In the summer of 1576, a black stone the size of a half-penny loaf was plucked from the rocky shores of Baffin Island and carried back to London, igniting a national obsession that would bankrupt investors and ruin reputations. This was not a gem or a rare mineral, but a worthless rock containing the mineral hornblende, yet it became the catalyst for three massive expeditions to the Arctic. The stone was found by Robert Garrard, a shipmaster who had been captured by the Inuit and later returned to the ship, and it was presented to Michael Lok, a wealthy merchant who saw in the dark rock a fortune that could fund England's expansion into the New World. Lok took the sample to an Italian alchemist named Giovanni Battista Agnello, who claimed to have extracted gold dust from it, telling Lok that one must know how to flatter nature to find gold. Despite the warnings of royal assayers who declared the stone to be marcasite and worthless, Lok and the ambitious sea captain Martin Frobisher pressed on, convinced they had discovered the key to a new empire. The story of this stone is the story of Frobisher himself: a man of great spirit and bold courage who could see opportunity where others saw only failure, and who would lead England into the frozen unknown in search of a passage to Cathay that never existed.
A Life Forged In Fire
Martin Frobisher was born in 1535 or 1536 in Altofts, Yorkshire, the third of five children to a merchant named Bernard Frobisher and Margaret York. His early life was marked by tragedy and instability; his father died prematurely in 1542, leaving the family in the care of his uncle, Francis Frobisher. With a rudimentary education and no inheritance, Frobisher was sent to London in 1549 to live with a maternal relative, Sir John York, a wealthy member of the Merchant Taylors' Company who held important connections in the royal government. It was here that Frobisher's true nature began to emerge. In 1553, he joined an expedition to West Africa led by Thomas Wyndham, a voyage that would become a crucible for his character. The expedition was a disaster, losing two ships and 100 lives to disease and Portuguese fire, yet Frobisher survived, earning the assessment of his patron that he possessed great spirit and natural hardness of body. He was not merely a survivor; he was a man who thrived in chaos. In 1555, he was captured by the Portuguese and held in the castle of São Jorge da Mina for nine months, only to escape and return to England by 1558. His life was a series of narrow escapes and bold gambles, from volunteering as a hostage to negotiate trade deals to leading privateering raids that landed him in prison multiple times. He was a man who lived on the edge, a privateer who plundered French ships and even Protestant vessels carrying English goods, all while navigating the treacherous waters of Elizabethan politics. His marriage to Isobel Richard, a Yorkshire widow with a substantial settlement, was a financial arrangement that he eventually abandoned, leaving her and her children to die in a poorhouse by 1588. Frobisher was a man of ambition, but his ambition was often at the expense of those around him, a trait that would define his later years.
The quest for the North-west Passage was a dream that had haunted English explorers for decades, from Sebastian Cabot's early voyages to the efforts of Robert Thorne and Roger Barlow in the 1530s. Frobisher, who may have expressed interest in the search as early as 1560, did not actively pursue the idea until 1574, when he petitioned the Privy Council for permission and financial support to lead an expedition to find a north-west passage to the Southern Sea, or Pacific Ocean. The Muscovy Company, an English merchant consortium that held exclusive rights to northern sea routes, was initially skeptical, but Frobisher's persistence and the backing of Michael Lok, a well-connected director, allowed him to raise enough capital for three small barques: the Gabriel, the Michael, and an unnamed pinnace. The fleet weighed anchor at Blackwall on the 7th of June 1576, with Queen Elizabeth I waving to the departing ships from a window of Greenwich Palace. The voyage was fraught with peril, from violent storms that sank the pinnace to the discovery of what Frobisher believed to be the coast of Labrador, which was actually the southernmost tip of Baffin Island. He named it Queen Elizabeth's Foreland and entered Frobisher Bay, which he called Frobisher's Strait, believing it to be the entrance to the North-west Passage. The expedition's first contact with the Inuit was a disaster; five of Frobisher's men were taken captive, and despite days of searching, they were never seen again. Frobisher's response was to take a native man hostage, a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life. The man, who later died in England after biting his tongue in choler, was a symbol of the cultural clash that defined Frobisher's Arctic ventures. The black stone found by Robert Garrard, which would become the focus of the next two voyages, was a token of possession, a promise of riches that would drive Frobisher to return to the frozen north.
