This company, through selfish motives, was unfavourable to the prosecution of a search for a northern passage to the westward, and nothing was attempted in that direction until 1576. In that year Sir Martin Frobisher, filled with enthusiasm by accounts of a mythical Strait of Anian, which was said to afford a safe passage between the Atlantic and Pacific, through the north temperate regions of America, resolved to explore the strait. Aided by powerful friends, he overcame the opposition of the Muscovy Company, and under the direct patronage of the Queen, he succeeded in outfitting three small clumsy vessels, two being of twenty-five tons burden each, the third being a pinnace of ten tons. These he provisioned for twelve months, and with the combined crews, numbering thirty-five persons, sailed from the Thames. High pinnacle land, covered with snow, was seen on the 11th of July, in N. latitude 61°. Off this land the pinnace foundered with all on board, and his other consort, deserting, returned to England.
Continuing westward alone, in a leaky ship with a sprung mast, high land was again seen on the 28th of July. Frobisher named this land Queen Elizabeths Foreland, but it was not until the 10th of August that a landing was effected. The following day, in N. latitude 63°, he entered the bay which bears his name, thus being the first to reach the great island of Baffin. He sailed a considerable distance up the bay, believing the land on his right hand to be the coast of Asia, while that to the left was the continent of America. The land on the north side of the entrance to the bay he named the North Foreland, while Queen Elizabeths Foreland forms the southern point. While in the bay four of the crew landed without permission, and were never seen again; in revenge for their supposed murder by the Eskimos, one of the latter was seized and carried to England, where he died shortly after arriving.
On his return to England, Frobisher was greatly commended for his voyage, especially for the hope he brought of a safe passage to China, and the Queen named the lands bounding the supposed strait, Meta Incognita.
A piece of ‘black earth’ picked up on Hall island was submitted to an alchemist, Baptista Angello, who ‘by coaxing nature’ obtained some gold from it, or said he did. On the strength of this discovery, money was immediately raised for a second expedition, with the sole purpose of bringing back ore. Three ships were again sent out under Frobisher, and returned well laden with the supposed ore. During the stay of the expedition in Frobisher bay several skirmishes took place with the natives, a number of whom were killed.
Fifteen ships were fitted out in 1578 for the third voyage, to bring home ore. Carried southward by strong currents, the fleet entered what was later called Hudson strait, and sailed several days westward through it before the mistake was discovered. If Frobisher had been on a voyage of discovery he might easily have entered Hudson bay, but the search for gold being the object he turned back, and entered Frobisher bay by passing through the strait to the east of Resolution island. On the 1st of August most of the fleet was assembled at the Countess of Warwick island, where the ore was mined, and all the ships loaded by the end of the month. The ore finally proving worthless, nothing further was done to continue the discoveries of Frobisher.
Ten years after the last voyage merchants of London determined to fit out another expedition to search for the northwest passage. The enterprise was entrusted to John Davis, ‘a man well-grounded in the art of navigation.’ Two vessels, the Sunshine and the Moonshine, were employed for the first voyage, with a combined crew of forty-two persons. Davis, on his outward voyage, landed on the southern coast of Greenland, and named the coast the Land of Desolation. One fiord in latitude 64° 15´, where the mission stations of Godhaab and Nye Hernhut are located, he named Gilbert’s Sound. Leaving here, Davis stood to the westward and northward for five days, and on the 6th of August, 1585, discovered land in latitude 66° 40´, quite free from ice. He anchored in the mouth of Exeter sound under Mount Raleigh, calling the north foreland Dier’s cape and the southern one Cape Walsingham. From here he coasted southward along the land, and rounded the Cape of Gods Mercy into Cumberland gulf, up which he sailed for sixty leagues to some islands. On his return he discovered that Cumberland gulf was separated from another long inlet, which, not recognizing as Frobishers bay, he called Lumlie’s inlet. Having crossed the mouth of this inlet, Davis then crossed to the south side of another great inlet, and renamed its northern point Warwick’s Foreland, while the south cape was named after John Chidley. Davis remarks on the strong tides met with in the entrance to Hudson strait.
On his second voyage Davis coasted the American shore from the 67th to the 57th degree of latitude, but added nothing to his previous discoveries to the northward of Hudson strait. Keeping near the Greenland coast, on his way northward, Davis on his third voyage reached latitude 72° 15´. The northern coast of Greenland he called the London coast. Leaving this, he sailed west for forty leagues, where he fell in with the ice of the ‘middle pack’ of the whalers; a strong gale then forced him south along the edge of the ice, so that no land was seen either to the west or north.
George Weymouth was the next adventurer to seek the northwest passage. He was fitted out by the Muscovy Company in 1602. On the 28th of June, in the Discovery, he reached Warwicks island, between Frobisher and Cumberland bays, and sailing northward he passed Cape Walsingham and nearly reached the 69th parallel, when the crew mutinied and forced him to return south. Passing around Hatton headland on Resolution island, he sailed a considerable distance up Hudson strait, and then returned to England, where he arrived on the 5th of August.
Captain John Knight, in the Hopewell, sailed in 1606, but the voyage terminated speedily and disastrously by the death of Knight, his mate and three of the crew, who were surprised and slain by the Eskimos.
Undeterred by these unsuccessful attempts, Sir John Wolstenholme and Sir Dudley Digges, in 1610, resolved to employ the Discovery, of fifty-five tons, in searching for the northwest passage, and nominated Henry Hudson to the command. He had proved his worth on previous voyages to Spitzbergen and to the Hudson river. On this, the last of his voyages, he first sighted the south shores of Greenland; eleven days later he entered Frobisher bay, but was soon turned back by ice, and so passed south into Hudson strait, which he followed westward into Ungava bay, where he was greatly obstructed by ice. Passing Akpatok island, which he named Desire Provoketh, on the 11th of July, he reached the islands of Gods Mercies, and thence sailed along the south shore of the strait, naming it Magna Britannia. He passed into Hudson bay on the 2nd of August, through a strait about two leagues broad. The southern head of this was named Cape Wolstenholme and the northern one, on an island, Cape Digges; a bold headland six leagues to the northward was called Salisburies Foreland (Salisbury island). Hudson’s journal ends on the 3rd of August, and the remainder of the melancholy story is told by Abacuk Pricket, who states that they were frozen in, on the 10th of November, in the southeast part of the bay, after sailing three months through a labyrinth of islands. Dissensions had early sprung up among the crew, and in the June following a mutiny broke out headed by Robert Juet and Henry Greene. On the 21st Hudson was seized by the conspirators, and, with his young son, forced into a small boat. The carpenter, John King, accompanied him voluntarily, while six sick men were also forced into the boat, which was cut adrift, never to be heard of again. On the way home Juet and other of the leading mutineers were killed by the Eskimos at Cape Digges, and the remainder only reached England after great sufferings from famine and other hardships.