geographical Descriptions, Adventures, Shipwrecks and Expeditions. 3 vols. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1935, 1938, 1949. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970. The three volumes are The Old World, The New World, and Great Britain. Eden, Rycharde, ed. The Decades of the Newe World of West India, Conteyning the Navigations and Conquestes of the Spanyardes, with the Particular Description of the Moste Riche and Large Landes and Ilandes Lately Founde in the West Ocean Pertayning to the Inheritance of the Kinges of Spayne. . . . Written in the Latine Tounge by Peter Martyr of Angleria. London: William Powell, 1555. Of particular relevance is ‘‘Of the straight or narrow passage of the lande lying betweene the North and South sea’’ (fol. 265).

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Harris, John. Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca; or, A Complete Collection of Voyages and Travels. Consisting of above Six Hundred of the most Authentic Writers. . . . Carefully revised by John Campbell. 3rd ed. 2 vols. London: Thomas Osborne, 1744–1748. Kerr, Robert. A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time. 18 vols. Edinburgh: William Blackwood; London: Thomas Cadell, 1811–1814. Mavor, W. F. A General Collection of Voyages and Travels, from the Discovery of America to the Commencement of the Nineteenth Century. 28 vols. London: Richard Phillips, 1810. Pinkerton, John. A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World. London: Longman etc., 1800–1814. Purchas, Samuel. Hakluytus Posthumus; or, Purchas His Pilgrimes Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others. 20 vols. Glasgow: MacLehose, 1907.

Richard Hakluyt Hakluyt, Richard. The Principall Navigations Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation. Imprinted at London 1589. Facsimile edition, with an introduction by David Beers Quinn and Raleigh Ashlin Skelton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Hakluyt Society, 1965. ———. The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation Made by Sea or Over-land to the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth at any Time within the Compasse of these 1600 Yeares. 12 vols. Glasgow: MacLehose; London: Hakluyt Society, 1903–1905. Jones, John Winter, ed. Divers Voyages touching the Discovery of America and the Islands Adjacent. Collected and Published by Richard Hakluyt, Prebendary of Bristol, in the Year 1582. London: Hakluyt Society, 1850. Lynam, Edward, ed. Richard Hakluyt and His Successors: A Volume Issued to Commemorate the Centenary of the Hakluyt Society. London: Hakluyt Society, 1946. Parks, George Brunner. Richard Hakluyt and the English Voyages. New York: American Geographical Society, 1928. Reprint. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1961. Payne, Anthony. Richard Hakluyt and His Books. London: Hakluyt Society, 1996. Quinn, David Beers, ed. The Hakluyt Handbook. 2 vols. London: Hakluyt Society, 1974. Quinn, David Beers, and Alison M. Quinn, eds. A Particular Discourse Concerning the Greate Necessitie and Manifolde Commodyties that are like to Growe to this Realm of Englande by the Westerne Discoveries lately Attempted, Written in the

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Yere 1584 by Richard Hackluyt of Oxforde / Known as Discourse of Western Planting. London: Hakluyt Society, 1993. Taylor, E. G. R. ‘‘Richard Hakluyt and England’s Sea Story.’’ Geographical Magazine 35, no. 12 (April 1963): 694–703. Taylor, E. G. R., ed. The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts. 2 vols. London: Hakluyt Society, 1935.

GENERAL WORKS Allen, John Logan. ‘‘The Indrawing Sea: Imagination and Experience in the Search for the Northwest Passage, 1497–1632.’’ In American Beginnings, ed. Emerson Baker et al., 7–35. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Baird, P. D., and J. L. Robinson. ‘‘A Brief History of Exploration and Research in the Canadian Eastern Arctic.’’ Canadian Geographical Journal 30, no. 3 (March 1945): 136–57. Baird, Patrick D. The Polar World. London: Longman; New York: Wiley, 1964. Barrow, John. A Chronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Regions; Undertaken Chiefly for the Purpose of Discovering a North-East, North-West or Polar Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific. . . . London: John Murray, 1818. ———. Voyages of Discovery and Research within the Arctic Regions from the Year 1818 to the Present Time: under the Command of the Several Naval Officers Employed by Sea and Land in Research of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. . . . London: John Murray, 1846. Berton, Pierre. The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818–1909. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart; New York: Viking, 1988. Bruemmer, Fred. ‘‘Northern Oases: Polynyas, Where Arctic Waters Team with Wildlife.’’ Canadian Geographic 114, no. 1 (January/February 1994): 54–63. Bunyan, Ian. Polar Scots. Edinburgh: National Museum of Scotland, 1986. Caswell, John E. ‘‘The Sponsors of Canadian Arctic Exploration.’’ Beaver 299, no. 4 (Spring 1969): 4–13; 300, no. 1 (Summer 1969): 38–46; 300, no. 2 (Autumn 1969): 25–33; and 300, no. 3 (Winter 1969): 44–53. Crouse, Nellis M. In Quest of the Western Ocean. New York: William Morrow; London: J. M. Dent, 1928. ———. The Search for a Northwest Passage. New York: Columbia University Press, 1934. Delgado, James P. Across the Top of the World: The Quest for the Northwest Passage. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre; London: British Museum Press, 1999. Dodge, Ernest S. Northwest by Sea. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961. Dunbar, Moira, and K. R. Greenaway. Arctic Canada from the Air. Ottawa: Defence Research Board, 1956. Fleming, Sandford. ‘‘Expeditions to the Pacific. With a Brief Reference to the Voy-

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ages of Discovery in Seas Contiguous to Canada, in Connection with a Western Passage from Europe to Asia.’’ PTRSC 7 (1889): 89–141. Hobbs, William Herbert. ‘‘The Progress of Discovery and Exploration within the Arctic Region.’’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 27, no. 1 (March 1937): 1–22. Keating, Bern. The Northwest Passage from the Matthew to the Manhattan, 1497 to 1969. Chicago: Rand-McNally, 1970. Kirwan, L. P. The White Road: A Survey of Polar Exploration. London: Hollis & Carter, 1959. Kohl, J. G. ‘‘History of Discovery and Exploration on the Coast of the United States.’’ In Report of the Superintendent United States Coast and Geodetic Survey 1884, 495–617. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1885. Laut, Agnes C. Pathfinders of the West. New York: Macmillan, 1904. Lea, Isaac. ‘‘North-West Passage.’’ American Quarterly Review 3, no. 6 (June 1828): 505–42. ———. ‘‘On the North-West Passage.’’ American Journal of Science and Arts 10, no. 1 (February 1826): 138–45. Lehane, Brendan. The Northwest Passage. Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1981. Levere, Trevor H. Science and the Canadian Arctic: A Century of Exploration, 1818–1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Macpherson, M. A. Silk, Spices and Glory: In Search of the North West Passage. Calgary, Alberta: Fifth House Publishers, 2000. McDonald, Lucille. Search for the Northwest Passage. Portland, Ore.: Binfords & Mort, 1958. Mirsky, Jeanette. To the Arctic! The Story of Northern Exploration from Earliest Times to the Present. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. Morrison, W. R. True North: The Yukon and Northwest Territories. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press Canada, 1998. Morton, Arthur S. A History of the Canadian West to 1870–1871, Being a history of Rupert’s Land (The Hudson Bay Company’s Territory) and of the North-West Territories (Including the Pacific Slope). London: Thomas Nelson, 1939. Mountfield, David. A History of Polar Exploration. London: Hamlyn; New York: Dial Press, 1974. Mowat, Farley. Ordeal by Ice: The Search for the Northwest Passage. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1973. Murray-Smith, D. Arctic Expeditions from British and Foreign Shores from the Earliest Times to the Expedition of 1875–76. Glasgow: McReady, Thompson & Niven, 1877. Neatby, Leslie H. Conquest of the Last Frontier, 1762–1962. Athens: Ohio University Press; Toronto: Longmans, 1966. ———. In Quest of the North West Passage. Toronto: Longmans Green; London: Constable; New York: Crowell, 1958.

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Nugent, Frank. Seek the Frozen Lands: Irish Polar Explorers, 1740–1922. Wilton, Cork, Ireland: Collins Press, 2003. Officer, Charles, and Jake Page. A Fabulous Kingdom: The Exploration of the Arctic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Owen, J. Victor. ‘‘No Smooth Sailing: The Once and Future Northwest Passage.’’ Mercator’s World 7, no. 1 (January/February 2002): 30–37. Quinn, David Beers. ‘‘The Northwest Passage in Theory and Practice.’’ In North American Exploration, vol. 1, A New World Discovered, ed. John Logan Allen, 292–343. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Ramsey, Raymond H. ‘‘That Elusive Northwest Passage.’’ In No Longer on the Map: Discovering Places That Never Were, 141–71. New York: Viking Press, 1972. Rasky, Frank. Explorers of the North: The Polar Voyagers. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1976. Rey, Louis, ed. Unveiling the Arctic. Calgary, Alberta: Arctic Institute of North America, University of Calgary; Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1985. A collection of papers first printed in Arctic 37, no. 4 (December 1984). Ruggles, Richard I. ‘‘Westward Thrust in a New World.’’ Geographical Magazine 45, no. 2 (November 1972): 116–25. Sale, Richard. To the Ends of the Earth: The History of Polar Exploration. London: HarperCollins, 2002. Sauer, Carl O. Northern Mists. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. Savours, Ann. The Search for the North West Passage. London: Chatham, 1999. Scoresby, William. An Account of the Arctic Regions. 2 vols. Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1820. Scott, J. M. Icebound: Journeys to the Northwest Sea. London: Gordon & Cremonesi, 1977. Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. Northwest to Fortune: The Search of Western Man for a Commercially Practical Route to the Far East. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1958. Struzik, Edward. The Northwest Passage: The Quest for an Arctic Route to the East. Toronto: Key Porter, 1990; London: Blandford, 1991. Taylor, E. G. R. Late Tudor and Early Stuart Geography, 1583–1650. London: Methuen, 1934. ———. Tudor Geography, 1485–1583. London: Methuen, 1930. Thomson, George Malcolm. The North-West Passage. London: Secker & Warburg; New York: Macmillan, 1975. Tytler, P. F. Historical View of the Progress of Discovery on the More Northern Coasts of America, from the Earliest Times to the Present Time. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1832; New York: J. and J. Harper, 1833. Vaughan, R. The Arctic: A History. Stroud, Gloucs., England: Alan Sutton, 1994. Weber, J. R., and E. F. Roots. ‘‘Discoveries and Explorations of the Circumpolar Lands and Seas from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century.’’ In Canada’s Missing

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Dimensions: Science and History in the Canadian Arctic Islands, ed. C. B. Harrington, 2:744–67. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Nature, 1990. Wilkinson, Doug. Arctic Fever: The Search for the Northwest Passage. Toronto: Clarke Irwin, 1971. Zaslow, Maurice, ed. A Century of Canada’s Arctic Islands, 1880–1980. Ottawa: Royal Society of Canada, 1981.