The Great Deception
The second voyage, launched in 1577, was a massive undertaking, with the Queen lending the 200-ton ship Ayde and investing £1000 in the expedition. The fleet included the Gabriel and Michael, and was commanded by Frobisher, with George Best as his second-in-command and Edward Fenton as the navigator of the Gabriel. The learned John Dee, one of England's preeminent scholars, acquired shares in the Cathay Company and instructed Frobisher and Hall in the use of navigational instruments and the mathematics of navigation. The fleet left Blackwall on the 27th of May 1577, and despite severe storms that separated the ships, they managed to regroup and reach Hall's Island at the mouth of Frobisher Bay. Frobisher and forty of his best men landed and made their way to the highest point, which he dubbed Mount Warwick in honour of the Earl of Warwick, one of the principal investors. They piled a cairn of stones to mark possession of the new land and prayed for the success of their venture. The expedition spent weeks collecting ore, but very little was done in the way of discovery, as Frobisher was directed to defer further exploration. The voyage was marked by skirmishes with the Inuit and futile attempts to recover the five men captured the previous year. Frobisher brought back three Inuit who had been forcibly taken from Baffin Island: a man called Calichough, a woman named Egnock, and her child Nutioc. All three died soon after their arrival in England, Calichough dying from a wound suffered when a rib was broken unintentionally during his capture. The ore, which numbered about 200 tons, was assayed with great expense, leading to disputes among the various interested parties. The Cathay Company, which had been formed to exploit the resources of the newly discovered territory, went bankrupt, and Michael Lok was ruined, being sent to debtors' prison several times. The ore proved to be a valueless rock containing hornblende, and the entire enterprise was a financial and moral disaster.
The Third Voyage And The Cost Of Ambition
The third voyage, launched in 1578, was the largest expedition yet, with fifteen vessels and over 400 men, including 147 miners, four blacksmiths, and five assayers. The fleet left Plymouth on the 3rd of June 1578, and after reaching the south of Greenland, they sighted the foreland of Frobisher Bay on the 2nd of July. Stormy weather and dangerous ice prevented the rendezvous, and the fleet was driven unwittingly up a waterway that Frobisher named Mistaken Strait, now known as Hudson Strait. He believed that the strait was less likely to be an entrance to the North-west Passage than Frobisher Bay, and after proceeding about sixty miles up the new strait, he turned back. The expedition made some attempt at founding a settlement, but dissension and discontent prevented the establishment of a successful colony. The ore was taken to a specially constructed smelting plant at Powder Mill Lane in Dartford, where assiduous efforts to extract gold and further assays were made over five years. The ore proved to be a valueless rock containing hornblende, and was eventually salvaged for road metalling and wall construction. The Cathay Company went bankrupt, and Michael Lok was ruined, being sent to debtors' prison several times. The failure of the third voyage marked the end of Frobisher's Arctic ambitions, but it did not mark the end of his career. He sought other employment, applying to Sir William Wynter, one of the Queen's most trusted naval commanders, who was leading a fleet to Ireland to put down the Desmond rebellion. Frobisher secured an appointment as captain of the Foresight and sailed in early March 1580, participating in the Siege of Smerwick at the Dingle Peninsula. The failure of the Arctic expeditions had damaged his reputation, but his experience and boldness made him a valuable asset to the Crown.
