Hakluyt's Voyages by Richard Hakluyt

First published: 1589; enlarged edition, 1598-1600

Type of work: Travel writing

The Work:

Richard Hakluyt, regarded as the first professor of modern geography at Oxford, made a point of getting to know the “chiefest Captains at sea, the greatest merchants, and the best Mariners of our nation.” As a boy, he watched ships come to port from distant places, and early lessons in geography made him eager to learn more. Studies at Oxford and a five-year period in Paris increased his resolve to collect and study the scattered records of English maritime discovery. The result of his interest was Hakluyt’s Voyages, an invaluable sourcebook for those who wish to study the age of discovery and to determine the place of England within it. This work is an anthology of accounts of the explorations and travels of British adventurers up to the author’s own time. The accounts are bold and vigorous and usually include only the main events of each journey. Many are written by those who made the voyages.

Published by Hakluyt in refutation of a French accusation that the English were insular and spiritless, the book is of value in several capacities. It faithfully describes many sixteenth century exploratory journeys, it is an index to the temper of Elizabethan England, and it reflects the enthusiasm for travel literature that was so prevalent at the time of its original publication. Hakluyt may have begun his tome as a piece of propaganda, but it soon became more than that. The second edition grew to three volumes issued over as many years. Hakluyt also published translated narratives by Spanish explorers, but Hakluyt’s Voyages remains his memorial, a true “prose epic” of the English people and nation.

The massive work is more than a documentary history of exploration, for in it, alongside tales of adventure, are mingled historical and economic papers intended to establish British sovereignty at sea. The purpose of the huge undertaking was to encourage overseas settlement and foreign trade. (It was asserted that the income of the East India Company was greatly increased through Hakluyt’s Voyages.)

The first section Hakluyt’s Voyages comprises thirty-eight tales of travels and explorations made by Britons from the Middle Ages up to the end of the sixteenth century. The opening narrative recounts a probably mythical voyage by King Arthur of Britain to Iceland and the northernmost parts of Europe in 517. The first ten narratives deal with voyages made before 1066, the year of the Norman Conquest of Britain. They include such journeys as the conquest of the isles of Man and Anglesey by Edwin, king of Northumberland, in 624; the trips of Octher into Norway and Denmark in 890 and 891; the voyage of Wolstan into Danish waters in the tenth century; the voyage of King Edgar, with four thousand ships, about the island of Britain; and the journey of Edmund Ironside from England to Hungary in 1017. Another voyage that took place before the Norman Conquest was that of a man named Erigena, who was sent by Alfred, king of the West Saxons, to Greece. Alfred was one of the most cultured of British kings in premedieval times and was very much interested in classical civilizations. His emissary, Erigena, went as far as Athens in 885, a long voyage for those ancient times.

The first of the post-Norman Conquest tales recounts a marvelous journey made by a company of English noblemen to escort the daughter of King Harold to Russia for her marriage to the duke of Russia in 1067. The next account is of the surprising journey of an unknown Englishman who traveled as far into Asia as Tartaria in the first half of the thirteenth century. One notable tale describes the adventures of Nicolaus de Linna, a Franciscan friar, who traveled to northern Scandinavia. The twenty-second voyage is that of Anthony Jenkinson, who traveled to Russia from England in order to return Osep Napea, the first ambassador from Muscovia to Queen Mary of England, to his own country in 1557. Surprisingly, almost half of the journeys described in this first collection were made to Russia by way of the Arctic Ocean, around northern Scandinavia. It is not ordinarily realized that there was any traffic at all between England and Russia at that time. Both water and land transportation between the two countries were extremely difficult. The final narrative of the first section tells of the greatest event of Elizabethan England, the meeting of the British naval fleet with the Spanish Armada, which Philip II of Spain sent in 1588 on an ill-fated mission to subdue England and win for Spain the supremacy of the seas.

