The Arctic Pre-1900

Before 1800

For centuries men entered the North American Arctic not in the hopes of reaching the pole but in quest for what became a Holy Grail of maritime navigation – the Northwest Passage. Somewhere in the wastelands of ice and sea there was, they believed, a navigable route from Atlantic to Pacific. This Northwest Passage, if only it could be found, would open up a new avenue to the riches of Asia. In search of it, the early explorers of the Arctic endured terrible hardships and many of them lost their lives.

The very first expeditions were English. Martin Frobisher was the archetypal Elizabethan seadog – daring, independent and bloody-minded – and he was one of those captains who fought off the Spanish Armada in 1588. He was also an intrepid, if slightly deluded, explorer of the Canadian Arctic. In 1576, backed by the Muscovy Company of London merchants, he sailed north-west and eventually landed on what is now Baffin Island. After an assortment of misadventures, including the capture of some of his men by a group of native people, he returned home, carrying samples of a black rock which, Frobisher was firmly convinced, contained gold enough to justify the despatch of further expeditions. Investors, including the Queen, agreed with him and he led two further journeys to the region. He brought back close to 1500 tons of the mysterious ore but, despite all Frobisher's hopes for it, it proved almost entirely worthless.

None the less, other English mariners followed in Frobisher's wake. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who was Sir Walter Raleigh's half-brother and had written an influential treatise on 'a new passage to Cathay' in the 1570s, sailed for Newfoundland in 1583 and took possession of it for Elizabeth I. On his way back home, the ship on which he was sailing went down and all on board drowned. John Davis, like Gilbert a Devon man, undertook a series of voyages in the late 1580s to the strait west of Greenland which now bears his name. Perhaps most significantly, Henry Hudson made four journeys into Arctic waters from 1607 onwards, acting on behalf of companies of London merchants in search of a new commercial route. On the last of his voyages, in 1610, he entered the bay now named after him and he and his men were forced by the ice to winter on shore. In the spring of the following year, the captain was eager to explore his bay further but most of the sailors with him were less enthusiastic about the prospect. Cold, miserable and frightened, they just wanted to go home. They mutinied and forced Hudson, his son and a few loyal crewmen into a small boat which was then set adrift. The occupants of the small boat were never seen again. The mutineers returned to London where they admitted what they had done but put the blame on two ringleaders who had conveniently died on the voyage home. Some of the survivors were put on trial but acquitted.

Meanwhile other ex