THE INUIT General Ananguaq, J. M., and Guy Mary-Rousselie`re. ‘‘The Schwatka Expedition as Seen by the Inuit.’’ Eskimo 47, nos. 38–39 (1989–1990): 5–11. Auger, Reginald, et al. Material Evidence for the Frobisher Voyages: Anglo-Inuit Contact in the North American Arctic in the Late Sixteenth Century. London: British Museum, 1995. Cheshire, Neil, et al. ‘‘Frobisher’s Eskimos in England.’’ Archivaria 10 (Summer 1980): 23–50. Csonka, Yvon. ‘‘Samuel Hearne and Indian-Inuit Hostility.’’ Polar Record 29, no. 169 (April 1993): 167. Damas, David. ‘‘The Arctic from Norse Contact to Modern Times.’’ In The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, vol. 1, North America, part 2, ed. Bruce C. Trigger and Wilcolm E. Washburn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Eber, Dorothy. ‘‘Rumours of Franklin: The Strength of the Inuit Oral Tradition.’’ Beaver 76, no. 3 (June/July 1996): 4–13. Jones, H. G. ‘‘Teaching the Explorers: Some Inuit Contributions to Arctic Discoveries.’’ Polar Geography (Columbia) 26, no. 1 (2002): 21–38. Malaurie, Jean. Ultima Thule: Explorers and Natives of the Polar North. New York: Norton, 2002. Neatby, Leslie H. ‘‘Joe and Hannah.’’ Beaver 290, no. 2 (Autumn 1959): 16–21. Panipakuttuk, Joe. ‘‘The Reminiscences of Joe Panipakuttuk.’’ North 16, no. 2 (January/February 1969): 10–17. Rich, Edwin Gile. Hans the Eskimo: His Story of Arctic Adventure with Kane, Hayes and Hall. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934. Sturtevant, William C., and David Beers Quinn. ‘‘This New Prey: Eskimos in Europe in 1567, 1576 and 1577.’’ In Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays, ed. Christian F. Feest. Aachen: E´ditions Heredot, 1987: 61–140. Wales, W. ‘‘Description of Esquimaux Indians.’’ Gentleman’s Magazine supplement (1772): 616–17. Waterman, Jonathan. Arctic Crossing: A Journey through the Northwest Passage and Inuit Culture. New York: Knopf, 2001.

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———. Odyssey among the Inuit: One Man’s Journey through the Northwest Passage. London: Macmillan, 2001. Woodman, David C. Strangers among Us. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995. ———. Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony. Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1991.

Inuksuit Cockney, Angus. ‘‘The Lore of Inukshuks.’’ Up Here 8, no. 4 (August/September 1992): 24–25. Ernerk, Peter. ‘‘Inuksuit Telling Where the Inuit Have Been.’’ Above and Beyond 8, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 35–36. Hallendy, Norman. Inuksuit: Silent Messengers of the Arctic. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre; Seattle: University of Washington Press; London: British Museum Press, 2000. Kesselheim, Alan S. ‘‘Inukshuks.’’ Up Here 4, no. 4 (July 1998): 40–42. Purvis, Mifi. ‘‘The Inukshuk Rocks.’’ Up Here 18, no. 7 (October 2002): 52–53.

Maps and Place Names ‘‘The Arctic Traveller’s Nunavut Territory Map.’’ Iqaluit: Nunavut Tourism, c. 1999. Single sheet 401/2 cm  54 cm, folding into 20 cm  27 cm. Crowe, Keith J. ‘‘Why the New Names for Eskimos and Indians?’’ Canadian Geographic 99, no. 1 (August/September 1979): 68–71. Fraser, J. Keith. ‘‘The Problem of Inuit Place Names.’’ Canadian Geographic 104, no. 6 (December 1984–January 1985): 6. Holmer, Nils M. ‘‘The Native Place Names of Arctic America.’’ Names 15, no. 3 (1967): 182–96. Riewe, Rick. Nunavut Atlas. Edmonton, Alberta: Canadian Circumpolar Institute and the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut, 1992. Spink, J., and D. W. Moodie. Eskimo Maps from the Canadian Eastern Arctic. Toronto: Department of Geography, York University, 1972. Warhus, Mark. Another America: Native American Maps and the History of Our Land. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Woodman, David C. ‘‘Inuit Place Names.’’ In Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony, 331–33. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991.

Language Birket-Smith, Kaj. Five Hundred Eskimo Words. Copenhagen: Glydensdalke Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1928. Reprinted as Five Hundred Eskimo Words: A Com-

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parative Vocabulary from Greenland and Central Eskimo Dialects (New York: AMS Press, 1976). ‘‘Glossary of Inuit Words.’’ In Sailing Directions for the Western Arctic, 5th ed., 3:xv. Ottawa: Canadian Hydrographic Service, 1994. Contains 25 topographical terms. Pilling, James C. Bibliography of the Eskimo Language. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1887. Reprint. Toronto: Canada House, 1969. Washington, John. Esquimaux and English Vocabulary for the Use of the Arctic Expeditions. London: The Admiralty, 1850.

Nunavut The 1998 Nunavut Handbook: Travelling in Canada’s Arctic. Iqaluit, Nunavut: Nortext Multimedia, 1997. Pelly, David F. ‘‘Dawn of Nunavut.’’ Canadian Geographic 113, no. 2 (March/April 1993): 20–27.

THE SEARCH BEGINS (1497–1553) General Biggar, H. P. The Precursors of Jacques Cartier, 1497–1934: A Collection of Documents Relating to the Early History of the Dominion of Canada. Ottawa: Government Printing Office, 1911. Cuthbertson, Brian. ‘‘Voyages to North America before John Cabot: Separating Facts from Fiction.’’ Collections of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society 44 (1995): 121–44. ‘‘English Voyages, 1512–1555.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 1:161–214. London: Macmillan, 1979. Hoffman, Bernard G. Cabot to Cartier: Sources for a Historical Ethnography of Northeastern North America, 1497–1550. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961. Jost, T. P. Portuguese Activity along the Canadian Shore at the Beginning of Modern Times. Lisbon: Congresso Internacional de Histo´ria des Descobrimentos, 1961. ———. ‘‘Voyages of Discovery: Hugh Say alias John Day; The Men of Bristol and Joao Fernandes.’’ Cartographer 4, no. 1 (June 1967): 1–12. Kohl, J. G. History of the Discovery of Maine. Vol. 1 of Documentary History of the State of Maine, ed. William Willis. Portland: Bailey & Noyes, 1869. Morison, Samuel Eliot. The European Discovery of America. The Northern Voyages AD500–1600. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. ‘‘Northwest Projects.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 1:215–28. London: Macmillan, 1979.

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Oleson, Tryggvi. Early Voyages and Northern Approaches, 1000–1632. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1964. Quinn, David Beers. England and the Discovery of America, 1487–1620: From the Bristol Voyages of the Fifteenth Century to the Pilgrim Settlement at Plymouth; The Exploration, Exploitation, and Trial-and-Error Colonization of North America by the English. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974. Robinson, Conway. An Account of Discoveries in the West until 1519, and of Voyages to and along the Atlantic Coast of North America from 1520–1573. Richmond: Virginia Historical and Philosophical Society, 1848. Thorne, Robert. ‘‘The Booke Made by the Right Worshipfull M. Robert Thorne in the Yeere 1527, in Sivill, to Doctour Ley, Lord Ambassadour for King Henrie the Eight, to Charles the Emperour, being an Information of the Parts of the World, Discovered by Him and the King of Portingall; and also of the Way to the Moluccaes by the North.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 1:182–89. London: Macmillan, 1979. ———. ‘‘A Declaration of the Indies and Lands Discovered, and Subdued unto the Emperour, and the King of Portingall: and also of Other Partes of the Indies and Rich Countries To Be Discovered, which the Worshipfull M. Robert Thorne Merchant of London (Who Dwelt Long in the Citie of Sivill in Spaine) Exhorted King Henrie the Eight to Take in Hand. In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 1:179–81. London: Macmillan, 1979.

