Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/402

Baffin side; but how far it runneth more eastward is yet uncertain.' In August 1821, Captain Parry, with better fortune, repeated Baffin's observations; he confirmed the remark as to the 'small show of any tide,' and he saw also the land to the north-east; but he found this to be an island, to which he gave the appropriate name of Baffin's Island, and succeeded in passing away beyond (Voyage of Fury and Hecla, 1824, p. 33). The Discovery anchored in Plymouth Sound on 8 Sept.; and Baffin, summing up the results of the voyage, says that 'doubtless there is a passage; but within this strait, which is called Hudson's Strait, I am doubtful, supposing the contrary... and my judgment is if any passage within Resolution Island, it is but some creek or inlet, but the main will be up Fretum Davis.' Acting on this opinion, in the next year, 1616, also in the Discovery, with Captain Bylot, he passed up Davis Strait, and pushing to the north as far as 78° N., discovered and named Smith's Sound (in which the false spelling has become a geographical fact), Lancaster Sound, Jones Sound, Wolstenholme Sound, Sir Dudley Digges Cape, with many others, and charted the whole in a manner which we have warrant to suppose was fairly accurate according to the nautical science of the day. Unfortunately, the map and the journal, as well as the narrative, were handed over to Purchas, who published the narrative alone, and that probably in a garbled and imperfect form, considering the reproduction of the chart and of the journal too costly an undertaking. And, so far as is known, neither the one nor the other has ever been seen since, though Mr. Markham offers the very plausible conjecture that the map published by Luke Foxe in 1635 (North- West Fox, &,c.) may have been, in this part, copied from the lost map of Baffin. It does not mark all Baffin's names, but it does represent the bay as something like the reality, and closed, as it is described by Baffin. Baffin's conclusion, stated in his report to Sir John Wolstenholme, is briefly: 'There is no passage, nor hope of passage, in the north of Davis Strait, we having coasted all or nearly all the circumference thereof, and find it to be no other than a great bay.' The want of the original map, however, permitted very wild statements as to the shape and size of Baffin's Bay to grow up, so that in course of time it came to be doubted whether the whole story was not a fable; and in later maps the distorted representation of Baffin's most important discoveries was omitted altogether as a mere fancy, till, in 1818, Captain Ross rediscovered them, and without difficulty identified the localities which Baffin had described and named (Voyage in H.M. ships Isabella and Alexander (4to, 1819), 140, 146). Baffin had expressed an opinion against the existence of a north-west passage; but his imagination would not be convinced, and suggested that better fortune might attend an expedition on the other side, starting from the neighbourhood of Japan. In some such hope, though quite indefinite, he obtained an appointment as master's mate in the Anne Royal, a large ship belonging to the East India Company, and commanded by Captain Andrew Shilling. This was one of the fleet which sailed from the Downs on 5 March 1616-7, and arrived at Surat in the following September. Captain Shilling was then directed to proceed into the Red Sea for settling an English trade in those parts; and arrived off Mocha on 13 April 1618. The Anne Royal remained in the Red Sea for about four months, during which time Baffin was busily employed in surveying and in charting his observations; and so also, when, later in the year, the ship went into the Persian Gulf. In February the Anne Royal left India homeward bound, and arrived in the Thames in September 1619. A minute of the court of directors, dated 1 Oct., orders 'William Baffin, a master's mate in the Anne, to have a gratuity for his pains and good art in drawing out certain plots of the coast of Persia and the Red Sea, which are judged to have been very well and artificially performed; some to he drawn out by Adam Bowen, for the benefit of such as shall be employed in those parts' (Calendar of State Papers, Colonial,. East Indies, 1617-21, 257).

Early the next year. Captain Shilling, in the London, a new ship, again sailed for the East Indies, in command of a company's fleet of four ships, and Baffin accompanied him as master. They arrived at Surat on 9 Nov. 1620, and having learned that a combined force of two Portuguese and two Dutch ships, making common cause against the English, were waiting at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, to attack such of their ships as came that way, they sailed at once to look for and anticipate them. On 16 Dec. the two fleets, equal in point of numbers, met and engaged. They fought for nine hours, and separated to repair damages. Twelve days later they met again. Captain Swan, of the English ship Roebuck, whose journal is given by Purchas (the original manuscript of which is in the India Office) says: 'Our broadsides were brought up, and the good ordnance from our whole fleet played so fast upon them that, doubtless, if the