The reward which Whalley held out, to counterbalance the risk incurred in helping a prisoner to escape, was a share in the vessel of the value of £500, and a free gift from Earl Desmond of his island of Valentia, on the coast of Derry. We do not know whether Frobisher entertained the idea of helping Desmond; probably he thought it too risky, for the attempt was not made. Possibly on thinking it over Frobisher believed it to be his duty to inform the Government, for he signed a declaration four months later in which he describes the Lambeth incident. Desmond did get away later on and broke out in rebellion in Ireland, only to be killed at last in an Irish cabin. Frobisher had latterly been employed by the Government in sailing along the Irish coast to intimidate rebels and prevent the landing of foreign sympathisers. This he continued to do for three or four years after the Lambeth incident, and so he came under the notice of Burghley and the Queen, and won the friendship of Sir Henry Sidney and Sidney's favourite, Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Now Sir Humphrey was the chief promoter of attempts to find a north-west passage to the Indies; he and Frobisher must have had many a long talk together over the Arctic map; and at last the Queen heard of the idea and granted a licence in 1575 to Master Martin Frobisher, and divers gentlemen associated with him, for finding a north-west passage to Cathay.
The chief argument in Frobisher's mind which proved the existence of such a passage was that Nature did all things in harmony. Now, as she had made a fair communication between the Southern Atlantic and the Pacific, so she would be found to have established the same water-way between the Northern Atlantic and the Pacific. It was of the same order of reasoning as the old theory that "Nature abhors a vacuum."
However, it seemed so very reasonable that many moneyed men in the city of London were willing and anxious to spend money on the search. Lock subscribed £100, Sir Thomas Gresham £100, Lord Burghley £50, the Earls of Sussex, Leicester, Warwick £50 each, and others smaller sums, until a fund of £875 was secured; in modern currency this was equivalent to some £6000, but was not sufficient for carrying out the project.
Frobisher went about London, Lock tells us, a sad man and thoughtful; Lock lent him books and maps, and got him friends and subscriptions, but still the fund remained insufficient. "I made my house his home, my purse his purse, and my credit his credit, when he was utterly destitute both of money and credit and of friends."
The ships were, however, being furnished in the docks, and after all the many conferences in Fleet Street and Mark Lane, and even at Greenwich Court, still the money came slowly in. At last, by May 1576, two strongly built barques, the Gabriel and the Michael, each of 25 tons burden, together with a small pinnace of 10 tons, lay ready in the Thames, hard by old London Bridge. Frobisher received his commission as admiral, Hall and Griffin were masters, and Chancellor purser of the voyage. They numbered about forty officers and men, and started on the 7th of June.
As they sailed off Deptford the pinnace was run down by a vessel coming up stream; her bowsprit and foremast were broken, and twenty-four hours were spent in doing repairs.
At midday on Friday the vessels sailed past Greenwich, firing guns as a salute in honour of the Court. The Queen sat at a window watching them, and waved her hand in token of farewell.
Anon she sent a messenger in a rowing-boat to tell her brave seamen that she liked well their doings and thanked them for it, and also willed that Master Frobisher should come the next day to the Court to take his leave of her. This he did with a beating heart; for was not his ambition of fifteen years being now satisfied!
They sailed round the western coast of England and Scotland, and halted in the Shetlands to calk the Gabriel, for she was leaking, and to take in water. Sailing west from the Faroe Islands they caught sight of "some high and ragged land rising like pinnacles of steeples"—perhaps the south of Greenland. 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.