Off the Map

by Fergus Fleming

  He was in a sour mood. He had been shaken by the mutiny and by the icy conditions. According to Pricket, ‘Our master was in despair, and, as he told me after, he thought he should never have got out of this ice, but there perished.’ His ‘card’ reflected the measure of his anxiety. Hitherto he had bestowed names of unexpected beauty – one island was called Paiva, a headland became Hold with Hope, a group of rocks was named The Isles of God’s Mercies. Now his charting became less optimistic. A bleak, 1,000-foot cliff was called Cape Digges and a 2,000-foot, guano-smeared headland became Cape Wolstenholme. He had hoped to ‘see Bantam [an island in the East Indies] by Candlemasse’, but this now seemed an impossible deadline. On the other hand, he was confident that he was on the right track, for once he cleared the Furious Overfall he was met by a sea so vast that it could only be the Pacific. It was, in fact, a bay, and if Hudson had sailed west he would have discovered this in a couple of days. But he had neither the time nor the inclination – nor, in his mind, any reason – to do so. He sailed south as fast as he could for Bantam.

  Before long Hudson was boxing about in a small bay – later known as James Bay, but which he called Bottom of the Bay – at the southern extremity of the larger one that he had mistaken for the Pacific. As he went north, west and south, probing for a channel, Juet and the bosun again became mutinous. On 10 September Hudson dealt with them summarily. After a trial in which several men testified to their past and present incitements, they were stripped of their rank. Robert Bylot was promoted to mate, and Francis Clements was replaced as bosun by ‘a savage, foul-mouthed’ man named Bill Wilson. Conceding their right to state their opinions, Hudson promised Juet and Clements that they would be reinstated if they behaved themselves. He was probably right to exert his authority, but he was wrong to pursue the course he then did. By October winter was coming in and James Bay was full of ice. The Discovery had embarked with no more than eight months’ food, and it was six months since it had left London. Nevertheless, Hudson decided they should overwinter before continuing to the Indies.

  He had no luck at all. Every inlet was either blocked by ice or too shallow to offer protection. Once, when raising anchor, the current turned the ship, and three men were injured by the revolving capstan. He ran aground on a rock – irritatingly the carpenter had warned him to look out for rocks – and when the Discovery was freed he stopped looking for a safe anchorage and simply drove it into the shallows and let the ice freeze round it. Almost immediately, discord broke out.

  It began with the most trivial of matters. In mid-November the gunner, John Williams, died and, following traditional practice, his belongings were put up for auction. Among the items was a much-coveted grey woollen smock. To the fury of all, Hudson said that his favourite, Henry Greene, should have it. The crew made their resentment clear. When Hudson asked Staffe to build them a hut, Staffe replied that it was too cold – ‘Which when our master heard, he ferreted him out of his cabin to strike him, calling him by many foul names and threatening to hang him.’ Coolly, Staffe told him he knew his job better than Hudson, that he was a ship’s carpenter not a housebuilder, and that if Hudson did not like it then that was his problem. The next day Staffe went hunting and, per Hudson’s instructions that nobody leave the ship unarmed or unaccompanied in case they met a polar bear, took Greene with him. Forgetting that Staffe had once been his supporter, Hudson assumed that he was now his enemy and, further, that Greene was consorting with him. In what can only be described as a fit of jealous rage, he told Greene that he could no longer have the smock and that it now belonged to Bylot. When Greene protested, ‘the master did so rail on Greene, with so many words of disgrace, telling him that all his friends would not trust him with twenty shillings, and therefore why should he? As for wages, he had none, nor none should have, if he did not please him well.’ Hudson’s volatile behaviour continued. They shot enough ptarmigan and caught enough fish to keep them alive through the winter, but when Indians appeared who might have been able to help them find more solid supplies Hudson refused to trade evenly with them. They gave him four valuable furs, he gave them a knife and a few glass beads. They did not return.

