william baffin first voyage

Search The Canadian Encyclopedia

Enter your search term

Why sign up?

Signing up enhances your TCE experience with the ability to save items to your personal reading list, and access the interactive map.

• MLA 8TH EDITION
• Marsh, James H. and Daniel Panneton. "William Baffin". The Canadian Encyclopedia , 18 December 2015, Historica Canada . www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/william-baffin. Accessed 13 April 2024.
• The Canadian Encyclopedia , 18 December 2015, Historica Canada . www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/william-baffin. Accessed 13 April 2024." href="#" class="js-copy-clipboard b b-md b-invert b-modal-copy">Copy
• APA 6TH EDITION
• Marsh, J., & Panneton, D. (2015). William Baffin. In The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/william-baffin
• The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/william-baffin" href="#" class="js-copy-clipboard b b-md b-invert b-modal-copy">Copy
• CHICAGO 17TH EDITION
• Marsh, James H. , and Daniel Panneton. "William Baffin." The Canadian Encyclopedia . Historica Canada. Article published December 18, 2007; Last Edited December 18, 2015.
• The Canadian Encyclopedia . Historica Canada. Article published December 18, 2007; Last Edited December 18, 2015." href="#" class="js-copy-clipboard b b-md b-invert b-modal-copy">Copy
• TURABIAN 8TH EDITION
• The Canadian Encyclopedia , s.v. "William Baffin," by James H. Marsh, and Daniel Panneton, Accessed April 13, 2024, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/william-baffin
• The Canadian Encyclopedia , s.v. "William Baffin," by James H. Marsh, and Daniel Panneton, Accessed April 13, 2024, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/william-baffin" href="#" class="js-copy-clipboard b b-md b-invert b-modal-copy">Copy

Thank you for your submission

Our team will be reviewing your submission and get back to you with any further questions.

Thanks for contributing to The Canadian Encyclopedia.

William Baffin

Article by James H. Marsh , Daniel Panneton

Published Online December 18, 2007

Last Edited December 18, 2015

William Baffin, explorer (probably born in London, England, ca. 1584; died 23 January 1621 or 1622 in the Persian Gulf). One of the most proficient navigators of his time, he was chief pilot with Captain James Hall on his ill-fated voyage to Greenland in 1612. He was pilot on two expeditions to the Spitsbergen region in 1613 and 1614, and made his next voyage under Robert Bylot aboard the Discovery in 1615 in search of the Northwest Passage . They examined the Hudson Strait and western Southampton Island; when in sight of land later named Baffin Island by W. E. Parry , they turned back because of ice conditions. On this voyage Baffin obtained a longitude by observing stars concealed by the moon, the first known instance of such a measurement by an English navigator at sea.

Early Life and Career

Very little is known about William Baffin’s life prior to his Arctic expeditions. He was likely both a native of London and self-educated. In 1612, Baffin was made chief pilot on Captain James Hall’s Patience and was present when Hall was killed by an Inuk off the coast of western Greenland, where Hall had previously taken Inuit captives. Baffin spent the next two years working in the Spitsbergen whale fishery, serving as pilot for whaling and discovery vessels.

Recording the Arctic

In 1615, William Baffin was hired by a company called The Governor and Company of the Merchants of London, Discoverers of the North-West Passage to find and map the hypothetical water route to Asia. Baffin served as pilot aboard Captain Robert Bylot’s Discovery , during which time he would make a number of observations that future explorers would find remarkably accurate. The next year, Baffin sailed again under Bylot, and they became the first Europeans to explore what is now called Baffin Bay and mapped the entrances to Lancaster , Smith, and Jones sounds. They sailed over 480 km further north than Baffin's predecessor, John Davis . European explorers wouldn't return to Smith Sound until Edward Augustus Inglefield’s 1852 expedition.

From 1617, William Baffin served with the English East India Company. Between 1617 and 1619, Baffin sailed to Surat, India, before going to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, where he continued surveying and charting. In 1621 or 1622, Baffin died from a cannonball wound to the stomach during an Anglo-Persian assault on a Portuguese fort in the Persian Gulf. Portions of Baffin’s journals would be published in 1625, but financial constraints prevented the inclusion of his charts and hydrographic observations.

Recommended

Sir george strong nares, sir william edward parry.

• Hide Sidebar
• First Paragraph
• Bibliography
• Find Out More
• How to cite
• Back to top

DCB/DBC News

New biographies, minor corrections, biography of the day.

d. 13 April 1813 in Delaware Township, Upper Canada

Confederation

Responsible government, sir john a. macdonald, from the red river settlement to manitoba (1812–70), sir wilfrid laurier, sir george-étienne cartier, the fenians, women in the dcb/dbc.

Winning the Right to Vote

The Charlottetown and Quebec Conferences of 1864

Introductory essays of the dcb/dbc, the acadians, for educators.

Exploring the Explorers

The War of 1812 

Canada’s wartime prime ministers, the first world war.

Source: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

BAFFIN , WILLIAM , arctic explorer; b.   1584?; d. 1622.

As with many of the early explorers and navigators, little is known of the life of William Baffin until the voyages upon which his reputation rests. The 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica gives 1584 as the year of his birth but does not supply the source of that important date. He was probably a native of London or vicinity and a self-educated man of humble origin but great talent, for Purchas speaks of him as “that learned-unlearned Mariner and Mathematician who, wanting art of words, so really employed himself to those industries, whereof here you see so evident fruits.”

