Of Frobisher’s interview with the queen and what followed we have account in the introductory paragraph of the third chapter of Best’s True Discourse:

“He was courteously enterteyned, and hartily welcommed of many noble men, but especially for his great adventure commended of her Majestie, at whose hands he received great thankes, and most gracious countenance, according to his deserts. Her Highnesse also greatly commended the rest of the Gentlemen in this service, for their great forwardnes in this so dangerous an attempt.... And finding that the matter of the gold Ore had appearance & made shew of great riches & profit, & the hope of the passage to Cataya, by this last voyage greatly increased, her Majestie appointed speciall commissioners chosen for this purpose, gentlemen of great judgmente, art, and skill, to looke thorowly into the cause, for the true triall and due examination thereof, and for the full handling of all matters thereunto appertaining. And because that place and countrey hath never heretofore beene discovered, 177and therefore had no speciall name by which it might be called and knowen, her Majestie named it very properly Meta Incognita, as a marke and bound utterly hitherto unknowen.”

A part of the ore was brought up from Bristol Castle and deposited in the Tower of London under lock and key; and after “sufficient triall and proofe” of it had been made, and they had also become satisfied of the “likelyhood” of the Northwest Passage, the commissioners advised the queen that “the cause was of importance, and the voyage worthy to be advanced again.”

Accordingly a third expedition was planned on quite a grand scale, and with this project was coupled a scheme of what might be termed limited colonization in Meta Incognita. One hundred selected “souldiers and discreet men” were to be assigned to inhabit the place at least through a year, for the “better guard” of those parts already found; for further discovery of the inland and of its “secrets,” meaning mineral wealth; and, lastly, for further search for the passage. For their accommodation the frame of a fort or house of timber, “cunningly devised by a notable learned man” in London, was to be carried out in parts in the ships; also a pinnace, in parts.

For this larger venture, besides most of the company on the previous voyage, “many well minded and forward young Gentlemen,” sons of the English gentry, volunteered. Fifteen well-furnished ships, including the experienced three, the “Ayde,” the “Gabriel,” and 178the “Michael,” were assembled, constituting an imposing fleet. The “Ayde” was again designated the “admiral,” carrying the captain-general. There was a “viceadmiral”—the “Thomas Allen”—in command of Captain Yorke of the “Michael” in the previous voyage. Christopher Hall was named chief pilot. The third ship in line was the “Judith,” under Captain Fenton, before of the “Gabriel,” and Frobisher’s lieutenant-general. The fourth was the “Anne Francis,” under Captain Best; the fifth, the “Hopewell,” Captain Carew; the sixth, the “Beare,” Captain Philpot, the ensign on the second voyage. The others were: the “Thomas of Ipswich,” Captain Tanfield; the “Emmanuel of Exeter,” Captain Courtney; the “Francis of Foy,” Captain Mayles; the “Moone,” Captain Upcot; the “Emmanuel (or Buss) of Bridgewater,” Captain Newton; the “Solomon of Weymouth,” Captain Randal; and the barks “Dennis,” "Gabriel," and “Michael,” Captains Kendal, Harvey, and Kinnesley, respectively. The government of the expedition was commended to Frobisher, with Fenton, Best, and Philpot as his principal aides. The one hundred appointed to constitute the temporary colony were to comprise forty mariners for the use of their ships, thirty miners to gather ore for shipment the next year, and thirty soldiers, the latter number including the gentlemen, goldfiners, bakers, and carpenters. Three ships of the fleet were to remain with the colony through the year: the others were to load with the ore and return at the end of the summer.

179The gallant fifteen, all “in good readinesse,” foregathered at Harwich on the twenty-seventh of May, 1578. Thereupon “the Generall with all the Captaines came to the Court,” now at Greenwich, “to take their leave of her Majestie.” All received at her hands “great encouragement and gracious countenance”; while upon Frobisher she bestowed, “besides other good gifts and greater promises,” a “fair chain of gold,” herself throwing it around his neck. Then all the captains kissed the royal hand, and departed “every man toward his charge.”

At Harwich the general and his captains made formal view of the fleet and mustered their companies. Then the general handed to each captain his articles of direction for the conduct of the expedition. On the thirty-first anchors were weighed and the fleet were off.