John Cabot Beazley, C. Raymond. John and Sebastian Cabot: The Discovery of North America. London: T. Fisher Unwin; New York: Longmans Green, 1898. Burpee, Lawrence J. ‘‘John Cabot of Bristol.’’ Canadian Geographical Journal 21, no. 1 (July 1945): 48–49. ———. ‘‘John Cabot Who Sought Cipangu and Found Canada.’’ Canadian Geographical Journal 6, no. 6 (June 1933): 259–67. Craig, Simon. ‘‘Mistaken Identity.’’ Geographical 69, no. 5 (May 1997): 30–32. Cuthbertson, Brian. John Cabot and the Voyage of the Matthew. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Formac Publishing, 1997. Davies, Arthur. ‘‘The English Coasts on the Map of Juan de la Cosa.’’ Imago Mundi 13 (1956): 26–29. ———. ‘‘The Last Voyage of John Cabot and the Rock at Grates Cove.’’ Nature 176, no. 4,491 (26 November 1955): 996–99. ‘‘The English Voyages of Discovery, 1497–1498.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 1:93–102. London: Macmillan, 1979. Ferguson, C. B. ‘‘Cabot’s Landfall.’’ Dalhousie Review 33, no. 4 (Winter 1953): 257–76. Firstbrook, Peter. The Voyage of the Matthew: John Cabot and the Discovery of

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Sebastian Cabot Biddle, Richard. A Memoir of Sebastian Cabot; with a Review of the History of Maritime Discovery. Philadelphia: Carey & Lea; London: Hurst Chance, 1831. Deane, Charles. ‘‘Remarks on Sebastian Cabot’s Mappe-Monde.’’ Proceedings American Antiquarian Society 24 (April 1867): 43–50. Quinn, David Beers. ‘‘A Further Voyage by Sebastian Cabot, 1508–1509.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 1:121–27. London: Macmillan, 1979. ———. Sebastian Cabot and Bristol Exploration. Rev. ed. Bristol, England: Bristol Branch Historical Association, 1993. Ruddock, A. A. ‘‘The Reputation of Sebastian Cabot.’’ Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 47, no. 115 (May 1974): 95–97.

Jacques Cartier Allen, John L. ‘‘From Cabot to Cartier: The Early Exploration of Eastern North America.’’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, no. 3 (September 1992): 500–521. Baxter, James Phinney. A Memoir of Jacques Cartier, Sieur de Limoilu, His Voyages to the St. Lawrence, a Bibliography and a Facsimile of the Manuscript of 1534. London: Henry Stevens, 1906. Biggar, H. P. ‘‘Cartier’s Objective.’’ In The Canadian Historical Association Report of the Annual Meeting Held at McGill University, Montreal, May 20–22, 1934, with Historical Papers. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1935. ———. A Collection of Documents Relating to Jacques Cartier and the Sieur de Roberville. Ottawa: Public Archives of Canada, 1930.

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———. The Voyages of Jacques Cartier Published from the Originals. Ottawa: Public Archives of Canada, 1924. Boissonault, Re´al. Jacques Cartier, Explorer and Navigator. Ottawa: Environment Canada Parks, 1987. Braudel, Fernand, ed. Le Monde de Jacques Cartier (Jacques Cartier’s world). Paris: E´ditions Berger-Levrault; Montreal: Libre Expression, 1984. Brault, Lucien. ‘‘Jacques Cartier (Bibliographie)’’ Bulletin de Recherche´s Historiques 41, no. 12 (December 1935): 724–35. Canada: An Exhibition Commemorating the Four Hundredth Anniversary of the Discovery of the Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier, 1534–1935; A Catalog with Notes. New York: New York Public Library, 1935. ‘‘Cartier and Roberval.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 1:293–339. London: Macmillan, 1979. Ganong, W. F. ‘‘The Literature of the Cartier Voyages.’’ PTRSC 3rd ser. 28, no. 2 (May 1934): 157–70. Groulx, Lionel. La De´couverte du Canada (The discovery of Canada). Montreal, Quebec: Fides, 1966. Guitard, Michelle. Jacques Cartier in Canada. Ottawa: National Library of Canada, 1984. Hayes, Derek. ‘‘Strait to Cathay: Jacques Cartier and the French Claim to North America.’’ Mercator’s World 7, no. 6 (November/December 2002): 26–33. Lanctot, Gustave. ‘‘Cartier’s First Voyage to Canada in 1524.’’ Canadian Historical Review 25, no. 3 (September 1944): 233–45. Lemieux, Rodolphe. ‘‘Canada’s Quadcentenary, 1934.’’ Canadian Geographical Journal 1, no. 7 (November 1930): 557–73. Lewis, Harrison F. ‘‘Notes on Some Details of the Explorations of Jacques Cartier in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.’’ PTRSC 3rd ser. 28, no. 2 (May 1934): 117–48.

Pedro de Coronas ‘‘The Spanish Annexation of the Carolina Outer Banks in 1566.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 2:550–555. New York: Macmillan, 1979. Vigneras, Louis-Andre´. ‘‘A Spanish Discovery of North Carolina in 1566.’’ North Carolina Historical Review 46, no. 4 (Autumn 1969): 398–415.

ˆrte-Real Gaspar and Miguel Co Brasa˜o, Eduardo. The Corte-Real Family and the New World. Lisbon: Agencia do Ultramar, 1965. Lopes, Francisco Fernandes. The Brothers Corte-Real. Lisbon: Agencia do Ultramar, 1957. Markham, Clements R. The Journal of Christopher Columbus . . . and Documents

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Esteva ˜o Gomes Scisco, L. D. ‘‘Gomez and the New York Gulf.’’ National Geographic no. 9 (August 1898): 371–73. Vigneras, Louis-Andre. ‘‘The Cartographer Diogo Ribero.’’ Imago Mundi 16 (1962): 76–83. ———. ‘‘El Viago de Esteban Go´mez a Norte America’’ (Esteva˜o Gomes’s voyage to North America). Revista de Indias 68 (1957): 189–207. ———. ‘‘The Voyage of Esteban Gomez from Florida to the Baccaloes.’’ Terrae Incognitae 11 (1970): 25–28. ‘‘The Voyage of Esteva˜o Gomes.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 1:273–79. London: Macmillan, 1979.

John Rastell Halliwell, James Orchard, ed. The Interlude of Four Elements: An Early Moral Play. London: Percy Society, 1848. Parks, George Bruner. ‘‘The Geography of The Interlude of the Four Elements.’’ Philological Quarterly 17, no. 3 (July 1938): 251–62. Parr, Johnstone. ‘‘John Rastell’s Geographical Knowledge of America.’’ Philological Quarterly 27, no. 3 (July 1948): 229–40. Pivernous, Peter J. ‘‘John Rastell’s Proposed Voyage to America from Ireland, 1517–1519.’’ Terrae Incognitae 3 (1971): 59–65. Reed, Arthur W. ‘‘John Rastell’s Voyage in the Year 1517.’’ Mariner’s Mirror 9, no. 5 (May 1923): 137–47.

John Rut Biggar, H. P. ‘‘An English Expedition to America in 1527.’’ In Me´langes Offerts a` M. Charles Bemont par Ses Amis et Ses E´le`ves a` l’Occasion de Vingt-Cinquie`me Anne´e de Son Enseignement a` l’E´cole des Hautes E´tudes (A festschrift in honor of Mr. Charles Bemont by his friends and students to mark his 25 years of teaching at the College of Advanced Studies). Paris: Librarie Alcan, 1913: 459–72. Kirkpatrick, F. A. ‘‘The First Recorded English Voyage to the West Indies.’’ English Historical Review 20, no. 77 (January 1905): 115–24.

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Giovanni da Verrazzano Bacchiani, Allessandro. ‘‘Giovanni da Verrazzano and His Discoveries in North America, 1524, According to the Unpublished Celle`re Codex of Rome, Italy.’’ In 15th Annual Report of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, 135–226. New York: American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, 1910. Brevoort, James Carson. ‘‘Notes on Giovanni da Verrazzano and on a Planisphere of 1529. Illustrating His American Voyage in 1524 with a Reduced Copy of the Map.’’ Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York 4 (1873): 146–297. ———. ‘‘Verrazzano Proved to be the First Explorer of the Atlantic Coast of the United States.’’ Magazine of American History 8, no. 7 (July 1882): 481–85. Codignola, Luca. ‘‘Another Look at Verrazzano’s Voyage, 1524.’’ Acadiensis 29, no. 1 (1999): 29–42. De Costa, B. F. ‘‘Bibliography of Verrazzano.’’ Magazine of American History 6, no. 1 (January 1881): 68–70. ———. Verrazzano The Explorer: Being a Vindication of His Letter and Voyage with an Examination of Hieronimo Da Verrazzano and a Discussion upon the Globe of Vulpius. New York: A.S. Barnes, 1880. ‘‘The French Intrusion: Giovanni da Verrazzano, 1523–1524.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 1:280–92. London: Macmillan, 1979. ‘‘Geographical Misconception: The False Sea of Verrazzano.’’ Map Forum (Spring 2004): 56–57. Ritchie, Neil. ‘‘Verrazzano in America.’’ History Today 22, no. 12 (December 1972): 843–49. Thrower, Norman J. W. ‘‘New Light on the 1524 Voyage of Verrazzano.’’ Terrae Incognitae 11 (November 1979): 59–65. Wroth, Lawrence C. The Voyages of Giovanni da Verrazzano, 1514–1528. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970.

