Frobisher Bay

“ Frobisher was honoured with the thanks of the queen, who showed great interest in the expeditions. The new fleet consisted of thirteen vessels of various kinds, including two queen’s ships of 400 and 200 tons, with one hundred and fifty men and one hundred and twenty pioneers. For the other ships there was an aggregate crew of two hundred and fifty men. The squadron sailed from Harwich on the 31st May 1578, and reached Greenland 19th June, and Frobisher Bay about a month later. ”

“ The expedition set sail May
31st, going through the English Channel, and reaching the coast of
Greenland June 21st. Frobisher and a few of his sailors landed where,
perhaps, white men had never trodden before. As he came near the bay he
was driven south by stormy weather, and entered, not knowing his
whereabouts, the waters of Hudson's Straits, which he traversed a
distance of sixty miles. He succeeded at length in retracing his course,
and anchored on the southern shore of Frobisher's Bay, in the Countess
of Warwick's Sound. ”

“ But, important as was this new development of trade, the British explorers, whose names have lived, still took their way for the most part over the Atlantic, making ever for the West. In June, 1576, Martin Frobisher sailed from Blackwall to the north-west 'for the search of the straight or passage to China.'43 He sighted Greenland; and, sailing west, came to the inlet in the American coast, north of the Hudson Straits, which, after him, was called Frobisher Bay. ”

“ Coming to the natives of Baffin island, the Nugumiut tribe inhabit the country about Frobisher bay, and at present have their headquarters at the whaling settlement at Cape Haven, being employed about the station, during the periods of open water, in chasing whales, walrus and seals. Their number is sufficient to man four whaleboats, requiring about twenty able-bodied men, and the total population does not exceed 120 persons. ”

“ At about 6 p.m. we stopped for our fourteenth encampment, [5] the fog shutting us out from all view except of the coast on our left. The place where we encamped was on the Kingaite side of Frobisher Bay, at the base of a long straight bank of sand and shingle, from thirty-five to forty feet high, the top being a grassy slope which extended back some three hundred fathoms to the mountains. ”

“ But the pinnace was soon swallowed up in the high seas; the seamen in the vessel of 20 tons lost heart and turned their ship homewards. Frobisher alone, in his 25-ton bark, sailed on and on across the stormy Atlantic, past the south end of Greenland, and over the great gulf that separates Greenland from Labrador. He missed the entrance to Hudson's Bay, but reached a great "island" which he named Meta Incognita [3] . Here he gathered up stones and, as he believed, minerals, besides capturing at least one Eskimo, and then returned. ”

“ But, alas! too soon he turns in another—a wrong direction.
"His tracks by eleven o'clock a.m. showed that he was lost. Up to this hour it was evident to us that John had in mind nearly the proper direction in which the harbour of the vessel lay. It is true that now and then his tracks led in a direction that indicated doubt, but mainly otherwise. When John Brown first made Field Bay, passing from the land over which he had just come from Frobisher Bay, it must have been nine o'clock last night. He could have been but a little in advance of the sledge party he had left in Frobisher Bay. ”

“ Well might I exclaim, as I did on viewing it, Great God, Thy works are indeed mighty! Shortly after, when we reached the frozen waters of the bay, the dogs and sledge carried us along past scenery ever changing and remarkable. While crossing this, I judged it to be Frobisher's Countess of Warwick Sound.
Our course this time, owing to a wide gap in the ice, led us to the north of Oopungnewing, as we intended to make for the low point of land called Twerpukjua; hence we passed the island at some little distance. ”

“ It is an island in the midst of Frobisher Bay, near to and due west of Gabriel's Island. ↑ Our tenth encampment was near the southern extreme of M'Lean Island, and was in lat. 62° 5′2 N. long. 66° 28′ W. ↑ Named after Dudley Field, of New York City. ↑ Named after Augustus H. Ward, of New York City. ↑ Named after the wife of Augustus H. Ward. The head or termination is in lat. 63° 44′ N. long. 67° 48′ W. Vide Chart. ↑ The land between Ward's Inlet and the main Bay of Frobisher I thus named after Captain A. B. Becher, R.N. of London, England. See Chart. ”

