Giles Milton - Nathaniel’s Nutmeg

Arctic Whirlwinds

T WAS THE LOOK-OUT who saw them first. Two crippled vessels, rotting and abandoned, lay at anchor close to the shoreline. Their hulls were splintered and twisted, their sails in tatters and their crew apparently long since dead. But it was not a tropical reef that had wrecked the ships and nor was it malaria that had killed the crew. England's maiden expedition to the Spice Islands had come to grief in the ice-bound waters of the Arctic.

The historic 1553 voyage was the brainchild of a newly founded organisation known as the Mystery, Company and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Unknown Lands. So impatient were these merchants to enter the spice race yet so unprepared for the risks and dangers - that they allowed enthusiasm to overrule practicalities and long before the ships had left port a catalogue of errors threatened to jeopardise their mission. The choice of expedition leader, or 'pilot-general', was sensible enough. Richard Chancellor was 'a man of great estimation' who had gained some experience of seafaring in his formative years. His adoptive father, Henry Sidney, so eulogised his young charge when presented to the Company that the merchant adventurers thought they had a new Magellan in their midst. Sidney explained that it was Chancellor's 'good parts of wit' that made him so invaluable and, never shy to blow his own trumpet, added, 'I rejoice in myself that I have nourished and maintained that wit.'

When a doubting merchant tackled Sidney on his enthusiasm for being separated from Chancellor the old man had a ready answer. 'I do now part with Chancellor not because I make little reckoning of the man, or because his maintenance is burdenous and chargeable unto me. You know the man by report, I by experience; you by words, I by deeds; you by speech and company, but I by the daily trial of his life.'

Sidney's rhetoric won the day and Chancellor was promptly given command of the Edward Bonaventure, the largest of the expedition's three ships. The governors then turned to choosing a captain for the expedition's other large ship, the Bona Esperanza. For reasons that remain obscure they plumped for Sir Hugh Willoughby, a 'goodly personage' according to the records, but one who had absolutely no knowledge of navigation. Such a man would have been a risk for the short hop across the English Channel; to despatch him to the uttermost ends of the earth was to court disaster.

When it came to deciding the passage to the Spice Islands the merchant adventurers were most insistent. Although they had watched the Spanish and Portuguese successfully sail both east and west to the East Indies, they plumped for an altogether more eccentric option. Their ships, it was decided, would head due north; a route that would shave more than two thousand miles off the long voyage to the Spice Islands. It would have the added benefit of avoiding conflict with the Portuguese who had been sailing the eastern route for almost a century and had established fortified bastions in every port. There was also the question of illness and climate to consider. English mariners had seen the Portuguese ships return home with their crews decimated by dysentery and typhoid, often contracted in the tropical climes of the Indian Ocean. At least one man in five could expect death on the long voyage to the East but that number was frequently much higher and often entire ships had to be abandoned due to a shortage of crew. Since the Portuguese were acclimatised by birth to a hot climate men questioned how English sailors, brought up on the frosty fringes of northern Europe, could hope to return in rude health.

The expedition ran into trouble before it even set sail. During delays at Harwich, it was discovered that a large part of the provisions was already rotten, while the wine casks had been so badly assembled that the wine was leaking freely though the joints in the wood. But with the wind in their favour the captains decided there was no time to restock the ships and the expedition set sail on 23 June 1553.

So long as the vessels stuck together under the capable direction of Richard Chancellor they were unlikely to run into trouble. But as they rounded the rocky shores of northern Norway, 'there came such flows of winde and terrible whirlewinds' that Willoughby's ship was blown off course. Chancellor had planned for such an eventuality, suggesting that the ships regroup at Vardohuus, a small island in the Barents Sea. He waited for seven days but, hearing nothing of either the Bona Esperanza or the Confidentia, the third ship of the fleet, he pushed on eastwards towards the White Sea.

The other two vessels had also survived the storm. After riding out the gale, Sir Hugh re-established contact with

the Confidentia and both headed towards the coastline. Here Willoughby's inexperience began to tell. He sounded the sea floor, pored over charts and scratched his head before concluding that 'the land lay not as the globe made mention.' Failing to locate Vardohuus's or Chancellors vessel, he decided to press on with the expedition without the flagship.

On 14 August 1553, he 'descried land', apparently uninhabited, at 72 degrees latitude but failed to reach it due to the quantity of ice in the water. If this reading is correct, his ship must have reached the barren islands of Novaya Zemlya which lie, remote and isolated, in the Barents Sea. From here he appears to have sailed south-east, then northwest, then south-west, then north-east. The ignorance of Willoughby and his men is staggering, for their course, more than three hundred miles inside the Arctic Circle, must have taken them in a giant arc through a dangerous sea littered with melting pack-ice. On 14 September, they again sighted land and shortly afterwards 'sailed into a faire bay' somewhere close to the present border between Finland and Russia. Willoughby s men were cheered by the sight of 'very many seal fishes, and other great fishes; and upon the main we saw beares, great deere, foxes with divers strange beasts'. They planned at first to spend a week here but 'seeing the yeare far spent, and also very evill weather, as frost, snow, and haile', they decided to winter in the bay.

The expedition's directors in London must by now have hoped that their ships had found the North-East Passage, broken through it, and be well on their way to the Spice Islands. But instead of balmy evenings and gently swaying palm trees, Willoughby and his men had met with freezing fog, impenetrable ice, and the realisation that London's merchants had made a terrible mistake when they chose the route over the North Pole. Those merchants had vociferously defended their decision, presenting logical and compelling arguments to support their theories. As far back as the year 1527, Robert Thorne, an English trader living in Seville, had written to King Henry VIII with the exciting (and highly secret) news that the Spice Islands could be reached by way of the North Pole: 'I know it is my bounden duty to manifest this secret unto your Grace,' he wrote, 'which hitherto, as I suppose, hath beene hid. 'The King was left in no doubt that 'by sailing northward and passing the Pole, descending to the Equinoctial line, we shall hit these islands [the Spice Islands], and it should be a much shorter way than either the Spaniards or Portingals have.'