The Voyages of Captain Luke Foxe, of Hull, and Captain Thomas James, of Bristol, in Search of a North-West Passage, in 1631-32: Volume 1: With Narratives of the Earlier North-West Voyages of Frobisher, Davis and Others

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. Volumes 88-89 (1884) contain accounts of two captains’ searches for a North-West Passage to Asia in 1631. Their explorations were beset by bad weather. Foxe circumnavigated Hudson’s Bay before retreating, while James became ice-bound for the winter, losing several members of his crew before retuning to England a year after Foxe. No new attempts were made for another century, as their accounts of the harrowing conditions they endured discouraged further voyages of exploration for the desired trade route.