Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pellham, Edward
PELLHAM, EDWARD (fl. 1630), sailor, was a gunner's mate on board the Salutation of London in the service of the company of Muscovy merchants. On 1 May 1630 the Salutation, with two other vessels, under command of Captain William Goodlea, sailed for Greenland. On reaching the Foreland the Salutation was appointed to station there. When within four leagues of Black Point Pellham and seven of her crew were despatched in a shallop to Green Harbour to meet the second ship. Missing both points, the shallop was given up as lost, and the Muscovy fleet returned home. The eight men, whose names Pellham gives, passed the winter in dire privation at Bell Sound. On 25 May 1631 two ships from Hull came into the Sound, followed on the 28th by the Muscovy fleet, again under command of Captain William Goodlea. The eight men were at once taken on board, and on 20 Aug. departed for the Thames. Pellham wrote an account of his privations in ‘God's Power and Providence shewed in the marvellous Preservation and Deliverance of Eight Englishmen left by mischance in Greenland, anno 1630, nine moneths and twelve days, with a true relation of all their miseries, their shifts, and hardship … with a map of Greenland,’ London, 1631; reprinted in vol. iv. of A. and J. Churchill's ‘Collection of Voyages and Travels,’ 1732, 1744, 1752, all folio; by Adam White for the Hakluyt Society, 1855, 8vo; and in Arber's ‘English Garner,’ vol. viii.
The book is dedicated to Alderman Sir Hugh Hammersley, governor of the Muscovy Company and to the Company's assistants and adventurers.
[Tract quoted.]