Colonization was visualized, when at all, only as occupation—to hold the route to the mines or to Cathay against the possibility of foreign claims.
Not until an English venturer in America by the name of John Smith challenged the wasteful search for gold and demanded the development of the country’s more obvious resources did it begin to dawn on the merchant adventurers of England that colonization might be a commercially desirable end in itself.
And it was this same John Smith who demonstrated how trade with the natives could be employed to get the country planted with Englishmen. Along with the usual trade for pelts he bartered successfully for Indian corn and other food stuffs. This kept the colonists alive until they were “seasoned” to the new land; then came the profits from organized fur trading to maintain them until agricultural settlement could be effected with some degree of economic success.
Prior to the coming of John Smith the English ventures in America had been one costly failure after another.
Among the earliest of these were the expeditions led by that enigmatic Yorkshireman, Martin Frobisher. Reputedly a successful privateer, it was also said that he knew how to hold his tongue. Maybe what he did tell gained in importance thereby. It might account for the otherwise unaccountable backing he obtained for three successive voyages to America. Many thousands of pounds sterling were wasted on these ventures by a usually hard-headed merchant named Michael Lok. A large part of the expenditure was underwritten by the queen, herself, and Elizabeth was not normally one to squander her silver.
Frobisher went out first in 1576 in search of a northwest passage. He succeeded only in discovering the bay, or “strait” as he called it, that bears his name before coming on “gold ore” in the form of bright, black rocks. Since the samples must have proved worthless on his return to England, his promise of a strait to Cathay was probably very impressive. Certainly the fur-clad Eskimo he brought back from the north side of the “strait” was accepted as an Asiatic. In any event, back he went to America the next year with three ships and the financial blessings of Lok’s newly formed Company of Cathay.
Martin Frobisher did some further exploring on this voyage, but not enough it appears to learn that his strait was only a bay. It is all very strange. An abundance of spiders in the region was taken as convincing evidence that gold-bearing ore was close at hand. In the end Frobisher loaded his ships with worthless black earth and returned to England. What he said, or didn’t say, must have been doubly impressive this time for the merchants evidently were not one whit discouraged. They backed him with a fine fleet, fifteen ships, for a third voyage in 1578.
A large band of miners was sent along this time by the company, and two hundred twenty men were provided for the purpose of planting a settlement on the “strait” that would protect both the mines and the route to Cathay. But, so anxious was everyone to dig for gold, the necessary buildings never did get erected. Again it is not clear what happened, but apparently all thought of settlement was abandoned.
Before the ice began to close in, Martin Frobisher set sail for home with all his company and another three hundred tons of fool’s gold, bankrupting the Company of Cathay.
Next there was Sir Humphrey Gilbert. He and his half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, were the queen’s two favorite gallants among her soldiers of fortune. Both were brave men and both were intensely nationalistic. Sir Humphrey said that a man is “not worthy to live at all, that for feare, or danger of death, shunneth his country service, and his owne honour.”