Interesting Trivia:

• a Rose was named after him
• highest rank was as Vice-Admiral
• was knighted in 1588
• named after him: - the Royal Navy Hawkins class heavy cruiser “HMS Frobisher” - one of the houses of Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Blackburn, - Martin Frobisher Infant/First/Primary School. Altofts, Yorkshire - Frobisher Bay, (in the Canadian Territory of Nunavut), - one of the four houses at Bishopsgate School in Englefield Green
• discovered Resolution Island, and Frobisher Bay
• one of the first English explorers to sail the northeast North American coast

His Story:

Frobisher’s first experience with the sea was when he was very. It was 1553 and his guardian, Sir John Yorke sent him to sea with a trading expedition sailing to the Guinea coast of Africa.  He started his career as a cabin boy. He had a keen interest in navigation, taught to him by his uncle Sir John York.  Asia was, at the time, seen as a continent of boundless riches and Frobisher was keen to be part of the expedition.  His first journey was a disaster as only a quarter of the men returned home.  His second voyage, a year later and again to Guinea, was no better. He and some of the crew were captured by an African tribal chief and held hostage for several months.  In the years that followed, Frobisher was very much engaged as a privateer or pirating unofficially of course, for the British crown. He was charged with piracy a couple of times, but as he brought back rich booties, was never really convicted.

He had, just as many other explorers of his time, dreams of finding a quicker (and cheaper) northwest passage to Asia. Finally, in 1576 he was able to secure financial backing for his expedition. Various investors (including the Crown) were willing to support him and on 7^th June 1576 set sail on two ships with a small crew. He set sail towards Greenland (going through the Shetland Islands) and by July reached an unknown coast (Labrador) and entered a bay which he named Frobisher Bay. They sailed on and reached Baffin Island in August.   He had brief encounters with the Inuit and did some trading with them.  However, some of his crewmen disappeared when they went ashore to visit the Inuit and Frobisher took an Inuk hostage and took him back to England where he was “displayed” to the Londoners.  Apart from the Inuk, Frobisher had taken back Inuit crafts, such as a kayak, and pieces of minerals that proved to contain gold.  Unfortunately, the cold, wet English weather was too much for the Inuk and he died of a simple cold.  Frobisher had already diverted his interest in something else, a second expedition.  With the gold find in the minerals, it was not difficult to find backers for this trip.

In fact, the same ship owners that had sponsored his first journey, were willing to sponsor him again.  They established the "Cathay Company" (China and India in those days were referred to as Cathay) and again, the Crown (Queen Elizabeth I), granted him a considerable sum of money and gave him a ship, the “Ayde”. Frobisher had also been granted a charter from the Crown, that appointed him high admiral of all lands and waters that might be discovered by him.

The main aim of the journey was now to find gold, with exploring coming second.  On 31^st May, 1577, Frobisher sailed from Harwich with three ships and some 120 men, including 30 soldiers and 11 gentlemen.  The journey was not very successful.  Although he brought back several hundred tons of minerals, they did not contain as much gold as his investors had hoped.  Again, there had been problems with the Inuit peoples. Frobisher had tried to find out what had happened to his crewmen, those gone missing on the previous journey, but he only found their clothes which were covered in blood.  Again, Frobisher captured some people, this time a man, woman and child.  In the fight that ensued, Frobisher was wounded. The fate of the poor captured Inuit people was the same as their countryman’s, the year before.  They all died.

The investors wanted to see some results and expected some profits, so Frobisher was sent out again. On 31^st May, 1578, he sailed again, this time with a fleet of 15 vessels carrying some 400 men.  They were to set up a colony (of a hundred men) and bring back to England 2000 tons of rock. The journey there proved difficult, heavy winds and thick ice prevented them from going beyond Hudson Strait.  On of the ships was struck by the pack ice and sank, while a second ship returned to England.  It was impossible to build the houses and set up the colony as the ship that had sunk was also the ship that carried the construction wood. However, Frobisher had a house built of stone and lime with a wooden roof.  Abandoning the plan to leave some of his crew behind to colonize the land, they returned home.  Although they had mined tons of minerals, upon returning to England, analysis showed that it contained no gold.  The Cathay Company, having invested heavily in the expeditions (a smelting plant at Powder Mill Lane in Dartford, Kent had been specially constructed to process the ore) and not receiving any return, went bankrupt and Frobisher lost his financial backing. Frobisher's voyages to Baffin Island had been the first European attempts to mine mineral wealth from the Canadian Arctic. Unfortunately, as he did not map the sites or kept detailed logs on navigational descriptions, nobody knew for sure where he had been.

His sailing days were far from over.  He traveled with Sir Francis Drake to Asia in 1585.  They encountered the Spanish fleet on the way and inflicted heavy losses on the Spanish.  With their success over the Spanish fleet, they were able to raid the Spanish colonies in the East Indies and returned with immense booty for the English Crown. In those days, many English ship captains were privateers (really a pirate that was (of course, unofficially, licensed by the Crown), large parts of their captured loot would go to the crown, to finance new ships and the wars. In fact, Frobisher himself had been arrested several times during the 1560s on piracy charges, but was never put on trial. Spain was not their only “enemy”, they also fought the French, looting their ships in the English Channel. The problems with the Spanish continued when Spain sent their Armada fleet against the English.  Again, Frobisher fought the Spaniards and was knighted for his efforts.  He had become Vice-Admiral under Drake and even after the Spanish Armada was defeated, he was frequently fighting Spanish ships. His luck rang out in 1594, when he was injured by a Spanish bullet at the siege of Crozon, near Brest France. He was taken back to Plymouth, but his injuries were too severe.  He died a few days later, on 22^nd November 1594. 

Books:

• McFee, W., “The Life of Sir Martin Frobisher”, New York: Harper & Brothers Pubs, 1928.
• Stefansson, V., “The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher” Vols I and II, London: The Argonaut Press, 1938