THE STRAIT OF ANIAN (1542–1677) Concept Burney, James. ‘‘A Memoir on the Geography of the Northeastern Part of Asia, and on the Question Whether Asia and America Are Contiguous, or Are Separated by the Sea.’’ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, pt. 1 (1818): 9–23. Carey, Charles H. ‘‘Some Early Maps and Myths.’’ Oregon Historical Quarterly 30 (1929): 121–44. Engel, Samuel. Me´moires et Observations Ge´ographiques et Critiques sur la Situation des Pays Septentrionaux de l’Asie et l’Ame´rique (Geographical and critical

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Voyages Burney, James. A Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean. 5 vols. London: G. and W. Nicol, 1803–1817. Davidson, George G. ‘‘An Examination of some of the Early Voyages of Discovery and Exploration on the Northwest Coast of America from 1539 to 1603.’’ In Report of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, June 1886, 155–253. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1887. ‘‘Early English Voyages to the Pacific Coast of America.’’ Out West 17, nos. 5–6 (November–December 1902): 593–600, 723–730; 18, nos. 1–5 (January–May 1903): 73–80, 209–12, 351–54, 493–96, 627–30; 19, nos. 2–5 (August– November 1903): 203–6, 311–14, 412–17, 527–30. Gough, Barry M. Distant Dominion: Britain and the Northwest Coast of North America, 1579–1809. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980. Kohl, J. G. ‘‘History of Discovery and Exploration on the Coasts of the United States.’’ In Report of the Superintendent of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey

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´ Ferrelo Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and Bartolome Ellis, John, ed. Cabrillo’s World: A Commemorative Edition of Cabrillo Festival Historic Seminar Papers. San Diego: Cabrillo Historical Association, 1991. Kelsey, Harry. Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1986. Lemke, Nancy. Cabrillo: First European Explorer of the California Coast. San Luis Obispo, Calif.: EZ Nature Books, 1991. ‘‘The Voyage of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo (Joa˜o Rodrigues Cabrilho) up the Pacific Coast, 1542–1543.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 1:450–61. London: Macmillan, 1979. Wagner, Henry Raup. ‘‘A Map of Cabrillo’s Discoveries.’’ California Historical Society Quarterly 11 (1932): 44–46.

Fictitious Voyages of Juan de Fuca Berenson, Bernard. The Controversy of Juan de Fuca’s Claim to the Discovery of the Strait Bearing His Name. Whittier, Calif.: Nautical Research Guild, 1950. Kingston, Ceylon Samuel. ‘‘Juan de Fuca Strait: Origin of the Name.’’ Pacific Northwest Quarterly 36, no. 2 (April 1945): 155–66. Lok, Michael. ‘‘A Note Made by Me Michael Lok, the Elder, Touching the Strait of Sea, Commonly Called Fretum Anian, in the South Sea, through the Northwest Passage of Meta Incognita.’’ In Glyn Williams, Voyages of Delusion, 413– 16. London: HarperCollins, 2002. McCurdy, James G. By Juan de Fuca’s Strait: Pioneering along the Northwestern Edge of the Continent. Portland, Ore.: Metropolitan Press, 1937.

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Richard Grenville Bushnell, George Herbert. Sir Richard Grenville: The Turbulent Life and Career of the Hero of the Little Revenge. London: George G. Harrap, 1936. Chope, R. Pearse. ‘‘New Light on Sir Richard Grenville: The Projected South Seas Voyage.’’ Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association 49, no. 9 (1917): 210–46. Rouse, A. L. Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge: An Elizabethan Hero. London: Jonathan Cape, 1937.

Fictitious Voyages of Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado Amoretti, Charles. Voyage de la Mer Atlantique a` l’Oce´an Pacifique par le Nordouest dans la Mer Glaciale; par le Capitaine Laurent Ferrer Maldonado, l’an 1588. Nouvellement traduit d’un Manuscrit Espagnol, et suivi d’un Discours qui en de´montre l’Autenticite´ et la Ve´rite´ (Voyage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean by the northwest into the Arctic Ocean by Captain Laurent Ferrer Maldonaldo in 1588. Newly translated from a Spanish manuscript, together with a discourse on its authenticity and veracity). Plaisance: Imprimerie del Majuo, 1812. [Barrow, John]. ‘‘Review of Voyage de la Mer Atlantique a` l’Oce´an Pacifique par le Nord-ouest dans la Mer Glaciale.’’ Quarterly Review 16, no. 31 (October 1816): 144–72. Maldonado, Lorenzo Ferrer. ‘‘A Relation of the Discovery of the Strait of Anian Made by Me, Captain Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado in the Year 1588.’’ In Glyn Williams, Voyages of Delusion, 423–30. London: HarperCollins, 2002.

´n Vizcaı´no Sebastia ‘‘Fray Anto´nio de la Ascensio´n’s Brief Report of the Voyage of Sebastia´n Vizcaı´no up the California Coast.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 5:413– 26. London: Macmillan, 1979. Mathes, W. Michael. ‘‘California’s First Explorer: Sebastian Vizcaino.’’ Pacific History 25, no. 3 (1980): 8–14. ———. Vizcaino and Spanish Expansion in the Pacific Ocean, 1580–1630. San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1968. Torquemada, Juan de. The Voyage of Sebastian Vizcaino to the Coast of California, Together with a Map and Sebastian Vizcaino’s Letter Written at Monterey, December 28, 1603. San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1933.

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Thomas Button Christy, Miller. ‘‘Admiral Sir Thomas Button of Cardiff.’’ Reports and Transactions Cardiff Naturalist Society 29 (1896–97): 9–17. Clark, Geo. T. Some Accounts Of Sir Robert Mansel, Vice Admiral of England . . . and of Sir Thomas Button Kt., of Worlton, and of Cardiff, in the County of Glamorgan. Dowlais, Wales: Privately printed, 1883. Petheram, John. ‘‘Sir Thomas Button’s Voyage 1612.’’ Notes and Queries 8, no. 208 (22 October 1853): 385–86. Sir Thomas Button. Winnipeg: Manitoba Culture, Heritage and Recreation, Historic Resources Branch, 1984. ‘‘Some particulars of the Voyage of Sir Thomas Button for the discovery of a North-West Passage to China, Cathay and Japan AD 1612.’’ Bibliographical Miscellany 1 (15 November 1853): 5–8.

John Davis Davis, John. The Voyages And Works Of John Davis the Navigator, ed. Albert Hastings Markham. London: Hakluyt Society, 1880. ———. The Worldes Hydrographical Discription Wherein Is Proved not only by Aucthoritie of Writers, but also by Late Experience of Travellers and Reasons of Substantiall Probabilitie, that the Worlde in All His Zones, Clymats, and Places, is Habitable and Inhabited, and the Seas Likewise Universally Navigable without any Naturall Annoyance to Hinder the Same, Whereby Appears that from England There Is a Short and Speedie Passage into the South Seas, to China, Molucca, Philippina, and India by Northerly Navigation. . . . London: Thomas Dawson, 1595. Reprinted in Markham, The Voyages And Works Of John Davis the Navigator. Halladay, E. ‘‘John Davis and the North-West Passage.’’ Geographical Magazine 34, no. 9 (January 1962): 524–35. Markham, Clements R. A Life of John Davis, the Navigator, 1550–1605, Discoverer of Davis Strait. London: George Philip, 1889. McIntyre, Ruth A. ‘‘William Sanderson: Elizabethan Financier of Discovery.’’ William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 13, no. 2 (April 1956): 184–201. Neatby, Leslie H. ‘‘John Davis.’’ Arctic 37, no. 2 (June 1984): 176–77. ‘‘The Northwest Voyages of John Davis.’’ In New American World, ed. David B.

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John Dee Deacon, Richard. John Dee: Scientist, Geographer, Astrologer and Secret Agent to Elizabeth I. London: Frederick Muller, 1968. French, Peter J. John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972. McCulloch, Samuel Clyde. ‘‘John Dee: Elizabethan Doctor of Science and Magic.’’ South Atlantic Quarterly 50, no. 1 (January 1951): 72–85. Murray, Ian M. ‘‘John Dee (1527–1608).’’ In Geographers Bibliographical Studies, vol. 10, ed. T. W. Freeman, 49–55. London: Mansell, 1986. Sherman, William H. John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995. ———. ‘‘John Dee’s Role in Martin Frobisher’s Northwest Enterprise.’’ In Meta Incognita: A Discourse of Discovery, ed. Thomas H. B. Symons, 1:283–98. Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1999. Smet, Antoine de. ‘‘John Dee et Sa Place dans l’Histoire de la Cartographie’’ (John Dee and his place in the history of cartography). In My Head Is a Map, ed. Helen Wallis and Sarah Tyacke, 107–13. London: Francis Edwards and Carta Press, 1977. Taylor, E. G. R. ‘‘Hudson’s Strait and the Oblique Meridian.’’ Imago Mundi 3 (1939): 48–52. ———. ‘‘A Letter Dated 1577 from Mercator to John Dee.’’ Imago Mundi 13 (1956): 56–68. ———. ‘‘Master John Dee, Drake and the Straits of Anian.’’ Mariner’s Mirror 15, no. 2 (April 1929): 125–30. Ward, B. M. ‘‘Martin Frobisher and Dr. John Dee.’’ Mariner’s Mirror 12, no. 4 (October 1926): 453–55.

Luke Foxe and Thomas James Belford, Richard A. ‘‘In the footsteps of Captain James.’’ Beaver 293, no. 1 (Summer 1962): 38–41. Christy, Miller, ed. The Voyages of Captain Luke Foxe of Hull, and Captain Thomas James of Bristol, in Search of a North-West Passage in 1631–32; with Narratives of the Earlier North-West Voyages of Frobisher, Davis, Weymouth, Hall, Knight, Hudson, Button, Gibbons, Bylot, Baffin, Hawkridge, and Others. 2 vols. London: Hakluyt Society, 1893, 1894. Davies, Wayne K. D. Writing Geographical Exploration: Thomas James and the Northwest Passage. Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary Press, 2003.

