Sir Martin Frobisher

Sir Martin Frobisher , 1535?-1594, English mariner. He went to sea as a boy, and spent much of his youth in the African trade. He later gained the friendship of Sir Humphrey Gilbert , through whom he became interested in the Northwest Passage . Licensed by Queen Elizabeth I and backed by a group of merchant adventurers, Frobisher made three voyages (1576, 1577, and 1578) to the Arctic in search of the passage. On his first voyage he sailed into Frobisher Bay to S Baffin Island, and from its shores brought back some black ore thought to contain gold and an Eskimo to prove his belief that he had actually reached fabled Cathay. Returning to Baffin Island on his next two journeys, he explored Frobisher Bay to its head and penetrated a short distance up Hudson Strait. Since his geographical discovery was slight and no gold was revealed in his cargoes of ore, Frobisher's name was discredited for a time. In 1585, however, he won glory as commander of a ship in Sir Francis Drake 's expedition to the West Indies and was knighted for his services with Drake and Sir John Hawkins in the defeat of the Spanish Armada (see Armada, Spanish ) in 1588. He died as the result of wounds received at Brest during an English campaign against the Spanish. The narratives of his voyages, first published in 1578, have passed through several editions. The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher by George Best was edited from the original 1578 text by Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1937).

Bibliography: See biography by J. McDermott (2001); study by R. Ruby (2001).

Frobisher, Sir Martin (c.1535–94). Although notable as an early English sea trader in west Africa and the eastern Mediterranean in the 1550s and later associated with Drake in the West Indies expedition of 1585–6 and the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, Frobisher is best remembered as an explorer who made three attempts in the period 1576–8 to find the North‐West Passage. After more encounters with the Spanish in the 1590s, Frobisher was killed at Brest.

Frobisher, Sir Martin (c.1535–94). Although notable as an early English sea trader in west Africa and the eastern Mediterranean in the 1550s and later associated with Drake in the West Indies expedition of 1585–6 and the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, Frobisher is best remembered as an explorer who made three attempts in the period 1576–8 to find the North-West Passage. The first to penetrate so far, Frobisher discovered Baffin Island and sailed some way into the Hudson Strait, opening the way for later explorers. Frobisher was distracted by thinking he had found gold in the bay which bears his name in Baffin Land, but it was iron pyrites. After more encounters with the Spanish in the 1590s, Frobisher was killed at Brest.

Roy C. Bridges