“ It is stated that the brothers, Benjamin and James Frobisher, of Montreal, who became so celebrated as fur traders, began a post ten years after the conquest. These two merchants were Englishmen. They speedily took the lead in pushing forward far into the interior, and were the most practical of the fur traders in making alliances and in dealing successfully with the Indians. In their first expedition they had the same experience in their goods being seized by the thievish Indians of Rainy Lake ”

“ Index: Hd Petition to Haldimand, 261. Bib.: See the memorials of Benjamin Frobisher and Joseph Frobisher, his brother, on the western fur trade, in Archives Report, 1890, and particularly that of Oct. 4, 1784, giving the early history of the North West Company; also correspondence in Archives Report, 1888.
Frobisher, Benjamin. Probably, according to Masson, a son of Joseph Frobisher. Entered service of North West Company, about 1798. Mentioned as clerk of that Company, in 1804 and 1805, and took a violent part in the troubles between the North West and Hudson's Bay Companies. ”

“ Frobisher thought as yet that the shores were all firm land; and when the ice broke up, he sailed sixty leagues along the strait, and there he landed. First of all he had to defend himself from some great deer, which ran at him in such a manner that he had a very narrow escape of his life. Another time when he landed he went to the top of a hill, and saw from thence several objects in the distance which he thought were porpoises or seals, but when they came nearer he found that they were boats filled with men. The boats were made of sealskins, with a keel of wood inside. ”

“ The cold was now rapidly increasing; every night the ships' ropes were frozen so that no man might handle them without cutting his hands; besides this the vessels were leaky, and the ice at any moment might have blocked them in altogether, when all on board must have perished.
Thus Frobisher was compelled to return to England without having found the passage he had hoped all his life to discover. It is said that if he had not had charge of the fleet, he would have sailed straight to the South Sea, and thus pointed out a nearer route to China. ”

“ He shortly after had interviews with the natives, several of whom came on board his vessel. The mariners, trusting them, began to hold open intercourse with the people, and a party of five went on shore in a boat; these were captured by the natives, and the captain could get no intelligence of them during the remainder of the time he spent there. Frobisher then turned his attention to obtaining some tokens of his voyage to carry back with him to England. He lured one of the native men on board, and took him off with him. ”

“ The trees stood in clumps. Hedges no longer divided the fields; they were parted by wire fences. Ploughed land gave way to pasturage. Then were heard the sounds of rooks cawing, and a church spire pierced the rounded banks of trees, that had not all lost their foliage, though that foliage was turned to copper.
And presently they came to the gates.
At that moment up trotted Joan's sister Sibyll, with the groom following her. The younger Miss Frobisher was but eighteen; she was a very pretty and graceful girl, with a high colour and dancing eyes. ”

“ The “Anne Francis,” finding herself alone, also put to sea, to remain till the weather should permit the taking of the sun’s altitude. The “Ayde” kept on the course, and leading the rest of the fleet, passed into the “doubtful” strait.
Up this broad passage the “Ayde” and her consorts sailed for “about sixty leagues,” having “always a faire continent upon their starreboard side, and a continuance still of an open sea before them.” Frobisher was the first to realize that they were on a new and unknown water. ”

“ After repairing to the court at Greenwich, where the queen, ‘besides other good gifts and greater promises, bestowed upon the general a fair chain of gold,’ Frobisher sailed from Harwich on 31 May with a fleet of fifteen vessels, in three divisions, headed by the Aid, Judith, and Thomas Allen, for the ‘North-West parts,’ and the fancied treasures of Meta Incognita. Taking a new route, he sailed down the Channel and along the southern coast of England and Ireland, and sighted Cape Clear on 6 June. ”

“ This Frobisher and his companion navigators agreed must be the “Friesland” of the brothers Zeno as laid down in the Zeno chart. It was, in fact, Cape Farewell, the southern point of Greenland. They sailed toward the shore, and Frobisher with four men in his shipboat strove to make a landing, but was prevented by the accumulation of ice about it. Leaving this coast and taking now a southwestward course they voyaged on through the trackless sea till the twenty-eighth of July, when they had their next sight of land, which Hall supposed to be Labrador. ”