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Martin Frobisher Auger, Reginald. ‘‘Frobisher the Fraud.’’ British Archaeology 53 (June 2000): 12–17. Boetzkes, Ottilie G. Sir Martin Frobisher’s Search for the North West Passage. New York: Exposition Press, 1964. Collinson, Richard, ed. The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher in Search of a Passage to Cathaia and India by the North-West, 1576–78. London: Hakluyt Society, 1867. Fitzhugh, William W., and Jacqueline S. Olin, eds. The Archeology of the Frobisher Voyages. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. ‘‘The Frobisher Voyages, 1576–1578.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 4:193–227. London: Macmillan, 1979. Gourlay, Iain. ‘‘The Archival Research Task Force.’’ In Symons, Meta Incognita, 1:1–5. Hogarth, D. D., et al. Martin Frobisher’s Northwest Venture, 1576–1581: Mines, Minerals, Metallurgies. Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1994. Kenyon, Walter A. ‘‘The Canadian Arctic Journal of Captain Edward Fenton, 1578.’’ Archivaria 11 (Winter 1980/81): 171–203.

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———. Tokens of Possession: The Northern Voyages of Martin Frobisher. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1975. McDermott, James. ‘‘The Company of Cathay: The Financing and Organization of the Frobisher Voyages.’’ In Symons, Meta Incognita, 1:147–78. ———. ‘‘Frobisher’s 1578 Voyage: Early Eyewitness Accounts of English Ships in the Arctic Seas.’’ Polar Record 32, no. 183 (October 1996): 325–34. ———. Martin Frobisher, Elizabethan Privateer. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001. ———. ‘‘Michael Lok, Mercer and Merchant Adventurer.’’ In Symons, Meta Incognita, 1:119–46. ———. The Navigation of the Frobisher Voyages. London: Hakluyt Society, 1998. ———, ed. The Third Voyage of Martin Frobisher to Baffin Island, 1578. London: Hakluyt Society, 2001. McDermott, James, and David W. Waters. ‘‘Cathay and the Way Thither.’’ In Symons, Meta Incognita, 2:353–99. McGhee, Robert. The Arctic Voyages of Martin Frobisher: An Elizabethan Adventure. Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2001; London: British Museum Press, 2002. Pattinson, Jeanne L. ‘‘Unearthing Frobisher’s Time Capsule.’’ Up Here 11, no. 3 (May/June 1995): 22–25. Pearce, Fred. ‘‘All That Glitters.’’ Geographical Magazine 71, no. 10 (October 1999): 14–18. Ruby, Robert. Unknown Shore: The Lost History of England’s Arctic Colony. New York: Henry Holt, 2001. Ruggles, Richard I. ‘‘The Cartography of the Frobisher Voyages.’’ In Symons, Meta Incognita, 1:179–236. Savours, Ann. ‘‘A Narrative of Frobisher’s Arctic Voyages.’’ In Symons, Meta Incognita, 1:19–54. Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, ed. The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher in Search of a Passage to Cathay and India by the North-West, A.D. 1576–1578: From the Original Text of George Best, Together with Numerous Other Versions, Additions, etc. 2 vols. London: Argonaut Press, 1938. Symons, Thomas H. B., ed. Meta Incognita: A Discourse of Discovery; Martin Frobisher’s Arctic Expeditions, 1576–1578. 2 vols. Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization with the authorization of the Meta Incognita Project Steering Committee, 1999. Taylor, E. G. R. ‘‘Voyages of Martin Frobisher.’’ Geographical Journal 91, no. 4 (April 1938): 360–63.

Humphrey Gilbert Gilbert, Humphrey. A Discourse of a Discoverie for a Newe Passage to Cataia. London: Richarde Jhones, 1576. Reprinted in New American World, ed. David B. Quinn (London: Macmillan, 1979), 3:5–23.

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Henry Hudson Abbe, Ernst C., and Frank J. Gillis. ‘‘Henry Hudson and the Early Exploration and Mapping of Hudson Bay, 1610 to 1631.’’ In Merchants and Scholars: Essays in the History of Exploration and Trade, ed. John Parker, 87–116. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1965. ‘‘The Aftermath of the Hudson Voyage.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 4:293–96. London: Macmillan, 1979. This article discusses the examination of various crew members of the Discovery, including Robert Bylot, at the inquiry into the events leading up to the abandonment of Hudson, his son, and others in Hudson Bay. Asher, G. M., ed. Henry Hudson the Navigator: the Original Documents in which his Career is recorded. London: Hakluyt Society, 1860. Burpee, Lawrence J. ‘‘The Fate of Henry Hudson.’’ Canadian Historical Review 21, no. 4 (December 1940): 401–6. ‘‘The Discovery of Hudson Bay.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 4:277–93. London: Macmillan, 1979. Includes ‘‘An Abstract of the Journall of Master Henry Hudson, for the Discoverie of the North-west Passage, begunne the seventeenth of Aprill 1610, ended with his end, Being Treacherously Exposed by some of the Companie,’’ and ‘‘A Larger Discourse of the same Voyage and the Successe thereof, written by Abacuk Pricket.’’ Duncan, George. ‘‘The Mystery of Henry Hudson.’’ Queen’s Quarterly 48, no. 2 (Summer 1941): 115–25. Gerson, Noel B. Passage to the West: The Great Voyages of Henry Hudson. New York: Julian Messner, 1968. Janvier, Thomas A. Henry Hudson: A Brief Statement of His Aims and His Achievements . . . to Which Is Added a Newly-Discovered Partial Record, Now First Published of the Trial of the Mutineers, by Whom He and Others Were Abandoned to Their Death. New York: Harper Bros., 1909. Johnson, Donald S. Charting the Seas of Darkness: The Four Voyages of Henry Hudson. Camden, Maine: International Marine; Shrewsbury, England: Airlife Publishing, 1993. Lundstrom, Linden J. The Bay Where Hudson Did Winter. Minneapolis: Associates of the James Ford Bell Library, University of Michigan, 1980. McNaughton, Douglas. ‘‘The Ghost of Henry Hudson.’’ Mercator’s World 4, no. 3 (May/June 1999): 32–39. Schuster, Carl. ‘‘Into the Great Bay: Henry Hudson’s Final Mysterious Voyage.’’ Beaver 79, no. 4 (August/September 1999): 8–15. Stevenson, Alex. ‘‘The Last Voyage.’’ North 16, no. 4 (July/August 1969): 7–15.

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Jens Munk Gosch, C. G. A., ed. Danish Arctic Expeditions 1600–1620. Book 2. The Expeditions of Captain Jens Munk to Hudson’s Bay in Search of a North West Passage in 1619–20. London: Hakluyt Society, 1897. Hansen, Thorkild. North West to Hudson Bay: The Life and Times of Jens Munk. London: Collins, 1970. ———. The Way to Hudson Bay: The Life and Times of Jens Munk. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970. Knox, John. ‘‘Jens Munk, Danish Explorer of the Canadian North.’’ Canadian Geographical Journal 65, no. 1 (July 1962): 14–19. Reprinted in American-Scandinavian Review 52, no. 2 (1964): 178–85. Munk, Jens. The Journal of Jens Munk, 1619–1620, ed. W. A. Kenyon. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1980. Suelflow, August R. ‘‘Jens Munk Expedition Commemorated.’’ Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly 65, no. 2 (1992): 81–87. Young, Delbert. ‘‘Was There an Unsuspected Killer aboard the Unicorn?’’ Beaver 304, no. 3 (Winter 1973): 9–15.

George Waymouth Birdwood, George. The Register of Letters etc of the Governour and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies 1600–1619. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1893. ‘‘The Continued Search for the Northwest Passage, 1602–1613.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 4:252–76. London: Macmillan, 1979. The Dawn of British Trade to the East Indies As Recorded in the Court Minutes of the East India Company 1599–1603. Containing an Account of the Formation of the Company. The First Adventure and Waymouth’s Voyage in Search of the North-West Passage. London: Henry Stevens, 1886. ‘‘George Waymouth Scouts Baffin Island and Labrador.’’ In New American World, ed. David B. Quinn, 4:255–61. London: Macmillan, 1979.

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William Clark and Meriwether Lewis Allen, John Logan. Lewis and Clark and the Image of the American Northwest. New York: Dover, 1991. Beckham, Stephen Dow, et al. The Literature of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: A Bibliography. Portland, Ore.: Graphic Arts Center, 2003. Benson, Guy Meriwether, ed. Lewis and Clark: The Maps of Exploration, 1507– 1814. Charlottesville, Va.: Howell Press, 2003.

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William Coates Barrow, John, Junr., ed. The Geography of Hudson’s Bay: Being the Remarks of Captain W. Coates, in Many Voyages to That Locality between the Years 1727 and 1751. With an Appendix Containing Extracts from the Log of Capt. Middleton on His Voyage for the Discovery of the North-West Passage in HMS Furnace, in 1741–2. London: Hakluyt Society, 1852. Williams, Glyndwr. ‘‘Captain Coates and Exploration along the East Main.’’ Beaver 294, no. 3 (Winter 1963): 4–13.

