Learn All Ways Possible: The Western World's First Tragic Trade Expeditions to Russia and Ivan the Terrible in the 1550's

 It is the 10th of May 1553 and famed English arctic explorer, diplomat and soldier Hugh Willoughby has been given command of three ships under the financing of a new joint stock venture called London’s Company of Merchant Adventurers of New Lands.  This joint stock company has been tasked with exploration to improve England’s foreign trade and was the brainchild of famed mariner and explorer Sebastian Cabot.  It is the hope of both Cabot and King Edward VI, who is very much personally invested in the joint stock venture, that the Merchant Adventurers of New Lands will discover the famed “Northeast Passage”--a sea route much quicker than sailing around the known world-- to India and the far east and that King Edward VI, Sebastian Cabot and all of England will become wealthy beyond their wildest imaginations in the process.

But before he sets sail on this supposed voyage of exploration to the far east of Asia Hugh Willoughby has one tiny problem--he’s not even sure a so-called northeast passage to India or China exists, and even if it does, the leaders of the Merchant Adventurers, namely Cabot and King Edward VI, want him to sail around the Arctic Circle, beyond the reach of the known world, to find it!

Today, no one knows exactly when Hugh Willoughby was born, but we know he was knighted for valour in combat during the reign of King Henry VIII and that by all accounts he was an excellent leader of men and a fearless soldiers, who most probably, would have stoically sailed his three ships northward to the Arctic Circle in search of a northeast passage to China even if he was certain that both he himself, and all of his men in the process, would freeze to death or starve before they even got there.  But, despite his bravery, leadership skills and connections with royalty, Willoughby was by most accounts not a skilled navigator and not experienced in seaborne exploration.  But, if nothing else Willougby was self aware, and to make up for his shortcomings he appointed Richard Chancellor as Chief Pilot and Navigator for the Merchant Adventurers of New Lands Expedition to find the famed northeast passage to India through the Arctic Circle.

Hugh Willoughby

Like his nominal boss on the expedition, Richard Chancellor’s exact date of birth is lost to history as well.  Most likely, in 1553 when he set out with Willoughby to discover the famed northeast passage to China via the Arctic Circle, Chancellor was aged somewhere in his early to mid-thirties, but an unknown birthdate is where the similarities between Willoughby and Chancellor pretty much end.

Richard Chancellor was an orphan who was raised in Bristol by a relative who himself was a ship’s captain.  Chancellor grew up not as a soldier, but rather, as a man destined to sail the high seas.

Before Chancellor and Willoughby set out on their expedition with three ships and a few hundred sailors under their command in the employ of the London Merchant Adventurers Sebastian Cabot ordered simply that, “They behave peaceably towards any peoples that they may encounter.”  The goal of the Merchant Adventurers of New Lands was trade and wealth, not conquest--at least, not yet.

Composed of frigid bays and dotted with floating icebergs, the White Sea is, in many ways, the earth’s gateway to the Arctic Circle.  It is located off the northwest coast of Russia and is surrounded on all sides by peninsulas.  Today, the White Sea is more of a giant Russian Lake, used as a base by the Russian Navy and for top secret Russian nuclear tests, than it is an international body of water that is open to free trade among world powers.

The White Sea

But, in the autumn of 1553 after several months at sea searching for the ill fated northeast passage to India and China Richard Chancellor at the helm of an English vessel called the Edward Bonaventure sailed into the White Sea after he had become separated from Willoughby and the other two ships of the expedition.  In the midst of a fierce storm he ran aground at the mouth of the Dvina River in northwest Russia at the edge of the Arctic Circle.  Chancellor, alone and without his crew, was brought all the way to Moscow, presumably as an invited guest, but most likely with an armed escort, to meet the Czar of Russia, becoming almost by chance, the first westerner to meet the Czar and to open up seaborne trade between the giant nation of Russia and the rest of the world.

It wasn’t just any old Russian Czar that Chancellor had the good fortune to meet with on behalf of England and the western world--it was the first Russian “Czar” who met Chancellor and negotiated a trade deal with the West, the man known to history as Ivan the Terrible.

Ivan the Terrible was technically the Grand Prince of the Muscovites only, but right around the time that Chancellor and the crew of the Edward Bonaventure washed up on the icy shores of the White Sea, Ivan had used ruthlessness and fear, and relentless military campaigns to unite all of the tribes of Russia under his rule, and had proclaimed himself “Czar” or Caesar of all of modern day Russia.  Ivan was a complex man with grandiose ambitions and he desired, more than anything else, power on the world stage of the sixteenth century.

Czar Ivan the Terrible

It is said that when Ivan the Terrible heard that an English ship had washed up, as if by magic on the shores of northern Russia, that he became almost uncontrollably excited and demanded to meet with the leader of the English ship at once.

