Hugh Willoughby

Willoughby and the crews of two ships died on the voyage while the third vessel Edward Bonaventure, under the command of Richard Chancellor, who went on to open a successful, long-lasting trading arrangement with Russia.

Willoughby petitioned to lead this expedition and although he lacked significant maritime experience, he was selected based on his distinguished family and his "singular skill in the services of war.

They left London with great fanfare and travelled slowly down the Thames, pausing at Greenwich to fire an artillery salute for the young King Edward.

The ships were careful to stay together and agreed that if they were separated, they would rendezvous at Vardøhus Fortress, a small fortified outpost on the Norwegian island of Vardøya in the town of Vardø.

Setting out again to resume their eastward journey, Chancellor found the entrance to the White Sea and moored at the mouth of the Dvina River near the convent of St. Nicholas at Nyonoksa from where the first Russian czar Ivan IV obtained salt for Russia.

From there he was summoned to Moscow and Ivan the Terrible's Court, where he negotiated an agreement opening trade with Russia through the northern ports that lasted three hundred years.

Willoughby attempted to reach Wardhouse, but their maps were misleading, compass readings were unreliable, and the weather was too overcast to measure latitude.

More recently it has been suggested that the crew may have been killed by carbon monoxide poisoning, resulting from a decision to insulate their ship and block their stove chimney to fight the Arctic cold.

[7] The discovery was quickly reported back to the tsar in Moscow who ordered the ships secured and transferred to the White Sea to await recovery by the English.