Throughout much of the sixteenth century, the feasibility of a northern route to
Cathay and the
East Indies was debated and tested by England. In 1508,
Sebastian Cabot led one of the first expeditions to search for a
North-west Passage. In the 1530s, Robert Thorne and Roger Barlow tried unsuccessfully to interest
Henry VIII in a plan to sail directly over the North Pole to China. In 1551 a company of English merchants (later known as the
Muscovy Company) was formed to search for a northeast passage to Cathay. The initiative failed to find a route but did establish a long-lasting trade relationship with Russia. In the 1560s
Humphrey Gilbert was an influential advocate for seeking a North-west Passage and penned a detailed treatise in support of the idea. Although Frobisher may have expressed interest in a search for the North-west Passage as early as 1560, it was only much later that he actively pursued the idea. In 1574, Frobisher petitioned the
Privy Council for permission and financial support to lead an expedition to find a north-west passage to "the Southern Sea" (the Pacific Ocean) and thence to Cathay. Some of its members were intrigued by his proposal, but cautiously referred him to the Muscovy Company, an English merchant consortium which had previously sent out several parties searching for the
Northeast Passage around the Arctic coasts of Norway and Russia, and held exclusive rights to any northern sea routes to the East.
First voyage on the south bank of the
River Thames, from a window of which Queen Elizabeth waved to the departing ships (by an unknown artist) In 1576, Frobisher persuaded the Muscovy Company to license his expedition. With the help of the company's director,
Michael Lok (whose well-connected father
William Lok had held an exclusive
mercers' licence to provide Henry VIII with fine cloths), Frobisher was able to raise enough capital for three
barques:
Gabriel and
Michael of about 20–25 tons each, and an unnamed
pinnace of 10 tons, with a total crew of 35. Queen
Elizabeth I sent word that she had "good liking of their doings", and the ships weighed anchor at
Blackwall on 7 June 1576. As they headed downstream on the Thames, Elizabeth waved to the departing ships from a window of
Greenwich Palace, while cannons fired salutes and a large assembly of the people cheered. On 26 June 1576, the little fleet reached the
Shetland Islands, where it stopped to repair a leak in
Michael hull and repair the barques' water casks. The ships hoisted sail the same evening and set course westwards, sailing west by north for three days until a violent storm arose and pounded them continuously through 8 July. On 11 July 1576, they sighted the mountains of the southeastern tip of Greenland, which they mistook for the non-existent island called 'Friesland'. Crossing the
Davis Strait, they encountered another violent storm in which the pinnace was sunk and
Michael turned back to England, but
Gabriel sailed on for four days until her crew sighted what they believed was the coast of
Labrador. The landmass was actually the southernmost tip of
Baffin Island; Frobisher named it "Queen Elizabeth's Foreland". The ship reached the mouth of Frobisher Bay a few days later, and because ice and wind prevented further travel north, Frobisher determined to sail westwards up the bay, which he believed to be the entrance to the North-west Passage, naming it Frobisher's Strait, to see "whether he might carry himself through the same into some open sea on the backside".
Gabriel sailed northwestwards, keeping in sight of the bay's north shore. On 18 August 1576, Burch's Island was sighted and named after the ship's carpenter who first spied it; there the expedition met some local
Inuit. Having made arrangements with one of the Inuit to guide them through the region, Frobisher sent five of his men in a ship's boat to return him to shore, instructing them to avoid getting too close to any of the others. The boat's crew disobeyed, however, and five of Frobisher's men were taken captive. After days of searching, Frobisher could not recover the insubordinate sailors, and eventually took hostage a native man to see if an exchange for the missing boat's crew could be arranged. The captive refused to communicate with his fellow Inuit and Frobisher's men were never seen again by their fellows, but Inuit oral tradition tells that the men lived among them for a few years of their own free will until they died attempting to leave Baffin Island in a self-made boat. Meanwhile, the local man, "Wherupon, when he founde himself in captivitie, for very choler and disdain, he bit his tong in twayne within his mouth: notwithstanding, he died not therof, but lived untill he came in Englande, and then he died of colde which he had taken at sea." Frobisher turned homewards, and was well received by the Queen when he docked in London on 9 October. Frobisher took no account of the black rock but kept it as a token of possession of the new territory. Michael Lok said that Frobisher, upon his return to London from the Arctic, had given him the black stone as the first object taken from the new land. Lok brought samples of the stone to the royal assayer in the
Tower of London and two other expert assayers, all of whom declared that it was worthless, saying that it was
marcasite and contained no gold. Lok then took the "ore" to an Italian alchemist living in London,
Giovanni Battista Agnello, who claimed it was gold-bearing. Agnello assayed the ore three times and showed Lok small amounts of gold dust; when he was challenged as to why the other assayers failed to find gold in their specimens, Agnello replied,
"Bisogna sapere adulare la natura" ("One must know how to flatter nature"). Ignoring the negative reports, Lok secretly wrote to the Queen to inform her of the encouraging result, and used this assessment to lobby investors to finance another voyage. Subsequently the stone became the focus of intense attention by the Cathay enterprise's venturers, who saw in it the possibility of vast profits to be derived from mining the rocky islands of
Meta Incognita; gossip spread in the court and from there throughout London about the gold powder Agnello was supposedly deriving from the rock.
