The Arctic Voyages of Martin Frobisher

With the blessing of Queen Elizabeth I, the privateer and adventurer Martin Frobisher took up the search for a northwestern route to Asia. After enduring storms, sea ice and the loss of two of his three ships in July 1576, Frobisher sighted the most easterly outlier of Arctic North America. Over the next three summers this region would be the scene of an adventure involving the fruitless search for a northwest passage, the first attempt by the British to establish a settlement in the New World, and the first major gold-mining fraud in North American history. Frobisher's claim of possession was the first step in the eventual establishment of British sovereignty over the northern half of the American continent. Using reports from the men who participated in the venture, details preserved in the oral histories of the Inuit, and archaeological information recovered from the sites of Elizabethan activities on Baffin Island, Robet McGhee describes Frobisher's expeditions and offers new insights into this audacious undertaking.