The second section of Hakluyt’s Voyages describes trips taken to the region of the Straits of Gibraltar and the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. Eleven of these accounts describe trips made before the Norman Conquest, and fifty-two describe trips made after that event. The earliest story is that of Helena, the wife of a Roman emperor and a daughter of Coelus, one of the early kings of Britain. Helena is famous as the mother of Constantine the Great, who made Christianity the official religion of Rome. She traveled to Jerusalem in 337 because of her interest in the early Christian Church. She built several churches in the Holy Land and brought back to Europe a collection of holy relics. One of the relics was a nail reputed to be taken from the True Cross. It was incorporated some time later into the so-called Iron Crown of Lombardy.

Several of the post-Conquest voyages recounted in the book’s second section were made by Englishmen to help in the recovery of Jerusalem from the Saracens during the Crusades. Among the best known are those of Richard I, often called the Lion-Hearted, and of Prince Edward, son of Henry III, who went to Syria in the last half of the thirteenth century. Another narrative tells of the voyage of the English ship Susan, which took William Hareborne to Turkey in 1582. Hareborne was the first ambassador sent by a British monarch to the ruler of Turkey, then Murad Khan. Another narrative tells of the voyage of Ralph Fitch, a London merchant, who visited the east between 1583 and 1591. Fitch traveled to Syria, Ormuz, Goa, Cambia, the River Ganges, Bengala, Chonderi, and Siam before returning home. During the sixteenth century, it was rare even for spice merchants to travel so far.

A third group of accounts collected by Hakluyt relates to the exploration and discovery of America. This section begins with the tale of a voyage supposedly made to the West Indies in 1170 by Madoc, the son of Owen Guined, a prince of North Wales. The tome also records a February, 1488, offer made by Christopher Columbus to Henry VII of England. Columbus petitioned the monarch to sponsor a voyage to the westward seas for the purpose of discovering a new route to the East Indies. Bartholomew, brother of Columbus, repeated the request a year later, but it was refused a second time by the English king.

Several accounts describe voyages to America in search of the Northwest Passage to the East. These include the early voyage of John Cabot, as well as the voyages of Martin Frobisher and John Davis. Frobisher made three voyages in search of a passage, in the three successive years between 1576 and 1578. Davis also made three fruitless efforts to find a passage between 1585 and 1587. All of these voyages were important parts of the colonial project of Hakluyt’s time.

Hakluyt’s Voyages also relates several exploratory trips to Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the earliest being the voyage of Sir Humphrey Gilbert to Newfoundland. The ship Grace of Bristol, England, also made a trip up the Gulf of St. Lawrence, as far as Assumption Island. There are also accounts of trips made by explorers of other European nations in the New World, such as the Canadian journeys of Jacques Cartier in 1534 and 1535. The text includes full accounts of all the voyages made to Virginia in the sixteenth century, including the two unsuccessful attempts by Sir Walter Raleigh to found a colony there in 1585 and 1587.

Another group of stories tells of both English and Spanish explorations of the Gulf of California. The voyage around the world undertaken by Sir Francis Drake is recounted, particularly the portion during which he sailed up the western coast of America to 43 north latitude. Drake landed and took possession of what he called Nova Albion in the name of Queen Elizabeth I, thus giving the British a claim to that part of the New World. Also described is a voyage taken under orders of the viceroy of New Spain by Francis Gualle. Gualle crossed the Pacific Ocean to the Philippine Islands, where he visited Manila. From there, he went to Macao in the East Indies, traveled on to Japan, and returned from the East to Acapulco, Mexico, in the 1580’s.