In 1612 Baffin was chief pilot with Capt. James Hall ’s ship Patience on the expedition when that unfortunate mariner was slain by revengeful Eskimos on the coast of Greenland. The Patience accompanied by the Heart’s Ease sailed from the Humber on 22 April and returned to Hull, 11 September under the command of Andrew Barker. Baffin kept a journal, printed in part in Purchas, beginning 8 July to the end of the voyage. In this account we get the first of his many and important astronomical observations. He also describes the Greenland Eskimos and their country, and tells of Hall’s tragic end.

When Baffin returned from this voyage he took service with the Muscovy Company which was trading with Russia and sending whalers to the Spitzbergen region. In 1613 the Company sent a fleet of seven vessels to the whaling grounds, and again the chief pilot was William Baffin, sailing on the Tiger under Capt. Benjamin Joseph. He sailed again with Capt. Joseph on a similar Spitzbergen voyage in 1614 on the Thomasine with a fleet of 11 ships and 2 pinnaces. Ice conditions extended well south making it a difficult season for northern navigation, but nevertheless Baffin explored a considerable section of the Spitzbergen coast returning to London 4 Oct. 1614.

Baffin’s fourth adventure was in the service of the Northwest Company to search for the northwest passage. This voyage was a continuation of three previous expeditions, under Henry Hudson (1610–11), who was abandoned by his men after wintering in Hudson Bay; Thomas Button , who wintered near Churchill (1612–13); and William Gibbons , who holed up on the Labrador coast (1614). The stout ship Discovery , used by all three of the previous expeditions, was fitted out under the command of Robert Bylot and Baffin again sailed as pilot on 15 March 1614/15. On 26 April, Baffin by observing an occultation of a star by the moon obtained the first longitude ever figured at sea while under way. Hudson Strait and the western end of Southampton Island were carefully examined, with particular attention given to the tides. The great 19th-century explorer, W. E.  Parry* , checked Baffin’s observations over two hundred years later and found them very nearly correct. Baffin kept a full journal of this expedition which is accompanied by the only surviving example of one of his maps. The expedition abandoned its search for the northwest passage because of ice conditions at a place where land showed to the northeast; Parry later named the land Baffin Island “out of respect to the memory of that able and enterprising navigator.” The expedition returned in the fall of 1615. On his return from this voyage, Baffin concluded, quite correctly, that no navigable passage to the west existed out of Hudson Bay.

Baffin’s fifth and most important voyage was also undertaken in the Discovery with Bylot as captain. Leaving Gravesend, 26 March 1616, they passed John Davis ’s farthest north at Hope Sanderson on the Greenland coast and continued for another 300   miles to 77º45´ which remained the farthest north reached for 236 years. They then sailed around and mapped the entire shore of “Baffin’s Bay,” including the entrances of “Sir Thomas Smith’s,” “Alderman Jones,” and “Sir James Lancaster’s” sounds. Lancaster Sound was not recognized, however, as the entrance to the sought-after northwest passage. It is an ironic historical fact that Baffin’s greatest discovery, at first accepted, gradually became suspect and was reduced and finally eliminated from maps until rediscovered and confirmed by Sir John Ross* on his first expedition in 18l8. Baffin’s papers and map relating to Baffin Bay were given to Purchas, who suppressed them with exasperating casualness.

Baffin is certainly the most proficient navigator and observer of all the arctic explorers of his period. Following his return from the discovery of Baffin Bay, but without finding the northwest passage, he decided to seek that elusive waterway from the western end if he could find employment that would take him to the Pacific. The opportunity came in 1617 and he sailed 4 February as master’s mate on the Anne Royal in the fleet of Capt. Martin Pring for the East India Company. The fleet arrived at Saldanha Bay 21 June and at Surat in September. The Anne Royal was detached and sent to Mocha and visited other ports in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf area, where Baffin worked steadily, surveying and charting. In September 1619 the Anne Royal was back in the Thames. Baffin had not been anywhere near the northwestern coast of North America but he was commended for his charts of Persia and the Red Sea.

The following year Baffin sailed again for the East Indies in the London , flagship of the fleet under Capt. Andrew Shilling who had been captain of the Anne Royal . Leaving the Downs 25 March the fleet arrived at Swally Roads 9 November, and, hearing of a fleet of Portuguese and Dutch ships awaiting them, they went in search of the enemy. In the engagement which took place 28 December in the Gulf of Oman, Capt. Shilling received wounds from which he died on 6 Jan. 1620/21. A year later 20 Jan. 1621/22 the English fleet arrived off Ormuz to lay siege to the Portuguese. William Baffin was sent on shore 23 January to make observations on the height and distance of the castle wall to find the range, “But as he was about the same, he received a shot from the Castle into his belly, wherewith he gave three leaps, and died immediately.” And Purchas records: “In the Indies he dyed, in the late Ormus businesse, slaine in fight with a shot, as hee was trying his mathematicall projects and conclusions.”

Mrs   Baffin, a “troublesome, impatient woman,” made claim against the East India Company for his wage and a large settlement. After three years of negotiations her claims were finally settled for   £500.

Thus the only part of Baffin’s life of which we are certain is the final decade, 1612 to 1622. The vast majority of his observations, records, surveys, and maps has disappeared but enough has survived to show us that during this time he became the best astronomical observer among all the navigators of his day.