The story of this voyage covers many pages in the telling by its chroniclers, but it can profitably be compressed into smaller compass. It is a tale of hardship with scant result, full of exciting incident and exhibitions of heroism and nerve. As before, Hakluyt gives us two narratives—the one written by Thomas Ellis, of the “Ayde’s” company; the other by Best, being the third chapter of his True Discourse.

The start was auspicious. Off the Irish coast a bark was sighted which by her actions was supposed to be a “rover of the seas,” and a merry chase was given her. When, however, overhauled, she was found to be not a pirate, but a reputable Bristol boat and the victim of a pirate. Several of her crew had been 180killed; others lay wounded, hungry, and desolate. The fleet was held up while our captain succoured them and started her homeward in comparative comfort. This good deed done the voyage was renewed, and without further incident of moment continued till the Arctic regions were reached. On the twentieth of June new land was discerned in “West Frisland”—the south of Greenland. Frobisher and others went ashore here, the “first known Christians,” Best wrote, “that we have true notice of that ever set foot on that ground.” Accordingly the captain-general “took possession thereof to the use of our Sovereigne Lady the Queen Majestie.” He named it “West England”; and a high cliff on the sea front he called “Charing Crosse,” for “a certaine similitude” to the London landmark. The inhabitants were found to be very like those of Meta Incognita. From this coast, where much drifting ice was met, they bore southerly toward the sea, hoping comfortably to make their destination. On the last day of June they came upon “many great whales.” One of the ships struck a big fellow head on, and such a powerful blow that the vessel was brought to a full stop. “The whale thereat made a great and ugly noyse and cast up his body and taile, and so went under water.” Two days after a dead whale “swimming” above water was met, and this was supposed to be the fellow which the ship struck. On the second of July Queen Elizabeth’s Foreland was sighted encompassed by ice.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.

Now their trials began. The way to Frobisher’s 181“straits” was found to be “choked up” with “many walles, mountaines, and bulwarks of yce.” Off the Foreland and, as they supposed, about the entrance to the “straits” they were buffeted by high winds and “forced many times to stemme and strike great rockes” of ice. Soon the fleet was dispersed. The “Judith,” carrying the lieutenant-general, Fenton, disappeared. The “Michael” had been early lost from sight by her companion ships. Of those which remained in company the bark “Dennis” shortly foundered, having received a crushing blow against a rock of ice. As she took the blow she signalled her danger by a shot from her great gun, and, fortunately, such quick aid was rendered by the other ships with their shipboats that all her men were saved. With her went down a part of the frame of the house to be erected for the band assigned to winter at Meta Incognita. Next a savage tempest suddenly arose, blowing from the sea “directly upon the place of the straits,” and various devices had to be resorted to to save the ships from destruction. Some getting a little sea room took in sails and drifted. Some were moored to great “islands of ice” and rode under their lee. Others were so shut in that they were at the mercy of the ice. To break its force, “junckes [junks] of cables, beds, masts, planks” were hung over their sides, while the mariners stood for hours beating it off with pikes, oars, and pieces of timber. Four—the “Anne Francis,” Best’s ship, the “Moone,” the “Francis of Foy,” and the “Gabriel”—being farthest from shore, and fast sailers, weathered 182the tempest under sail; and by noon the next day they had got off at sea clear of ice. And here by night of the following day they were joined by the rest of the fleet, which had escaped with a turn of the wind that had broken their ice barriers. Now joyous in fellowship again, they all “played off” more to seaward, there to abide till the ice had further cleared from before the entrance to their “straits.”

On the seventh of July they “cast about toward the inward” for another attempt. Shortly they sighted land, which was before them in form like the North Foreland, or Hall’s Island. But there was a difference of opinion as to whether it was or was not. The coast being veiled in fog was difficult to make out. After a while a height was discerned which some were sure was Mount Warwick. Yet they marvelled how it was possible that they should be so suddenly “shot up” so far into the “straits.” The captain-general sent his pinnace the round of the fleet to take a census of the opinions of all the captains and masters. As the matter grew more doubtful Christopher Hall, the chief pilot, whose knowledge of this Foreland, to whom his name had been given, was the more intimate, “delivered a plain and publique opinion in the hearing of the whole Fleete, that he had never seene the foresayd coast before, and that he would not make it for any place of Frobisher’s Straits.”

