Born c. 1550, Terschelling Island, The Netherlands
Died June 20, 1597, Barents Sea
During the sixteenth century the great maritime powers of Spain and Portugal largely controlled the trade routes to Africa and Asia. The country we now call the Netherlands was also a significant trading nation at that time, with a powerful merchant class and superb sailing vessels. Rather than force their way through established southern trade routes, the Dutch were interested in finding a northern water route that would take them to the Orient. Thus they began a series of journeys designed to sail north of Eurasia—into what was called the Northeast Passage—and then south into the Pacific Ocean, to China and India. Dutch navigator Willem Barents piloted three such expeditions during the 1590s. The hardships he and fellow crew members endured during their final journey discouraged all but the most hardy explorers from attempting such a passage, which was finally achieved by Swedish scientist Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskjöld some 275 years later.
Little is known about Barents’s early life. He was a native of the island of Terschelling, off the coast of Friesland in the northern Netherlands. He moved to the bustling trade city of Amsterdam, where he became known as an accomplished sailor and navigator. In 1954 the Dutch government, along with a group of wealthy Amsterdam merchants, financed an expedition in search of the Northeast Passage and granted Barents command of one of its vessels; Jan van Linschoten, a major backer of the mission, captained another. On June 4 Barents left Holland and sailed through the North Sea, heading along the northern coast of Europe. He made his way around Norway’s Cape North, and entered the expansive body of water later named in his honor—Barents Sea—before reaching the large island of Novaya Zemlya, off the northern coast of east Russia. He managed to travel to the island’s northernmost point—which he named Ice Cape—before floating ice stopped his eastern progress.
During his return trip, Barents met up with van Linschoten, who had had better luck. Instead of taking Barents’s more northerly route, he had sailed close to the European and Russian coast. He had passed Novaya Zemlya by sailing south of the island in ice-free waters, and had made it as far as the Kara Sea before turning back. Encouraged by van Linschoten’s reports, the expedition’s sponsors planned a second journey for the following year. Van Linschoten would command a seven-ship fleet, and Barents would serve as chief pilot. They would travel van Linschoten’s southern route. The merchants were so confident of success that they filled the ships with goods to trade in the Far East.
In the spring of 1595 the expedition set sail. But by August 19 the fleet had to abandon its mission, for the ice was particularly bad that year, and the travelers could make it only as far as Vaigach Island, located in the straits between Novaya Zemlya and mainland Russia. The trip was a dismal failure, and the Dutch government voted to spend no more public funds looking for the Northeast Passage.
But Barents convinced the merchants of Amsterdam to give the quest another try. On his third trip in search of the Northeast Passage, he served as expedition pilot for two ships. One was under the command of Jacob van Heemskerk; the other was captained by Jan Cornelizoon Rijp. Barents planned to direct the ships north, from the tip of Norway to the North Pole. This extreme route was based on an idea popular among European geographers at that time: that Arctic ice formed only in a wide band along the coast, and that farther north lay an open polar sea. If that were the case, the expedition would find a swift, smooth sailing route to the Pacific.
The expedition set sail on May 13, 1596. In June, when the explorers were north of Norway, they discovered Bear Island, so named after the fierce battle they had with a polar bear there. Not long after they came upon the island of Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard Archipelago (a group of scattered islands), which they mistakenly thought was the east coast of Greenland. Barents and his companions were the first Europeans to sail that territory since the Vikings in medieval times. These island discoveries proved important, for the area soon became a profitable hunting ground for whale, seal, and walrus.
Icebergs kept the travelers from making their way farther north. In a disagreement over which route to take next, the two ships separated, with Rijp soon returning to Holland. Barents and van Heemskerk turned east, hoping to travel around Novaya Zemlya. But on the north coast of the island heavy ice set in, and the boat was forced to land in a bay that Barents called Ice Haven. On August 26, the crew abandoned ship as the advancing ice began to crush it. They would have to spend the Arctic winter on the island.
The seventeen expedition members built a cabin with driftwood and timber from the boat. They also used the wood for fuel, and kept a fire burning throughout the long winter. They nearly suffocated from the constant smoke, but the air was so cold that they could not do without the fire. Liquids froze before the men could drink them, and blankets froze to beds. The men had to be watchful of polar bear attacks. Yet foxes and walruses were plentiful in the area, and provided the crew with food. Miraculously, only two men died that winter.
When the summer thaw came Barents and his companions planned to set sail for the Russian mainland in two of the ship’s remaining longboats. Before embarking on June 13, 1597, van Heemskerk made a copy of the expedition’s log for each boat to carry. Barents wrote his own account of the ordeal, which he hid in the cabin’s chimney. A few days into their sea journey, he died in the open boat, probably weakened by the harsh winter. The rest of the crew did manage to make their way through ice-filled waters to the mainland, where fishermen helped them reach a Dutch trading settlement on Russia’s Kola Peninsula. There Rijp met them, sailing them safely back to Holland by November. The story of the expedition members’ courage and endurance during the Arctic winter fascinated Europe. But the tale also emphasized the grave difficulty of traveling the Northeast Passage, and the Dutch made no further attempts. (Military victories against the Spanish would soon allow them to freely use the southern trade route to the Indies.)
The area along the Northeast Passage was so little traveled that it was not until 1871 that anyone revisited Novaya Zemlya’s Ice Haven bay. Then, a Norwegian seal-hunting expedition led by Captain Elling Carlsen came upon the small cabin that Barents and his fellow crew members had built to face the Arctic winter so long ago. The place was little disturbed. In 1875 another explorer found part of Barents’s secret journal. This and other artifacts of the expedition are now displayed at a museum in The Hague.
Baker, Daniel B., ed. Explorers and Discoverers of the World. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993.
Bohlander, Richard E., ed. World Explorers and Discoverers. New York: Macmillan, 1992.
Waldman, Carl, and Alan Wexler. Who Was Who in World Exploration. New York: Facts on File, 1992.
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