Company, a message was sent to its Directors, asking them to transfer their privileges to the new association. This the Muscovy Company at first refused to do. It also refused to conduct the enterprise in partnership with the East In lia Company, and announced its intention of undertaking the voyage itself, without specifying any time for the enterprise or giving any token of immediate action. At a meeting of the East India Company Directors in November it was agreed that "an enterprise of such importance should not be slacked;" and a fresh message was sent to the Muscovy Company to the effect that if it would really take the work in hand it should be left to do it in its own way, or that the East India adventurers were still willing to enter upon it in conjunction with the Muscovy traders; but that, if the Muscovy traders refused either of these plans, an appeal would be made to the Privy Council. That threat was enforced, and the Muscovy Company was in December ordered by the Queen to take its part in the projected voyage. It appears to have been still obstinate, and to have transferred its privileges to the rival association.

This, however, gave no annoyance to the East India Company. Its object was gained, and the few following months of winter were spent in completing the preparations that had been begun in the summer. On the 10th of April, 1602, the formal articles of agreement with Waymouth were signed; and on the 24th John Cartwright, a London preacher, who had already travelled in Persia, and written an account of his jour

1601-1602.] The Difficulties of its Setting Out.

301

ney,* was chosen to go with Waymouth as his chief adviser. All the preparations were completed by the end of April, and the East India Company was in "great hope that there is a possibility of discovery of a nearer passage into the East Indies, by seas by the way of the north-west, if the same be undertaken by a man of knowledge in navigation, and of a resolution to put in execution all possibility of industry and valour for the attaining of so inestimable benefit to his native country and his own perpetual honour."† Perhaps Waymouth was such a man; but the work to which he applied himself, almost sure to have failed in any case, was brought to premature failure by his chief adviser, John Cartwright, and his inefficient crew.

With two little vessels, the Discovery, of 70 tons burthen, and the Godspeed, of 60 tons burthen, victualled for sixteen months, and having thirty-five men and boys on board, he started from Ratcliffe on the 2nd of May. He was instructed "to sail towards the coast of Greenland, and pass on unto the seas by the northwest towards Cathay or China, without giving over proceeding on his course so long as he found any possibility to make a passage through those seas, and not to return for any let or impediment whatever until one year had been bestowed in attempting the passage." He was, in fact, to avail himself of all the experience

*The Preacher's Travels, in OSBORNE'S Harleian Collection of Voyages. + The preceding account of the preparations for Waymouth's voyage are from SAINSBURY, vol. i., pp. 128-133.

The following details are from Waymouth's Journal in PURCHAS, vol. iii., pp. 809-814.

attained by Davis fifteen years before, and to do his best in realizing the hopes which Davis, for want of support, had been forced to abandon. Had the work been entrusted to Davis himself, it might have had a different issue.

Following Davis's track Waymouth reached the north-western part of Greenland on the 18th of June. Thence he sailed almost due west, and on the 29th he had sight of the northern part of Frobisher's Meta Incognita, then generally known as Warwick's Foreland. It was covered with snow, and along the coast were snow-covered masses, of which no one could say whether they were icebergs or rocks. Waymouth attempted to enter Frobisher's Straits, judging that therein he would find the coveted north-western passage to India. But contrary winds kept him at sea during sixteen or seventeen days, which he spent in sailing up and down the neighbouring coast, and that short time sufficed to sicken his sailors of their arctic voyaging. They were all puzzled by the numerous islands that they saw dimly through the fogs that oppressed them, and by the conflicting currents, formed of melting ice, that pressed upon them with a force which, in the darkness, was especially alarming. They were sorely frightened, too, by the distant rumble and turmoil of cracking ice and shivering icebergs, and yet more by the intense cold which froze their sails, ropes, and tackling, so as to render them almost unmanageable. At length, on the 19th of July, says Waymouth, "all our men conspired secretly together to bear up the helm for Eng

1602.]

66

Its Disastrous Ending.

303

land while I was asleep in my cabin, and there to have kept me by force until I had sworn unto them that I would not offer any violence unto them for so doing." Waymouth woke up in time to prevent the full accomplishment of this mutinous purpose; but having all or nearly all his men in league against him, with John Cartwright, the parson, at their head, he was forced in the end to give way to them. They insisted upon being taken out of this icy region, alleging that their demand was a matter builded upon reason, and not proceeding upon fear or cowardice." All Waymouth could do was to induce them to carry him in a southerly direction as far as the great channel discovered by Frobisher in 1578, but first properly explored by Henry Hudson in 1610. Waymouth entered Hudson's Straits on the 25th of July, and sailed along it for about three hundred miles. Then he was forced to turn back. He touched the coast of Labrador between the 5th and the 17th of August. On the 18th a violent storm nearly destroyed his ships, and the sailors thereupon obliged him to return at once to England. He reached Dartmouth on the 5th of September.

In the stringent inquiry which the East India Company instituted as to the cause of this unfortunate ending of Waymouth's expedition, it appears that Cartwright" did confess and justify that he was the persuader and mover of the company to return for England and give over the voyage." Waymouth was not blamed, and it was proposed that, in the following year, a new and better-manned voyage to Davis's

Straits should be intrusted to him.* But the proposals came to nothing. The East India Company found more profitable work in southern voyaging to India, after the plan initiated by Lancaster; and the task of arctic searching, in succession to John Davis, was left to Henry Hudson, in the reign of James I.

* SAINSBURY, vol. i., pp. 135-138.

END OF VOL. I.

LONDON PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET

AND CHARING CROSS.