Arthur Dobbs and the Great Probability Barrington, Daines. Summary, Observations and Facts Collected from Late and Authentic Accounts of Russian and Other Navigators, to Show the Practicability and Good Prospects for Vessels by Sea, between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. London: J. Nourse, 1776. Brun, Christopher. ‘‘Dobbs and the Passage.’’ Beaver 289, no. 2 (Autumn 1958): 26–29. Clarke, Desmond. Arthur Dobbs, Esquire, 1689–1765: Surveyor-General of Ireland, Prospector, and Governor of North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957. Dobbs, Arthur. ‘‘A letter . . . Concerning the Distances between Asia and America.’’ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 46, no. 1 (March–May 1747): 471–76. Reprinted in Gentleman’s Magazine 19 (June 1749): 256–58. ———. A Short Narrative and Justification of the Proceedings of the Committee Appointed by the Adventurers, to Prosecute the Discovery of the Passage to the Western Ocean of America; and to Open and Extend the Trade, and Settle the Countries beyond Hudson’s Bay. . . . London: J. Robinson, 1749. ———. A Short State of the Countries and Trade of North America Claimed by the

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Thomas Swaine Drage and Charles Swaine Belch, Edwin Swift. ‘‘Arctic Expeditions Sent from the American Colonies.’’ Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 31, no. 4 (1907): 419–28. Bryant, Henry G. ‘‘Notes on an Early American Arctic Expedition in the Schooner Argo, Charles Swaine, Master, Sailing from Philadelphia March 4, 1753, to Discover the Northwest Passage.’’ Geographical Society of Philadelphia Bulletin 7 (1909): 23–28. Eavenson, Howard N. ‘‘The Clerk of the California.’’ Notes and Queries 184, no. 33 (6 November 1943): 284–85. ———. Map Maker and Indian Traders: An Account of John Patten, Trader, Arctic Explorer, and Map Maker; Charles Swaine, Author, Trader, Public Official and Arctic Explorer; Theodorus Swaine Drage, Clerk, Trader and Anglican Priest. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Pittsburgh University Press, 1949. ———. Swaine and Drage: A Sequel to ‘‘Map Maker and Indian Traders.’’ Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1950. ‘‘Historical Chronicle: America: Philadelphia November 15.’’ Gentleman’s Magazine 24 (January 1754): 46. Solis-Cohen, Bertha. ‘‘An American Search for the Northwest Passage.’’ Beaver 274, no. 2 (September 1943): 24–27. ———. ‘‘Authorship Notes.’’ Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 37 (4th qtr. 1943): 308. ———. ‘‘Bibliographical Notes.’’ Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 39 (4th qtr. 1945): 319–20. ———. ‘‘Philadelphia’s Expeditions to Labrador.’’ Pennsylvania History 19, no. 2 (April 1952): 148–62.

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James Knight Bruemmer, Fred. ‘‘Marble Island.’’ Beaver 300, no. 2 (Autumn 1969): 36–41. Geiger, John, and Owen Beattie. Dead Silence: The Greatest Mystery in Arctic Discovery. London: Bloomsbury, 1993. Knight, James. The Founding Of Churchill Being The Journal Of Captain James Knight, Governor-in-Chief in Hudson Bay, from the 14th July to the 13th September 1717, ed. James F. Kenney. Toronto: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1932. Pelly, David F. ‘‘Marble Island Revisited.’’ Above and Beyond 6, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 21–22. Ross, W. Gillies, and William Barr. ‘‘Voyages in Northwestern Hudson Bay (1720– 1772) and Discovery of the Knight Relics on Marble Island.’’ Musk-Ox, no. 11 (1972): 28–33. Schmalz, Ken. ‘‘Unlocking the Secrets of Marble Island.’’ Up Here 10, no. 1 (March/April 1994): 20–21, 23, 28. Smith, Ralph. ‘‘Discovery of One of James Knight’s Ships at Marble Island: A Preliminary Report.’’ Musk-Ox, no. 9 (1971): 12–14. ———. ‘‘Relics of James Knight.’’ Beaver 302, no. 4 (Spring 1972): 36–41. Smith, Ralph, and William Barr. ‘‘Marble Island: A Search for the Knight Expedition, August 6–15, 1970.’’ Musk-Ox, no. 8 (1971): 40–46. Unwin, Peter. ‘‘Searching for James Knight.’’ Beaver 80, no. 6 (August/September 2000): 22–25, 27–29. Zacharchuk, Walter. ‘‘The House That Knight Built.’’ Beaver 304, no. 2 (August 1973): 12–15.

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William Moor and Francis Smith Barr, William, and Glyndwr Williams, eds. The Voyage of William Moor and Francis Smith, 1746–1747. Vol. 2 of Voyages to Hudson Bay in Search of a Northwest Passage, 1741–1747. London: Hakluyt Society, 1995. Cashin, Edward J. Governor Henry Ellis and the Transformation of British North America. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993. [Drage, Theodore Swaine?]. An Account of a Voyage for the Discovery of a NorthWest Passage by Hudson’s Streights to the Western and Southern Ocean of America. Performed in the Year 1746 and 1747 in the Ship California, Captain Francis Smith. 2 vols. London: Joliffe, Corbett and Clarke, 1748. Ellis, Henry. Considerations on the Great Advantages Which Would Accrue from the Discovery of the Northwest Passage and a Clear Account of the Most Practicable Method for Attempting That Discovery. London: 1750. Reprint. San Francisco: Sutro Library, 1959. ———. A Voyage to Hudson’s-Bay, by the Dobbs Galley and California, in the Years 1746 and 1747. For Discovering a North West Passage; with an Accurate Survey of the Coast, and a Short Natural History of the Country. Together with a Fair View of the Facts and Arguments from which the Future Finding of Such a Passage is Rendered Probable. . . . London: H. Whitridge, 1748.

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Dom Mee Coates, Sam. ‘‘Relic of Ill-Fated Arctic Journey Is Home 170 Years On.’’ Times (London), 29 November 2003: 18. Gornall, Jonathan. ‘‘Marlboro Man Rides Shotgun in the Arctic.’’ Times (London), 23 July 2003: T2:6. Horsnell, Michael. ‘‘Lone Explorer Trapped by Arctic Ice for Three Days.’’ Times (London), 12 September 2003: 8.

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ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE General Byer, Doug. Northern Service. Calgary, Alberta: Detselig Enterprises, 1997. Clarke, Tom E. The Mounties Patrol the Sea. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969. Fournier, Chris. ‘‘Policing the World’s Biggest Beat.’’ Up Here 11, no. 1 (January/ February 1995): 22–25. Morrison, William R. Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894–1925. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1985. ‘‘On the Arctic Patrol: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the Far North.’’ Canada 97, no. 1276 (28 June 1930): 389–90. Rivett-Carnac, Charles. ‘‘The Establishment of the RCMP Presence in the North West Territories and the Arctic.’’ Canadian Geographical Journal 86, no. 5 (May 1973): 155–68. Steele, Harwood. Policing the Arctic: The Story of the Conquest of the Arctic by the Royal Canadian (formerly North-West) Mounted Police. London: Jarrolds, 1936.

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Henry Asbjorn Larsen Bassett, John M. Henry Larsen. Don Mills, Ontario: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1980. Delgado, James A. Dauntless St. Roch: The Mounties’ Arctic Schooner. Victoria, B.C.: Horsdal & Schubert, 1992. Dobrin, Michael. ‘‘Saga of the St. Roch.’’ Up Here (February/March 1992): 42–46. Farrar, Frederick S. Arctic Assignment: The Story of the St. Roch. Toronto: Macmillan, 1955. Godsell, Philip H. ‘‘Sea-Going Mounties Cross Roof of the World.’’ Dalhousie Review 23 (July 1943): 149–54. Grant, Shelagh D. ‘‘Why the St. Roch? Why the Northwest Passage? Why 1940? New Answers to Old Questions.’’ Arctic 46, no. 1 (1993): 82–87. Larsen, Henry Asbjorn. ‘‘The Conquest of the North West Passage: The Arctic Voyages of the St. Roch, 1940–1944.’’ Geographical Journal 110, nos. 1–3 (July/ September 1947): 1–16. ———. ‘‘East through the North West Passage.’’ Royal Canadian Mounted Police Quarterly 10, no. 2 (October 1942): 148–61. ———. The North-West Passage, 1940–1942 and 1944: The Famous Voyages of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Schooner ‘‘St.Roch.’’ Ottawa: Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Public Relations Branch, 1984. ———. ‘‘Our Return Voyage through the North-West Passage.’’ Royal Canadian Mounted Police Quarterly 10, no. 4 (April 1945): 298–320. Larsen, Henry Asbjorn, et al. The Big Ship: An Autobiography. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1967. Porsild, A. F. ‘‘Henry Asbjorn Larsen (1899–1964).’’ Arctic 18, no. 1 (March 1965): 67–68. Robinson, J. Lewis. ‘‘Conquest of the North-West Passage by R.C.M.P. Schooner St. Roch.’’ Canadian Geographical Journal 30, no. 2 (February 1945): 52–73. ———. ‘‘The Last Voyages of the St. Roch.’’ Beaver 75, no. 6 (December 1995/ January 1996): 26–31. Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Reports and Other Papers Relating to the Two Voyages of the RCMP Schooner St. Roch through the North West Passage from (1) Vancouver B.C., to Sydney, N.S. (1940–1942); (2) Dartmouth N.S. to Vancouver B.C. (1944) under the Command of Regimental No. 10407 Staff Sergeant H. A. Larsen (now Sub-Inspector). Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1945. Facsimile edi-

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General Allerston, Rosemary. ‘‘Bones and Silence.’’ Up Here 9, no. 6 (December 1993/ January 1994): 24–27. Cyriax, Richard J. ‘‘Recently Discovered Traces of the Franklin Expedition.’’ Geographical Journal 117, no. 2 (June 1951): 211–14. ———. ‘‘Sir John Franklin: A Note on the Absence of Records on the Shores Past Which He Sailed during His Last Voyage.’’ Scottish Geographical Magazine 75, no. 1 (April 1959): 30–40. ———. ‘‘The Unsolved Problem of the Franklin Expedition Records, Supposedly Buried on King William Island.’’ Mariner’s Mirror 55, no. 1 (February 1969): 23–32. Galaburri, Richard. ‘‘The Franklin Records: A Problem for Further Investigation.’’ Musk-Ox, no. 32 (1983): 62–65. Lentz, John W. ‘‘Through the Barrens by Canoe.’’ Explorers’ Journal 43, no. 1 (March 1965): 39–45. Purvis, Mifi. ‘‘In Franklin’s Footsteps.’’ Up Here 17, no. 3 (April 2001): 34–37, 49. Snow, William Parker. A Paper on the Lost Polar Expedition and Possible Recovery of Its Scientific Documents. . . . London: Edward Stanford, 1860.

