True Tales of Arctic Heroism in the New World. Greely Adolphus Washington
"As for himself, he would not stay in the ship unless they would force him."
The private log of Prickett, though favoring always the mutineers with whom he returned to England, clearly shows that Philip Staffe was a man of parts although unable to either read or write. His high character and unfailing loyalty appear from his decision. He was steadfast in encouraging those inclined to despair, and also discouraged grumbling discontent which was so prevalent in the ship. He was one of the men sent to select the location of winter quarters on the desolate shores of James Bay. Faithful to his sense of duty, he knew how and when to stand for his dignity and rights. He displayed spirit and resolution when Hudson, in untimely season and in an abusive manner, ordered him in a fit of anger to build a house under unsuitable conditions ashore. Staffe asserted his rights as a ship's carpenter, and declined to compromise himself ashore.
His quick eye and prompt acts indicated his fitness for a ship's officer. He first saw and gave warning, unheeded, of a ledge of rocks on which the Discovery grounded. Again in a crisis, by watchful care and quick action, he saved the ship's cable by cutting it when the main anchor was lost. But in critical matters he stood fast by the choleric Hudson, who recognized his merit and fidelity by making him mate when obliged to make a change. This caused feeling, as Prickett records. "For that the master (Hudson) loved him and made him mate, whereat they (the crew) did grudge, because he could neither read nor write."
Even in the last extremity Staffe kept his head, exerted his personal influence with the mutineers for the good of the eight men who were to be cast adrift with the master. Declining the proferred chance of personal safety, he asked the mutineers to give means of prolonging life in the wild. He thus secured his tools, pikes, a pot, some meal, a musket with powder and shot. Then he quietly went down into the boat. Wilson, a mutineer, testified that "Philip Staffe might have staid still in the ship, but he would voluntarily go into the shallop for love of the master (Hudson)."
Rather than cast in his life with mutineers, thus insuring present comfort with prolonged life, this plain, illiterate English sailor stood fast by his commander, and faced a lingering death while caring for his sick and helpless comrades in a desolate, far-off land. Death with unstained honor among his distressed shipmates was to Philip Staffe preferable to a life of shame and dishonor among the mutineers of the Discovery. Surely he belongs to those described by the Bishop of Exeter:
"Men who trample self beneath them,
Men who make their country wreathe them."
The heroic loyalty of Philip Staffe was fittingly embalmed in quaint historic prose by the incomparable English chronicler of the principal voyages of famous navigators. Purchas, in "His Pilgrimage," relates: "But see what sincerity can do in the most desperate trials. One Philip Staffe, an Ipswich man, who, according to his name, had been a principal staff and stay to the weaker and more enfeebled courages of his companions in the whole action, lightening and unlightening their drooping darkened spirits, with sparks from his own resolution; their best purveyor, with his piece on shore, and both a skilful carpenter and lusty mariner on board; when he could by no persuasions, seasoned with tears, divert them from their devilish designs, notwithstanding they entreated him to stay with them, yet chose rather to commit himself to God's mercy in the forlorn shallop than with such villains to accept of likelier hopes."
The mutineers, having deposed and marooned the great navigator Hudson, looked forward to a homeward voyage of plenty and of comfort. But under the rash and untrained directions of Henry Greene, William Wilson, and Robert Juet, the wretched, luckless seamen were in turn harried by hostile savages and distressed by deadly famine.
Prickett relates that a party landed near Cape Diggs, at the mouth of Hudson Strait, to barter with the natives for provisions, and adds: "I cast up my head, and saw a savage with a knife in his hands, who stroke at my breast over my head: I cast up my right arm to save my breast, he wounded my arm and stroke me in the body under the right pap. He stroke a second blow, which I met with my left hand, and then he stroke me in the right thigh, and had like to cut off my little finger of the left hand. I sought for somewhat wherewith to strike him (not remembering my dagger at my side), but looking down I saw it, and therewith stroke him into the body and the throat.
"Whiles I was thus assaulted in the boat, our men were set upon on the shore. John Thomas and William Wilson had their bowels cut, and Michael Perse and Henry Greene, being mortally wounded, came tumbling into the boat together…
"The savages betook them to their bows and arrows, which they sent amongst us, wherewith Henry Greene was slain outright, and Michael Perse received many wounds, and so did the rest. In turning the boat I received a cruel wound in my back with an arrow. But there died there that day William Wilson, swearing and cursing in most fearful manner. Michael Perse lived two days and then died."
Of their final sufferings Prickett records: "Towards Ireland we now stood, with prosperous winds for many days together. Then was all our meal spent, and our fowl [birds from Hudson Bay] restie [rusty?] and dry; but, being no remedy, we were content with salt broth for dinner and the half-fowl for supper. Now went our candles to wrack, and Bennet, our cook, made a mess of meat of the bones of the fowl, frying them with candle grease. Our vinegar was shared, and to every man a pound of candles delivered for a week, as a great dainty…
"Our men became so faint that they could not stand at the helm, but were fain to sit. Then Robert Juet died for mere want, and all our men were in despair, … and our last fowl were in the steep tub… Now in this extremity it pleased God to give us sight of land."
As to Hudson, with loyal Staffe and their sick comrades, the record runs: "They stood out of the ice, the shallop being fast to the stern, and so they cut her head fast… We saw not the shallop, or ever after." Thus perished Henry Hudson, the man who laid the foundations of the metropolis of the western hemisphere, who indirectly enriched the world by hundreds of millions of dollars by giving to it the fisheries of Spitzbergen and the fur trade of Hudson Bay. To the day of his death he followed the noble rule of life set forth in his own words: "To achieve what they have undertaken, or else to give reason wherefore it will not be." In geography and in navigation, in history and in romance, his name and his deeds stand forever recorded.
In the Homeric centuries Hudson might well have been deified, and even in this age he has become in a manner mythological among the sea-rovers as graphically depicted by Kipling:
"And North amid the hummocks,
A biscuit-toss below,
We met the fearful shallop
That frighted whalers know:
For down a cruel ice-lane,
That opened as he sped,
We saw dead Henry Hudson
Steer North by West his dead."
FRANKLIN'S CROSSING OF THE BARREN GROUNDS
"One who never turned his back,
But marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break."
Strange as it may now seem, a century since the entire northern coasts of North America were wholly unknown, save at two isolated and widely separated points – the mouth of the Coppermine and the delta of the Mackenzie. The mouth of the Coppermine was a seriously doubted geographical point, as Hearne's discovery thereof in 1771 was made without astronomical observations; though he did reach the sea we now know that he placed the mouth of the Coppermine nearly two hundred and fifty miles too far to the north. Mackenzie's journey to the delta of the great river that bears his name was accepted as accurate.
In the renewed efforts of Great Britain to discover the northwest passage and outline the continental coasts of North America, it was deemed important to supplement the efforts being made by Parry at sea with a land expedition. For this purpose it selected neither a civilian nor a soldier, but a sailor known to the world in history as a famous arctic explorer – Sir John Franklin – who was to attain enduring fame at the price of his life.
Franklin had served as signal officer with Nelson at Trafalgar, was wounded while engaged under Packenham at the battle of