At length on the seventeenth of August the boat, although hung together only by the strength of the nails, and lacking some of the principal knees and timbers, was pronounced finished, and Best made ready for his voyage. Veteran seamen strongly advised against the venture in such a frail craft, assured that it could have only a fatal end. Thereupon he called for the best judgment of the master and mariners of his ship upon the matter, and to foster a favourable decision, he urged the absolute necessity for the voyage now that ore had been found, to seek with Frobisher’s company the goldfiners who alone could test the value of their “find.” This court of last resort decided that by careful handling the pinnace might suffice. Then the master’s mate and Captain Upcot of the “Moone” volunteered for the voyage. Others were quick to follow their example; and on the nineteenth Best set off with a goodly crew, the whole company comprising twenty men. With much rowing and cautious sailing, and hugging the shore, they got on without the disaster predicted. On the second day out they had sight of the Countess of Warwick’s Sound in the distance from a hilltop on shore where they had landed for observation. Again afloat, soon smoke was seen rising from a fire under a hillside. As this point was approached people were observed and apparently signalling them with a flag or ensign. They suspected that this was a trick of natives, for they saw no ship. Coming nearer tents were seen, and it was perceived that the ensign was “after the English fashion.” They fancied that some of the fleet had been brought up thus far and wrecked, and that they had been spoiled by the natives, who were now signalling them likewise into danger. Then, true Englishmen that they were, they resolved to have that flag, or, “els to lose their lives.” So they made for it, and to their great surprise and joy they found it to be a signal of their own countrymen. When within hailing they shouted “What cheer?” The response came cheerily back, “All’s well.” Then “there arose a sudden and joyfull outshoote [shout] with great flinging up of caps, and a brave voly of shot to welcome one another.” The group thus so happily met were a party working the “mine” on the Countess of Sussex Island. They, in their turn, had supposed when they signalled that Best’s company were survivors of a wreck of one of the ships. From this point the shaky pinnace hastened into the Countess of Warwick’s Sound, where Frobisher and the rest were met with as joyous greetings. Best displayed his samples of ore, and the goldfiners, trying them, “supposed” them to be “very good.” Accordingly Frobisher directed him to freight his ship at Best’s Blessing, and then bring her up. So he returned as he came, and found her already laden. The next day she sailed, and arrived with the “Moone” at the rendezvous on the twenty-eighth of August.
On the thirtieth the work at the Countess of Warwick’s Island was finished and the fleet were prepared for the homeward voyage. Frobisher endeavoured to persuade his council of captains to make one more effort at further discovery. He would “not only by Gods help bring home his shippes laden with Ore, but also meant to bring some certificate of a further discovery of the Countrey.” His associates were loth to fall in with the proposal, considering the time spent in the “mistaken straits,” and holding that discovery to have been something gained, in that thereby the hope of a passage to Cathay was “much furthered and encreased”; yet loyal to his leadership they were willing as he should appoint to “take any enterprise in hand.” Although the conclusion was reached that under all the circumstances “the thing was impossible,” Frobisher himself took his pinnace and explored some distance farther northward.
On their last day ashore the remnants of the frame of their timber house were buried, and about the lime and stone house were sown peas, corn, and other grain “to proove the fruitfulnesse of the soyle against the next yeere.” These things done, formal leave of the place was taken. The company being assembled, Master Wolfall preached another “goodly” sermon, and celebrated a communion. The next day, the thirty-first of August, all embarked, and the fleet, with the exception of the “Judith” and the “Anne Francis,” which tarried to take in fresh water, hoisted sail for home.
