The fog continued to hang about them “thick and dark,” and on the tenth they were again partly dispersed. The “Thomas Allen,” aboard of which was the chief pilot with Captain Yorke, having lost sight of the admiral, turned back to sea with two others in her company. The “Anne Francis,” finding herself alone, also put to sea, to remain till the weather should permit the taking of the sun’s altitude. The “Ayde” kept on the course, and leading the rest of the fleet, passed into the “doubtful” strait.
Up this broad passage the “Ayde” and her consorts sailed for “about sixty leagues,” having “always a faire continent upon their starreboard side, and a continuance still of an open sea before them.” Frobisher was the first to realize that they were on a new and unknown water. Yet he dissembled his opinion and continued to persuade his associates that it was the right way, by such policy meaning to carry them along with him for further discovery. This he was said to have afterward confessed when he declared that “if it had not bene for the charge and care he had of the Flete and fraighted ships, he both would and could have gone through to the South Sea [the Pacific] ... and dissolved the long doubt of the passage” to “Cathay.” While he may have been more or less impelled to his adventures, in common with his chief backers, by the “lust for gold,” he was above all moved by the spirit of the true discoverer: a merit in his performances which some popular historians have failed to recognize.
When at length he turned the fleet and they sailed back to the entrance of this strait, he found a way into the “old strait” by the inside of Queen Elizabeth’s Foreland, thus incidentally discovering that to be an island. Now within the “proper strait,” after many perils overcome in making it, some of the dispersed ships were met, and others heard from. First appeared the “Anne Francis,” which had long been “beating off and on” before the Queen’s Foreland. At the meeting they joyously welcomed one another with “a thundering volley of shot.” The next day the “Francis of Foy” joined them, having fought her way through the ice out of the “mistaken strait.” She brought tidings of the “Thomas Allen,” which she had left at sea clear of the ice. Later the “Buss of Bridgewater” showed up, and reported the “marvellous accidents and dangers” she had experienced.
The latter’s men also declared that “Frobisher’s Straits” above were so frozen over that it was “the most impossible thing of the world” to reach the destined port—the Countess of Warwick’s Sound. This report spreading through the fleet “brought no small feare and terror into the hearts of many,” and murmurs against venturing further passed from lip to lip. Some urged that a harbour be sought where the battered ships might be repaired, and the fleet might await the dispersion of the ice. Others mutinously declared that they “had as leave be hanged when they came home as without hope of safetie to seeke to passe, and so to perish amongst the ice.”
To all these murmurings of discontent, however, the intrepid Frobisher lent a deaf ear, determined to reach the ultimate port or else to “burie himselfe with his attempt.” But, as before, he dissembled. “Somewhat to appease the feeble passions of the fearfuller sort,” he “haled on the Fleete with beleefe that he would put them into harborow.” Accordingly he went with his pinnace among the neighbouring islands as if searching for a haven, but really to see if any ore might be found in them.
Meanwhile another “terrible tempest” suddenly came up from the southwest, and once more the fleet were in part dispersed. It was the twenty-sixth of July, and snow fell so hard and fast that “we could not see one another for the same, nor open our eyes to handle our ropes and sails.” The “Anne Francis,” the “Moone,” and the “Thomas of Ipswich” again plied seaward. The rest of the fleet stayed by the admiral. When the storm was spent these remaining ships under Frobisher’s lead had pushed through the ice up the bay, “with incredible pain and peril,” and at last reached the goal, dropping anchors in the Countess of Warwick’s Sound on the thirty-first of July. At the entrance to the haven, when all hardship was thought to be over, the “Ayde” narrowly escaped sinking through contact with a “great island of ice.” Here, to their astonishment, the new-comers found arrived before them the “Judith” and the “Michael,” both of which had been mourned as lost. The happy meeting was celebrated with more exchange of thundering salutes from the great ordnance. Then all came together in a service of praise and thanksgiving, and the minister of the fleet, Master Wolfall, preached a “goodly sermon” to a kneeling company on the “Ayde.”
