North-East Passage to Muscovy: Stephen Borough and the First Tudor Explorations

263 Pages·2005·6.18 MB·English

by  Kit Mayers

N -E
orth ast
P
assage
TO
M
uscovy
STEPHEN BOROUGH
AND THE FIRST
Tudor Explorations
Kit Mayers
SUTTON PUBLISHING
First published in the United Kingdom in 2005 by
Sutton Publishing Limited • Phoenix Mill
Thrupp • Stroud • Gloucestershire • GL5 2BU
Copyright © Kit Mayers, 2005
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright holder.
Kit Mayers has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author
of this work.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-7509-4069-7
Typeset in 10.5/14pt Photina MT.
Typesetting and origination by
Sutton Publishing Limited.
Printed and bound in England by
J.H. Haynes & Co. Ltd, Sparkford.
Contents
List of Illustrations in the Text v
Illustration and Text Credits vi
Preface vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction xi
1 The Times 1
2 Stephen Borough at Home 5
3 The Aims and Organisation of the 1553 Expedition 16
4 The Ships of the 1533 Expedition and their Crews
and Equipment 25
5 Geographical Knowledge 41
6 ‘The Haven of Death’:
Sir Hugh Willoughby’s Account of the 1553 Voyage 54
7 The Voyage of the Edward (1553) 69
8 The Voyages of the Serchthrift
Part 1: 15 5 6 - The Exploration 7 7
Part 2: 1557 - Surveying the Coast of Lappia 88
9 Stephen Borough’s Navigation 90
10 The Muscovy Company 112
11 Other Consequences of the First Voyages and
Subsequent Attempts on the North-East Passage 139
12 A Summary and Assessment of Stephen Borough’s
Nautical Career 150
Appendices
1 Stephen Borough's Dates 155
2 Stephen Borough’s Famous Relatives and Other
Members of his Family 158
3 The Ordinances for the 1553 Expedition 162
4 The Dimensions of the Expedition Ships 164
5 The Courses Taken by Sir Hugh Willoughby 166
6 The Voyages of the Muscovy Company Ships
(1553-82) 169
7 Stephen Borough’s Survey of the North Russian
Coast (Summary) 176
8 The Latitudes Recorded by Stephen Borough in
1556 and 1557 178
9 Navigational Instruments 180
10 The English Joint Stock Companies 182
11 The Charts and Globes Available in 1553 186
Notes and References 189
Index 233
List of Illustrations in the Text
The estuary of the Riyers Taw and Torridge in North Devon 6
The Borough family tree 7
Stephen Borough’s signature 13
The text of the memorial plaque to Stephen Borough 14
A Spanish carrackj c. 1500 26
Robert Thorne’s map of the world, 1527 43
Zeigler’s map of northern Europe, 1536 48
The great whirlpool devouring ships 48
The Arctic regions of Europe and Asia, showing John Dee’s conjecture
of where the coast lay 50
The coast of Norway 60
The course sailed by Sir Hugh Willoughby and his ships, and that
taken by Chancellor and Borough, after the storm at Seynam 65
The ‘Haven of Death’ entry in Sir Hugh Willoughby’s journal 67
Wardhouse, from a Dutch drawing of 1594 70
The mouths of the Dvina river 74
The Serchthrift sailed from London in 1556, and travelled 800 km
further east than any western European had been before 82
Van Bemmelen’s Isogonic Chart 96
Two methods of taking the altitude of the sun using astrolabes 99
Measuring the elevation or altitude of the Pole Star using a cross staff 101
Thomas Gemini’s monogram 107
William Borough’s chart of northern waters, probably drawn in
1567-8 110
The trading stations or ‘factories’ of the Muscovy Company in the
sixteenth century 120
The Muscovy Company’s location in London 122
The agents of the Muscovy Company travelled great distances in the
pursuit of trade 132
Hugh Smyth’s sketch map of Pet and Jackman’s ships in 1580 143
The routes taken by some of the later explorers of the North-East
Passage 145
Illustration and Text Credits
The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to reproduce
illustrations from the following: The Serchthrift in 1556, and The three ships
of the 1553 expedition, drawings (2004) by Mark Myers, artist, Woolley,
Cornwall; Borough, the manor house, Transactions. Dev. Assoc. Iviii (1926)
p. 193, The Devonshire Association; The village square at Northam, Marion
Northcott, Northam; Stephen Borough’s signature, Centre for Kentish Studies,
County Hall, Maidstone; The Thames and the Tower of London, Placentia
Palace at Greenwich and Dr John Dee, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford;
Sebastian Cabot, Bristol Industrial Museum; Small merchant ship by Hans
Holbein, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main; The Dragon (ADD.