L. T. Burwash Burwash, L. T. Canada’s Western Arctic: Report on Investigations in 1928–1929 and 1930. Ottawa: Department of the Interior, North West Territories and Yukon Branch, 1931. ———. ‘‘The Franklin Expedition: Major Burwash on His Finds.’’ Times (London), 29 September 1930: 11. ———. ‘‘The Franklin Search.’’ Canadian Geographical Journal 1, no. 7 (November 1930): 587–603.

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Robert Cundy Challis, Robin. ‘‘In Search of Franklin’s Papers.’’ Geographical Magazine 38, no. 4 (August 1965): 291–303. Cundy, Robert. Beacon Six. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1970. ———. ‘‘Search for Cairn Six.’’ Oval 32, no. 1 (January 1963): 3–7. Oval is the house journal of Canadian Industries, Ltd.

R. D. Gillan Binney, I. W. ‘‘In Search of Franklin.’’ Canadian Forces Sentinel 4, no. 1 (January 1968): 20–23. Wonders, William C. ‘‘Project Franklin 1967.’’ Polar Record 14, no. 90 (September 1968): 333–36. ———. ‘‘Search for Franklin.’’ Canadian Geographical Journal 76, no. 4 (April 1968): 126–27.

Rebecca Harris Amodeo, Christian. ‘‘Harris of the Arctic.’’ Geographical 75, no. 9 (September 2003): 48–51. Howker, Edward. ‘‘In the Boot-Eater’s Footsteps.’’ Daily Telegraph (London), 19 April 2003: 9. Leake, Jonathan. ‘‘Woman Takes on Arctic to Solve Riddle of Franklin.’’ Sunday Times (London), 6 April 2003: 29. ‘‘Team Retraces Route of Tragic Arctic Quest.’’ Times (London), 19 April 2003: 6.

Barry Ranford Ranford, Barry. ‘‘Bones of Contention.’’ Equinox 74 (Spring 1994): 69–87. ———. ‘‘Death in the Arctic.’’ Geographical 65, no. 6 (June 1993): 12–15. ———. ‘‘In Franklin’s Footsteps.’’ Equinox 69 (May/June 1993): 46–53. ———. ‘‘More Pieces of the Franklin Puzzle.’’ Up Here 2, no. 4 (July/August 1995): 36–39. Sykes, Lisa. ‘‘New Answers to Old Questions.’’ Geographical 67, no. 5 (May 1995): 5.

Frederick Schwatka ‘‘Address of Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka.’’ Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, no. 4 (1880): 246–58. The American Overland Expedition to the Arctic Regions in Search of Records and

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Relics of Sir John Franklin and His Brave Companions 1879–1880. London: John Tamblyn, [1881?]. Barr, William. ‘‘An Artist in Search of Franklin: Klutschak.’’ Beaver 71, no. 3 (June/July 1991): 12–25. Davis, Richard C. ‘‘Frederick Schwatka (1849–1892).’’ Arctic 37, no. 3 (September 1984): 302–3. Gilder, William H. Schwatka’s Search: Sledging in the Arctic in Quest of the Franklin Records. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Sampson Low, 1881. Johnson, Robert E. ‘‘Frederick Schwatka.’’ Wi-Iyolai (Bulletin of the South Dakota Historical Society) 20, no. 6 (September 1966): 1–6. ———. ‘‘Frederick Schwatka—Cavalry Officer, Explorer, Physician.’’ New England Journal of Medicine 278, no. 1 (January 1968): 31–35. Johnson, Robert E., et al. Schwatka: The Life of Frederick Schwatka (1849–1892), M.D., Arctic Explorer, Cavalry Officer: A Precis. Montpelier, Vt.: Horn of the Moon Enterprises, 1984. Klutschak, Heinrich. Overland to Starvation Cove: With the Inuit in Search of Franklin, 1878–1880, ed. William Barr. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987. Myerson, Ralph M. ‘‘Frederick Schwatka: The Arctic’s Great Trekker.’’ Polar Priorities 19 (1999): 41–43. Stackpole, Edouard A., ed. The Long Arctic Search: The Narrative of Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, USA, 1878–1880, Seeking the Records of the Lost Franklin Expedition. Mystic, Conn.: Marine Historical Association, 1965.

Peter Wadhams Shaw, Ian. ‘‘Arctic Explorers Miss Survival by a Short Haul.’’ Daily Telegraph (London), 13 September 1994: 14. Wadhams, Peter, and Maria Pia Casarini. ‘‘Signs of Life.’’ Geographical Magazine 66, no. 4 (April 1994): 26–27. Wadhams, Peter, and Pierre Sauvedet. ‘‘In Search of the Franklin Expedition with the Aid of ERS-1.’’ In Space at the Service of Our Environment: Proceedings of the Second ERS-1 Symposium, Hamburg, Germany, 11–14 October 1993, 1285– 1291. Paris: European Space Agency, 1994.

David Woodman Campbell, Stacy. ‘‘The Search Resumes.’’ News North, 11 August 1997: A15. Green, Jim. ‘‘On Franklin’s Trail of Terror.’’ Up Here 11, no. 2 (March/April 1995): 37–39. Woodman, David C. ‘‘Probing the Franklin Mystery.’’ Canadian Geographic 115, no. 2 (March/April 1995): 90–92.

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ADDITIONAL TOPICS Cairns Davis, Richard C., ed. Lobsticks and Stone Cairns: Human Landmarks in the Arctic. Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary Press, 1996. Reprints profiles of 100 explorers from successive issues of Arctic, June 1982 through December 1987. Gibson, William. ‘‘The Dease and Simpson Cairn.’’ Beaver 264, no. 2 (June 1940): 45. Phillips, Caroline. ‘‘The Camps, Cairns and Caches of the Franklin and Franklin Search Expeditions.’’ In The Franklin Era in Canadian Arctic History, 1845– 1859, ed. Patricia D. Sutherland, 149–73. Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1985. Trafton, Stephen J. ‘‘The Location and Mapping of the Camps and Cairns Associated with Sir John Franklin’s Last Arctic Expedition on the Northern Shores of King William Island.’’ Mariner’s Mirror 77, no. 4 (November 1991): 407–15.

Cannibalism Beattie, Owen. ‘‘A Report on Newly Discovered Human Skeletal Remains from the Last Sir John Franklin Expedition.’’ Musk-Ox, no. 33 (1983): 68–77. Beattie, Owen, and James M. Savelle. ‘‘Discovery of Human Remains from Sir John Franklin’s Last Expedition.’’ Historical Archaeology 17, no. 2 (1983): 100– 105. Keenleyside, Anne. ‘‘The Last Resort: Cannibalism in the Arctic.’’ Explorers Journal 72, no. 4 (Winter 1994/95): 138–43. Stone, Henry. The Night Side of Dickens: Cannibalism, Passion, Necessity. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1994. Stone, I. R. ‘‘The Contents of the Kettles: Charles Dickens, John Rae and Cannibalism on the 1845 Franklin Expedition.’’ Dickensian 84, no. 3 (1987): 7–16.

DEW Line Fletcher, Roy J. ‘‘Military Radar Defence Lines of North America: An Historical Geography.’’ Polar Record 26, no. 159 (October 1990): 265–76. La Fay, A. ‘‘DEW Line, Sentry of the Far North.’’ National Geographic 114, no. 1 (January 1958): 128–46. Marshall, C. J. ‘‘Operation Bellot.’’ Canadian Geographical Journal 57, no. 3 (September 1958): 104–11. Morenus, R. DEW Line: The Miracle of America’s First Line of Defense. New York: Rand-McNally, 1957. Pelly, David F. ‘‘The DEW Line.’’ North 29, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 18–23.

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Treadwell, T. R. ‘‘Hydrographic Surveys in the Arctic.’’ International Hydrographic Review 35, no. 2 (1958): 33–41.

Food and Lead Poisoning Amy, Roger. ‘‘The Last Franklin Expedition: Report of a Postmortem Examination of a Crew Member.’’ Canadian Medical Association Journal 135 (15 July 1986): 115–17. Beattie, Owen. ‘‘Elevated Bone Lead Levels in a Crewman from the Last Arctic Expedition of Sir John Franklin.’’ In The Franklin Era in Canadian Arctic History, 1845–1859, ed. Patricia D. Sutherland, 141–48. Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1985. Beattie, Owen, and John Geiger. Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition. New York: E. P. Dutton; London: Bloomsbury, 1987. Cookman, Scott. Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin’s Lost Polar Expedition. New York: John Wiley, 2000. Farrer, K. T. H. ‘‘Lead and the Last Franklin Expedition.’’ Journal of Archaeological Science 20 (1993): 399–409. ———. ‘‘Whence Came the Lead in Franklin’s Crewmen?’’ Food Science and Technology Today 3 (1989): 93–94. Keenleyside, Anne, et al. ‘‘The Final Days of the Franklin Expedition: New Skeletal Evidence.’’ Arctic 50, no. 1 (1997): 36–46. Kowal, Walter, et al. ‘‘Did Solder Kill Franklin’s Men?’’ Nature 343 (25 January 1990): 319–20. ———. ‘‘Lead Levels in Human Tissues from the Franklin Forensic Project.’’ International Journal of Environmental Analytical Chemistry 35 (1989): 119–26. ———. ‘‘Source of Identification of Lead Found in the Tissues of Sailors from the Franklin Arctic Expedition of 1845.’’ Journal of Archaeological Science 19 (1991): 193–207. Laing, E. A. M. ‘‘Introduction of Canned Food into the Royal Navy, 1821–1852.’’ Mariner’s Mirror 50, no. 2 (May 1964): 146–49. Notman, D. N. H., et al. ‘‘Arctic Palaeoradiography: Portable Radiographic Examination of Two Frozen Sailors from the Franklin Expedition (1845–1848).’’ American Journal of Roentgenology 149 (1987): 347–50. Page, Jake. ‘‘Arctic Arsenic.’’ Smithsonian 1 (February 2001): 55–68. ‘‘Preserved Meats, Navy . . . The Date and Terms of All Contracts for Preserved Meats for the Use of Her Majesty’s Navy; also the Quantities Issued . . . Specifying the Quantities Fit for Use, as well as the Quantities Either Condemned or Returned into Store as Unfit for Use, from Any of Her Majesty’s Stores or Ships, whether at Home or Abroad.’’ HCA&P 30, no. 59 (1852): 317–22. Arctic Bib 8, no. 45,231 (1959): 329. Trafton, Stephen J. ‘‘Did Lead Poisoning Contribute to Death of Franklin Expedition Members?’’ Information North 15, no. 9 (November 1989): 1–4.