No time was lost in getting to work at the “mines.” Immediately upon landing on the Countess of Warwick’s Island Frobisher assembled his council of captains and orders of government were adopted. On the first of August the whole company were mustered on shore, the tents set up, and everything got in readiness for operations. On the next day the orders of the council were published and proclaimed by sound of the trumpet. On the next, all were diligently employed in their several classes, the miners plying their trade, the goldfiners trying the “ore,” the sailors discharging the ships: the gentlemen labouring as heartily as the “inferior sort” for “examples sake.” Meanwhile Frobisher was busied in seeking new mines in neighbouring parts. On the ninth of August preparations were made to set up the house for the one hundred men assigned to remain here a year. But half of the frame had been lost with the foundering of the “Dennis,” and the remaining parts, brought out in others of the ships, were imperfect, pieces having been used for fenders in the battles of the ships against the ice. Provisions also were short, the “Thomas of Ipswich” having carried most of the supplies intended for the temporary colonists. Captain Fenton offered to stay with sixty men, and the carpenters and masons were asked how soon they could build a house for this smaller number. They replied, in eight or nine weeks, provided enough timber could be found. Of course this would never do, for the fleet must depart much before that time or else be frozen in for the winter. There remained no alternative, and so the general and council were forced reluctantly to decide that the plan of a habitation for this year must be abandoned. Later in the month, however, a little house of lime and stone was erected under Captain Fenton’s direction for possible occupation another year. And when at length the company were making ready to leave the place, this house was stocked with the trifles they had brought for traffic with the natives—bells, whistles, knives, looking-glasses, combs, pins, leaden toy men and women, some on horseback some on foot—"the better to allure" the “bruitish and uncivill people to courtesie” against another coming of the Englishmen.
Toward the middle of August the “Thomas Allen” had joined the fleet here, and her company were working a “mine” which Captain Yorke had found on an island by Bear’s Sound, which he called the “Countess of Sussex Mine.” Near the end of the month the “Anne Francis” and the “Moone” had arrived. Now the fleet were once more together, excepting the lost “Dennis” and the “Thomas of Ipswich,” supposed also to be lost. The “Thomas of Ipswich,” however, as subsequently appeared, had, after the tempest of July twenty-six, when she was at sea in company with the “Anne Francis” and the “Moone,” turned about under the cover of night, and scudded home for England.
The “Anne Francis” came up laden with ore which she had taken on an island in a harbour of Queen’s Foreland, which Best had found, and which he reported was in such abundance there that if its goodness equalled its plentifulness it “might reasonably suffice all the gold-gluttons of the world.” The adventures of this ship after the tempest of the twenty-sixth of July—which the chroniclers distinguished as “the day of the great snowe”—were remarkable in several respects, and Captain Best showed himself to be of the same heroic mould as Captain Frobisher. When she, with the “Moone” and the “Thomas of Ipswich” had been for a long time beating about off “Queen’s Foreland,” and were bruised and battered from their contacts with the ice, Best called the several captains and masters to a conference in her cabin. Having grave doubts as to the fate of the rest of the fleet, and considering the sorry condition of their own vessels, together with the lateness of the season, a proposal to abandon further efforts and turn their prows homeward was earnestly debated. Both sides having been fully heard, Best rendered the decision. It should never be spoken of him, he declared, that “hee would ever return without doing his endeavours to finde the Fleete and know the certaintie of the General’s safetie.” It was therefore agreed that first a fit harbour should be sought; that this found, the pinnace brought out in parts on the “Anne Francis” should be put together; and that then, leaving the ships in the harbour, he himself would take the pinnace and push up the “straits” to prove if it were possible for the ships to break through the ice and reach the Countess of Warwick’s Land; and also to seek tidings of Frobisher and the rest of the fleet. In the meantime the skippers were to keep the craft together as near as they could, “as true Englishmen and faithful friends should supply one another’s wants in all fortunes and dangers.” Only the next night, however, the company of the “Thomas of Ipswich” was lost, and the “Anne Francis” and the “Moone” alone remained to pursue the adventure as agreed. Harbour was found by Best at an island lying under “Hatton’s Headland,” where he discovered the promising ore. For this “good hap” he called the island “Best’s Blessing.” Here his miners were put to work on the ore, while the carpenters toiled at building the pinnace. How this was done with the shifts they were put to for tools and materials is best told in Best’s words:
“They wanted two speciall and most necessaire things, that is, certaine principall tymbers that are called Knees, which are the chiefest strength of any Boate, and also nayles, where withall to joyne the plancks together. Whereupon having by chance a Smyth amongst them (and yet unfurnished of the necessary tooles to worke and make nayles withall) they were faine of a gunne chamber to make an Anvile to worke upon, and to use a pickaxe in stead of a sledge to beate withall, and also to occupy two small bellowes in steade of one payre of greater Smiths bellowes. And for lacke of small yron for the easier making of nayles, they were forced to breake their tongs, grydiron, and fire shovel in pieces.”