Sir Hew Willoughby had the
chief command: Captain Richard Chanceller and Captain Durfovill commanded
the other two vessels under him. Willoughby, having reached 72 degrees of
north latitude, was obliged by the severity of the season to run his ship
into a small harbour, where he and his crew were frozen to death. Captain
Durfovill returned to England. Chanceller was more fortunate; for he
reached the White Sea, and wintered in the Dwina, near the site of
Archangel. While his ship lay up frozen, Chanceller proceeded to Moscow,
where he obtained from the Czar privileges for the English merchants, and
letters to King Edward: as the Czar was at this period engaged in the
Livonian war, which greatly interrupted and embarrassed the trade of the
Baltic, he was the more disposed to encourage the English to trade to the
White Sea. We have already remarked, in giving an account of the voyage of
Ohter, in King Alfred's time, that he had penetrated as far as the White
Sea. This part of Europe, however, seems afterwards to have been entirely
lost sight of, till the voyage of Chanceller; for in a map of the most
northern parts of Europe, given in Munster's Geographia, which was printed
in 1540, Greenland is laid down as joined to the north part of Lapland;
and, consequently, the northern ocean appears merely as a great bay,
enclosed by these countries.
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