Hakluyt provides short accounts of trips by Englishmen to various parts of Spanish America. Among these were trips to Mexico City as early as 1555, barely a quarter of a century after it had been conquered by Hernán Cortés. The book also recalls voyages to the Antilles Islands in the West Indies, to Guiana, to the coast of Portuguese Brazil, to the delta of the Rio Plata, and to the Straits of Magellan. Hakluyt tells the stories of the first two voyages ever made to the Straits of Magellan and thence around the world, the first begun by Ferdinand Magellan and completed by the survivors of the expedition after his death and the second by Drake. The third man to sail through the Straits of Magellan and then to proceed around the world became one of the forgotten men of history: Hakluyt gave the credit for this trip to Thomas Cavendish, an Englishman who circled the globe between 1586 and 1588.

To a contemporary reader, Hakluyt’s Voyages is alive with the Elizabethan spirit of adventure and reflects the suddenly expanding world of the Tudors. Although the work is an anthology, the stamp of Hakluyt’s personality is discernible throughout the book; his idealism, his admiration for brave men and noble deeds, and his ambitions for his nation are evident in the various narratives he collected.

As much as anything else, Hakluyt’s Voyages should be read as economic history; some of the pieces included might be considered real estate promoters’ descriptions of lands to be developed. Merchants found the book invaluable, and the queen and her ministers saw it as a worthy psychological push of the nation toward readiness to embrace an empire. The voyages are recounted with a simplicity and a directness that is far more effective than self-conscious artistry or literary pretension; the tales are the matter-of-fact reporting of people of action.

Bibliography

Day, Matthew. “Hakluyt, Harvey, Nashe: The Material Text and Early Modern Nationalism.” Studies in Philology 104, no. 3 (Summer, 2007): 281-305. Examines Hakluyt’s travel books, as well as texts written by Gabriel Harvey and Thomas Nashe, demonstrating how these works fostered nationalist ideas.

Lynam, Edward, ed. Richard Hakluyt and His Successors: A Volume Issued to Commemorate the Centenary of the Hakluyt Society. Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1967. Collects essays discussing Hakluyt’s activities as a publicist for sea ventures and describing other English collections of voyage and travel documents.

Mancall, Peter C. Hakluyt’s Promise: An Elizabethan’s Obsession for an English America. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007. Biography focusing on Hakluyt’s prominent role in the establishment of English colonies in America. Describes how Hakluyt’s travel accounts and his advocacy of colonization influenced Elizabeth I and other policymakers to found the Roanoke and Jamestown colonies. Includes almost fifty illustrations.

Parks, George Bruner. Richard Hakluyt and the English Voyages. Edited by James A. Williamson. 2d ed. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1961. Parks describes Hakluyt’s life as an active scholar, government consultant, and a man of letters. Includes discussion of Hakluyt’s contributions to oceanic voyages of trade and discovery. Features a full chronology.

Payne, Anthony. Richard Hakluyt and His Books. London: Hakluyt Society, 1997. A printed version of a talk delivered to the Hakluyt Society in 1996. Payne argues that Hakluyt’s books are objects that deserve study in their own right. Accompanied by an interim census of surviving copies of Hakluyt’s Divers Voyages and Principal Navigations.

Neville-Singlton, Pamela. “’A Very Good Trumpet’: Richard Hakluyt and the Politics of Overseas Expansion.” In Texts and Cultural Change in Early Modern England, edited by Cedric C. Brown and Arthur F. Marotti. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Examines Hakluyt’s travel books and their impact upon English colonization policy.

Quinn, David B., ed. The Hakluyt Handbook. 2 vols. London: Hakluyt Society, 1974. A comprehensive handbook with an updated chronology. In addition to numerous illustrations and maps, the handbook contains a collection of modern views concerning the significance of Hakluyt’s work and presents an analysis of the efficiency and accuracy of Hakluyt’s use of his source materials.

Sacks, David Harris. “Richard Hakluyt’s Navigations in Time: History, Epic, and Empire.” Modern Language Quarterly 67, no. 1 (March, 2006): 31-62. An analysis of Hakluyt’s works, including Divers Voyages and Principal Navigations. Discusses Hakluyt’s responsibilities as an editor and publisher, printing texts concerned with navigation and discovery and influencing the publication of other books