Sir Martin Frobisher (; – 22 November 1594) was an English sea captain and privateer who made three voyages to the New World looking for the North-west Passage. He probably sighted Resolution Island near Labrador in eastern Canada, before entering Frobisher Bay and landing on present-day Baffin Island.
On his second voyage, Frobisher found what he thought was gold ore and carried of it home on three ships. He initially determined a profit of £5.20 per ton (equivalent to £ per ton in ). Encouraged, Frobisher returned to Canada with an even larger fleet and dug several mines around Frobisher Bay. He eventually carried 1,350 tons of the ore back to England, where, after years of smelting, it was realised that the ore was a worthless rock containing the mineral hornblende.
As an English privateer, he plundered riches from French ships. He was later knighted for his service in repelling the Spanish Armada in 1588. Named in his honour, Frobisher Bay lies close to Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut.
Early life Martin Frobisher was probably born in 1535 or 1536, the son of merchant Bernard Frobisher of Altofts, Yorkshire, and Margaret York of Gouthwaite. He was the third of five children when his father died prematurely in 1542. The family was left in the care of his uncle, Francis Frobisher. Little else is known of his early life in Yorkshire; his education appears to have been rudimentary. In hopes of better opportunity, young Frobisher was sent to London in 1549 to live with a maternal relative, Sir John York. York was a wealthy and influential member of the Merchant Taylors and had important connections in the royal government.
African Expedition
In 1553, Thomas Wyndham led the first English expedition to West Africa, comprising three ships and 140 men. York was an investor in the enterprise and Frobisher accompanied the fleet in an unknown capacity. After plundering Portuguese ships in the vicinity of Madeira, they made their most successful transactions on the Gold Coast, trading English cloth for 150 pounds of gold. Pushing further south they reached Benin and negotiated directly with Oba Orhogbua for 80 tons of melegueta pepper.
After some initial reluctance, Orhogbua agreed to trade but while the pepper was being gathered, disease swept through the English crew killing many of them including the expedition leader, Wyndham. Lacking sufficient sailors to crew the entire fleet, they abandoned one ship and, in their panic to leave, even left behind some members of the expedition. The return voyage was extremely difficult for the sick and short-handed crew. Another ship was lost and when the one remaining ship returned to England only 40 of the original 140 crewmen were still alive. Frobisher was one of the survivors, perhaps a confirmation of York's assessment that Frobisher had "great spirit and bould courage, and natural hardnes of body."
Despite the loss of two ships and 100 lives, the 1553 voyage was considered a financial success and investors, including York, funded another trading expedition to Portuguese Guinea in 1554. Undaunted by his first experience, Frobisher joined the new expedition and served as an apprentice merchant working for York's trading representative, John Beryn. Three ships left Dartmouth in November 1554 under the command of John Lok. This may have been Frobisher's first acquaintance with the Lok family, a relationship that would play an important role in his future.
After seven weeks' sailing, they made their first landfall near the Cestos River in present-day Liberia. They traded for a quantity of pepper and then proceeded to the Gold Coast, the West African gold trade centre. The local governor refused to deal with the English until they provided a hostage to ensure negotiations in good faith. Frobisher volunteered to serve as the hostage and discussions were allowed to proceed. However, before they could conclude a deal, a Portuguese ship appeared offshore and fired on the English fleet.
The expedition abandoned Frobisher and went elsewhere to trade, eventually returning to England with a valuable cargo of gold, pepper, and ivory. His African captors then handed Frobisher over to the Portuguese at their trading post of Mina, where he was imprisoned in the castle of São Jorge da Mina. After nine months or so, the Portuguese authorities sent him to Portugal, whence he eventually made his way back to England about 1558.
Privateer and pirate The circumstances and timing of Frobisher's return from Portugal are unclear. There is no indication of any diplomatic or financial effort to secure his release; perhaps the Portuguese simply saw no advantage to holding a low-ranking political prisoner any longer. Frobisher must have returned to the sea soon after his release. There is some evidence that by 1559, he led a voyage to the Barbary Coast to secure the release of an English hostage, Anthony Hammond. In September of the same year the well-known pirate, Henry Strangways, testified in court that Frobisher had been part of an aborted plot to attack and plunder the Portuguese fortress of Mina where Frobisher had been held captive in 1555.
On 30 September 1559, Frobisher married a Yorkshire widow, Isobel Richard, who had two young children and a substantial settlement from her previous marriage to Thomas Rigatt of Snaith. Little is known of their domestic life, but having spent all her inheritance to finance his ventures, Frobisher seems to have left her and her children by the mid-1570s; Isobel's death in a poorhouse in 1588 went unremarked by the ambitious captain.
