Adventurers of the Far North: A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas

by Stephen Leacock

Contrary to what we should suppose, the voyage was viewed as a brilliant success. The queen herself named the newly found rocks and islands Meta Incognita. Frobisher was at once 'specially famous for the great hope he brought of a passage to Cathay.' A strange-looking piece of black rock that had been carried home in the Gabriel was pronounced by a metallurgist, one Baptista Agnello, to contain gold; true, Agnello admitted in confidence that he had 'coaxed nature' to find the precious metal. But the rumour of the thing was enough. The cupidity of the London merchants was added to the ambitions of the court. There was no trouble about finding ships and immediate funds for a second expedition.

The new enterprise was carried out in the following year (1577). The Gabriel and the Michael sailed again, and with them one of the queen's ships, the Aid. This time the company included a number of soldiers and gentlemen adventurers. The main object was not the discovery of the passage but the search for gold.

The expedition sailed out of Harwich on May 31, 1577, following the route by the north of Scotland. A week's sail brought the ships 'with a merrie wind' to the Orkneys. Here a day or so was spent in obtaining water. The inhabitants of these remote islands were found living in stone huts in a condition almost as primitive as that of American savages. 'The good man, wife, children, and other members of the family,' wrote Master Settle, one of Frobisher's company, 'eat and sleep on one side of the house and the cattle on the other, very beastly and rude.' From the Orkneys the ships pursued a very northerly course, entering within the Arctic Circle and sailing in the perpetual sunlight of the polar day. Near Iceland they saw huge pine trees drifting, roots and all, across the ocean. Wild storms beset them as they passed the desolate capes of Greenland. At length, on July 16, the navigators found themselves off the headlands of Meta Incognita.

Here Frobisher and his men spent the summer. The coast and waters were searched as far as the inclement climate allowed. The savages were fierce and unfriendly. A few poor rags of clothing found among the rocks bespoke the fate of the sailors of the year before. Fierce conflicts with the natives followed. Several were captured. One woman so hideous and wrinkled with age that the mariners thought her a witch was released in pious awe. A younger woman, with a baby at her back, was carried captive to the English ships. The natives in return watched their opportunity and fell fiercely on the English as occasion offered, leaping headlong from the rocks into the sea rather than submit to capture.

To the perils of conflict was added the perpetual danger of moving ice. Even in the summer seas, great gales blew and giant masses of ice drove furiously through the strait. No passage was possible. In vain Frobisher landed on both the northern and the southern sides and tried to penetrate the rugged country. All about the land was barren and forbidding. Mountains of rough stone crowned with snow blocked the way. No trees were seen and no vegetation except a scant grass here and there upon the flatter spaces of the rocks.

But neither the terrors of the ice nor the fear of the savages could damp the ardour of the explorers. The landing of Frobisher and his men on Meta Incognita was carried out with something of the pomp, dear to an age of chivalrous display, that marked the landing of Columbus on the tropic island of San Salvador. The captain and his men moved in marching order: they knelt together on the barren rock to offer thanks to God and to invoke a blessing on their queen. Great cairns of stone were piled high here and there, as a sign of England's sovereignty, while as they advanced against the rugged hills of the interior, the banner of their country was proudly carried in the van. Their thoughts were not of glory only. It was with the ardour of treasure-seekers that they fell to their task, forgetting in the lust for gold the chill horror of their surroundings; and, when the Arctic sunlight glittered on the splintered edges of the rocks, the crevices of the barren stone seemed to the excited minds of the explorers to be filled with virgin gold, carried by subterranean streams. The three ships were loaded deep with worthless stone, a fitting irony on their quest. Then, at the end of August, they were turned again eastward for England. Tempest and fog enveloped their passage. The ships were driven asunder. Each thought the others lost. But, by good fortune, all safely arrived, the captain's ship landing at Milford Haven, the others at Bristol and Yarmouth.

Fortunately for Frobisher the worthless character of the freight that he brought home was not readily made clear by the crude methods of the day. For the next summer found him again off the shores of Meta Incognita eagerly searching for new mines. This time he bore with him a large company and ample equipment. Fifteen ships in all sailed under his command. Among his company were miners and artificers. The frames of a house, ready to set up, were borne in the vessels. Felton, a ship's captain, and a group of Frobisher's gentlemen were to be left behind to spend the winter in the new land.

