Champlain Samuel de - Gods mercies: rivalry, betrayal, and the dream of discovery

Praise for Gods Mercies

[Hunters] latest book intersects the lives of two iconic seven-teenth-century explorers in a meticulously researched work thats also a storytelling success Its tough to marry historical scholar ship and entertainment but Hunter gets the balance just right as he plows through the historical evidence and pulls pieces of the puzzle together. Adventures in Canadian history dont come much better than this.

Winnipeg Free Press

Few literary pleasures are greater than that of being comfortably ensconced in an easy chair in the warmth of the twenty-first century while reading about the brutish ordeals of seafarers in the seven teenth century. Douglas Hunters book about the intersecting lives of Henry Hudson and Samuel de Champlain has plenty of such moments Hunter writes with the kind of vividness that makes you want to pull the blankets closer [His] research and writing skills are impeccable a first-rate adventure story.

Calgary Herald

A page-turner thanks to his skill as a craftsman, Hunter makes the story work While eschewing cutting-edge pyrotechnics, [he] holds our interest because he avidly engages with his material Bottom line? Gods Mercies is entertaining, enlightening and significant: Bravo!

The Globe and Mail

A work that combines scholarly rigour and fresh insight A riveting account.

Literary Review of Canada

Let Douglas Hunter join the ranks of Canadas greatest explorers. His journey into the lives and curiously intertwined fates of Henry Hudson and Samuel de Champlain is the stuff of great adventure and even new discovery. Theres enough wind in this writers sails to carry the reader effortlessly through the European foundingor perhaps we should say invasionof the land we now call Canada. A grand achievement indeed.

Roy MacGregor, author of Canadians: A Portrait of a Country and Its People

ALSO BY DOUGLAS HUNTER

Against the Odds
Trials (co-author)
Open Ice
A Breed Apart
Champions
War Games
Scotty Bowman
The Glory Barons
Yacht Design Explained (co-author)
Molson
The Bubble and the Bear
Yzerman
Building the Best (co-author)

For Anne and Bill

1. M OUNT H EKLA

2. B REIDA F JORD

3. C APE F AREWELL

4. S MITH S OUND

5. A LDERMAN J ONES S OUND

6. L ANCASTER S OUND

7. C UMBERLAND S OUND

8. F ROBISHER B AY (F ROBISHER S TRAIT ; L UMLEY S I NLET )

9. R ESOLUTION I SLAND

10. T HE F URIOUS O VERFALL

11. C HIDLEY C APE

12. U NGAVA B AY

13. A KPATOK I SLAND

14. H UDSON S TRAIT (M ISTAKEN S TRAIT )

15. C APE W OLSTENHOLME AND THE D IGGES I SLANDS

16. S ALISBURY I SLAND

17. N OTTINGHAM I SLAND

18. F OXE B ASIN (M ARE M AGNUM )

19. M ANSEL I SLAND

20. C OATS I SLAND

21. S OUTHAMPTON I SLAND

22. M OUTH OF N ELSON R IVER

23. J AMES B AY

24. R UPERT B AY

25. N AIN

26. G ULF OF S T. L AWRENCE

27. S AGUENAY R IVER

28. L AC S T -J EAN

29. S T. L AWRENCE R IVER

30. R ICHELIEU R IVER

31. L AKE C HAMPLAIN AND L AKE G EORGE

32. H UDSON R IVER

33. T HE G REAT R APID

34. O TTAWA R IVER

35. S UMMER CAMP OF T ESSUAT

36. L AKE N IPISSING

37. G EORGIAN B AY

38. L AKE H URON

39. H URONIA

40. L AKE S UPERIOR

41. L AKE M ICHIGAN

42. L AKE E RIE

43. L AKE O NTARIO

44. L AHAVE (P ORT DE LA H VE )

45. G EORGES R IVER

46. C APE C OD

47. N EW Y ORK B AY

48. D ELAWARE B AY

49. C HESAPEAKE B AY

EUROPEAN SETTLEMENTS
( WITH YEARS OF OCCUPATION )

F RENCH

A. LE DE B OURBON (S ABLE I SLAND ) 15981603

B. T ADOUSSAC 160001

C. S T e-C ROIX 160405

D. P ORT R OYAL 160507, 161013

E. Q UEBEC 1608 PRESENT

E NGLISH

F. E LIZABETH S I SLE 1602

G. S AGADAHOC 160708

H. J AMESTOWN 1607 PRESENT

I. C UPERS C OVE 1610?

CONTENTS

PART I

PART II

PART III

PART 1

Beyond the Furious Overfall

One

O N S EPTEMBER 6, 1611 , a veritable ghost shipsails flapping seemingly untended, the hull gnawed by pack ice and gouged by groundings, her course speaking more of accident than intentdrifted from the western horizon into the reluctant company of fishermen setting seines for mackerel off Dursey Island, on Irelands south coast. The eight emaciated Englishmen aboard the bark Discovery had all but given up hope of ever reaching a friendly shore.

It had been a mistake not to steer for Newfoundland when theyd had the chance, and instead to trust that a favourable new breeze could carry them all the way home. The wind had failed them. First, the grain supply ran out, followed by the stock of wild birds they had killed. After exhausting their individual daily ration of salt broth and half a bird, they resorted to eating tallow candlesand, as a special treat, the marrow of gnawed bird bones fried in candle grease and dressed with vinegar. They were so weakened that they sat rather than stood at the whipstaff to steer the ship, and they steered her badly. As one survivor, Habakkuk Prickett, wrote of his skeletal shipmates, they cared not which end went forward some of them would sit and see the foresail or mainsail fly up to the tops, the sheets being either flown or broken, and would not help it themselves, nor call to others for help.

Their last hope had been to make Ireland, and they had begun to fear that they had missed it altogether. With a few more careless turns at the whipstaff, they might well have blundered too far south to spy their intended landfall. They then could have missed Lands End, or even strayed south of Brest and into the Bay of Biscay, by which point the