athey had no need to have troubled themselves with,

[enkidu68]

Hi folks, this is cited from a book A new voyage around the world… (1723) by Daniel Defoe


Q: "and for being a passage they had no need to have troubled themselves with” Does it mean Sir John Narborough and other gentlemen who have lived before him never passed through this Strait of Magellan? Maybe this Magellan Strait was famous many years ago, but lost favor now.


Such is the account of Sir John Narborough's Voyage to the South Seas, adorned with I know not how many charts of the famous Strait of Magellan, a place only now famous for showing the ignorance of Sir John Narborough, and a great many wise gentlemen before him, and for being a passage they had no need to have troubled themselves with, and which nobody will ever go through anymore.

 

[Majorbloodnok]

The Magellan Straits are difficult to navigate (and even more so in a sail-powered ship). Sir John Narborough and "a great many wise men before him" did not, according to Defoe, need to navigating that route and could easily have ignored them. However, they did, in fact, navigate the Straits and so wrote about them. Defoe is suggesting all this information was unnecessary, claiming no-one was likely to use the Straits in the future.

 

[enkidu68]

Thank you so much. My interpretation was similar at the beginning.
Now yours rectifies mine.