They were, in fact, southwestward of Queen Elizabeth’s Foreland, and at the entrance to Hudson’s Strait, to be rediscovered or re-explored thirty-two 183years afterward by Henry Hudson, and so named for him.

The fog continued to hang about them “thick and dark,” and on the tenth they were again partly dispersed. The “Thomas Allen,” aboard of which was the chief pilot with Captain Yorke, having lost sight of the admiral, turned back to sea with two others in her company. The “Anne Francis,” finding herself alone, also put to sea, to remain till the weather should permit the taking of the sun’s altitude. The “Ayde” kept on the course, and leading the rest of the fleet, passed into the “doubtful” strait.

Up this broad passage the “Ayde” and her consorts sailed for “about sixty leagues,” having “always a faire continent upon their starreboard side, and a continuance still of an open sea before them.” Frobisher was the first to realize that they were on a new and unknown water. Yet he dissembled his opinion and continued to persuade his associates that it was the right way, by such policy meaning to carry them along with him for further discovery. This he was said to have afterward confessed when he declared that “if it had not bene for the charge and care he had of the Flete and fraighted ships, he both would and could have gone through to the South Sea [the Pacific] ... and dissolved the long doubt of the passage” to “Cathay.” While he may have been more or less impelled to his adventures, in common with his chief backers, by the “lust for gold,” he was above all moved by the spirit of the true discoverer: a merit in his performances 184which some popular historians have failed to recognize.

When at length he turned the fleet and they sailed back to the entrance of this strait, he found a way into the “old strait” by the inside of Queen Elizabeth’s Foreland, thus incidentally discovering that to be an island. Now within the “proper strait,” after many perils overcome in making it, some of the dispersed ships were met, and others heard from. First appeared the “Anne Francis,” which had long been “beating off and on” before the Queen’s Foreland. At the meeting they joyously welcomed one another with “a thundering volley of shot.” The next day the “Francis of Foy” joined them, having fought her way through the ice out of the “mistaken strait.” She brought tidings of the “Thomas Allen,” which she had left at sea clear of the ice. Later the “Buss of Bridgewater” showed up, and reported the “marvellous accidents and dangers” she had experienced.

The latter’s men also declared that “Frobisher’s Straits” above were so frozen over that it was “the most impossible thing of the world” to reach the destined port—the Countess of Warwick’s Sound. This report spreading through the fleet “brought no small feare and terror into the hearts of many,” and murmurs against venturing further passed from lip to lip. Some urged that a harbour be sought where the battered ships might be repaired, and the fleet might await the dispersion of the ice. Others mutinously declared that they “had as leave be hanged when they came 185home as without hope of safetie to seeke to passe, and so to perish amongst the ice.”

To all these murmurings of discontent, however, the intrepid Frobisher lent a deaf ear, determined to reach the ultimate port or else to “burie himselfe with his attempt.” But, as before, he dissembled. “Somewhat to appease the feeble passions of the fearfuller sort,” he “haled on the Fleete with beleefe that he would put them into harborow.” Accordingly he went with his pinnace among the neighbouring islands as if searching for a haven, but really to see if any ore might be found in them.

Meanwhile another “terrible tempest” suddenly came up from the southwest, and once more the fleet were in part dispersed. It was the twenty-sixth of July, and snow fell so hard and fast that “we could not see one another for the same, nor open our eyes to handle our ropes and sails.” The “Anne Francis,” the “Moone,” and the “Thomas of Ipswich” again plied seaward. The rest of the fleet stayed by the admiral. When the storm was spent these remaining ships under Frobisher’s lead had pushed through the ice up the bay, “with incredible pain and peril,” and at last reached the goal, dropping anchors in the Countess of Warwick’s Sound on the thirty-first of July. At the entrance to the haven, when all hardship was thought to be over, the “Ayde” narrowly escaped sinking through contact with a “great island of ice.” Here, to their astonishment, the new-comers found arrived before them the “Judith” and the “Michael,” 186both of which had been mourned as lost. The happy meeting was celebrated with more exchange of thundering salutes from the great ordnance. Then all came together in a service of praise and thanksgiving, and the minister of the fleet, Master Wolfall, preached a “goodly sermon” to a kneeling company on the “Ayde.”

No time was lost in getting to work at the “mines.” Immediately upon landing on the Countess of Warwick’s Island Frobisher ass............