From the first the voyage was inauspicious. The ships had scarcely entered the straits before a great storm broke upon them. Land and sea were blotted out in driving snow. The open water into which they had sailed was soon filled with great masses of ice which the tempest cast furiously against the ships. To their horror the barque Dionise, rammed by the ice, went down in the swirling waters. With her she carried all her cargo, including a part of the timbers of the house destined for the winter's habitation. But the stout courage of the mariners was undismayed. All through the evening and the night they fought against the ice: with capstan bars, with boats' oars, and with great planks they thrust it from the ships. Some of the men leaped down upon the moving floes and bore with might and main against the ships to break the shock. At times the little vessels were lifted clear out of the sea, their sides torn with the fierce blows of the ice-pack, their seams strained and leaking. All night they looked for instant death. But, with the coming of the morning, the wind shifted to the west and cleared the ice from the sea, and God sent to the mariners, so runs their chronicle, 'so pleasant a day as the like we had not of a long time before, as after punishment consolation.'

But their dangers were not ended. As the ships stood on and off the land, they fell in with a great berg of ice that reared its height four hundred feet above the masts, and lay extended for a half mile in length. This they avoided. But a few days later, while they were still awaiting a landing, a great mist rolled down upon the seas, so that for five days and nights all was obscurity and no ship could see its consorts. Current and tide drove the explorers to and fro till they drifted away from the mouth of Frobisher Strait southward and westward. Then another great sound opened before them to the west. This was the passage of Hudson Strait, and, had Frobisher followed it, he would have found the vast inland sea of Hudson Bay open to his exploration. But, intent upon his search for ore, he fought his way back to the inhospitable waters that bear his name. There at an island which had been christened the Countess of Warwick's Island, the fleet was able to assemble by August 1. But the ill-fortune of the enterprise demanded the abandonment of all idea of settlement. Frobisher and his men made haste to load their vessels with the worthless rock which abounded in the district. In one 'great black island alone' there was discovered such a quantity of it that 'if the goodness might answer the plenty thereof, it might reasonably suffice all the gold-gluttons of the world.' In leaving Meta Incognita, Frobisher and his companions by no means intended that the enterprise should be definitely abandoned. Such timbers of the house as remained they buried for use next year. A little building, or fort, of stone was erected, to test whether it would stand against the frost of the Arctic winter. In it were set a number of little toys, bells, and knives to tempt the cupidity of the Eskimos, who had grown wary and hostile to the newcomers. Pease, corn, and grain were sown in the scant soil as a provision for the following summer. On the last day of August, the fleet departed on its homeward voyage. The passage was long and stormy. The ships were scattered and found their way home as best they might, some to one harbour and some to another. But by the beginning of October, the entire fleet was safely back in its own waters.

The expectations of a speedy return to Meta Incognita were doomed to disappointment. The ore that the ships carried proved to be but worthless rock, and from the commercial point of view the whole expedition was a failure. Frobisher was never able to repeat his attempt to find the North-West Passage. In its existence his faith remained as firm as ever. But, although his three voyages resulted in no discoveries of profit to England, his name should stand high on the roll of honour of great English sea-captains. He brought to bear on his task not only the splendid courage of his age, but also the earnest devotion and intense religious spirit which marked the best men of the period of the Reformation. The first article of Frobisher's standing orders to his fleet enjoined his men to banish swearing, dice, and card-playing and to worship God twice a day in the service of the Church of England. The watchword of the fleet, to be called out in fog or darkness as a means of recognition was 'Before the World was God,' and the answer shouted back across the darkness, 'After God came Christ His Son.' At all convenient times and places, sermons were preached to the company of the fleet by Frobisher's chaplain, Master Wolfall, a godly man who had left behind in England a 'large living and a good honest woman to wife and very towardly children,' in order to spread the Gospel in the new land. Frobisher's personal bravery was of the highest order. We read how in the rage of a storm he would venture tasks from which even his boldest sailors shrank in fear. Once, when his ship was thrown on her beam ends and the water poured into the waist, the commander worked his way along the lee side of the vessel, engulfed in the roaring surges, to free the sheets. With these qualities Martin Frobisher combined a singular humanity towards both those whom he commanded and natives with whom he dealt. It is to be regretted that a man of such high character and ability should have spent his efforts on so vain a task.