1831 Visit of Captain James, the Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captain Thomas James to Hudson Bay

James, Thomas

[Twenty years after Henry Hudson’s 1610 discovery and exploration of the bay that bears his name, Captains Thomas James and Luke Foxe explored the region. James spent the winter there, and from his published account, The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captain Thomas James to Hudson Bay, 1631-1632, come these three excerpts from his journal:]
Excerpt 1—November 1631:

I lay ashore till the 17th, all which time our miseries did increase. It did snow and freeze most extremely. At which time, we looking from the shore toward the ship, she did look like a piece of ice in the fashion of a ship, or a ship resembling a piece of ice. The snow was all frozen about her. . . .On the three-and-twentieth the ice did increase extraordinarily, and the snow lay on the water in flakes as it did fall; much ice withal drove by us. . . . In the evening, after the watch was set, a great piece came athwart our hawse, and four more followed after him, the least of them a quarter of a mile broad….

Excerpt 2—May 1632:

The second, it did snow and blow, and was so cold that we were fain to keep house all day. This unexpected cold at this time of the year did so vex our sick men that they grew worse and worse. We cannot now take them out of their beds but they would swound, and we had much ado to fetch life in them.The third, those that were able went aboard betimes to heave out the ice. The snow was now melted in many places upon the land, and stood in plashes. And now there came some cranes and geese to it.The fourth, while the rest wrought aboard, I and the surgeon went with a couple of pieces to see if we could kill any of these fowl for our sick men; but never did I see such wild-fowl: they would not endure to see anything move. . . .

Excerpt 3—July 1632:

. . . We were continually till the 22 so pestered and tormented with ice that it would seem incredible to relate it. Sometimes we were so blinded with fog that we could not see about us; and, being now become wilful in our endeavours, we should so strike against the ice that the forepart of the ship would crack again, and make our cook and others to run up all amazed and think the ship had been beaten all to pieces. Indeed we did hourly strike such unavoidable blows that we did leave the hatches open; and, 20 times in a day, the men would run down into the hold to see if she were bulged.Sometimes, when we had made her fast in the night to a great piece of ice, we should have such violent storms that our fastening would break, and then the storm would beat us from piece to piece most fearfully; other-while, we should be fast enclosed amongst great ice as high as our poop.