Today in 1556 Richard Chancellor died. He was a navigator and explorer who is remembered for piloting the boats that were sent to find a northeast passage. Yes, northeast, not northwest. The idea was that the Spanish and Portuguese largely had a lock on the trade routes to the west, so it worth it to try heading east, over Russia, and to try to come down from that direction. The first ships set out in 1553, and while they didn’t discover a faster route to Asia, they did discover a trade route to Moscow.