In 1576, Queen Elizabeth’s seadog Martin Frobisher decided that he would find the Northwest Passage to China through the bitter cold of the Arctic. With the backing of merchant Michael Lok, a ship of about 20 tons was built for the mission named the Gabriel, and two ships were purchased – the Michael of 25 tons, and a pinnace of 10 tons. To man the ships, a crew of 35 was employed. On 7 June 1576, the fleet sailed from Ratcliff with Frobisher as its admiral and pilot, Christopher Hall as captain of the Gabriel, and Owen Griffyn as captain of the Michael.
On 1 July, they sighted the east coast of Greenland, where they were hit by a massive storm. The three ships got separated, and the pinnace was lost. The captain of the Michael became so intimidated by the ice that he turned back, and the Gabriel was nearly swamped and wound up on its side. Frobisher kept the ship afloat by ordering the men to cut the mizzenmast to lighten the weight and right the ship. This saved the day, but the ship was full of water, and they had lost many supplies.
Undaunted Frobisher continued westward, and on 28 July he sighted a barren rocky headland which he dubbed “Queen Elizabeth’s Foreland”, now known as Resolution Island, the most easterly outpost of Arctic Canada. From here, Frobisher headed west in a great bay reaching into the heart of Baffin Island, and at its head, Frobisher dispatched a party on a small island, he named Hall’s, after the master of Gabriel. As they departed, he told the group to bring him anything that they found “in token of Christian possession” of the land.
In McFee’s biography of Frobisher’s life, he relates: “Some of his company brought flowers, some green grass, and one brought a piece of a black stone, much like to a Seacoal in color, which by the weight seemed to be some metal or Mineral. This was a thing of no account, in the judgment of the Captain at the first sight. And yet for novelty, it was kept, in respect of the place from whence it came.” (1928: 48)
This little rock would later lead to a mad search for gold in Frobisher Bay.
Frobisher then sailed into a “greate gutte bay”, which he assumed was the Northwest passage. Frobisher traveled about 60 leagues into the bay and named it Frobisher’s Strait. Unfortunately, it was not the Northwest Passage at all but a dead end inside Baffin Island, a mistake that would go uncorrected until the middle of the 19th century.
At this point, Frobisher decided to visit Hall’s Island himself and, for the first time, realized that the country was inhabited. “He saw a number of small things fleeting in the Sea afar off, which he supposed to be Porpoises, or Seals, or some kind of strange fish: but coming nearer, he discovered them to be men, in small boats made of leather.” (Collinson, 1867, p. 73)
These were the Inuit of Baffin Island.
Over the next several days, the two groups traded cautiously with one another, sometimes ashore and sometimes aboard the Gabriel. The Inuit seemed familiar with ships such as the Gabriel, and they willingly consumed English food, drank wine, and competed in acrobatics with the mariners among the ropes of the ship’s rigging.
One of the Inuit, through signs, agreed to show them the way to a western sea and Frobisher sent him with five seamen back to the shore to prepare for the journey. These five sailors disobeyed their orders to stay in sight of the ship and were never seen again. Frobisher waited three days for their return and then searched the coast in vain for his men or some Inuit that might be captured and ransomed. He did not find any of his men and was able to capture only one poor local who had inadvertently come to the ship in his kayak to trade. Frobisher would take this unfortunate man back to England as proof to Queen Elizabeth that he had reached a far and strange land. Sadly, the Inuit died shortly after reaching England.
Frobisher now realized that it was time to turn homeward, as snow had begun falling on deck, and the seas were beginning to freeze around the Gabriel. He claimed Baffin Island as a possession of Queen Elizabeth and then sailed back to England.
Soon after his return, Frobisher gave the black stone that had been collected on Hall’s Island to Lok, who took pieces of it to three different assessors to determine its worth. All three deemed it worthless as marcasite, a sulfide of iron very similar to pyrite (fool’s gold). Disappointed but undaunted, Lok took one more piece of it to another person named Giovanni Agnello, who gave the opposite opinion and claimed he could extract gold from it with a special process known only to himself.
Lok wrote Queen Elizabeth an account of all these findings, and she decided to support a second voyage, even with the shaky evidence of gold. In March 1577, the Cathay Company was formed and given a royal charter, with Lok as governor and Frobisher as “high admiral.” All was now in place for an expedition to specifically find gold.
Illustration: Martin Frobisher Frobisher from the Heroologia Anglica, a collection of engraved portraits of illustrious English people (1620).
Bibliography:
Collinson, R. (1867) The three voyages of Martin Frobisher, in search of a passage to Cathaia and India by the North-west, A.D. 1576-8. Hakluyt Society, London.
McFee, W. (1928) Sir Martin Frobisher. John Lane the Bodley Head LTD: London
Catalysts of trade and exploration 