“ They could not land for "the great store of ice that lay along the coast, and the great mists that troubled them not a little."
As they sailed north and west a great storm arose and swept away the pinnace, so that they saw her no more. Next day they lost the Michael, but her crew, after waiting about on the ice-bound coast of Labrador, concluded that Frobisher and the rest in the Gabriel were drowned, and so they returned home and came to Bristol on the 1st of September. ”

“ The natives soon began to come on board the bark, and to talk with the sailors in an unknown tongue; they brought the captain salmon and flesh which they eat raw themselves; also bearskins and sealskins, for which Frobisher gave them toys, bells, and looking-glasses. They got very friendly with his men, although he warned them not to trust them too quickly; and one day five of the sailors were enticed by the savages to go in a boat to the shore, and neither men nor boat ever appeared again. ”

“ The boat, with five men, went away and, contrary to orders, pulled out of sight of the ship to barter for skins. Neither men nor boat were ever heard of again. It was a great calamity, for there was no other boat and the men were a serious loss. Frobisher succeeded in capturing one savage, with his kayak, but this was poor consolation. On the 26th August the return voyage was commenced and by the 9th October the Gabriel was once more in the Thames. ”

“ Bless me, Joan, why did you look? If you had not seen the raw, you might have gone on with a safe conscience. Do not pry, and seek to discover what is best not known. Take it for granted that all is well, till you have the contrary forced upon you. That is my doctrine and philosophy."
"Prying—exactly!" said Mr. Frobisher, looking up from his shrimps. "We have had an exemplification of prying here, that I have very properly exposed. Joan, did that cub happen to ask the sizes of the several rooms, so as to enable him to provide carpets? ”

“ In two of the northwestern voyages of Martin Frobisher the discovery of a short way to the South Sea was only a secondary object. The adventurers at whose cost they were undertaken looked mainly to the profit from a successful search for gold, though they were not unmindful of the advantages to be gained by shortening the distance to the Spice Islands of the East. In the bitter quarrel between Frobisher and Michael Lok, after the third voyage, it was charged that Frobisher had neglected this part of the undertaking. ”

“ On the voyage home some of the vessels got scattered during the violent storms that arose, and they were kept long apart, but they all reached England by October of the year 1578.
After this there is no account of Frobisher until he went in his ship the Aid on an expedition to the West Indies with Sir Francis Drake, and was present at the taking and sacking of St. Domingo. When Philip II. of Spain sent the Invincible Armada to invade England, the English fleet prepared to resist it was divided into four squadrons, and Frobisher commanded one of them in the ship called the Triumph. ”

“ Frobisher's little ships struck boldly out on the Atlantic. They ran northward first, and crossed the ocean along the parallel of sixty degrees north latitude. Favourable winds and strong gales bore them rapidly across the sea. On July 11, they sighted the southern capes of Greenland, or Frisland, as they called it, that rose like pinnacles of steeples, snow-crowned and glittering on the horizon. They essayed a landing, but the masses of shore ice and the {12} drifting fog baffled their efforts. Here off Cape Desolation the full fury of the Arctic gales broke upon their ships. ”

“ Unhappily, of late, he sold out all his securities, and transferred the proceeds to a gold mine in South Africa, in which your uncle was largely interested, and of the prospects of which he was vastly sanguine. Mr. James Frobisher was a man by nature hopeful and confident, and, to employ a serviceable colloquialism, all his geese were swans. He was assured that the Willjoens Reef was auriferous, and would yield an enormous interest on capital spent developing it. Your father—whose deplorable decease we cannot forget—implicitly believed in him, and caught fire at the representations of Mr. ”

“ But Best found it more cheery despite the Boreal blasts. As he observed, “for so much of this land as we have sailed alongst comparing their [the brothers Zeno’s] carde on the coast, we finde it very agreeable.” One day when they lay becalmed they did a little fishing, and Best spins this fine fish yarn: “We ... let fall a hooke 161without any bayte [bait] and presently caught a great fish called a Hollibut who served the whole companie for a day’s meale.” As on his first voyage, Frobisher made several attempts with his shipboat to get ashore, but could not overcome the bulwarks of ice. ”