  By now Staffe had forgotten the matter of Greene’s smock and had constructed a basic hut between which and the ship they divided their time. It was the first time an English vessel had wintered by choice in the Arctic, but the months passed without trouble. It was in spring that the arguments started afresh. As the ice began to melt, the crew asked if they could take the boat with a net to catch some fish. Hudson said no. Instead he took the boat and the net to find Indians with whom he could barter fish for meat – and also to find the North-West Passage. He gave no specific date for his return, merely instructing the crew to take aboard fuel, food and water while he was away. He did not find the Passage, and as the Indians avoided him (taunting him with their fires, whose smoke rose tantalizingly close to the shore) he returned with neither fish nor meat nor news of a route to the Indies. Hudson was on the verge of a breakdown. He did not know where to go or how to get out. The men netted ‘fourscore small fish, a poore relief for so many hungrey bellies’. As their captain distributed a portion of bread to accompany their little fishes, the biblical comparison became obvious. Dividing the loaves, he wept.

  By June the Discovery was free of the ice, and many, including Pricket, were suffering from scurvy. (Greene, one of the healthiest, had not scurvy but indigestion, Hudson having passed him a slice of rotten cheese.) Their one consolation was that they would soon be through the Furious Overfall and on their way home. But instead of heading north Hudson sailed north-west. Perhaps he was taking a circuitous route to the Furious Overfall, but it did not look that way to the men. Earlier he had emptied the bread locker and given everyone their allowance for the return journey; now he asked for it back again. A search of their sea chests revealed 30 small loaves, which he took for safekeeping into his own cabin to be redistributed at a later date. It was a rash move: apart from making him seem indecisive, it reinforced the crew’s fear that he planned to extend the voyage; it also created the suspicion that he might be eating their bread on the sly; and, given that some had eaten their allowance within a fortnight (one man bolted his in a single day, and was sick for the following three), it was unfair to those who had rationed themselves more sensibly. This direct threat to their survival, from a captain who appeared to have no intention of abandoning his quest for the North-West Passage, was the catalyst for what happened next.

  On the night of 23 June Greene and Wilson told Pricket they planned to take charge of the Discovery and put Hudson, his officers and his supporters into the ship’s boat. ‘For there was not fourteen days victuals left for all the company, at that poor allowance they were at, and that there they lay, the master not caring to go one way or other, and that they had not eaten anything these three days, and therefore were resolute either to mend or end, and what they had begun they would go through with it or die ... And for the good will they bare me, they would have me stay in the ship.’ It was not so much goodwill as a hope that if the company man supported their cause the repercussions would be less on their return: disagreeing with the captain was one thing; killing him was quite another.

  Lying on his sickbed, Pricket prevaricated: he told Greene that if he waited for three days, or two, or even one, he could persuade Hudson to go home. ‘I did not join this ship to forsake her,’ he said, ‘nor to damage myself and others by such a deed.’ He pointed out that they were married men and that if they went ahead with their plan they could never see their wives again and would be brought to trial if they entered English territory. Greene replied that he could not wait even a day and if Pricket felt so strongly about it he could take his chances in the boat. With little other choice, and after a visit from Juet, ‘who sware plainly that he would justify this deed when he came home’, Pricket sided with the mutineers. But, by his own (possibly self-serving) account, he persuaded them to keep the carpenter aboard, hoping that when
Staffe was alerted he would warn Hudson. He also made them take an oath that ‘You shall do no nothing but to the glory of God, and the good of the action in hand, and harm no man.’ Greene, Wilson and Juet swore on the Bible that they would do so. Four other men came to Pricket’s bedside to take the same oath. He asked them to sleep on it and make their decision in the morning, but ‘It was dark, and they in readiness to put their deed of darkness in execution ... [W]ickedness sleepeth not.’

