Later in Henry the eighth’s reign, in 1527, a larger expedition, composed of “divers cunning men,” set out for Northern discovery, but with no more satisfactory results. Their enterprise was impelled by the weighty reasoning of Robert Thorne, the observant Bristol merchant, then in Seville (whom Hakluyt terms a “notable member and ornament of his country”), in his “large discourse” of that year to Dr. Ley, the English ambassador in Spain, urging the immediate need of English discovery in the north parts, “even to the North pole,” to overcome the advantages gained by Spain and Portugal in their discoveries of “all the Indies and seas Occidental and Oriental,” so “by this part of the Orient and Occident” compassing the world. Who were the “divers cunning men” composing this expedition Hakluyt endeavoured to ascertain through much enquiry among “such as by their years and delight in Navigation” might inform him. He learned, however, of one only, and his name he could not get—a certain canon of St. Paul’s in London, 97a “great mathematician, and indued with wealth,” apparently the leader. Two “fair ships” formed the squadron, one of them called “The Dominus Vobiscum.” They set forth out of the Thames on a mid-May day. When sailing “far northwestward” one of the ships was cast away as it entered into “a dangerous gulph about the great opening between the North parts of Newfoundland and the country lately called by her Majestie Meta Incognita.” Thereupon the other ship, “shaping her course toward Cape Briton and the coaste of Arambec, and oftentimes putting their men on land to search the state of those regions, returned home about the beginning of October.” So this story lamely ends.

Six years later an enterprise for discovery in the same parts was projected by certain London men, with the king’s “favour and good countenance,” under the leadership of one “Master Hore,” a “man of goodly stature and of great courage, and given to the studie of Cosmographie.” Master Hore’s “persuasions” were so effective that he soon drew into the scheme “many gentlemen of the Inns of court and of the Chancerie, and divers others of good worship, desirous to see the strange things of the world.” Two “tall ships” were obtained for the venture, the “Trinitie,” of one hundred and forty tons, which was designated the “admiral” (flag-ship) of the fleet, and the “Minion.” The company numbered about sixscore persons, of whom thirty were gentlemen. Among the latter were enrolled one Armigil Wade, “a very learned and vertuous gentleman,” 98afterward clerk of the councils of Henry the eighth and his successor, Edward the sixth; one Joy, subsequently gentleman of the king’s chapel; and Oliver Dawbeny, a merchant of London. All were “mustered in warlike manner” at Gravesend. After receiving the Sacrament they embarked and sailed away at the end of April, 1536. The adventures of these gentlemen-explorers were rare and tragic.

From the time that they left Gravesend they were more than two months at sea without touching land. At length they arrived in the region of Cape Breton. Shaping their course northwestward they came to the “island of Penguin,” where they landed. This was found to be a place “full of rocks and stones” and inhabited by flocks of “great foules white and gray, as big as geese.” These strange fowls were the sea-birds known as Penguins from their first discovery on this island, and afterward, when appearing in other parts, called Great Auks or Gare-Fowls. The sailors drove large numbers of them into the boats, and they made good eating. Quantities of their eggs were also seen on the island. No natives were encountered by the voyagers till they had lain anchored off Newfoundland for several days. Then one morning while Oliver Dawbeny was walking on the hatches he spied a boat full of savages rowing down the bay toward the ships. A ship’s boat was quickly manned and sent out to meet and take them. But at its approach the savages fled to a neighbouring island up the bay. The English pursued them, but they got away. On the island a 99fire was found, and by it the side of a bear on a wooden spit ready for roasting. A boot of leather was picked up, “garnished on the outward side of the calf with certain brave trails as it were of raw silke”; also a “great warm mitten.” The voyagers tarried in the Newfoundland seas till famine came upon them.

Now the tale becomes gruesome. Temporary relief was had from the stock of a nest of an osprey “that brought hourly to her young great plentie of divers sort of fish.” For a while they lived on raw herbs and roots gathered on the main. Then, the relief from herbs becoming of “little purpose,” some of the hardest pressed, when ashore in companies of two, seeking food, fell to feeding upon their mates. “The fellow killed his mate while he stooped to take up a root for his relief, and cutting out pieces of his body whom he had murthered broyled the same on the coles [fire] and greedily devoured them.” By this means, the chronicler grimly adds, “the company decreased.” The officers on shipboard wondered a............