Part 3 (1/2)
When they had entered that spacious sea--rounding the cape which then received its name of Cape Wolstenholrew plentifully, and where there was ”great store of fowle” prickett records that the crew urged Hudson ”to stay a daye or two in this place, telling hiht there bee had But by no means would he stay, as not pleased with the ust 3d, the day on which Hudson's log ends prickett adds, significantly: ”So we left the fowle, and lost our way downe to the South West”
By September, the ”Discovery” was come into James Bay, at the southern extremity of Hudson's Bay; and then it was that the serious trouble began By prickett's showing, there seeard to the shi+p's course; and of so violent a sort that strong measures were required to maintain discipline The outcome was that ”our Master took occasion to revive oldhis mate, and the boatswaine froreat bay of ice”
For what happened at that time we have a better authority than prickett The ”Note” of Tho it, throws light upon the e went on As the only conte Hudson's side of the matter it is of first importance--we may be very sure that it would not have come down to us had it been discovered by the mutineers--and I cite it here in full as Purchas prints it:
”The tenth day of September, 1610, after dinner, our Master called all the Coether, to heare and beare witnesse of the abuse of so beene the request of Robert Juet), that the Master should redresse soainst this Juet: which thing after the Master had examined and heard with equitie what hee could say for hireat abuses, and ainst the Master, and [the] action by Juet, that there was danger to have suffered theer: and it was fit time to punish and cut off farther occasions of the like mutinies
”It was proved to his face, first with Bennet Mathew, our Truht of Island [Iceland], and he confest, that he supposed that in the action would be hter, and proue bloodie to so of the Companie, hee did threaten to turne the head of the shi+p home from the action, which at that ti of amendment
”Thirdly, it was deposed by Philip Staffe, our Carpenter, and Ladlie Arnold [Arnold Ludlow] to his face upon the holy Bible, that hee perswaded theed, and Swords readie in their Cabbins, for they should be charged with shot ere the Voyage was over
”Fourthly, wee being pestered in the Ice, hee had used words tending to ement, and slander of the action, which easily took effect in those that were tiht easily have overthrowne the Voyage: and now lately being imbayed in a deepe Bay, which the Master had desire to see, for soether to put the Co in cold: Jesting at our Master's hope to see Bantam by Candleainst the Master, hee was deposed, and Robert Bylot [Bileth, or Byleth], who had showed hiood of the action, was placed in his stead the Masters Mate
”Also Francis Clement the Boatson, at this tiht more fit, preferred to his place This man had basely carried himselfe to our Master and the action
”Also Adrian Mooter was appointed Boatsons mate: and a proes should rees should bee equally diuided betweene Wilson and one John King, to the owners good liking, one of the Quarter Masters, who had very well carryed themselves to the furtherance of the businesse
”Also the Master promised, if the Offenders yet behaued theood, and that hee would forget injuries, with other adhter for this testament of the poor ”Student in the Mathematickes” whose loyalty to his commander cost him his life At times, Hudson seerave crisis he did not temporize For cause, he disrated his chief officers: and so asserted in that desolate place, as fearlessly as he would have asserted it in an English harbor, that aboard his shi+p his as law
But his strong action only scotched theseven weeks deals hat he i up and down James Bay He casts reflections upon Hudson's seamanshi+p in such phrases as ”our Master would have the anchor up, against the eth thereto”; and in all that he writes there is a perceptible note of resent on board Especially does this feeling show in his account of their settling into winter quarters: ”Having spent threenow the last of October, ent downe to the East, to the botto of that ent for The next day ent to the South and South West, and found a place, whereunto we brought our shi+p and haled her aground And this was the first of November By the tenth thereof ere frozen in”
And then the Arctic night closed down upon them: and with it the certainty that they were prisoners in that desolate freezing darkness until the sun should coo to pieces in the Arctic Captain Back, who coe (1836), has told how there cos on, ”a weariness of heart, a blank feeling, which gets the better of the whole man”; and Colonel Brainard, of the Greely expedition, wrote: ”Take any set of men, however carefully selected, and let theether as are thethe sa the same faces, day after day--and they will soon become weary of one another's society and impatient of one another's faults”
The Greely expedition--composed of twenty-five men, of whom only seven were found alive by the rescue party--in many ways parallels, and pointedly illustrates, the Hudson expedition
There was dissension in Greely's cory protests co the sending back of Coleburne in the pink--of oneJuet's insubordination--objected so strongly to Greely's regulations that he gave in his resignation and tried, unsuccessfully, to overtake the ”Proteus” and go hoer, he was not restored to his rank, and re superseded--a malcontent
One of the commentators on the expedition thus has summarized the conditions of that dreadful winter of 1883-84: ”It was now October, and the situation of the explorers was becos seem to have increased with their peril As the weary days of starvation and death wore on, nearly every rievance Israel was repri Brainard of unfairness in the distribution of articles Bender annoyed the whole ca his bed-clothes; Pavy and Henry accused Fredericks, the cook, of not giving thebury had a quarrel that barely stopped short of blows Then Jeas accused of selecting the heaviest dishes of those issued Bender and Schneider had a fist fight in their sleeping bag; and on one occasion Bender was so violent that a general mutiny was imminent, and Greely says in his written record:
'If I could have got Long's gun I would have killed him' Bender brutally treated Ellison, as very weak; and Schneider abused Whistler as he was dying--the second occurrence of the kind The thefts of food by Henry, and his execution, forh it did not entirely stop the effects of the conditions of Arctic life and privations upon men who in other circumstances were able to dwell at peace with their fellows”
[Illustration: BARENTZ'S shi+P IN THE ICE
FROM DE VEER DRIE SEYLAGIEN, AMSTERDAM, 1605]
Out of those conditions came like results aboard Hudson's shi+p: discontent developing into insubordination; hatred of the co on to tragedies--as nified into catastrophes and little injuries into deadly wrongs Strictly in keeping with the mean traditions of the Arctic is the fact that the point of departure of the final ray cloth gowne”