  Greene saw through Pricket’s ploy. Staffe was one of the first to be detained. Hudson was persuaded out of his cabin, whereupon his hands were tied and he was put in the boat, still wearing a multicoloured dressing-gown. His son followed him. John King the quartermaster was chased into the hold, where he defended himself bravely with a cutlass, but he too ended up in the boat. The sick were thrown after them. So too was Thomas Woodehouse, the student of mathematics, on the grounds that he was an intellectual and therefore untrustworthy. It was such a disorganized affair that two of the mutineers were also bound and put in the boat. They were only released when two of Greene’s accomplices complained that they were personal friends. Greene agreed that they should be set free, but replaced them with another pair of mutineers. Staffe then came forward with his chest of tools and said that he would rather go with Hudson than with Greene. The Discovery’s new commander had no problem with that.

  On the morning of the 24th, with ten men in the boat, Greene gave them a gun, powder and shot, a few pikes, an iron pot and a bit of flour, then cut the rope. When Hudson made to follow him, ‘they let fall the mainsails and out with their topsails, and fly as from an enemy’. Once the boat had vanished, the mutineers ransacked the Discovery. In the hold they found one and a half barrels of flour, two firkins of butter, 27 joints of pork and half a bushel of peas. ‘But in the master’s cabin,’ Pricket wrote, ‘we found two hundred of biscuit cakes, a peck of meal, of beer to the quantity of a butt.’ To the mutineers, the discovery of this secret hoard vindicated their actions.

  Bylot was the only one of Hudson’s appointees to escape retribution. He had hidden during the night of the 23rd, and when he emerged he was given the helm. By common assent, he was deemed a better navigator than Juet. The ex-mate protested – curiously, he wanted to sail north-west, as Hudson had; Bylot, on the other hand, favoured the north-east – but the decision was justified when Bylot led them safely to Digges Island, at the western mouth of the Furious Overfall. On the way in, they had found the Inuit of Digges Island welcoming and the game plentiful. Now, on the way out, they expected to find the same. Confidently, Greene led a boat party ashore to get food. Pricket, who was one of the group but remained in the boat, gave a graphic description of events. Greene and two others, John Thomas and Bill Wilson, stood by the boat showing the Inuit mirrors, bells and Jew’s harps which they hoped to trade for meat. Meanwhile, another two men, Michael Perse and Andrew Moter, were gathering sorrel not far away. Everything seemed to be proceeding in a friendly fashion until, without warning, the Inuit attacked. One of them slipped onto the boat and stabbed Pricket from behind, reaching over his shoulder to strike at the heart. ‘I cast up my right arm to save my breast,’ Pricket wrote; ‘he wounded my arm and struck me into the body under my right pap. He struck me a second blow, which I met with my left hand, and then he struck me into the right thigh, and had like to have cut off my little finger of the left hand. Now I had got hold of the string of the knife, and had wound it about my left hand, he striving with both hands to make an end of that he had begun. I found him but weak in the grip (God enabling me), and getting hold of the sleeve of his left arm, so bare him from me. His left side lay bare to me, which when I saw, I put his sleeve of his left arm into my left hand, holding the string of the knife fast in the same hand, and having got my right hand at liberty, I sought for some-what wherewith to strike him, not remembering my dagger at my side; but looking down I saw it, and therewith struck him into the body and the throat.’

  Meanwhile, John Thomas and Bill Wilson had been eviscerated, and Henry Greene and Michael Perse ‘being mortally wounded came tumbling into the boat together’. Wilson and Thomas, too, managed somehow to make it aboard. Moter, unharmed, jumped into the sea and hung on to the edge, shouting for help. Despite being partially disembowelled, Greene and Perse put up a heroic defence. With a yell of ‘Coragio!’ Greene laid about with a truncheon and Perse wielded a hatchet to deadly effect. Pricket described a scene of panic and confusion: ‘I cried to them to clear the boat, and Andrew Moter cried to be taken in.’ In his shock, vivid details imprinted themselves on his mind – one of them being the image of an Inuit bobbing dead in the water, the victim of Perse’s hatchet. When they turned the boat, and Perse had dragged Moter aboard, the Inuit unleashed a hail of arrows. Greene was killed outright, Pricket was hit in the back, and they were all wounded to a greater or lesser degree. As Perse and Moter rowed away – how Perse did it is beyond comprehension for, apart from having his belly slit, he had been hit by several arrows – the Inuit ran to their kayaks. But for some reason they did not press their advantage and the white men escaped.