The Knight Of The Armada
In 1588, the Spanish Armada set sail from Corunna in Galicia to escort the Army of Flanders, led by the Duke of Parma, to invade England. Sir Francis Walsingham sent a dispatch to Whitehall stating that the Armada had been sighted in the chops of the Channel. When the two navies first engaged, Frobisher was in command of the Triumph, the Royal Navy's largest ship, leading a consort of the ships Merchant Royal, Margaret and John, Centurion, Golden Lion, and Mary Rose. Following a council of war, Lord Howard, the Lord High Admiral of the Fleet, reorganized the English fleet into four squadrons, and Frobisher was made commander of one of these. On the morning of the 21st of July 1588, Frobisher in Triumph, Drake in Revenge, and Hawkins in Victory attacked the seaward wing of the Spanish defensive formation, damaging the ship of the Armada's vice-admiral, Juan Martínez de Recalde. Later that day, Frobisher and Hawkins engaged Pedro de Valdez, commander of the Andalusian squadron, who did not yield his ship until Drake came to their assistance. Three days later, the English fleet was reinforced by Lord Seymour's channel patrol, and Frobisher assumed command of his newly formed squadron. On the 25th of July 1588, Frobisher's squadron was close inshore at dawn, the only one landwards of the Armada that morning. The sea was dead calm when he engaged the Duke of Medina Sidonia's flagship San Martín and gave her another pummeling. However, a breeze rose from the southwest, allowing several Spanish galleons to move in and save their flagship. The other English ships withdrew in time, but Triumph was caught on the lee shore off Dunnose cape on the Isle of Wight, and more than thirty Armada ships bore down upon him. Frobisher used his boats to manoeuvre Triumph with good effect and managed to escape when the wind shifted again, allowing him the weather gage. Frobisher was knighted for valour on the 26th of July 1588 by Lord Howard aboard Howard's flagship Ark Royal, alongside Sheffield, Thomas Howard, and Hawkins. The decisive action was fought the 29th of July 1588 on the shoals off Gravelines, where Frobisher, Drake, and Hawkins pounded the Spanish ships with their guns. Even so, the San Martín sustained no major damage, but five Spanish ships were lost. The defeat of the Spanish fleet marked the end of the Armada's threat to England, and Frobisher's role in the victory cemented his place in history as a national hero.
The Final Voyage And The Legacy Of A Man
In 1590, Frobisher visited his native Altofts and found himself welcomed in the homes of the peers and landed gentry of Yorkshire county as an honoured guest. He paid particular attention to a daughter of Thomas, 1st Baron Wentworth, Dorothy Wentworth, who became his second wife sometime before October 1591. In November 1591, he purchased from the Queen the leasehold of the manor of Whitwood in Yorkshire and of Finningley Grange in Nottinghamshire, which had belonged to the Mattersey Priory, for £949. Frobisher made Whitwood his chief residence, befitting his new status as a landed proprietor, but found little leisure for country life. The following year, he took charge of an English fleet sent out to blockade the Spanish coast and rendezvous with the Spanish treasure fleet. The fleet was divided into two divisions, with Frobisher's squadron patrolling the waters off the coast of Portugal near the Burlings, while Sir John Burgh and John Norton's squadrons sailed for the Azores. In September 1594, Frobisher led a squadron of ships that besieged Morlaix and forced its surrender. The following month, he was engaged with the squadron in the siege and relief of Brest, where he received a gunshot wound to his thigh during the Siege of Fort Crozon, a Spanish-held fortress. The surgeon who extracted the ball left the wadding behind, and an ensuing infection resulted in his death days later at Plymouth on the 22nd of November 1594. His heart was buried at St Andrew's Church, Plymouth, and his body was then taken to London and buried at St Giles-without-Cripplegate, Fore Street. Frobisher's legacy is complex, marked by both his achievements and his failures. He is remembered for his role in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, but also for the disastrous Arctic expeditions that bankrupted investors and ruined reputations. His name lives on in the Frobisher Bay in Nunavut, which was the former name of Nunavut's capital, Iqaluit, from 1942 until 1987, and in the many ships, streets, and schools named after him. He was a man of great spirit and bold courage, but also a man who could see opportunity where others saw only failure, and who would lead England into the frozen unknown in search of a passage to Cathay that never existed.