Ernest S. Dodge

Purchas, Pilgrimes (1905–7), XIV 365–411. The voyages of William Baffin, 1612–1622 , ed. C. R. Markham (Hakluyt Soc., 1st ser., LXIII, 1881). DNB . Dodge, Northwest by sea . Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed., 29v., incl. Index, Cambridge, 1910–11). Oleson, Early voyages , 167–68. W. E. Parry, Journal of a second voyage for the discovery of a north-west passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific; performed in the years 1821–22–23 in His Majesty’s ships Fury and Hecla (London, 1824). J. Ross, A voyage of discovery, made under the orders of the Admiralty, in His Majesty’s ships Isabella and Alexander for the purpose of exploring Baffin’s Bay, and inquiring into the probability of a north-west passage (London, 1819).

General Bibliography

© 1966–2024 University of Toronto/Université Laval

Image Gallery

Document history.

• Published 1966
• Revised 1979

Occupations and Other Identifiers

Related biographies.

HUDSON, HENRY

BYLOT, ROBERT

PARRY, Sir WILLIAM EDWARD

ROSS, Sir JOHN (1777-1856)

BUTTON, SIR THOMAS

DAVIS, JOHN (d. 1605)

ROSS, Sir JAMES CLARK

Cite This Article

The citation above shows the format for footnotes and endnotes according to the chicago manual of style (16th edition). information to be used in other citation formats:.

William Baffin North-West Passage expedition 1615–16

Discover more about Baffin's pioneering new techniques for calculating longitude

William Baffin and Robert Bylot North-West Passage expedition 1615-16

In 1615, William Baffin and Robert Bylot searched for the North-West Passage. Baffin pioneered new techniques for calculating longitude.

Explorers Baffin and Bylot set sail to look for the Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Arctic Circle - which was a sought-after trade route. They believed that their predecessor, Thomas Button, who had also gone in search of the North-West Passage, was wrong to assume that an inlet he had discovered in the northwest corner of Hudson Bay was not an entrance to the passage.

Baffin and Bylot (who had sailed with Button and Henry Hudson before him) set out in the ship Discovery , now on its fifth Arctic voyage. Baffin was an outstanding navigator, pioneering new techniques for calculating longitude by observing the Moon’s relationship to the stars.

First voyage

On their first voyage, Baffin and Bylot mapped the south coast of what is now known as Baffin Island, the largest island in Canada. Sailing to the north of Southampton Island, at the entrance to Hudson Bay, they concluded that the body of water they had entered was enclosed, and therefore not passable. So they turned back to England, safely arriving in Plymouth in September. Baffin concluded that if a passage did exist it would be found up Davis Strait, and it was with this idea in mind that a second voyage set sail in 1616.

Second voyage

Travelling up Davis Strait, Baffin and Bylot managed to navigate the ice and sail north into Baffin Bay. Then, impassable ice further north eventually halted progress. Before turning for home the mouths of various straits were explored, notably Lancaster Sound. Ice blocked its entrance and Baffin concluded that it could not form any part of the passage.

Returning to England, Baffin wrote to his investors saying: ‘There is no passage nor hope of passage in the north of Davis Strait. We having coasted all, or near all the circumference thereof, and find it to be no other than a great bay, as the voyage doth truly show.’ Edward Parry was to prove otherwise, sailing through Lancaster Sound, but his discovery lay over 200 years in the future.

• Dartmouth Digital Collections

Encyclopedia Arctica

William Baffin: Encyclopedia Arctica 15: Biographies

Author Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 1879-1962

William Baffin

Encyclopedia Arctica ^ 6200 +150 145 ^ Eloise McCaskill ^ McCaskill ^ Popini

Purchas, Samuel Purchas his Pilgrimes , London, 1625, Vol. III

Churchill, John Collection of Voyages and Travels , London, 1732, Vol. VI

Fotherby, Robert "A Short Discourse of a Voyage made in the Yeare of our Lord 1613, to the Late Discouered Countrye of Greenland; and a Briefe Discription of the same Countrie, and the Comodities ther raised to the Adventurers," in Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society (1860), Vol. IV

Markham, Clements R. (ed.) The Voyages of William Baffin, 1612-1622 , London, Hakluyt Society, 1881

Gosch, C.C.A. (ed.) Danish Arctic Expeditions, 1605 to 1620 , Book I, London, Hakluyt Society, 1897

Rundall, Thomas Narratives of Voyages towards the North-West , London, Hakluyt Society, 1849

Christy, Miller (ed.) The Voyages of Captain Luke Foxe of Hull, and Captain Thomas James of Bristol, in Search of a North-West Passage, in 1631-32 , London, Hakluyt Society, 1894

Dictionary of National Biography article, William Baffin

Samuel Purchas: Purchas his Pilgrimes , London, 1625, Vol. III

John Churchill: Collection of Voyages and Travels , London, 1732, Vol. VI

Robert Fotherby: "A Short Discourse of a Voyage made in the Yeare of Our Lord 1613, to the Late Discouered Countrye of Greenland; and a Briefe Discription of the same Countrie, and the Comodities ther raised to the Adventurers", in Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society (1860), Vol. IV,

Clements R. Markham(ed.): The Voyages of William Baffin , 1612-1622, London, Hakluyt Society, 1881

C.C.A. Gosch ^ (ed.) ^ : Danish Arctic Expeditions, 1605 to 1620 , Book I, London, Hakluyt Society, 1897

Thomas Rundall: Narratives of Voyages ^ [] ^ towards the North-West , London, Hakluyt Society, 1849

Miller Christy (ed.): The Voyages of Captain Luke Foxe of Hull, and Captain Thomas James of Bristol, in Search of a North-West Passage, in 1631-32 , London, Hakluyt Society, 1894

Dictionary of National Biography : article, William ^ [] ^ Baffin

William Baffin

William Baffin, an English pilot, died Jan. 23, 1622. Of all the great navigators, Baffin is the one we know least about. He suddenly appeared on a ship's roster in 1612, and we...

