Robert Bylot

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Robert Bylot was a 17th century English navigator and explorer . He led two expeditions to find the Northwest Passage and took part in three others.

Bylot was an officer on Henry Hudson's expedition with the Discovery . The Hudson Bay was first reached on August 2, 1610 through the Hudson Strait . In the James Bay the ship in November in the ice froze. After the first wintering of Europeans in the Canadian Arctic , Hudson apparently wanted to continue the voyage, which led to the mutiny of part of the crew and the captain's suspension in James Bay. After the leader of the mutiny on the Digges Islands by Inuitwas killed, Bylot brought the ship back to England. He reached the Irish coast with seven other survivors on September 6, 1611. The subsequent investigation exonerated him from the charge of having been involved in the mutiny, where his supposed knowledge of the Northwest Passage should have played a role.

Baffin's Map of the Journey through the Hudson Strait (1615)

As early as 1612 he sailed again in the Hudson Bay with the ships Resolution and Discovery under the command of Thomas Button . Button looked unsuccessfully for an entrance to the Northwest Passage on their west coast. After overwintering at the mouth of the Nelson River , which cost many men their lives, and the loss of the resolution in the spring of 1613, the expedition started their journey home with the Discovery . A year later, Bylot took part in the failed expedition of William Gibbons , which returned to England prematurely because the Hudson Strait was blocked by an ice barrier.

In 1615 Robert Bylot was given command of the Discovery for another voyage to discover the Northwest Passage. With his helmsman William Baffin , he passed the Hudson Strait and mapped the south coast of Baffin Island . North of Southampton Island they came to the conclusion by observing the tides that with the Foxe Basin they had reached an enclosed body of water that could not be part of the passage they were looking for. Instead of in Hudson Bay, the search should rather continue in the Davis Strait area.

In 1616, Bylot and Baffin began their second journey together with the Discovery . The ship left Gravesend on March 26th and anchored off Disko Island on the east coast of Greenland on May 20th to take up some more provisions. Further following the Greenland coast, ten days later they passed the northernmost point that John Davis had reached in 1587. On July 5, they discovered the northernmost position they had reached at 77 ° 45 'N, the entrance from Baffin Bay into Smithsund . Bylot and Baffin then discovered Jones and Lancastersund and mapped the north coast of Baffin Island.

Baffin's report on the geographic discoveries of the voyage was published heavily censored, probably to prevent competitors from looking for the Northwest Passage in Baffin Bay, and was increasingly questioned. Only 200 years later did another expedition reach Baffin Bay. Their leader, Sir John Ross , confirmed the accuracy of the Bylot-Baffin expedition's maps. Although Bylot had directed them, most of the fame fell to William Baffin. In Canada today, Bylot Island at the entrance to Lancastersund, Lake Lac Bylot on the Ungava Peninsula and Cape Bylot in the north of Southampton Island are reminiscent of Robert Bylot .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ian Chadwick: The Life and Voyages of Henry Hudson . Part 4: Henry Hudson's Fourth Voyage 1610: The Northwest Passage , accessed January 8, 2011.
  2. Wilson: Bylot, Robert. P. 295.
  3. ^ William James Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers - A Historical Encyclopedia. P. 114.
  4. ^ William James Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers - A Historical Encyclopedia. P. 55.
  5. Thomas Rundall: Narratives of voyages towards the north-west, in search of a passage to cathay and india, 1496 to 1631. p. 131.
  6. Barry Lopez : Arctic Dreams . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007 (original title: Arctic Dreams. Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape , translated by Ilse Strasmann), ISBN 978-3-596-17702-8 , pp. 401f.

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