In 1563, Frobisher became involved in a privateering venture with his brother, John Frobisher, and a fellow Yorkshireman, John Appleyard. Appleyard was licensed to seize ships of the French Catholic party and financed a fleet of three vessels. Martin Frobisher captained one vessel and may have been fleet commander. By May 1563, they had seized five French ships and brought them to Plymouth harbour. Frobisher was promptly arrested by officers of the Privy Council because his ship had also participated in the seizure of a Spanish ship which resulted in the death of 40 Englishmen. The leader of this attack was the pirate Thomas Cobham, who gave Frobisher the Spanish cargo of tapestries and wine. Possession of these goods was sufficient evidence to land Frobisher in prison.
In 1564, Frobisher was released from prison. In 1565, he purchased two ships, the Mary Flower and William Baxter. His stated intention was to outfit the ships for a trading expedition to the Guinea coast. Based on previous experience, officials were skeptical of his motives and when a storm drove him into Scarborough, he was seized along with the William Baxter. His brother, John Frobisher, was captain of the Mary Flower and escaped arrest. Martin Frobisher was once again imprisoned briefly by the admiralty court.
On 31 October 1566, Frobisher was again set free on the condition that he refrain from going to sea without a license. In 1568, he commanded the Robert in service to the exiled Cardinal of Chatillon who licensed at least six vessels to prey on French shipping. For a brief time Frobisher associated with other notable privateers including John Hawkins and William Winter. However, Frobisher refused to limit his depredations to French Catholic vessels and also seized Protestant ships carrying English goods. In 1569, he was again arrested by admiralty officers and imprisoned first at Fleet prison and then at Marshalsea. He might have remained there for some time if not for the intervention of the lord admiral, Edward Fiennes de Clinton and the secretary of state, William Cecil. With their help, Frobisher was free again in March 1570.
The terms of his release are unknown but it appears that Frobisher was required to undertake certain assignments at the direction of the Privy Council. In October 1571, he was commissioned to command four ships in the search for pirates and smugglers along the English coast. There is no indication that he had any success in this effort. In 1572, he was directed to the Irish coast to provide logistical support for the English campaign against the Desmond Rebellions.
Starting in 1571, Frobisher was involved in various plots that ran counter to government interest. He possibly had the tacit approval of the Privy Council, suggesting that he may have been working as a double agent. He was briefly associated with a plan to help the Earl of Desmond flee England; then a proposal to lead a group of disaffected English mercenaries to seize Flushing for the Spanish king; and finally, in 1573, a plot to capture the English rebel, Thomas Stukley.
According to the Dictionary of National Biography, the first direct notice of Frobisher apparently is an account in the state papers of two interrogations in 1566, "on suspicion of his having fitted out a vessel as a pirate". On 21 August 1571, Captain E. Horsey wrote to Lord Burghley from Portsmouth that he "has expedited the fitting out of a hulk for M. Frobisher"; this is the earliest mention of Frobisher being in the Crown's employ. Burghley, then chief minister of the Queen, became Lord High Treasurer in 1572. From the latter part of 1571 to 1572, Frobisher was in the public service at sea off the coast of Ireland.
North-west passage
Throughout much of the sixteenth century, the feasibility of a northern route to Cathay and the East Indies was debated and tested by England. In 1508, Sebastian Cabot led one of the first expeditions to search for a North-west Passage. In the 1530s, Robert Thorne and Roger Barlow tried unsuccessfully to interest Henry VIII in a plan to sail directly over the North Pole to China. In 1551 a company of English merchants (later known as the Muscovy Company) was formed to search for a northeast passage to Cathay. The initiative failed to find a route but did establish a long-lasting trade relationship with Russia. In the 1560s Humphrey Gilbert was an influential advocate for seeking a North-west Passage and penned a detailed treatise in support of the idea.
Although Frobisher may have expressed interest in a search for the North-west Passage as early as 1560, it was only much later that he actively pursued the idea. In 1574, Frobisher petitioned the Privy Council for permission and financial support to lead an expedition to find a north-west passage to "the Southern Sea" (the Pacific Ocean) and thence to Cathay. Some of its members were intrigued by his proposal, but cautiously referred him to the Muscovy Company, an English merchant consortium which had previously sent out several parties searching for the Northeast Passage around the Arctic coasts of Norway and Russia, and held exclusive rights to any northern sea routes to the East.
First voyage
In 1576, Frobisher persuaded the Muscovy Company to license his expedition. With the help of the company's director, Michael Lok (whose well-connected father William Lok had held an exclusive mercers' licence to provide Henry VIII with fine cloths), Frobisher was able to raise enough capital for three barques: Gabriel and Michael of about 20–25 tons each, and an unnamed pinnace of 10 tons, with a total crew of 35. Queen Elizabeth I sent word that she had "good liking of their doings", and the ships weighed anchor at Blackwall on 7 June 1576. As they headed downstream on the Thames, Elizabeth waved to the departing ships from a window of Greenwich Palace, while cannons fired salutes and a large assembly of the people cheered.