For this larger venture, besides most of the company on the previous voyage, “many well minded and forward young Gentlemen,” sons of the English gentry, volunteered. Fifteen well-furnished ships, including the experienced three, the “Ayde,” the “Gabriel,” and the “Michael,” were assembled, constituting an imposing fleet. The “Ayde” was again designated the “admiral,” carrying the captain-general. There was a “viceadmiral”—the “Thomas Allen”—in command of Captain Yorke of the “Michael” in the previous voyage. Christopher Hall was named chief pilot. The third ship in line was the “Judith,” under Captain Fenton, before of the “Gabriel,” and Frobisher’s lieutenant-general. The fourth was the “Anne Francis,” under Captain Best; the fifth, the “Hopewell,” Captain Carew; the sixth, the “Beare,” Captain Philpot, the ensign on the second voyage. The others were: the “Thomas of Ipswich,” Captain Tanfield; the “Emmanuel of Exeter,” Captain Courtney; the “Francis of Foy,” Captain Mayles; the “Moone,” Captain Upcot; the “Emmanuel (or Buss) of Bridgewater,” Captain Newton; the “Solomon of Weymouth,” Captain Randal; and the barks “Dennis,” "Gabriel," and “Michael,” Captains Kendal, Harvey, and Kinnesley, respectively. The government of the expedition was commended to Frobisher, with Fenton, Best, and Philpot as his principal aides. The one hundred appointed to constitute the temporary colony were to comprise forty mariners for the use of their ships, thirty miners to gather ore for shipment the next year, and thirty soldiers, the latter number including the gentlemen, goldfiners, bakers, and carpenters. Three ships of the fleet were to remain with the colony through the year: the others were to load with the ore and return at the end of the summer.
The gallant fifteen, all “in good readinesse,” foregathered at Harwich on the twenty-seventh of May, 1578. Thereupon “the Generall with all the Captaines came to the Court,” now at Greenwich, “to take their leave of her Majestie.” All received at her hands “great encouragement and gracious countenance”; while upon Frobisher she bestowed, “besides other good gifts and greater promises,” a “fair chain of gold,” herself throwing it around his neck. Then all the captains kissed the royal hand, and departed “every man toward his charge.”
At Harwich the general and his captains made formal view of the fleet and mustered their companies. Then the general handed to each captain his articles of direction for the conduct of the expedition. On the thirty-first anchors were weighed and the fleet were off.
The story of this voyage covers many pages in the telling by its chroniclers, but it can profitably be compressed into smaller compass. It is a tale of hardship with scant result, full of exciting incident and exhibitions of heroism and nerve. As before, Hakluyt gives us two narratives—the one written by Thomas Ellis, of the “Ayde’s” company; the other by Best, being the third chapter of his True Discourse.
The start was auspicious. Off the Irish coast a bark was sighted which by her actions was supposed to be a “rover of the seas,” and a merry chase was given her. When, however, overhauled, she was found to be not a pirate, but a reputable Bristol boat and the victim of a pirate. Several of her crew had been killed; others lay wounded, hungry, and desolate. The fleet was held up while our captain succoured them and started her homeward in comparative comfort. This good deed done the voyage was renewed, and without further incident of moment continued till the Arctic regions were reached. On the twentieth of June new land was discerned in “West Frisland”—the south of Greenland. Frobisher and others went ashore here, the “first known Christians,” Best wrote, “that we have true notice of that ever set foot on that ground.” Accordingly the captain-general “took possession thereof to the use of our Sovereigne Lady the Queen Majestie.” He named it “West England”; and a high cliff on the sea front he called “Charing Crosse,” for “a certaine similitude” to the London landmark. The inhabitants were found to be very like those of Meta Incognita. From this coast, where much drifting ice was met, they bore southerly toward the sea, hoping comfortably to make their destination. On the last day of June they came upon “many great whales.” One of the ships struck a big fellow head on, and such a powerful blow that the vessel was brought to a full stop. “The whale thereat made a great and ugly noyse and cast up his body and taile, and so went under water.” Two days after a dead whale “swimming” above water was met, and this was supposed to be the fellow which the ship struck. On the second of July Queen Elizabeth’s Foreland was sighted encompassed by ice.
QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Now their trials began. The way to Frobisher’s “straits” was found to be “choked up” with “many walles, mountaines, and bulwarks of yce.” Off the Foreland and, as they supposed, about the entrance to the “straits” they were buffeted by high winds and “forced many times to stemme and strike great rockes” of ice. Soon the fleet was dispersed. The “Judith,” carrying the lieutenant-general, Fenton, disappeared. The “Michael” had been early lost from sight by her companion ships. Of those which remained in company the bark “Dennis” shortly foundered, having received a crushing blow against a rock of ice. As she took the blow she signalled her danger by a shot from her great gun, and, fortunately, such quick aid was rendered by the other ships with their shipboats that all her men were saved. With her went down a part of the frame of the house to be erected for the band assigned to winter at Meta Incognita. Next a savage tempest suddenly arose, blowing from the sea “directly upon the place of the straits,” and various devices had to be resorted to to save the ships from destruction. Some getting a little sea room took in sails and drifted. Some were moored to great “islands of ice” and rode under their lee. Others were so shut in that they were at the mercy of the ice. To break its force, “junckes [junks] of cables, beds, masts, planks” were hung over their sides, while the mariners stood for hours beating it off with pikes, oars, and pieces of timber. Four—the “Anne Francis,” Best’s ship, the “Moone,” the “Francis of Foy,” and the “Gabriel”—being farthest from shore, and fast sailers, weathered the tempest under sail; and by noon the next day they had got off at sea clear of ice. And here by night of the following day they were joined by the rest of the fleet, which had escaped with a turn of the wind that had broken their ice barriers. Now joyous in fellowship again, they all “played off” more to seaward, there to abide till the ice had further cleared from before the entrance to their “straits.”
On the seventh of July they “cast about toward the inward” for another attempt. Shortly they sighted land, which was before them in form like the North Foreland, or Hall’s Island. But there was a difference of opinion as to whether it was or was not. The coast being veiled in fog was difficult to make out. After a while a height was discerned which some were sure was Mount Warwick. Yet they marvelled how it was possible that they should be so suddenly “shot up” so far into the “straits.” The captain-general sent his pinnace the round of the fleet to take a census of the opinions of all the captains and masters. As the matter grew more doubtful Christopher Hall, the chief pilot, whose knowledge of this Foreland, to whom his name had been given, was the more intimate, “delivered a plain and publique opinion in the hearing of the whole Fleete, that he had never seene the foresayd coast before, and that he would not make it for any place of Frobisher’s Straits.”
They were, in fact, southwestward of Queen Elizabeth’s Foreland, and at the entrance to Hudson’s Strait, to be rediscovered or re-explored thirty-two years afterward by Henry Hudson, and so named for him.