Scientist of the Day - William Baffin

William Baffin, an English pilot, died Jan. 23, 1622.  Of all the great navigators, Baffin is the one we know least about.  He suddenly appeared on a ship's roster in 1612, and we have no idea where or when he was born or what kind of upbringing he had.  But the ten years of his life that we do know about are filled with both adventure and accomplishment.  Between 1612 and 1616, Baffin served as pilot on five voyages to Arctic regions along both the eastern and western coasts of Greenland.  The first three were to the area of Spitsbergen, as part of whaling expeditions sponsored by the Muscovy Company, in an attempt to find a Northwest Passage to the Orient. On these voyages, Baffin demonstrated his considerable navigational skills, which involved taking difficult astronomical observations at sea.

Baffin then entered the services of the Company of the Merchants Discoverers of he North-West Passage, which was well funded by sponsors including Sir Thomas Smith and Sir Dudley Digges.  The Northwest Passage Company, as we shall call it, had already sponsored three voyages exploring in the area of Davis Strait west of Greenland, one of which included Henry Hudson, who discovered the strait and bay named after him, and who was then cast adrift by his rebellious crew, to be seen no more.  The ship used by Hudson, called the Discovery , was a tiny flyboat of 20-tons displacement, which had been built in 1602, and was one of the three ships that ferried colonists to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.  When the Discovery returned without Hudson, the Northwest Company sent it out twice more under other captains, to explore Hudson Bay, but without finding a passage.  Not ones to give up easily, in 1615, the Company sent out the Discovery again, and this time, Baffin was aboard as pilot, and Robert Bylot (who had been on Hudson’s last voyage) as captain.

Facsimile of William Baffin’s hand-drawn map of Hudson strait, made on the 1615 voyage, and reproduced from The Voyages of William Baffin, 1612–1622, by Clements R. Markham, 1881; location of original is unknown (Wikimedia commons)

The 1615 expedition returned to Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay, and for this voyage, we have tangible evidence of Baffin's map-making skill, as a single map survives in his own hand depicting Hudson Strait and the eastern entrance to Hudson Bay ( second image ).  Clements Markham reproduced it in his 1881 book about Baffin (which is not in our Library); I do not know if the original map survives, and if so, where it might be.

It was also on this voyage that Baffin made the first attempt ever (as far as we know) to determine longitude at sea, using what is called the "lunar distance" method, which involves measuring the angular distance between the Moon and a star, and then the altitudes of both the Moon and the star.  Usually this involves comparing the readings to a set of tables to establish local time.  I do not know what Baffin used for tables, since the method, while invented in the early 16th century, had never been used before at sea.  But historians of navigation and of longitude determination have long been very impressed by Baffin's accomplishment.

Map of the Atlantic Ocean, with Baffin Bay highlighted at left ( see detail, first image ), explored by John Ross and crew in 1618, engraving in A Voyage of Discovery , by John Ross, 1819 (Linda Hall Library)

The 1615 voyage, while producing one surviving map (and presumably many other maps) of great accuracy, did not yield any sign of a Northwest Passage, so Bylot and Baffin were sent out again in the Discovery in 1616, this time to explore up Davis Strait, which had been discovered by Englishman John Davis in 1586, and which extends north of the entrance to Hudson Strait.  Although the sea north of Davis Strait (now called Baffin Bay) was clogged with ice, the Discovery managed to explore both coasts, that of Greenland on the east, and what is now Baffin Island on the west.  At the north end of the bay, they found three sounds, which they named after three of their patrons: Lancaster Sound, Smith Sound, and Jones Sound.  All of these were blocked by ice, so Baffin and Bylot were unable to discover that Lancaster Sound, which led to the west, was indeed an avenue into the Arctic archipelago and the beginning of a Northwest Passage, as William Parry would discover 203 years later,

Baffin turned all his logs and maps over to Samuel Purchas for publishing in his series of voyages, but Purchas unaccountably did not publish any of them, just a summary, and the logs and maps were since lost.  That was a disaster, because all knowledge of Baffin Bay slowly disappeared, and no one attempted to follow up on Baffin’s 1616 voyage for over two centuries.  Fortunately, John Barrow , Second Secretary of the Admiralty in the 1810s, believed in the stories he had heard about Baffin, and he sent out the first modern search for a Northwest Passage in 1818, with John Ross in command of the Isabella and Alexander.  The ships duplicated almost exactly the path of the Discovery in 1616, finding Lancaster, Jones, and Smith sounds just where Baffin said they would be.  In fact, the map produced by the 1818 voyage could well serve as the lost map of Baffin of 1616 ( first and third images ).  The Discovery had been prevented by ice from entering Lancaster Sound; the Isabella was blocked by incompetence, as Ross claimed the Sound was obstructed by a mountain range. Fortunately, a furious Ross sent William Parry back out in 1819, and Parry and his ships and crew sailed right through Lancaster Sound and half-way across the Arctic archipelago.  It was a completion, two centuries later, of the voyage begun by Baffin.