22047), English ships off Dover (Cotton Aug. I.i.22.23), The ‘Haven of Death’
entry (Cotton Otho EVIII 6: f 16), William Borough’s chart (Royal 18.D.iii.
f 123: f 124) and Hugh Smyth’s sketch map (Cotton Otho E VIII: f 38)
British Library; Ships at Antwerp, 1468 [Cartes et Plans manuscrits No. 351]
Archives Générales du Royaume, Bruxelles; The Teager (detail from MPF 1/75)
The National Archives; portrait of Sir Hugh Willoughby, The Lord Middleton,
Birdsall House, N. Yorks; The great whirlpool (Olaus Magnus, Description of
the Northern Peoples, Hakluyt Society Series II/182) David Higham Associates;
The Old English Court in Moscow, John Powers, Instow. The maps are by the
author.
Note: It is regretted that despite various attempts, it has not yet been possible
to find the copyright holders of Zeigler’s map of northern Europe or Olaus
Magnus’s Carta Marina.
The author and publisher also gratefully acknowledge permission to
reproduce a quotation from Alistair MacLean, HMS Ulysses (HarperCollins,
1994), pp. 106-7.
When my father died, I found among his books a version of Richard
Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, originally written in 1589. The first story in
the book that I came across was that of Stephen Borough. He was a
shipmaster, born ip Devon, who in 1553, and again in 1556, was given the
job of sailing in search of a north-east passage to China. Such a voyage
would be remarkable even today; in those days, it must have been astounding.
The bare facts of the voyages were there in Hakluyt, but I conceived an
irresistible desire to know much more. I wanted to know about the reasons for
the voyages, how Stephen came to be selected for the job and how he did it, what
sort of ships he had, and about the effects and consequences of the voyages.
This present book is an attempt to find some of the answers. It has three
main subjects: the exploits, the first brave voyages to search for a north-east
passage from Europe to the Orient; the effects of the voyages, one of which
was the setting-up of the Muscovy Company, the first English company to
trade outside western Europe; and the man who did it, Stephen Borough, his
origins and connections. (This book is not a biography, as we know virtually
nothing of a personal nature about him. He lives on only through his
exploits, but these are more than enough to put him into the pantheon of
great Tudor sea captains from Devon.) The other topics in this book include
the sizes and shapes of the ships of the time, the state of geographical
knowledge, the state of the art of navigation and a brief history of
subsequent attempts to find a north-east passage.
Before 1553 the English had done almost nothing by way of overseas
exploration.1 Stephen Borough’s voyages were the first that had been
organised by the English. They were the first English voyages to set off in a
previously unknown direction, and they were also the first voyages of which
we have any detailed account written in English.
A principal source of information throughout has been Richard Hakluyt’s
book, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Trafflques and Discoveries of the English
Nation (1589).2 Hakluyt (c. 1552-1616) made it his life’s work to gather the
stories of English seamen and explorers. His perseverance in accumulating so
much material on the early days of exploration and trade with Russia has
viii PREFACE
come in for particular appreciation.3 It was entirely due to his diligence that
the original accounts of the voyages were collected together in his
‘troublesome and painful' work. On one occasion, as he himself said, ‘I rode
200 miles onely to learn the whole trueth of this voyage.’4 On other
occasions, he was supplied with material by his friends and acquaintances,
such as William Borough and Anthonie Jenkinson.5
Hakluyt himself had staunchly Protestant views, but he kept them separate
from the narratives that he collected.6 He made a point of copying the
original accounts’ ipsissima verba. Hakluyt himself wrote, ‘Whatsoever
testimonie I have found in any authour ... I have recorded the same word for
word’,7 and G.B. Parkes, the Hakluyt scholar, has commented that ‘Hakluyt
emphasised the value of the original sources’ and ‘the majority of the
narratives give no sign of his part in their making’.8 A few of the original
documents that Hakluyt copied still exist, such as the ‘Haven of Death’
account of Sir Hugh Willoughby’s voyage.9 Comparing this original with
Hakluyt’s version shows that he copied it word for word. I make no apology
for quoting from him on numerous occasions.
As to the other important sources, it is extremely fortunate that some of
them ever survived. The Lisle Letters, for instance, were seized and impounded
when Lord Lisle was incarcerated in the Tower of London, and they have
survived in the national archives ever since. The wills of the members of the
Borough family are another important source of information. The original
wills, or most of them, were destroyed when the Exeter Register Office was
bombed in the Second World War, but fortunately a Mr Oswyn Murray had
previously made abstracts of them, and those abstracts have survived.
It is not obvious why Stephen Borough’s epic voyages have received so little
attention hitherto. A few later authors have retold the tale of his exploits, but
they have done little more than paraphrase Hakluyt’s original account.10 By
contrast, Martin Frobisher’s voyages in search of a north-west passage, some
twenty years later than Stephen Borough’s, have had a good press, even though
his expeditions produced relatively little result and were a financial disaster.
