William Baffin

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William Baffin

William Baffin (* around 1584 probably in London , England ; † January 23, 1622 on Hormuz / Persian Gulf ) was an English navigator and explorer . Baffin Bay between West Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago is named after him , which he was the first to describe in detail and map in 1615. In the 19th century, polar explorer William Edward Parry named the fifth largest island in the world Baffin Island after him.

Life

Baffin may have been born in London in 1584, but there is little reliable information about his early years. He first appeared in 1612 as a helmsman on James Hall's expedition to the west coast of Greenland . He wrote the official report for this, which, in addition to information about the compass deviation , also contains extensive calculations for determining the degree of longitude in the western Greenland area based on the lunar zenith . In addition, he described encounters with the Inuit and in particular Hall's tragic end when he was killed by a native.

1613 and 1614 acted Baffin as a helmsman on two expeditions to Spitsbergen , which were organized by the Muscovite Compagnie and served primarily economic interests with the search for whaling grounds.

Baffin's map of the 1615 journey through the Hudson Strait

In 1615 he took part in the first of two expeditions led by Robert Bylot to search for the Northwest Passage, funded by the Muscovy Company . The first expedition explored the Hudson Strait and Southampton Island in more detail. During the expedition, Baffin performed the first recorded determination of longitude on a ship. In the report on the expedition, Baffin took the view not to continue looking for a possible passage in Hudson Bay , but to start further north.

Discovery of Baffin Bay

The sea west of Greenland was first explored about 30 years earlier by John Davis , after whom the Davis Strait was named. Baffin's plan now was to advance further north. The second expedition commissioned by the North West Company set sail on March 26, 1616 aboard the Discovery and a crew of 17 from Gravesend , England . The voyage across the Atlantic was uneventful and land was sighted off Maniitsoq on May 14 . Six days later, Discovery anchored off the northern tip of Disko Island . On May 30 they passed Mount Sandersons Hope , where Davis had turned back in 1587. The expedition encountered Inuit on Women's Island near modern-day Upernavik . From June 12, at 73° 45' N, one waited for the pack ice to melt again and was able to continue the voyage six days later. On June 20, Smiths Sound was discovered and reached the northernmost point of the expedition at 78° N. On July 10 and 12, the group discovered Jones and Lancastersund . As William Edward Parry demonstrated in 1819, Lancasters Sound was indeed the entrance to the Northwest Passage, but the expedition made no further exploration, instead searching a southerly course for further outlets. After no further discoveries could be made and scurvy spread among the crew, it was decided to return. After another stopover at Maniitsoq, where the spread of scurvy was fought by means of scurvy grass boiled in beer, Dover was reached on 30 August .

Service for the East India Company

After the discovery of the Northwest Passage on a western route failed, Baffin dealt with the idea of ​​​​finding this route in an easterly direction in the following years. On February 4, 1617, he sailed to the Pacific as master's mate aboard the Anne Royal in a fleet commanded by Martin Pring . Funded by the East India Company , the expedition reached Surat , India , in September . There, the Anne Royal was detached from the fleet and drove to ports in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf . Meanwhile, Baffin made maps of the area. In September 1619 the ship was ordered back to England.

The following March, Baffin put to sea again for the East India Company, this time aboard the flagship of a fleet under Andrew Shilling, former captain of the Anne Royal . However , in the Gulf of Oman , the fleet became involved in a battle with Portuguese and Dutch ships while Shilling was killed. From January 1622 the fleet took part in a siege of the Portuguese fortress on Hormuz . On January 23, Baffin was sent ashore to determine the height of the fortress walls. He was hit by a bullet in the stomach and succumbed to the injury on the spot.

legacy and meaning

His wife sued the East India Company after his death and was awarded £500 in damages after three years. In 1625 parts of his diary were published. Baffin's discoveries were forgotten for over 200 years. The pastor Samuel Purchas , who undertook the publication of Baffin's documents, omitted the maps and tables of calculations, which were then difficult and costly to print. It was not until 1818 that John Ross re-explored the sea off West Greenland and confirmed Baffin's statements. Edward Augustus Inglefield crossed the northernmost point of the 1616 expedition at Smithsund in 1852. However, the first complete crossing of the Northwest Passage through Lancastersund was only achieved by Roald Amundsen in 1906. In addition to Baffin Bay, the English officer and polar explorer William Edward Parry later named the large Baffin Island after him in the 19th century, which belongs to the Canadian-Arctic archipelago . After a good two hundred years, Parry was also able to confirm that Baffin's observations and descriptions had been largely correct.

literature

  • Thomas Rundall: Narratives of voyages towards the north-west, in search of a passage to cathay and india, 1496 to 1631. The Hakluyt Society, London 1849 (English, archive.org ).
  • Clements R Markham : The voyages of William Baffin, 1612-1622. The Hakluyt Society, London 1881 (English, archive.org ).
  • Clements R. Markham, The Lands of Silence: A History of Arctic and Antarctic Exploration , 1921.
  • Augustine Courtauld: From the Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of Polar Writings , 1958.
  • Jeanette Mirsky: To the North! The Story of the Arctic Exploration from Earliest Times to the Present , 1934; Revised new edition: To the Arctic! The Story of Northern Exploration from Earliest Times to the Present , 1948.
  • Nellis M. Crouse: The Search for the Northwest Passage , 1934.
  • Paul Emile Victor: Man and the Conquest of the Poles , translation 1963.
  • John Knox Laughton: Baffin, William . In: Leslie Stephen (ed.): Dictionary of National Biography . tape 2 : Annesley-Baird . MacMillan & Co, Smith, Elder & Co., New York City / London 1885, p. 389–391 (English, full text [ wikisource ]).
  • William J Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers: A Historical Encyclopedia. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara 2003 ISBN 1-57607-422-6 , p. 54 f.

web links

Commons : William Baffin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

itemizations

  1. ↑ Baffin, William . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 3 : Austria – Bisectrix . London 1910, p. 192 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
  2. ↑ William Baffin: The fourth voyage of James Hall to Groeneland, wherein he was set forth by English Adventurers, Anno 1612, and slaine by a Greenelander . In: Samuel Purchas (ed.): Purchas His Pilgrimes . tape 14 . James MacLehose and Sons, Glasgow 1906, p. 365–378 ( Text Archive – Internet Archive ).
  3. ↑ William Baffin , Website Discoverers of the World, 2021 (accessed November 17, 2021)
  4. ↑ Ernest S. Dodge: Baffin, William . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . tape 1: 1000-1700 . University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1979, ISBN 0-8020-3142-0 ( English , French ).
  5. ↑ James H. Marsh and Daniel Panneton: William Baffin. In: The Canadian Encyclopedia. (English, accessed 18 December 2015, accessed 18 November 2021) https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/william-baffin
personal data
SURNAME Baffin, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English navigator and explorer
BIRTH DATE uncertain: 1584
PLACE OF BIRTH uncertain: London, England
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1622
PLACE OF DEATH Hormuz , Persian Gulf