Martin Frobisher

English explorer

• Born: c. 1535
• Birthplace: Pontefract, Yorkshire, England
• Died: November 22, 1594
• Place of death: Plymouth, Devon, England

Frobisher’s search for the Northwest Passage failed, but he and his English contemporaries helped establish an English presence in the Atlantic.

Early Life

Although Martin Frobisher (FROH-bish-uhr) was born into the country gentry of England, where record keeping usually was more precise than for the lower classes, researchers still do not know the exact date of his birth or even the exact year. What is known is that Frobisher was brought up in Yorkshire until the early death of his father in 1549, when Frobisher had barely reached adolescence. Thereupon, his mother dispatched him to London to be raised by her brother, Sir John York. He early on showed far more promise as a mariner than he did as a student. Frobisher’s personality and talents, indeed, were not typical of his social class, and he was in temperament far more like the common mariners he commanded in later life than he was like the captains who were to be his colleagues.

Frobisher was at sea by the time he entered his teenage years. His first recorded expedition took place at the age of fifteen, on a disastrous pirate voyage to West Africa commanded by Thomas Wyndham, from which he was one of the few to return alive. Frobisher’s career could not have prospered, though, without the help Frobisher was given by the powerful Lok family of mariners. John Lok was a merchant whose activities basically amounted to piracy; he spent much of his time at sea while the business affairs were handled by his brother Michael. His approach of aggressive, financially motivated expansionism became Frobisher’s own.

In 1562, Frobisher returned to Africa with Lok. Frobisher was taken hostage by the Portuguese and imprisoned for four months. On his release, he became even more dedicated to carrying on the fight against England’s enemies.

Life’s Work

Frobisher fought for England in Ireland, where the Catholic population was restive under the control of their newly Protestant overlords. His heart remained with the sea, however, and he participated in raids on the Spanish, Portuguese, and French fleets. As successful as the English were against their opponents in individual raids, Spain and Portugal continued to control the lucrative trade route to Asia. The only alternative was to try to discover the theoretical Northwest Passage to Asia, going to the north of North America in what is now called the Arctic Ocean. Frobisher’s relative youth (he was in his early forties in 1576), as well as his energy and experience, led to his appointment to lead the first English expedition in search of the Northwest Passage.

Frobisher embarked on June 7, 1576, with three ships, financed by the Lok brothers and a group of wealthy backers. The ships were stocked with the latest scientific equipment and navigational guides. By July, they had arrived at Greenland. Sailing around the southern tip of that island, they eventually came to Baffin Island in what is now Canada. Here, on August 19, Frobisher and his fleet had their first encounter with the Inuit people of the region. Frobisher was the first English-speaker to encounter the Inuit, many of whom would, centuries later, be subject to the British crown. Though at first Frobisher’s relations with the Inuit were friendly, relations deteriorated after the Inuit kidnapped several men of Frobisher’s fleet. Soon, Frobisher decided to return home, in the deluded hope that he had found the way to Asia when all he had done was probe deeper into the Arctic ice. His fleet had, however, found some lumps of ore that they determined to be gold, and they brought it home to England. Frobisher became a national hero and was able to marry Isabel Riggatt, a wealthy widow whose money helped finance subsequent voyages.

The gold was not gold at all, and even Michael Lok, who stood to profit substantially if it were gold, did not think it was. Nonetheless, the hunger for gold, more than a pure interest in exploration, allowed for the speedy financing of a second voyage by Frobisher in search of the Northwest Passage and more “gold.” This time, Queen Elizabeth I of England contributed to the cost and lent her personal support to the voyage. The expedition had a better crew, including more navigational experts and scientists. It was also better equipped, with the addition of the tall ship Aid to the two large ships of the first voyage, the Gabriel and Michael. Frobisher was generally a popular leader among his men.

Expectations were high that the second voyage would confirm the perceived success of the first. They returned to the inlet of Baffin Island that is now known as Frobisher Bay in commemoration of its first European explorer. It is difficult for readers now to realize how distant in terms of perception the icy, barren landscapes of Baffin Island were from the sailors’ home. There was a sense of near-total isolation and remoteness that can only be compared to the feelings of astronauts who explored the Moon, except that the astronauts were in constant communication with Earth. Frobisher and his men not only had no communication with home but also, because of the limitations of the maps and navigational tools available to them, had no sure idea of where they were. Frobisher still believed that Baffin Island was Asia. He laid a cross on a nearby hill, thinking that he was taking possession of Asia in the name of the queen. He thought that the Inuit were some manner of coastal Asian people.

Given the kidnapping on the previous voyage, relations with the Inuit were hostile from the start. Frobisher had to wage a series of skirmishes against them. Defeating the Inuit, he took some more ore as well as two live captives, the first to be taken by the English. Although the captives died a short time after their return to England, they were the subject of a great frenzy in England and, combined with the supposed gold, led to finding a crew easily for a third Frobisher expedition.

Frobisher’s final voyage to the Arctic left at the end of May, 1578. Again, the ship approached Greenland, this time landing on the island itself. The voyage then proceeded back to the familiar area of Frobisher Bay. In search of the Northwest Passage, the ships plunged into Hudson Strait, which if explored until the end would have led to the waterways they were seeking, although they were far more icebound and impassable than the Europeans imagined at the time. Once more mining for ore, Frobisher wanted to leave one hundred men on Baffin Island to winter there and set up a permanent gold-mining base. Fearing the harshness of the winter, the crew was not enthusiastic, and Frobisher was persuaded to return to England, losing one of his ships in the process but returning with most of his crew and bounty intact.