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Maritime Archaeology Dotto, Lydia. ‘‘Joe MacInnis, Pioneer in the Underwater World.’’ Canadian Geographic 100, no. 3 (June/July 1980): 60–65. MacInnis, Joseph B. ‘‘The Breadalbane Project: A Progress Report.’’ Canadian Geographic 102, no. 3 (June/July 1982): 68–71. ———. ‘‘The Breadalbane Project: Implications for the Discovery of Franklin’s Ships.’’ In The Era of Franklin in Canadian Arctic History, 1845–1859, ed. Patricia D. Sutherland, 174–84. Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1985. ———. ‘‘Diving beneath Arctic Ice.’’ National Geographic 144, no. 2 (August 1973): 248–67. ———. ‘‘Exploring a 140-Year-Old Ship under Arctic Ice.’’ National Geographic 164, no. 1 (July 1983): 104A–104C. ———. The Land That Devours Ships: The Search for the Breadalbane. Montreal: C.B.C. Enterprises, 1985. Also published in England as The Search for the Breadalbane (Newton Abbot, Devon: David & Charles, 1985). McDonald, Kendall. ‘‘Finding Breadalbane: Joe MacInnis and the Great Adventure.’’ Diver 28, no. 10 (October 1983): 30–31. Payne, Doug. ‘‘Technology Lights Up an Arctic Shipwreck.’’ New Scientist 89, no. 1236 (15 January 1981): 136–39.

Scurvy Brown, Stephen A. Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail. Chichester, Sussex, England: Summersdale Publishers, 2003. Decker, Jody F. ‘‘Scurvy at York.’’ Beaver 69, no. 1 (February/March 1989): 42–48. Feeney, Robert E. Polar Journeys: The Role of Food and Nutrition. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1997. Harvie, David. Limeys: The True Story of One Man’s War against Ignorance, the Establishment, and the Deadly Scurvy. Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: 2002. Lloyd, Christopher. ‘‘The Introduction of Lemon Juice as a Cure for Scurvy.’’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine 35, no. 2 (March/April 1961): 123–32. Savours, Ann, and M. Deacon. ‘‘Nutritional Aspects of the British Arctic (Nares) Expedition of 1875–1876 and Its Predecessors.’’ In Starving Sailors, ed. J. Watt et al. Greenwich, England: National Maritime Museum, 1981, 131–62. Stewart, C. P., and Douglas Guthrie, eds. Lind’s Treatise on Scurvy: A Bicentenary Volume Containing a Reprint of the First Edition of a Treatise of the Scurvy by James Lind with Additional Notes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1953. White, William. Probable Fate of Sir John Franklin and Crew; or, The Scurvy in the Arctic Seas: and Correspondence of Captain William White with the . . . Principal Commanding Officers of the Late Arctic Expedition, on Its Prevention and Cure. London: Piper Bros., 1852.

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Sledges and Sledge Traveling Cyriax, Richard J. ‘‘Arctic Sledge Travelling by Officers of the Royal Navy, 1819– 1849.’’ Mariner’s Mirror 49, no. 2 (May 1963): 127–42. Mackinnon, C. S. ‘‘The British Man-Hauled Sledging Tradition.’’ In The Franklin Era in Canadian Arctic History, 1845–1859, ed. Patricia D. Sutherland, 129–40. Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1945. Marsh, D. B. ‘‘The Mudding of Sledge Runners.’’ Polar Record 4, no. 27 (January 1944): 139–40. McClintock, Francis Leopold. ‘‘On Arctic Sledge Travelling.’’ PRGS 19 (1875): 464–79. Reprinted in Antarctic Manual for the Use of the Expedition of 1901 (London: Royal Geographical Society, 1901), 293–304. Mills, William James. ‘‘Man-Hauling.’’ In Exploring Polar Frontiers: A Historical Encyclopedia, 2:399–401. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 2003. ———. ‘‘Sledges and Sleds.’’ In Exploring Polar Frontiers: A Historical Encyclopedia, 2:612–14. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 2003. Wallace, Hugh N. ‘‘Rae on Flat Sleds and Sleds with High Runners.’’ In The Navy, the Company, and Richard King, 1829–1860, 170–71. Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1980.

Sovereignty Byrne, J. ‘‘Canada and the Legal Status of Ocean Space in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.’’ University of Toronto Faculty of Law Revue 28 (1970): 1–16. Elliott-Meisel, Elizabeth B. Arctic Diplomacy: Canada and the United States in the Northwest Passage. New York: Peter Lang, 1998. Green, L. C. ‘‘Canada and Arctic Sovereignty.’’ Canadian Bar Review 48 (1970): 748–75. Head, I. L. ‘‘Canadian Claims to Territorial Sovereignty in the Arctic Regions.’’ McGill Law Journal 9 (1962–1963): 200–226. Hindell, Keith. ‘‘Canada’s Arctic Claim.’’ Geographical Magazine 52, no. 1 (January 1980): 16–20. Honderich, John. Arctic Imperative: Is Canada Losing the North? Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987. Johnston, V. Kenneth. ‘‘Canada’s Title to the Arctic Islands.’’ Canadian Historical Review 14, no. 1 (March 1933): 24–41. King, William Frederick. Report upon the Title of Canada to the Islands North of the Mainland of Canada. Ottawa: Government Printing Office, 1905. Konan, R. W. ‘‘The Manhattan’s Arctic Conquest and Canada’s Response in Legal Diplomacy.’’ Cornell International Law Journal 3 (1970): 189–204. Morris, Margaret W. ‘‘Boundary Problems Relating to the Sovereignty of the Canadian Arctic.’’ Musk-Ox, no. 6 (1970): 32–58.

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Pharand, Donat. Canada’s Arctic Waters in International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. ———. The Northwest Passage: Arctic Straits. Amsterdam: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984. Pullen, Thomas C. ‘‘What Price Canadian Sovereignty?’’ United States Naval Institute Proceedings 113, no. 9 (1987): 66–72. Reinhard, W. G. ‘‘International Law: Implications of the Opening of the Northwest Passage.’’ Dickinson Law Review 74 (1970): 678–90. Sevunts, Levon. ‘‘Northwest Passage Redux: As Ice Melts, Canada Aims to Reassert Sovereignty.’’ Washington Times (12 June 2005). Smith, Gordon W. ‘‘Canada’s Arctic Archipelago: 100 Years of Canadian Jurisdiction.’’ North 27, no. 1 (Spring 1980): 10–15; and no. 2 (Summer 1980): 10–17. ———. ‘‘Sovereignty in the North: The Canadian Aspect of an International Problem.’’ In The Arctic Frontier, ed. R. St J. MacDonald. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966, 194–255. ———. ‘‘Still Unresolved after Fifty Years: The Northwest Passage in Canadian– American Relations, 1946–1998.’’ American Review of Canadian Studies 29, no. 3 (1999): 407–30. ———. ‘‘The Transfer of Arctic Territories from Great Britain to Canada and Some Related Matters as Seen in Official Correspondence.’’ Arctic 14, no. 1 (March 1961): 53–73.

About the Author

A Man of Kent, as opposed to a Kentish Man (it depends on which side of the River Medway), Alan Day was born in Maidstone in 1932. He was a qualified librarian for 45 years, his interest in the Northwest Passage first kindled by George Malcolm Thomson’s The North-West Passage (1975). In 1986 he published Search for the Northwest Passage: An Annotated Bibliography and continued his interest by submitting a thesis, ‘‘The British Search for the Northwest Passage: Concept, Motive, Achievement, 1490–1854,’’ to the Victoria University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. He is also a graduate of the University of Cambridge (M.A.) and the University of Leeds (M.Phil.). Dr. Day is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (formerly the Library Association). When he retired in 1990, he was head of the Department of Library and Information Studies at Manchester Polytechnic. Dr. Day has contributed articles and essays to a wide variety of academic and professional journals, including such diverse publications as Alexandria, Army Quarterly & Defence Journal, Bulletin des Bibliothe` ques de France, Information Management Report, Journal of the J. B. Priestley Society, Literary Review, and Logos. He is the author of J. B. Priestley: An Annotated Bibliography (1979) and A Supplement (2001); three volumes on the British Library (1988, 1994, and 1998); three titles in the World Bibliographical Series, England (1993), Falkland Islands (1996) and St. Helena (1997); and Historical Dictionary of the Discovery and Exploration of Australia (2003). He was the joint editor/compiler of four editions of Walford’s Guide to Reference Material, vol. 2, Social and Historical Sciences (1990, 1994, 1998, and 2000).

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