William Baffin – The Explorer

The Golden Age of Antarctic exploration (1897–1922) produced a host of heroes, whom we regularly feature in this section. Yet as early as three centuries before the ‘Heroic Age’, daring men ventured into unknown, icy Arctic regions in search of adventure, fame and trade routes.

One of the heroes of this ‘Dark Age’ is the Englishman William Baffin (1584–1622). Long after his death, Baffin Bay – the marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean between Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago – was named after him. Baffin Island, the fifth-largest in the world, also bears his name.

Exactly when and where Baffin was born has been lost in the mists of history. He first came to prominence as a seafarer in 1615. To illustrate his world and the spirit of the age, here are a few key events from that year: in Europe, a Little Ice Age was causing wailing and misery. In the year 1615, the Catholic Church forced Galileo to recant his blasphemous claim that the Earth was round and orbited the Sun – failing which he would face death by burning at the stake. Cervantes completed his *Don Quixote*, Rubens immortalised the voluptuous *Venus at her Mirror*, and Kepler devised a formula for calculating the volume of a barrel. The Inca Empire is on its last legs, Cape Horn is rounded for the first time, and Japan closes its doors to the rest of the world. Trading companies such as the British East India Company, founded in 1600, lay the foundations for globalisation and make their shareholders fabulously wealthy.

And our hero is travelling west of Greenland, aboard the ‘Discovery’, under the command of Robert Bylot. They are searching for a Northwest Passage that would considerably shorten the route from Europe to East Asia. The expedition is financed by the Muscovy Company, the Russian counterpart to the British East India Company. Baffin had already earned his spurs earlier: first in 1612 as a helmsman on the James Hall expedition to the west coast of Greenland, and in 1613 and 1614 on two expeditions to Spitsbergen, where they scouted out lucrative whaling grounds for the Muscovy Company.

On the ‘Discovery’ in 1615, Baffin achieved his first pioneering feat: he determined the longitude from aboard a ship, albeit, unfortunately, using the rather imprecise lunar distance method. The final, precise solution to the problem of longitude would not be found until 1775, during James Cook’s second circumnavigation of the globe, thanks to a precise clock. The crew of the ‘Discovery’ explored and mapped Hudson Strait and Southampton Island, but turned back without having discovered the Northwest Passage. In his report, Baffin expressed the view that it must be sought further north.

This is precisely what the second ‘Discovery’ expedition set out to do; with a crew of 17, it set sail from Gravesend, England, on 26 March 1616 and headed for Davis Strait, west of Greenland. Baffin’s plan is to press northwards from here. On 20 May, the ‘Discovery’ drops anchor at the northern tip of Disko Island; ten days later, it passes Sanderson’s Hope. John Davis had already reached this point 50 years earlier. The ‘Discovery’ sailed undaunted further north, reaching the northernmost point of the voyage at Smithsund on 20 June at 77 degrees 45 minutes, and on 12 July the expedition’s actual destination, Lancaster Sound, the entrance to the Northwest Passage. Unfortunately, neither Baffin nor anyone on board the ‘Discovery’ realised this. He noted in his report that there was ‘no passage and no hope of finding one’. It was not until over 200 years later, in 1818 and 1819, that John Ross and Edward Parry proved that Baffin had been correct and that he had found the entrance to the Northwest Passage.

In the summer of 1616, the ‘Discovery’ set course for home as scurvy was spreading amongst the crew. After a stopover in Mannitsoq, Greenland – where the ravages of the deficiency disease were combated with herbs boiled in beer – the ‘Discovery’ landed in its home port of Dover on 30 August. Baffin continued his search for the Northwest Passage, but this time heading eastwards. In September 1617, he landed in India on behalf of the East India Company; in 1620, he landed at Hormuz on the Gulf of Oman; and two years later, he was shot dead during the siege of a Portuguese fortress in the Persian Gulf.

Most of Baffin’s records have been lost. We know nothing at all about his private life, except that he was married. His wife, whose name is unknown, sued the East India Company and, after a three-year legal battle, received 500 pounds in compensation for her husband’s death.

Author: Christian Hug