Replicas of the three ships that carried colonists to Jamestown in 1608, at Jamestown, Virginia, modern photograph; the tiny Discovery , center, was the ship later piloted by William Baffin in his last two searches for a Northwest Passage (theclio.com)

After the 1616 Discovery voyage, Baffin turned his attentions to the East India Company, perhaps hoping to find the Northwest Passage from the Pacific side.  He spent the rest of his life in the East Indies, and died of a gunshot wound during the siege of Ormuz in 1622.

To me, one of the most remarkable aspects of Baffin’s last two arctic voyages is the ship he made them in.  The Discovery was a tiny, tiny vessel.  It was apparently quite maneuverable, and thus well suited to travel in ice-laden seas.  But a collision with even a mid-sized marine mammal would have been a fatal flow.  The original Discovery does not survive, but because of its role in founding the Jamestown colony, replicas were made in the 1980s of all three Jamestown ships for the Jamestown historic site, and we see above a photograph of the three ( fourth image ). The Susan Constant , on the right, was the largest of the trio, and it was not very big.  The Discovery replica is the one in the middle.  I cannot imagine being one of the 17 crew members as this vessel plied its way up Baffin Bay to a latitude of 77° 45’, a record that would not be equaled until 1852.  What an amazing voyage of discovery that was, and no wonder Baffin is often called the greatest English navigator before Captain James Cook. Since we have room, we also show a photo of the Virginia state quarter, which depicts the three Jamestown ships, with the Discovery at the far left.

The Virginia state quarter, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown in 1607; the small ship at left, the 20-ton Discovery , latter carried William Baffin on his last two attempts to find a Northwest Passage in 1615 and 1616 (Wikimedia commons)

There is no known portrait of Baffin, although many biographical articles are illustrated with a portrait of a navigator in the Royal Museums Greenwich.  There is no reason to think this is Baffin, and many reasons to believe that it portrays someone else.

William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to  [email protected] .

Library Hours

Monday - Friday 10 AM - 5 PM

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

The voyages of William Baffin, 1612-1622

Bookreader item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

5,250 Views

3 Favorites

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

For users with print-disabilities

IN COLLECTIONS

Uploaded by MarkGraves on June 11, 2008

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

William Baffin

Robert MacNeil, urbane anchor who founded ‘PBS NewsHour,’ dies at 93

He forged a two-decade partnership with jim lehrer, his co-anchor on public television.

Robert MacNeil, a Canadian-born broadcast journalist who built what is now “PBS NewsHour” and served for two decades as its urbane, evenhanded co-anchor, died April 12 at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 93.

His daughter Alison MacNeil confirmed the death but did not cite a cause.

Mr. MacNeil, known as Robin, and Jim Lehrer, a former Texas newspaperman, formed one of television journalism’s most successful and enduring partnerships in 1975, when they launched what became “PBS NewsHour.” As the news world transformed around them with the arrival of 24-hour cable news and combative political talk shows, they maintained a reputation for sober, straightforward reporting and analysis.

The duo met in 1973 while anchoring public television’s gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings. Teaming up again two years later, they decided to offer a sophisticated supplement to the network nightly news, focusing on a single issue each night that they addressed in interviews with experts.

“We decided to do a program for the curious, and the informed, and the interested,” Mr. MacNeil later told the Toronto Star. “And it worked.”

Known early on as “The MacNeil/Lehrer Report,” the show anticipated network programs such as ABC’s “Nightline” and expanded from a 30-minute time slot to become the country’s first national, hour-long nightly news broadcast in 1983.

Although it was accused at times of being boring and elitist, the program developed a loyal audience, with about 5 million viewers tuning in each night by the time Mr. MacNeil retired as executive editor and co-anchor in 1995. Nearly 50 years after its founding, the show still commands a following, attracting some 1 million viewers a night.

“In Mr. MacNeil and Mr. Lehrer, ‘The NewsHour’ has the only two major anchors on television who actually practice journalism,” New York Times media critic John Corry wrote in 1983 . “They ask questions and then listen to the answers. Network anchors just read the news.”

In addition to Lehrer, who remained as the sole anchor after Mr. MacNeil’s retirement and who died in 2020 , “NewsHour” has featured journalists including Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Elizabeth Farnsworth, Gwen Ifill , Roger Mudd and Judy Woodruff.

Mr. MacNeil had a distinctive and reassuring baritone, with a cultivated accent that complemented Lehrer’s folksier delivery. He saw himself as a writer trapped in a broadcaster’s body — he and Lehrer were both novelists in addition to newscasters — and said that he turned to journalism in financial desperation while struggling to make a living as a playwright in London.

He began writing for Reuters in 1955 and, five years later, joined NBC News as a foreign correspondent, covering fighting in the Belgian Congo, the Algerian war of independence and the construction of the Berlin Wall. After moving to the network’s Washington bureau, he was assigned to cover President John F. Kennedy’s November 1963 visit to Dallas, where he was sitting at the front of a press bus when shots rang out.

Mr. MacNeil ran off the bus, followed police officers up a grassy knoll and searched for a phone to call his editor. Sprinting toward the Texas School Book Depository, the building from which Lee Harvey Oswald was later found to have shot Kennedy, he came face to face with a “young guy in shirtsleeves” who suggested that Mr. MacNeil “ask inside” for a phone.

“I didn’t register his face because I was obsessed with finding a phone,” Mr. MacNeil told the Canadian Press in 2013 . “Much later,” he added, “it occurred to me that I was going in just about the time Oswald had been going out.”