Unfortunately, euphoria about this voyage was short-lived, as it was soon proved conclusively that the ore was not gold. From the outset, the English had wanted so badly to believe it was gold that they would not accept the evidence before their own eyes. It was only when all hope had vanished that the reality of its worthlessness was admitted. Frobisher’s popularity faded rapidly, even though he was not suspected of using the supposed gold for personal financial gain. Many of the people who had invested in his voyages were ruined financially (as was Frobisher himself) or were furious because they thought they had been defrauded. Adding to his troubles, Frobisher’s wife Isabel became disillusioned with him because he lost their wealth; she died not a year after the return of the third voyage.

This financial disaster meant that Frobisher had to return to piracy. As a pirate, he became successful enough to be offered a position of command under Sir Francis Drake . Thereafter, his career would be a more traditionally military one. He would serve under the command of the government rather than as the representative of a privately controlled, mercantile concern. Frobisher redeemed himself by fighting for the English cause in Ireland in 1580. In 1585, he became the major lieutenant to Drake in the West Indies, where his experienced seamanship and empathy with the common sailor proved crucial to Drake’s victories in battle after battle against Spain and in the sacking of Cartagena in what is now Colombia. In 1588, the Spanish Armada prepared to invade England itself. Successfully commanding the Channel fleet and then the ship Triumph, Frobisher was knighted after the defeat of the Spanish.

His personal relations with Drake, though, were not as positive, as he chafed under the command of the other great captain, whom he suspected of wanting to take all the fleet’s profits for himself.

Frobisher, who by this time had married Lady Dorothy Widmerpole, spent his final years in expeditions against the Portuguese-controlled Azores and the French coast. In one of his assaults on the latter, at Brest, he received a wound in his leg that became infected and led to his death at Plymouth in late 1594.

Significance

Frobisher’s lack of learning and the fact that his goals seemed more mercantile than scientific have contributed to his not being one of the more famous European explorers. Still, he deserves fame, not only for being one of the first Englishmen to explore the territory that eventually became Canada but also because his deeds and explorations changed the course of European and North American history. Without his enthusiasm, popularity, and leadership qualities, the three voyages to the Arctic in the late 1570’s would never have occurred. Until Frobisher’s era, the sea and all world exploration were largely controlled by the Spanish and Portuguese. Frobisher and his English contemporaries helped establish an English presence in the Atlantic. This achievement proved to be a far more enduring one than the search for the Northwest Passage. The Northwest Passage continued to be hunted for another three centuries, by which time it had become of far more scientific than practical interest.

Bibliography

Asimov, Isaac. The Ends of the Earth: The Polar Regions of the World. New York: Weybright and Talley, 1975. Skillfully and clearly written history of polar exploration, emphasizing the scientific side of the effort. Also provides some historical background. A good source for students beginning their study of polar discoveries.

Fitzhugh, William W., and Jacqueline S. Olin, eds. Archeology of the Frobisher Voyages. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. Examines the material remains of Frobisher’s three voyages to what is now Canada in search of the Northwest Passage. For supplementary historical or biographical use.

Keating, Bern. The Northwest Passage: From the Mathew to the Manhattan, 1497 to 1969. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1970. A convenient source that is indispensable on the geography of Frobisher’s voyages. Contains many colorful and detailed maps.

McDermott, James. Martin Frobisher: Elizabethan Privateer. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001. Extremely thorough biography, the product of thirty years of research. Provides virtually all known details of Frobisher’s life and attempts imaginatively to fill in the undocumented gaps. Includes photographic plates, illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

McFee, William. The Life of Sir Martin Frobisher. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1928. Written by a seaman himself, this is the only reliable, scholarly biography of Frobisher. Out of date and hard to find, it contains much information crucial to the student. It is necessarily sketchy on the early life but provides details on the West Indian years that are not otherwise easily accessible, given that most sources concentrate on the North Atlantic voyages.

McGhee, Robert. The Arctic Voyages of Martin Frobisher: An Elizabethan Adventure. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001. Study utilizes archaeological evidence and Inuit oral history as well as the written records left behind by Frobisher and his men to develop a complete picture of his three voyages.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. The most available and most valuable source on Frobisher. Thorough, insightful, written with wit and flair, and concerned to defend Frobisher against his detractors, particularly those who accuse him of being greedy or unscientific. Also provides an excellent survey of the process of discovery and exploration in the North Atlantic in which Frobisher played such a pivotal role.

Quinn, David Beers. England and the Discovery of America, 1481-1620. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974. The best single-volume history of English exploration in the Atlantic, with an excellent bibliography. Occasionally pedantic, this book nonetheless provides a good overview of Frobisher’s maritime era.

Symons, Thomas H. B., ed. Meta Incognita, a Discourse of Discovery: Martin Frobisher’s Arctic Expeditions, 1576-1578. 2 vols. Hull, Que.: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1999. In-depth report of the findings of the Meta Incognita Project, which excavated, studied, and preserved archaeological sites related to Frobisher’s expeditions. Includes illustrations, maps, and bibliographic references.