Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/376

364 search of him with three ships; the expedition failed, however, and but two ships returned.

In 1576 Martin Frobisher, after begging money of merchants for 15 years to undertake "the only great thing left undone in the world," got off with two small vessels, one of 25 tons and one of 10, and reached Labrador in safety, discovering the strait which is called by his name; but he accomplished nothing more.

In 1585 Captain John Davis started for the northwest with two ships, and got as far as latitude 70°, discovering the strait which bears his name.

In 1607 Henry Hudson was commissioned by certain London merchants to find a route to India across the pole, and, in a little vessel manned by 10 men and one boy, reached the east coast of Greenland, in latitude 70°. He had gone beyond the 80th parallel before his way was blocked by the ice. He made several voyages, the last in 1610 in an ill-provisioned ship and with an unruly crew; but he made his way through the strait and into the bay which bear his name. He was frozen in during the winter; his mutinous crew took control of the ship, and set him adrift in an open boat with his little son and six invalid seamen, and they were never heard of again. After this, expeditions followed rapidly, led by Poole, Button, Bylot, Baffin, Munck, and others. After 1631 little was done in this direction for a century. There was a revival of adventure between 1741 and 1746, but ill-success again discouraged efforts for more than half a century. In 1773 Lord Musgrave attempted to reach the pole, and in 1776 Captain Cook tried to circumnavigate the northern shore of America by way of Behring's Strait.

With the opening of the present century arctic enterprise began to assume a new phase, and was pursued more in the interest of science. If the northwest passage was impossible, it was determined to find out how much was possible in exploring the northern region. To reach the magnetic and geographical poles, and ascertain the conditions of the polar sea and the accompanying phenomena, were now the main objects of adventure. Captain Scoresby, in 1806, reached a point north of Spitzbergen in latitude 81° 30'—510 geographical miles from the pole. He saw an open sea before him, but his vessel was only a whaler, and he was answerable to her owners, so he reluctantly turned back. In 1818 two expeditions sailed—Buchan's and Ross and Parry's. In 1819 Parry set out again, and discovered Prince Regent's Inlet, Barrow Strait, Wellington Channel, Melville Sound, and wintered at Melville Island. Clavering's expedition (1823), Grabb's (1828, Danish), De Blosseville's (1833, French), and Parry's third (1827), were strictly for the purposes of scientific exploration, and not for the discovery of the northwest passage. Sir John Franklin commenced his career as a northern navigator with Captain Buchan, in 1818, as a lieutenant. In 1810, in connection with Dr. Richardson, he set out from Fort