A decade later — while moderating “Washington Week in Review,” his first job at PBS — he started covering the Watergate hearings with Lehrer, with whom he bonded over shared literary interests. They spent more than 300 hours together in front of the camera, anchoring live coverage of the Senate hearings that helped lead to President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

Mr. MacNeil and Lehrer received an Emmy Award for their Watergate coverage and soon formed “The Robert MacNeil Report,” initially broadcast by WNET in New York, with Lehrer serving as Washington correspondent. After a few months, the show was distributed nationally by PBS and renamed “The MacNeil/Lehrer Report,” with the two men as co-anchors.

The duo formed a production company in 1981, making “NewsHour” the only major nightly news show to be independently produced and owned by its anchors.

With their focus on informing rather than entertaining, the anchors joked that the show’s motto was, “We dare to be boring.” “NewsHour” left coverage of sensational stories such as the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial to the major networks, gravitating instead toward foreign conflicts, trade negotiations, nuclear arms deals and the like.

Mr. MacNeil interviewed foreign leaders including Ayatollah Khomeini, who was exiled in France when he urged Iranians to overthrow the shah, and Cuba’s Fidel Castro , who two decades earlier had placed the young foreign correspondent under house arrest in Havana during the Cuban missile crisis.

Backed by corporate sponsors such as PepsiCo and AT&T, the show endured despite being eclipsed in the ratings by the major network programs and facing a budget shortfall that contributed to Mr. MacNeil’s decision to retire on its 20-year anniversary.

“I think we helped create a place for a civil discourse and respect for complexity in a medium which often respects neither — you could even argue increasingly respects neither,” he told the Times in 1995 , shortly before stepping down. “Those aren’t small things.”

The oldest of three sons, Robert Breckenridge Ware MacNeil was born in Montreal on Jan. 19, 1931, and grew up in the port city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. His father served in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and commanded convoy escort ships during World War II, leaving his mother at home to raise Robin and his two brothers.

“The words of her own stories, and of the stories she read me, were the first words I drank in,” Mr. MacNeil wrote in a 1989 memoir, “Wordstruck.” Partly from his mother, he inherited a love of language that inspired PBS documentaries such as “The Story of English” (1986), an Emmy-winning nine-part series, and “Do You Speak American?” (2005), both of which he hosted and co-wrote.

Mr. MacNeil was steered toward a naval career by his father but, after graduating from high school in Ottawa, failed part of the naval college entrance exam. “When that happened, the bottom dropped out of both my world and my father’s,” he later told People magazine.

He turned toward theater at Dalhousie University in Halifax, where a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. producer recruited him for radio acting after seeing an “Othello” production that featured Mr. MacNeil as Cassio. Mr. MacNeil played a farmhand on a radio soap, quit school, worked as an all-night DJ and left for the United States, where he failed to find success in the New York theater scene.

Deciding that writing would be his creative outlet, he returned to school, receiving a bachelor’s degree in English in 1955 from Carleton College (now a university) in Ottawa. His plays were rejected by the Royal Court Theatre and BBC’s Radio Drama Co. in London before he began working as a journalist.

Mr. MacNeil did some early broadcasting work for Britain’s Independent Television and Canada’s CBC Television. But in a farewell tribute for “NewsHour,” he recalled that his on-air career got off to an inauspicious start: “The very first television interview I ever did, which was live in Canada, I forgot the names of both the people I was interviewing and had to say so to them.”

He found his rhythm at NBC, where he co-anchored a weekend show called “The Scherer-MacNeil Report” before leaving in 1967 for the BBC. Mr. MacNeil joined its news program “Panorama” and then moved to Washington, where he credited Lehrer with helping him loosen up his interviewing style, teaching him to ask questions such as “Why?” and “Could you say that again?”

Mr. MacNeil’s marriages to Rosemarie Copland and Jane Doherty ended in divorce. In 1984, he married Donna Nappi Richards, who died in 2015.

Survivors include two children from his first marriage, Cathy and Ian MacNeil, a Tony-winning set designer; two children from his second marriage, Alison and William MacNeil; a brother; and five grandchildren.

In 1997, Mr. MacNeil became a U.S. citizen and, while maintaining dual citizenship, was named an officer in the Order of Canada. He also accepted the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton on behalf of the MacDowell Colony, an artist residency program in New Hampshire that he led for 17 years as chairman.

Mr. MacNeil maintained an enduring interest in the arts, and while he occasionally returned to PBS after his retirement — including as the presenter of “America at a Crossroads” (2007), a documentary miniseries about the war on terrorism — he spent much of his time writing.

His debut novel, “Burden of Desire” (1992), centered on the catastrophic 1917 collision of two freighters in the Halifax harbor, resulting in an explosion that knocked his real-life uncle off the toilet. Like his follow-up, “The Voyage” (1995), the book was occasionally steamy, jolting some readers accustomed to his buttoned-up interviewing style.

“I think people were surprised that anybody with my persona was writing about matters that exist below the belt,” he told the Times . But in broadcast news, he added, “like in a lot of professions, you use only a band of your personality in public.”

Rosatom Starts Production of Rare-Earth Magnets for Wind Power Generation

TVEL Fuel Company of Rosatom has started gradual localization of rare-earth magnets manufacturing for wind power plants generators. The first sets of magnets have been manufactured and shipped to the customer.

