Robert Fotherby

Robert Fotherby (died 1646) was an early 17th-century English explorer and whaler. From 1613 to 1615 he worked for the Muscovy Company, and from 1615 until his death for the East India Company.

There was a family of Fotherbys in Grimsby, Lincolnshire. Robert Fotherby may have belonged to this Grimsby stock.

Fotherby was among the crew of seven ships sent by the Muscovy Company to Greenland (Spitsbergen) in May 1613. He served as master's mate aboard the ship Matthew (250 tons), vice-admiral of the fleet. The only notable occurrence Fotherby spoke of in his journal was that he ascended a glacier in Josephbukta, a bay on the western side of Recherche Fjord. This is significant in that this is the first recorded glacier expedition in Spitsbergen's history. The glacier in question was probably Renardbreen (Fox glacier).

In this year Fotherby sailed as master's mate in the ship Thomasine, one of the two ships sent by the Muscovy Company to explore the coast of Spitsbergen. The ship left England early in May and had arrived in the latitude of 75° N, just south of Spitsbergen, by the end of the month.

On 22 June Fotherby came into Magdalenefjorden, claiming it and the small sheltered bay on its southern shore for King James I of England by setting up the King's Arms on a wooden cross. He named the former Maudlin Sound, the latter Trinity Harbor.

Several times in July and August, Fotherby, along with William Baffin, pilot of the Thomasine, using two shallops, explored the northern coast of Spitsbergen. They explored and named Raudfjorden Red-cliff Sound (its modern name is merely a corruption of this earlier namesake). Fotherby named the cape separating its two southern branches Point Deceit (now called Narreneset, its Norwegian equivalent), and its eastern entrance Point Welcome (which modern maps have misplaced further east). The large, open bay to the east he named Broad bay (Breibogen, its Norwegian equivalent), and its shore Red Beach. Along Red Beach Fotherby saw evidence of the presence of Thomas Marmaduke's 1612 expedition by the fires his crew had made. The eastern point of Red Beach, now wrongly marked Velkomstpynten on modern charts, Fotherby named Redbeach Point. The two fjords (Liefdefjorden and Woodfjorden) south of Breibogen and Reinsdyerflya he marked Wiches Sound, named after the London shipowner and merhant Richard Wyche.

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