  During the incident the Discovery had been lying offshore, its crew unable to see what was happening. The first they knew of the disaster was when the boat hove into view and, Perse having fainted, Moter waved for assistance. ‘They could not tell what to make of us,’ Pricket wrote, ‘but in the end they stood for us, and so took us up.’ Greene’s body was thrown into the sea, and the survivors, including the Inuit Pricket had stabbed, were hauled aboard. Only Moter and Pricket survived. The Inuit never recovered consciousness and died the same day, as did all the others – Bill Wilson ‘swearing and cursing in most fearful manner’ – except for Perse, who lingered in agony for another 48 hours.

  There were now nine men on the Discovery, only five of whom knew how to handle a ship, and their food was running out. In the manner of all mutinies, the mutineers had no clear idea what to do once they had taken charge of the ship. But in this case they were lucky to have Bylot. He took them successfully through the Furious Overfall, despatching parties along the way to ransack nesting colonies, from which they gathered 300 birds. Apart from a meagre amount of flour, this was all they had to see them across the Atlantic. Previously they had skinned the birds they shot, finding that this reduced the rank, fishy taste of the meat. But now, on Juet’s recommendation, they just burned the feathers and ate everything – which alleviated their scurvy. In Pricket’s words, they ‘began to make trial of all whatsoever ... and as for the garbage, it was not thrown away’.

  By general agreement, Bylot was now their captain. Juet tried to assert his authority with a proposal that they sail for Newfoundland where, if they did not meet the fishing fleet, they would find huts and stores of food that had been left on the coast. Bylot overrode him and headed east for home. The journey was hard. As their stock of fat ran out they were reduced to cooking the birds in candle fat. When the birds ran out they were left with the candles, which were shared out, a pound a week, as a ‘great dainty’. By the time the Discovery reached Ireland, Juet was dead and the others were starving. They tried to deal with the Irish, ‘but found no relief, for in this place there was neither bread, drink, nor money to be had amongst them. Wherefore they advised us to deal with our countrymen who were there a-fishing; which we did, but found them so cold in kindness that they would do nothing without present money, whereof we had none in the ship.’ One of England’s first colonies, Ireland was even more impoverished than the Arctic. They pawned their anchor and their best cable to the local garrison commander, who then indentured several Irish seamen – on pain of death – to man the Discovery as far as Plymouth.

  When the Discovery’s crew reached London in September 1611 they were brought before the Admiralty. Statements were taken, the ship was examined and so was the boat, particular attention being paid to the bloodstains that still marked both vessels. Bennet Mathews, the cook and trumpeter, gave a straightforward, if grisly, explanation: the
y ‘became bloody by reason the Cannibals cut up [the men’s] bellies and ... they presently died, one in the boat and three in the ship’. The questioning continued for three months, but it was another seven years before the crew were finally brought to trial on the charge of ‘feloniously pinioning and putting of Henry Hudson, master of the Discovery, out of the same ship with eight or more of his company... without meat, drink, clothes or other provisions, whereby they died’. By this time the majority had fled, leaving Mathews, Clements, Pricket and Edward Wilson to face the judge. For unknown reasons, the case against Mathews and Clements was dropped. Pricket and Wilson were acquitted by jury. The only man to escape all censure was Bylot. This was not because he was thought any more innocent than the others. It was for the hard-headed reason that he was the only navigator alive who had sailed this newly discovered inland sea. To the many influential people who still hoped to find the North-West Passage, he was too valuable to lose. Scarcely had the questioning finished than he was once again in the Arctic, searching for a route to China.