Jonas Poole

Jonas Poole was an early 17th-century English explorer, sealer, and whaler. Although Henry Hudson has often been dubbed the "father of English whaling," Poole, who's 1610 voyage led to the establishment of the English whaling trade, deserves the title.

Jonas Poole, having become a proficient seaman, volunteered to learn about commercial whaling and exploration. On 10 April 1603 he joined the Grace (30 tons) under Stephen Bennett after she had been refitted at the expense of Sir Thomas Cherry, governor of the Muscovy Company, to sail for Archangel. Their plan was to use the return voyage to check Dutch claims to have found islands to the north-west of the Kola River at about 80° N. Poole and Bennett returned to London with confirmation of the Dutch discovery on 10 September 1603. Under Bennett, who came to live at Tower Wharf, Poole returned to Svalbard five more times before 1609. His navigational and descriptive skills thus became known to the governor of the Muscovy Company and to Sir Thomas Smythe, well before he took sail for Smythe and the Virginia Company with the first colonists bound for Jamestown in 1607. That year Smythe displaced Sir Thomas Cherry as governor of the Muscovy Company, amid recriminations over Cherry's private trade, assuring Poole of annual commercial commissions to return to Arctic waters. Poole's ‘Relations’ (later published by Purchas) reveal that he sailed from Blackwall to exploit new walrus and whaling grounds every year from 1603 to 1612 except in 1607. Poole's summary of all his exploratory voyages before 1610 was given to Richard Hakluyt late in 1610, probably with a lost account of the Jamestown colony. He also records locating exploitable lead deposits, bringing home samples of galena from Bjørnøya in Svalbard and laying formal claim to and naming his own discovery Cherrie Island after Sir Francis Cherry.

Samuel Purchas published several of Poole's journals in His Pilgrimes (London, 1625). They reveal he was made master of a pinnace in 1606 and then of the ship Lioness in 1609. Although 31 tons of whale oil was gleaned on the 1608 voyage, a loss of £1000 was later declared. Poole details the abundance of ‘morses’ or walruses and a steady increase in the numbers killed and rendered into saleable products. Another shorter account shows that in 1609 Poole brought back two polar bear cubs which were kept at the Paris Garden in London. Although Purchas follows Henry Hudson and Thomas Edge in renaming some of Jonas Poole's earlier landfalls, Poole's dramatic accounts of the fauna of those shores agree with a detailed map showing these discoveries and vignettes of the onshore tryworks updated to 1616 by Edge. That map, at pages 472–3 of Purchas's text, shows Svalbard (not Greenland as it states) with Hakluyt Headland (on Amsterdam Island) and waters up to 80° N by Purchas Plus Ultra and Purchas Point (Zeeland Bay). In March 1610 Poole took command of the Amitie (70 tons) on behalf of the Muscovy Company, writing a lively account of the walrus caught and rendered into oil and of the narwhal horn taken there. The Muscovy Company's commissions of 31 March 1611 reveal Poole as ‘Grand Pilot of the expedition’ taking charge of the Elizabeth of Dover (60 tons) with Stephen Bennett as his master and six experienced Biscayan harpooners in his crew (ibid.). Edge would take overall charge of the fleet of four ships from the ill-fated Lady Margaret of London. To Poole's consternation the master of another ship in his fleet of 1609, Mr Woodcock, was seen off Svalbard in 1611 in command of a whaler from San Sebastian; Purchas adds that on his return to London in 1612 Woodcock was gaoled in the Gatehouse and the Tower for sixteen months. Poole's account, ‘My voyage of discovery to Greenland and towards the west of it’ was supplemented with a passage written by his brother Randolph. In 1611 Poole had sailed as far as an ice field just beyond 80 ° N, noting the presence there of polar bears, deer, and white Arctic foxes, and many species of seabirds, whales, grampuses (sea lions) and morses. On Cherry Island Poole suffered a broken skull and collar bones while transhipping his own cargo of fat hides and walrus ivory out of the Elizabeth's hold before lading the higher value whale oil rendered from the catches of the abandoned wreck, Mary Margaret. Edge later contracted with the master of a rival whaler, the Hopewell of Hull, to bring home the injured Poole plus his cargo of 21 tons of whale oil, 5 hogsheads of walrus ivory and 106 bundles of baleen. Poole was back in London by early August, recovering his health so quickly that in 1612 he sailed again for the Muscovy Company as master of the Sea Horse alongside a new and bigger ship, the Whale, commanded by Edge. Poole's last and unfinished ‘Relation’ of the voyage of 1612 describes a successful voyage until they encountered ice floes north of Svalbard on 7 July 1612. His text, reproduced by Purchas reveals several rivals: a Dutch presence, Woodcock's Basque crew from San Sebastian, plus the Diana of London, skippered by Thomas Bustian of Wapping. An East India Company source shows that Poole's ships earned a 90 per cent profit from 17 whales rendered into 180 tons of oil at Svalbard in 1612.

Samuel Purchas added a significant note that Jonas Poole was, unusually, ‘entertained by a certayne stipend’ before he ‘was, as I have heard, miserably and basely murthered betwixte Ratcliffe and London after his returne from this voyage’. Poole's murder in Wapping in August after the voyage of 1612 left his widow, Joanne, with no will to administer. The administration of his estate, given in November 1612, records that Joanne Poole, widow, of Stepney, was due after his death on 8 September just £14 8s. 4d. On 2 December 1612 John Brumbridge was acquitted of Poole's murder before the Middlesex sessions but the judge sent him back to prison without bail pending good conduct. Joanne Poole had two sons, Robert, married in St Dunstan's in 1611, and Jonas (1612–1666), who married Mary Wild at St Dunstan and All Saints, Stepney on 23 June 1635. Joanne lived to see a grandson, Jonas, (bap. 17 March 1636), who enjoyed a naval career lasting from 1652 to 1665.