vessels, the Edward Bonaventura and the Bona Confidentia, under his command. His chief pilot, Richard Chancellor, sailed on the Edward, captained by Stephen Borough. 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. Disappearance They were seriously delayed by unfavourable winds, only reaching the coast of Norway on 14 July, more than two months after leaving London. The ships were careful to stay together and agreed that if they were separated, they would rendezvous at Wardhouse, a small fortified outpost on the Norwegian island of Vardø. On 30 July, they were beset by storms and "terrible whirlwinds" probably in the vicinity of the North Cape. Willoughby and one other ship, the Bona Confidentia, became separated from Chancellor on the Edward. The Edward sailed to Wardhouse as agreed and waited for seven days but the other two ships never appeared. 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 and his crew were never seen alive again, but the events following their separation can be pieced together from Willoughby's journal which was later recovered. The storm had blown them far from the coast and without any landmarks they became disoriented. Willoughby attempted to reach Wardhouse, but their maps were misleading, compass readings were unreliable, and the weather was too overcast to measure latitude. For two weeks the ships sailed eastward until they encountered an uninhabited shoreline that was teeming with ducks and other birds. It was likely a part of the south island of Novaya Zemlya which came to be known to the Russians as Gusinaya Zemlya (Goose Land). They turned back and headed west, coasting along Kolguev Island and just missing the entrance to the White Sea where Chancellor had already landed. As the weather became colder and sea ice began to form they decided to winter in a bay formed by the Varzina River on the coast of the Kola Peninsula. Searches were made in three