In total, the contract between Elemash Magnit LLC (an enterprise of TVEL Fuel Company of Rosatom in Elektrostal, Moscow region) and Red Wind B.V. (a joint venture of NovaWind JSC and the Dutch company Lagerwey) foresees manufacturing and supply over 200 sets of magnets. One set is designed to produce one power generator.

“The project includes gradual localization of magnets manufacturing in Russia, decreasing dependence on imports. We consider production of magnets as a promising sector for TVEL’s metallurgical business development. In this regard, our company does have the relevant research and technological expertise for creation of Russia’s first large-scale full cycle production of permanent rare-earth magnets,” commented Natalia Nikipelova, President of TVEL JSC.

“NovaWind, as the nuclear industry integrator for wind power projects, not only made-up an efficient supply chain, but also contributed to the development of inter-divisional cooperation and new expertise of Rosatom enterprises. TVEL has mastered a unique technology for the production of magnets for wind turbine generators. These technologies will be undoubtedly in demand in other areas as well,” noted Alexander Korchagin, Director General of NovaWind JSC.

For reference:

TVEL Fuel Company of Rosatom incorporates enterprises for the fabrication of nuclear fuel, conversion and enrichment of uranium, production of gas centrifuges, as well as research and design organizations. It is the only supplier of nuclear fuel for Russian nuclear power plants. TVEL Fuel Company of Rosatom provides nuclear fuel for 73 power reactors in 13 countries worldwide, research reactors in eight countries, as well as transport reactors of the Russian nuclear fleet. Every sixth power reactor in the world operates on fuel manufactured by TVEL. www.tvel.ru

NovaWind JSC is a division of Rosatom; its primary objective is to consolidate the State Corporation's efforts in advanced segments and technological platforms of the electric power sector. The company was founded in 2017. NovaWind consolidates all of the Rosatom’s wind energy assets – from design and construction to power engineering and operation of wind farms.

Overall, by 2023, enterprises operating under the management of NovaWind JSC, will install 1 GW of wind farms. http://novawind.ru

Elemash Magnit LLC is a subsidiary of Kovrov Mechanical Plant (an enterprise of the TVEL Fuel Company of Rosatom) and its main supplier of magnets for production of gas centrifuges. The company also produces magnets for other industries, in particular, for the automotive

industry. The production facilities of Elemash Magnit LLC are located in the city of Elektrostal, Moscow Region, at the site of Elemash Machine-Building Plant (a nuclear fuel fabrication facility of TVEL Fuel Company).

Rosatom is a global actor on the world’s nuclear technology market. Its leading edge stems from a number of competitive strengths, one of which is assets and competences at hand in all nuclear segments. Rosatom incorporates companies from all stages of the technological chain, such as uranium mining and enrichment, nuclear fuel fabrication, equipment manufacture and engineering, operation of nuclear power plants, and management of spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. Nowadays, Rosatom brings together about 350 enterprises and organizations with the workforce above 250 K. https://rosatom.ru/en/

U.S. Added Less New Wind Power in 2021 Than the Previous Year — Here’s Why

Airborne Wind Energy Developer Kitemill Prepares for 24HOUR Operation and Multi-Device Demonstrations

Vietnam's Largest Wind Power Plant Starts Operational

Vietnam Plans to Double Wind Power Generation by 2030

Developer Lines up Support for Vietnam Wind Build

Australia Adopts Policy for Development of 1.2GW Wind Project

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Robert MacNeil, Earnest News Anchor for PBS, Dies at 93

With his longtime co-host Jim Lehrer, he delivered thoughtful reports that stood in stark contrast to the commercial networks’ ever more sensational newscasts.

By Elizabeth Jensen

Robert MacNeil, the Canadian-born journalist who delivered sober evening newscasts for more than two decades on PBS as the co-anchor of “The MacNeil/Lehrer Report,” later expanded as “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” died early Friday in Manhattan. He was 93.

His death, at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital, was confirmed by his daughter Alison MacNeil.

Mr. MacNeil spent time at NBC News early in his career and was a reporter for the network in Dallas on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. But he came to reject the flashier style of the commercial American networks, and in 1971 he joined the fledgling Public Broadcasting Service.

He brought with him a news sensibility honed at the BBC, where he had worked in the interim, and became a key figure in shaping U.S. public television’s in-depth and evenhanded approach to news coverage.

A pairing with Jim Lehrer in 1973 to cover the Senate Watergate hearings for PBS was unpopular with the operators of many local public stations, who thought the prime-time broadcasts weren’t appropriate evening fare. But the two men’s serious demeanor was a hit with viewers, and the broadcasts won an Emmy Award and eventually launched an enduring collaboration.

In October 1975, some major public stations began carrying the “The Robert MacNeil Report,” a half-hour of Mr. MacNeil’s design that examined a single issue each night and shunned showy production values. Within a year the program was renamed “The MacNeil/Lehrer Report.” It was expanded again in 1983 to become “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” a multitopic program that was the nation’s first full hour of evening news.

The program offered a stark counterpoint to the ever-frothier newscasts on the commercial networks’ local affiliates and was honored with every major broadcast journalism award.

Intensely private in public, Mr. MacNeil was known to friends as engaging and wickedly funny. He was proud of his no-nonsense style on air, which critics called boring but which he called civilized discourse in the public interest. One memorable example was his hourlong interview in 1985 with Fidel Castro, in which Mr. Castro reluctantly defended the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, in part because he would never “be on the side of the United States.’’

