For three days Frobisher lingered in the area, hoping that the missing men would reappear. As for the Inuit, they too seemed to have disappeared until, on the fourth day, at a far distance, a native was spotted in his kayak. With the rigorous tinkling of bells and welcoming waving of arms, the unsuspecting fellow was lured alongside the Gabriel. As he stretched up to receive a proffered bell, the sailors “caught the man fast and pluncked him with maine force, boate and all, into the ship out of the sea.”
With no sign of his lost men, the season rapidly advancing, and with “the strange infidel” safely stowed away, Frobisher ordered a return home. Weeks later, the Gabriel sailed into London amid much joyous acclaim. Frobisher was greeted as a hero for not only had he and his ship survived, having been taken earlier for lost, but carrying with them a “strange man and his boate, which was such a wonder onto the whole city and to the rest of the realm … [Frobisher] was highly commended … for the great hope he brought of the passage to Cathay.” His unfortunate prisoner, however, “had taken a cold at sea, soon died.”
And then, a sensational turn of events. The returning sailors had carried home souvenirs of their adventurous journey, and among them one Seaman Hall brought an unusual black stone. His wife inadvertently cast it into the fireplace, but soon spotted, it was withdrawn and doused with water. It now “glistened with a bright marquesset of golde.” The wondrous stone was taken to three assayers, two of whom thought it to be white pyrites, whereas the third convincingly pronounced it to contain gold.
The rush was on. Within five months of Frobisher’s return, he was off again to the Arctic, this time not so much to seek the way to Cathay, but to mine more black rock. Funding for this second expedition had been gathered effortlessly; the queen herself subscribed £1,000, having received the hero “with gracious countenance and comfortable words.” His backers directed him strictly to search “for the Gold Ore, and to deferre the further discoverie of the passage until another tyme.” On May 31, 1577, the 120 men of the four heavily equipped ships, having “received the Sacrament and prepared themselves as good Christians towards God,” sailed forth. On July 4, Frobisher reached Greenland’s mountainous coast at 60°30', where the icebergs they had been encountering appeared larger than ever. He marvelled at the size of these “islands of ice,” some he reckoned to be a half-mile in circumference. Mostly, however, he was stunned to find that they were of fresh water, which led him to believe that they “must be bredde in the sounds or in some land neere the pole.” He concluded, furthermore, that if such were the case, the “maine sea freeseth not, therefore there is no mare glaciale, as the opinion hitherto hath been.”
The ice prevented a landing and the small fleet continued on until it arrived to its destination, the strait on Baffin Island where Hall’s black stone had been found. While the party of miners accompanying the expedition oversaw the excavation of the esteemed ore, Frobisher launched a search for his five missing sailors. The men were not found, but they discovered remnants of English shoes and clothing, some with arrow holes in an abandoned Inuit camp — foul play seemed obvious. One search party encountered a party of natives who initially appeared welcoming. The face-to-face encounter seemed friendly enough, but then it soured and became increasingly heated. Finally, the “savages … so fiercely, desperately, and with such fury assaulted and pursued our generall and his master … that they chased them to their boates, and hurt the generall in the buttocke with an arrow.”
The search for ore on the north side of the bay proved disappointing, so it was moved to the south side. On that shore, much excitement was generated by the discovery of “a great dead fishe, twelve feet long, having a bone of two yards long growing out of the snoute or nostril” — a narwhal. Shortly after they established themselves and began the search in earnest, another party of natives was encountered, and these Frobisher determined to capture. In the ensuing melee, five Inuit were killed and the rest ran away. Two women, however, were captured, “whereof the one being old and ugly, our men thought she had been the devil or some witch, and therefore let her goe,” but the other one was retained, an attractive young mother with a howling baby on her back. During the struggle, an arrow had pierced the infant’s arm and “our surgeon meaning to heale her child’s arme, applied salves thereonto.” The frightened woman grew suspicious of the medication, brushed it off, and “by continuuale lickng with her owne tongue, not much unlike our dogs, healed upthe childe’s arm.”
Using the mother and child as hostage, a parlay was successfully established with the natives, during which Frobisher was given to understand that the five missing men were alive, but were located at some distance. He penned a letter to them, which the natives were instructed to deliver on pain of the mother and child’s death. The reassuring preamble is notable [spelling, in modern English]:
In the name of God, in whom we all believe, who, I trust, has preserved your bodies and souls among these infidels, I commend myself to you. I will be glad to seek by all means one can devise for your deliverance, either with force, or with any commodities within my ships, which I will not spare for your sakes, or anything else I can do for you.
The letter goes on to explain that his men are to inform the “savages” that unless they are immediately and safely delivered, mother and child would die and that “I will not leave a man alive in their country.” The natives were dispatched, but alas without result — they neither returned nor did the Englishmen reappear.
The mining operation had been progressing satisfactorily, but the season was rapidly advancing. Apart from not finding his missing men, it had been a successful mission and since Frobisher had been ordered “to deferre the further discoverie of the passage till another tyme,” he ordered preparations for a return home. For the next twenty days every person present was put to work loading onto the vessels two hundred tons of the sought-after ore, and on August 22 they set sail, not however, before taking a third native hostage.
In England, samples of the ore were delivered to experts, but no consensus was reached on their value. Investors and refiners were at loggerheads, but the queen and her officials remained firm in their convictions that a unique source of gold had in fact been uncovered. So delighted was Her Majesty with prospects of “great riches and profit, and the hope of the passage to Cathay,” that a fleet of fifteen ships was made ready for yet another expedition to the recently discovered land, which the Queen had named Meta Incognita. Frobisher was made an admiral and had a gold chain planted about his neck by his monarch.
On May 31, 1578, the fleet put out from England, with a twofold purpose: first, to return with a substantial cargo of ore, and second, to establish a mining colony in the new land — a hundred men had signed on to spend a winter on Meta Incognita, mostly miners, carpenters, and soldiers. Stowed in the ships’ holds were all the material and equipment required for the building of a walled fortress-like shelter of 9,500 square feet, complete with bastions. On arriving at Frobisher’s strait, they found it nearly chockablock with icebergs, one of which was fatally encountered by the one-hundred-ton bark Dennis. The ship sank, but its crew was saved. The unfortunate aspect of the loss, however, was that the vessel carried most of the expedition’s construction supplies. Following this critical setback, further bad luck befell the ships. A brutal storm hit the anchored fleet and the vessels were dispersed, some driven farther into the strait, others were swept out to sea by drift ice, with most sustaining damage. Once reassembled and repaired, a period of fogs, heavy mists, and snows brought work to a stop, all this resulting in time lost.
With the loss of the building material it was deemed impractical to pursue the colonization project — something perhaps for the future. But the mining proceeded. Much to their satisfaction, an especially bounteous amount of the black ore was found on “a great black island … as might reasonably suffice all the gold gluttons of the world.” Work on excavating the rock got underway in earnest with vast quantities of the stuff