ABSTRACT
Richard Hakluyt served his readers well in bringing to their notice the achievements of English navigators in Arctic exploration. Apart from the apparent playing-down of foreign achievement, there are no major gaps, in the cover Hakluyt provided. Many voyages were made to the White Sea and Hakluyt is silent about their details, but these were not exploratory voyages. The changes that Hakluyt made between his two editions were in the direction of clarifying or simplifying. There were sixteen separate items relevant to north-eastern voyages in the first edition. For the second, he added five, and trimmed or cut three. On the voyages to the north-west, Hakluyt provides a no less full story; in some ways, perhaps, fuller, for it is reasonably certain that there were only six English voyages and he deals well with all of them. Apart from the north-east and north/west, Hakluyt mentions very briefly a few much earlier voyages.