Mr. MacNeil defended his interviewing style and his program’s unsensational approach to weighty topics. “I cannot stand the theatrical, prosecutorial interview, the interview designed to draw attention to the interviewer, full of either mawkish, false sentiment or theatrically belligerent questioning,” he told The New York Times in 1995, when he retired from the daily newscast.

“Every journalist in this country has a stake in the democratic system working, and I think institutions of democracy are worth taking seriously,” he added. “It’s a very old-fashioned, corny view, but Jim and I both feel that strongly, which is one of the reasons our show is the way it is.”

Robert Breckenridge Ware MacNeil, known as Robin, was born on Jan. 19, 1931, in Montreal and raised in the port city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. His father, Robert A.S. MacNeil, served in the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II, commanding convoy escort ships, and later joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. His mother Margaret (Oxner) MacNeil, was left to raise her children alone for several years while her husband was at war.

While Mr. MacNeil was attending Dalhousie University in Halifax, a producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. saw him in a school production of “Othello,” and he was hired to act in CBC radio productions and eventually a daily radio soap opera.

He soon dropped out of college to try his hand full time at stage acting, but decided that he was better suited to be a playwright and returned to school, this time at Carleton University in Ottawa. While still a student he worked as a national radio announcer for the CBC and then for the CBC’s new television service, where he also hosted a children’s program.

After graduating, he moved to England to write plays, but quickly turned to journalism to make money. He told The Times in 1995, “I had one of those golden careers; it just floated.”

In 1960, after five years at the Reuters news agency in London, Mr. MacNeil joined NBC News, eventually replacing John Chancellor as a wide-ranging foreign correspondent, covering wars in Africa and the Cuban missile crisis. (For about a week after that October 1962 episode, he and five other journalists were held under house arrest in a Havana hotel by the Castro government.) He was present at the construction of the Berlin Wall and later covered its dismantling in 1989.

Mr. MacNeil was assigned to cover Washington in 1963 and was on his first presidential trip on Nov. 22 when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. While his work covering the killing was overshadowed by that of his NBC News colleagues, he may have had his own brush with the drama of that day.

After the shots were fired in Dealey Plaza, Mr. MacNeil made his way to the nearest building, the Texas School Book Depository — the building from which the fatal shots had been fired. There, he asked a man who was leaving and another in the lobby where the nearest telephone was. Kennedy’s accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, later told the Dallas police that he had encountered a Secret Service agent at the building. The historian William Manchester concluded in his 1967 book, “The Death of a President,” that the man in the suit, crew cut and press badge was, in fact, Mr. MacNeil.

In his autobiography, “The Right Place at the Right Time” (1982), Mr. MacNeil wrote that “it was possible, but I had no way of confirming that either of the young men I had spoken to was Oswald.”

In 1965, Mr. MacNeil became the co-anchor, with Ray Scherer, of NBC’s half-hour weekend news broadcast, “The Scherer-MacNeil Report.” But two years later he returned to London, reporting for the BBC’s “Panorama” program, before joining PBS in 1971.

Mr. MacNeil, who had homes in Manhattan and Nova Scotia, became an American citizen in 1997 and was made an officer in the Order of Canada the same year. He reflected on his life as a dual citizen in a 2003 memoir, “Looking for My Country: Finding Myself in America.”

His wife, Donna MacNeil, died in 2015 . His first marriage, to Rosemarie Coopland, ended in divorce, as did his second marriage, to Jane Doherty.

He is survived by two children from his first marriage, Ian MacNeil, a theatrical set designer who won a Tony in 2009 for his work on the musical “Billy Elliott,” and Cathy MacNeil; two children from his second marriage, Alison and Will MacNeil; and five grandchildren.

After retiring from the daily newscast, Mr. MacNeil continued to work with PBS, including hosting the “America at a Crossroads” series of documentaries in 2007, which examined the nation’s challenges in the post-9/11 world. With Mr. Lehrer, his close friend, he remained a partner in MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, which produced their newscast until 2014, when WETA, the Washington, D.C., public media station where the “NewsHour” is based, assumed ownership. Mr. Lehrer died in 2020 at 85.

Mr. MacNeil found himself at the center of controversy in 2011 when, returning to “NewsHour” for a six-part series on autism, he featured the story of his grandson Nick. He was criticized for allowing his daughter Alison to question whether her son’s autism was linked to vaccines. (He did qualify her comments by noting that “public health authorities say there is no scientifically valid evidence that vaccines cause autism.”)

Mr. MacNeil chaired the board of the MacDowell Colony (now known as MacDowell), the retreat for artists, writers and musicians in Peterborough, N.H., from 1993 to 2010. After leaving the “NewsHour,” he returned to his first love, writing. He was the author of “The People Machine” (1968), about the relationship between television and politics; three memoirs; and four novels — “Burden of Desire” (1992), “The Voyage” (1995), “Breaking News” (1998) and “Portrait of Julia” (2013).

He was a co-author of “The Story of English,” a companion volume to the 1986 BBC-PBS television series that he hosted, and he wrote its 2005 sequel, “Do You Speak American?”

Mr. MacNeil remained proud of his early evening newscast. In interviews for the Archive of American Television in 2000 and 2001, he was asked how he wanted to be remembered.

“Television has changed journalism, utterly, not just for television, but for print and everybody else,” he said. “It’s changed the whole culture and ethos of journalism. And to have been able hold the line — perhaps Canute-like — against a tide that’s going to engulf us all in the end, for a few years, has been a source of gratification to me.”

Sofia Poznansky contributed reporting