For his part, Richard Chancellor was unsure what to do when he found himself, and the small crew of his ship, separated from the rest of the Expedition.  Most likely he and his men were terrified.  Nothing lay before them but ice and barren desolation, and upon landing, they quickly discovered from local fishermen that they were in Russia--which at the time many Englishmen believed was simply a savage land inhabited by cannibals and warring bloodthirsty tribes, and truth be told, aside from the part about cannibals they weren’t far from the truth!  Sixteenth century Russia was definitely a vast expanse of warring tribes that only a ruthless despot like Ivan the Terrible could hope to control.

 Apparently, he waited several days for Willoughby and the others to show up.  The temperature was beginning to drop dramatically, and eventually Chancellor considered setting out for more civilized and inhabited environs, when quite fortuitously, a group of messengers sent by the Czar Ivan the Terrible showed up and provided Chancellor with sledges and transported him southward over 1500 miles to Moscow to meet with the Czar.  Chancellor’s men, though provided with supplies for the winter on behalf of the Czar, were forced to stay behind with their ship on the banks of the White Sea and wait apprehensively for the return of their ship’s Captain and the expedition’s navigator.

It was reported that Chancellor arrived in Moscow to an overwhelming reception.   He recorded of being summoned to meet Ivan the Terrible in his own journal that, “He found him (Ivan) wearing a long garment of beaten gold, an imperial crown upon his head and with a staff of gold and crystals in his hand.”

Contemporary image of Chancellor being brought to Moscow

Despite his fearsome reputation, and the imposing regal attire that Ivan the Terrible was dressed in he informed Richard Chancellor that the Edward Bonaventure had indeed washed up on Russian shores at a most fortuitous time because just as Chancellor and his crew came ashore, Ivan had been considering launching an international expedition of his own to open up trade relations between Russia and the nation’s of the western world that he had heard so much about.

History records that Chancellor spent a most enjoyable winter at the court of Ivan the Terrible, though his men stranded on the frozen banks of the White Sea probably didn’t feel the same.  In the spring of 1554 he returned to England to report to the Merchant Adventurers of New Lands that he had met with the Czar and that Ivan the Terrible wished to open up trade relations with Great Britain and western Europe.

King Edward and Sebastian Cabot quickly set about outfitting another expedition, this time of only two ships one of which was the Edward Bonaventure that would make the return voyage to the Russian port of Archangel on the shores of the Arctic Circle, to begin trading with Ivan the Terrible.  This time Richard Chancellor, who had by chance stumbled upon the vast expanse of Ivan the Terrible’s Russia, was placed in overall command of the expedition.

In an ominous foreshadowing of events when Chancellor did return to Russia he found out from the same Russian fishermen that had greeted him less than two years before, that Hugh Willoughby and the rest of the men on the first Expedition to find the Northeast Passage had become trapped and frozen in the ice of the Arctic Circle and presumably had all died of starvation or exposure.  Their bodies were never recovered and no trace of Hugh Willoughby or his crew was ever brought back to England.  

              This second expedition set out for Russia in 1555 and arrived at the port of Archangel in October of that year.  Chancellor was this time given orders by King Edward to, “Learn by all ways possible…either by land or by sea…how many men may pass from Russia into Cathay (China).”  Richard Chancellor successfully completed a trade deal with the Czar and loaded his ships with furs and gifts of jewels and precious metals from Ivan the Terrible.  Ivan, for his part, said that he wished to trade natural resources with the English King, but he was non-committal about any passage to “Cathay’ and did not disclose any pertinent information about Russian relations with the Chinese, something that twenty-first century diplomats would definitely be able to understand.

Richard Chancellor at the Court of Ivan the Terrible

After spending a winter in the court of the Czar at Moscow, Chancellor and his ship’s crew departed from the port of Archangel from the White Sea for a return to England, this time accompanied by a Russian ambassador and his entourage.

The English ships departed Russia for their return voyage home in July of 1556.  Off the Scottish coast, Chancellor and his ships were caught in a raging storm with fierce winds that smashed the ships against the rocky shores off Scotland.  In a desperate attempt to reach shore Richard Chancellor, seven other men and the Russian ambassador Ivan Nespas rowed for shore in a small boat but their lifeboat was capsized by a rogue wave and everyone aboard the boat except for the Russian ambassador perished by drowning off the coast of Scotland.

Oddly enough, the only survivor from the trade expedition with Russia was Nespas, the Russian ambassador himself, who washed up on the shore in Scotland where he was captured by locals and promptly imprisoned.  Apparently, he would die in captivity and when word reached Ivan the Terrible that his ambassador had died at the hands of the United Kingdom while imprisoned it is said that he flew into a violent rage that cost the lives of many of his courtiers.

Thus, way back in the 1550’s, began the west’s long and turbulent relationship with Russia, and nearly half a millenia later, there’s still no telling where that relationship will lead.