Second voyage , . In 1577, a much bigger expedition than the former was fitted out. The Queen lent the 200-ton ship or
Ayde to the Company of Cathay (Frobisher's biographer James McDermott says she sold it) and invested
£1000 () in the expedition. Prior to 30 March 1577, Frobisher petitioned the Queen to be confirmed as High Admiral of the north-western seas and governor of all lands discovered, and to receive five per cent of profits from trade. It is unknown whether or not his request was ever granted. Michael Lok, meanwhile, was petitioning the queen for his own charter, by the terms of which the Company of Cathay would have sole rights to exploit the resources of all seas, islands and lands to the west and north of England, as well as any goods produced by the peoples occupying them; Frobisher would be apportioned a much smaller share of the profits. Lok's request was ignored and a charter was never issued, nor was a royal license granted, creating corporate ambiguity that redounded to the Queen's benefit. Besides
Ayde, the expedition included the ships
Gabriel and
Michael; Frobisher's second-in-command aboard
Ayde was Lieutenant
George Best (who later wrote the most informative account of the three voyages) with Christopher Hall as
master, while the navigator
Edward Fenton was in command of
Gabriel. The learned
John Dee, one of the preeminent scholars of England, acquired shares in the
Cathay Company's venture, and instructed Frobisher and Hall in the use of navigational instruments and the mathematics of navigation, as well as advising them which books, charts, and instruments the expedition should purchase. The fleet left Blackwall on 27 May 1577 and headed down the Thames, ostensibly having, per the instructions of the Privy Council, a maximum complement of 120 men, including 90 mariners, gunners and carpenters to crew the ship, as well as refiners, merchants, and thirty
Cornish miners; this figure included a group of convicts to be expatriated and put to use as miners in the new lands. Frobisher had exceeded the assigned quota of crewmen by at least twenty men, and perhaps by as many as forty. Letters from the Privy Council were waiting for him at Harwich, however, commanding him to trim the excess; consequently, he sent the convicts and several seamen ashore at the harbour on 31 May and set sail northwards to Scotland. The fleet anchored at St Magnus Sound in the
Orkney Islands on 7 June 1577 to take on water, and weighed anchor that evening. It enjoyed fair weather and favourable winds on its passage across the Atlantic, and "Friesland" (southern Greenland) was first sighted on 4 July. There was much parleying and some skirmishing with the Inuit, and earnest but futile attempts were made to recover the five men captured the previous year. The expedition's return to England commenced on 23 August 1577, and
Ayde reached
Milford Haven in Wales on 23 September.
Gabriel and
Michael later arrived separately at
Bristol and
Yarmouth. All three died soon after their arrival in England, Calichough dying from a wound suffered when a rib was broken unintentionally during his capture and eventually punctured his lung. Frobisher was received and thanked by the queen at
Windsor. Great preparations were made and considerable expense incurred for the assaying of the great quantity of "ore" (about 200 tons) brought home. This took much time
Third voyage ,
Kalicho;
Arnaq, and her child Nuttaaq, forcibly brought back to Bristol by Frobisher from his second expedition to Baffin Island in late 1577. Meanwhile, the Queen and others in her retinue maintained a strong faith in the potential productivity of the newly discovered territory, which she herself named
Meta Incognita It was resolved to send out the largest expedition yet, with everything necessary to establish a colony of 100 men. Frobisher was again received by the queen, whereupon she threw a chain of fine gold around his neck. The expedition consisted of fifteen vessels: the flagship
Ayde,
Michael, and
Gabriel, as well as
Judith,
Dennis or
Dionyse,
Anne Francis,
Francis of Foy and
Moon of Foy,
Bear of Leycester,
Thomas of Ipswich,
Thomas Allen,
Armenall,
Soloman of Weymouth,
Hopewell, and
Emanuel of Bridgwater. On 3 June 1578, the expedition left
Plymouth and, sailing through the Channel, on 20 June reached the south of
Greenland, where Frobisher and some of his men managed to land. On 2 July 1578, the foreland of Frobisher Bay was sighted. Stormy weather and dangerous ice prevented the rendezvous, and, besides causing the wreck on an iceberg of the 100-ton barque
Dennis, drove the fleet unwittingly up a waterway that Frobisher named "Mistaken Strait". He believed that the strait, now known as
Hudson Strait, was less likely to be an entrance to the North-west Passage than Frobisher Bay ("Frobisher's Strait" to him). After proceeding about sixty miles up the new strait, Frobisher with apparent reluctance turned back, and after many buffetings and separations, the fleet at last came to anchor in Frobisher Bay. During this voyage, the vessel
Emanuel claimed to have found the phantom
Buss Island. Some attempt was made at founding a settlement, and a large quantity of ore was shipped, but dissension and discontent prevented the establishment of a successful colony. On the last day of August 1578, the fleet set out on its return and reached England at the beginning of October, although the vessel
Emanuel was wrecked en route at
Ard na Caithne on the west coast of Ireland. The ore was taken to a specially constructed smelting plant at Powder Mill Lane in
Dartford; assiduous efforts to extract gold and further assays were made over five years, but 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. ==Anglo-Spanish War==