Now new perils were to beset them. The “Buss of Bridgewater” and the barks “Gabriel” and “Michael,” not fully laden, put into Bear’s Sound to take on a little more, the others meanwhile waiting for them farther down the bay. Frobisher also went ashore in Bear’s Sound to superintend the lading; and so did Best, the latter to take off his miners and their trappings here, in his rickety “kneeless” pinnace. That night an “outrageous tempest” fell upon them and created a general havoc. The fleet down the bay were beaten with such vehement “vigor that anchor and cable availed nought.” They were driven on “rockes and Ilands of yce” and not one escaped damage. The “Judith” and the “Anne Francis” had now joined them. Frobisher could not reach his ship and was compelled to board the “Gabriel.” Best and his men had the roughest time of it. Their crazy pinnace was taken in tow by the “Michael” and rushed through the icy waters till the “Anne Francis” (which with the “Judith” had now joined the fleet) was reached. They scrambled aboard the “Anne” in panicky haste, and as the last man mounted her side the pinnace “shivered and sank in pieces at the ship’s stern.” Thus fitly ended the career of this astonishing craft. Unseaworthy from the start, she had indeed performed wonders, and had miraculously held her own till her full work was done.
Again the fleet was dispersed, not to come together through the remainder of the voyage. The “boystrous blasts” continued so fierce and constant that all were blown homeward “will we or nill we” (willy nilly) at a clipping pace. “If by chance any one Shippe did overtake other by swiftness of sayle, or mette [met] as they often did, yet was the rigour of the wind so hideous that they could not continue company together the space of one whole night.” The “Buss of Bridgewater” took her course alone to the southeast of Greenland, and discovered on the way, in latitude fifty-seven and a half degrees north, a phantom island, “seeming to be fruitfull, full of woods, and a champagne country.” It was named “Buss Island,” and got onto the maps; but it was never again found. The other ships came limping home one by one, and by the first of October all had arrived, “some in one place and some in another.” Of the whole company that went out forty had perished during the expedition.
There is no record of public demonstrations at this home-coming, or of elation over the precious freight of the battered ships. During the absence of the voyagers a mystery which had been thrown over the ore previously brought had deepened, and now there was a growing suspicion that it was not the profitable thing that had been supposed. Indeed, before this expedition had started out from England a pretty sturdy quarrel had developed among the assayers. Now the breach between them had widened. There was, too, a rupture in the councils of the Company of Cathay. A sorry situation, therefore, was met by the returned voyagers. Frobisher fell upon evil days. Charges of broken promises were brought against him. He retorted with similar charges against the management of the promoting corporation. Finally, the Company of Cathay went to pieces, the adventurers lost heavily in their investment, while of the ore of the last voyage, so laboriously gathered and safely brought to port through such perils, nothing more was heard.
Thus dismally closes the story of the Eldorado of the Northwest. Three centuries afterward, in 1862, Captain Charles Francis Hall, the American Arctic explorer, on a New England whaler, identified the Countess of Warwick’s Island as “Kod-lu-narn,” the “Island of the White Man”; and found, even then in a fair state of preservation, the little house of lime and stone, with a number of relics of its furnishings.
Frobisher, upon the sorry sequel of his third voyage, lost the queen’s favour. He later regained it, however, sufficiently to secure his employment in 1580 as captain of his majesty’s ship the “Foresight” in preventing the Spaniards from aiding the Irish rebellion in Münster. The next year, 1581, he was the chosen leader for a new voyage of Northwestern discovery projected by the Earl of Leicester and others. But when, before the sailing, in 1582, the instructions were changed for the purposes of trade and not for discovery, he withdrew from the enterprise in favour of Captain Fenton, his lieutenant-general in the voyage of 1578.
In 1585–1586 he was in Sir Francis Drake’s warring expedition to the West Indies, in charge of the “Primrose”; and in 1588 he commanded the “Triumph” in the great fight against the Spanish Armada. It was then that he received the honour of knighthood, being knighted by Admiral Howard at sea for bravery. In 1590, 1592, and 1594 he was in other engagements, vice-admiral to Sir John Hawkins in one; sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh in another; and in the third with Sir John Norris at Brest and Crozon. Wounded in the last fight while leading his men in action ashore, and the victim of unskilled surgery, he died after reaching Plymouth.
He was a brave and resolute man, harsh in bearing, with the rough manner of the sailor, but generous and just.