Perhaps Stephen suffered because his great exploits were peaceful: he never fired
a shot in anger. The other great Tudor sea captains such as the Hawkinses,
Drake, Raleigh, John Davis, Oxenham, Cavendish, Fenner, Howard, Towerson,
Grenville and Frobisher, as well as all the pirates and privateers, all relied on
their cannon, their swords and their swashbuckling for their fame and fortune.
Incidentally, all these sea captains came later than Stephen Borough, with the
single exception of William Hawkins. This book is an attempt to remedy the
neglect and to throw some new light on a Tudor hero from Devon.
Acknowledgements
A large number of'people have helped me in finding out about Stephen
Borough and I am very happy to thank as many of them as I can. I
acknowledge my debt to my deceased parents. I thank my wife, Heather, and
my son, John Henty, for their great patience and encouragement.
This book started life as a dissertation in the Maritime History Department
at Exeter University. Since then it has been considerably enlarged, extensively
changed and completely rewritten. I am grateful to have had Dr Stephen
Fisher as my first supervisor at Exeter University. He was a wise and erudite
adviser who became my friend, and his death in the spring of 2002 was a
great loss. Fortunately for me, Dr Michael Duffy Was able to take over the
supervision of my dissertation in a very able manner. I also appreciate
the stimulating tuition of Dr Roger Morriss and Mr Ian Mortimer and the
comments of my fellow students in Maritime History.
I am very happy to have this opportunity to thank a number of individuals,
including Mr Robert Baldwin, National Maritime Museum; Dr David
Barraclough, British Geological Survey, Edinburgh, for correspondence about
changes in magnetic variation over the years; Mr Peter Christie, Bideford, for
some research suggestions; P.L. Dickinson, Richmond Herald, College of Arms,
for information about Walter Borough; Mr S.M. Dixon, Borough Archivist,
Rochester, for information about Stephen Borough’s house there; Mr Alastair
Dodds, National Museums of Scotland, for information about ship models;
Mr R. Foster, Chatham, for information about the Medway Heritage Centre;
Mr Ian Friel, Littlehampton Museum, for advice on medieval shipbuilding;
Dr Alastair Grassie, Isle of Arran, for his comments on Viking navigation;
Captain J. Johnson for comments on the chapter on ships and ship design;
Mr Danny Koolen for his comments on the whole of the text; Mr David
Loughborough, owner of the house at Northam where Stephen Borough spent
his childhood, who kindly showed me round; Mr Jim Moulton for an engraving
of the old house at Borough; Mrs Marion Northcott for information on
Northam; Mrs Carole Pavitt, Chelmsford, for information about John Vassall and
the Mayflower connection; Mr John Power, Instow, for photographs of the
Muscovy Company house in Moscow; Dr Owain Roberts, University of Bangor,
X ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
for helpful correspondence about the sizes and shapes of ships; Mr Philip Rose,
Bideford, for discussion on the chapter on navigation; Mr Jim Row, Bridgend, for
his experience with the Arctic convoys; Mr James Saumarez, Bideford, for useful
comments on the text; Mrs Pat Slade, Bideford Archives at Northam, for advice
about the Borough family; Mr Peter Towey, Teddington, for a helpful summary
of the Star Chamber cases involving the Borough family; and Victor Winstone
and his wife, Joan Cory, for their most helpful and constructive criticism.
I am grateful too for courteous help on my visits to, or in response to my
letters to, various record offices, libraries and other archives, including
Archivo General de Indies, Sevilla; Barnstaple Library; Bideford Library;
Bodleian Library, Oxford; Bristol Record Office; British Library; Centre for
Kentish Studies, Maidstone; The Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons),
Exeter; College of Arms, London; Devon and Exeter Institute; Devon Record
Office, Exeter; Exeter Central Library; Exeter University Library; Family
Records Centre, Myddleton Street, London; Guildhall Library, London;
Hampshire Record Office; Lambeth Palace Library; London Metropolitan
Archives; Medway Heritage Centre, Chatham; National Archives (formerly the
Public Record Office), Kew; Naval History and Local Studies Library,
Plymouth; Newberry Library, Chicago; North Devon Local Studies Library;
Rochester upon Medway Studies Centre, Strood; Royal Commission on
Historical Manuscripts; the Society of Genealogists; UK Hydrographic Office,
Taunton; and the West Country Studies Library, Exeter.
I am also grateful to the representatives of several societies for their help,
particularly the Hakluyt Society; the Royal Geographical Society; the Society
for Nautical Research (publishers of the Mariner's Mirror); and the South
West Maritime History Society.
Several museums and their staff have also been helpful with advice and
information, including Guernsey Museum and Art Gallery; Mary Rose
Museum, Portsmouth; Merchant Adventurer’s House, York; Merchant’s House
Museum, Plymouth; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; North Devon
Maritime Museum, Appledore; and Tucker’s Hall, Exeter.
The errors and omissions in this book are all mine