The 16th-century gold rush that split Greenland in two

Source: Wikimedia

As a notorious privateer, Martin Frobisher had spent much of his early life plundering French and Spanish ships, even spending time in jail for his exploits. Yet he held a long-held ambition to discover the Northwest Passage, proclaiming it “still the only thing left undone whereby a notable mind might be made famous and remarkable.” However, his intended mark on history would not be so glamorous.

Frobisher’s Strait

By 1576, Frobisher had managed to raise sufficient capital for an expedition and on June 7th left London with three ships, with Queen Elizabeth I even sending word that she had “good liking of their doings”.

Source: worldhistory.org

Six weeks later they had sighted the southeastern tip of Greenland, which they mistook for the phantom island ‘Frisland‘. Despite a violent storm in the Davis Strait sinking one ship and forcing another to turn back to England, Frobisher continued on, reaching a bay which he believed to be the entrance to the Northwest Passage. High in confidence, he named it Frobisher’s Strait. A violent encounter with Inuit. Source

In this bay the crew met and interacted with local Inuit, believing them to be Asian. Five of Frobisher’s men ended up being taken captive and were never seen again, and without exploring any further westward, Frobisher returned home.

Source: JP Newell

The eastern coastline of Baffin Bay that Martin Frobisher likely saw.
Source: JP Newell

All that glitters is not gold

One crucial item he did bring back to London was a black stone “as great as a half-penny loaf”. This “ore” was assayed and was found to be gold-bearing. The extracted gold dust created a massive buzz around the capital, and was enough to finance two further return expeditions over the next few years, this time with bigger ships and more resources.

While the first expedition had the laudable objective of geographical discovery, these subsequent expeditions were very much focused on seeking treasure, with orders to “defer the further discovery of the passage until another time”.

During 1577 and 1578 many hundreds of tons of ore were shipped back to England, and significant efforts were made to extract gold. Ultimately, it proved to be a valueless rock and was eventually salvaged for road metalling or dumped in the Thames. The whole enterprise ruined many of its investors and significantly damaged the reputation of the wannabe adventurer-explorer Martin Frobisher.

A cartographer’s nightmare

But where in the New World was Frobisher gathering tons of this worthless rock that he mistook for gold?

Frobisher had initially declared his strait divided America on one side and Asia on the other. A bold claim needless to say – perhaps hoping to impress the Queen or seek high rewards?

Expeditions by John Davis a decade later, between 1585-7, made it clear that Frobisher’s claim of reaching Asia was massively exaggerated, having circum-navigated the entirety of the Davis Strait separating Greenland and North America,

The few observations written describing the voyages furthermore left cartographers with a headache for where to place Frobisher’s discovery on the world map. George Best, who had joined Frobisher on the last two expeditions, published an account and sketch map in 1578 interpreting their journeys across the Atlantic,

Source: George Best

Mistaken Strait

Frisland

Greenland splits

Yet with an emerging picture of Baffin Bay and the North American coastline becoming clearer, mapmakers ultimately decided Greenland to be the most likely setting for Frobisher’s misadventures. This viewpoint was probably reinforced by Frobisher’s mistaken sightings of ‘Frisland’ – actually Greenland – on his route westwards.

One of the first maps to feature Frobisher’s Strait in Greenland appeared in 1592 by Cornelis Claesz, showing a truncated southern tip of Greenland.

This strait through Greenland persisted on many maps well into the 18th century. Yet with disagreement amongst cartographers and other explorers on its correct location, some maps included multiple straits dissecting the ice-covered island.

Source: Stanford University

The true identity of Frobisher’s Strait – known today as Frobisher Bay in Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic – was only fully confirmed three hundred years later in the 1860s. The American explorer Charles F. Hall used the oral history of the local Inuit to locate evidence of Frobisher’s gold mining operations, and furthermore proved the ‘strait’ to in fact be just a bay.

Frobisher finally did make it to Asia in 1585, where, as a vice-admiral under Sir Francis Drake, they inflicted heavy losses on the Spanish. He was also later knighted for valour for his service in repelling the Spanish Armada in 1588.

Further reading:

Sir Martin Frobisher – Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Martin Frobisher – Stephen R Bown

Becher, A.B., 1842. The Voyages of Martin Frobisher. The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 12, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.2307/1797976