Northeast passage voyages

Willem Barentsz · 1594 CE – 1597 CE · Earth

Northeast passage voyages — Willem Barentsz · 1594 CE – 1597 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Find a sea route to China north of Russia, round or past Novaya Zemlya.

Historical context

In the 1590s the merchants of the young Dutch Republic, shut out of the trade with Portugal, looked for a road to China north of Russia. Willem Barentsz, a pilot from Terschelling, guided three voyages: in 1594 to the Orange Islands off the north of Novaya Zemlya; in 1595 with a fleet stopped by ice in the Vaygach strait, where the Dutch met the Nenets; and in 1596 north to Bear Island and Spitsbergen, then east to Novaya Zemlya, where his ship was beset and seventeen men wintered at the Ice Haven. The voyages are known from the account of Gerrit de Veer, printed at Amsterdam in 1598, which gives its dates in the new, Gregorian style; it is quoted here in William Phillip’s English translation, as edited for the Hakluyt Society in 1876.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Seeking a northeast passage

    1594 CE

    In June 1594 four Dutch ships set out to look for a sea road to China north of Russia; Willem Barentsz, a pilot from Terschelling, commands the two from Amsterdam.

  2. Round the North Cape

    1594 CE

    The 1594 voyage rounds the North Cape and works up the coast of Novaya Zemlya to the Orange Islands; in 1595 a fleet of seven ships is stopped by ice in the Vaygach strait, where the Dutch meet the Nenets.

  3. Bear Island

    10 June 1596

    The third voyage raises an unknown island on 9 June 1596 by de Veer’s journal, 10 June by a log thought to be Barentsz’s; on 12 June the crews of both ships kill a polar bear there, and name the island after it.

  4. The pointed mountains

    1596 CE

    A week after Bear Island the ships sight a high, snow-covered coast near 80 degrees north, which they take for part of Greenland; on 24 June, by a log probably kept by Barentsz, they name it Spitsbergen for its pointed mountains.

  5. Novaya Zemlya

    19 August 1596

    On 19 August 1596 Barentsz’s ship rounds the Point of Desire, the north-eastern corner of Novaya Zemlya; a week later the ice closes on her at the Ice Haven and lifts her bow out of the water.

  6. Winter in the ice

    1596 CE

    The crew builds a house of driftwood and ship’s planks, known in Dutch as het Behouden Huys, the Saved House, and lives through the polar night on ship’s stores, Arctic foxes and the fat of bears.

  7. Away in open boats

    20 June 1597

    On 14 June 1597 fifteen men leave the Ice Haven in two open boats; on 20 June, off the Ice Point at the north of Novaya Zemlya, Barentsz dies, and twelve of the company reach Kola in September.

Outcome

Reached the Orange Islands in 1594 and the Kara Sea’s ice in 1595; in 1596 discovered Bear Island and Spitsbergen and was beset at the Ice Haven of Novaya Zemlya, where seventeen men wintered; Barentsz died on 20 June 1597 and twelve men reached Kola in open boats.

Willem Barentsz

Dutch pilot from Terschelling who searched for a northeast passage to China, discovered Bear Island and Spitsbergen with Jan Cornelisz Rijp in 1596, and died in an open boat off Novaya Zemlya after wintering at the Ice Haven.

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Sources

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