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Overview
The true story of how the first English colony in the New World was lost to history, then found again three hundred years later.
England's first attempt at colonizing the New World was not at Roanoke or Jamestown, but on a mostly frozen small island in the Canadian Arctic. Queen Elizabeth I called that place Meta Incognita -- the Unknown Shore. Backed by Elizabeth I and her key advisors, including the legendary spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and the shadowy Dr. John Dee, the erstwhile pirate Sir Martin Frobisher set out three times across the North Atlantic, in the process leading what is still the largest Arctic expedition in history. In this forbidding place, Frobisher believed he had discovered vast quantities of gold, the fabled Northwest Passage to the riches of Cathay, and a suitable place for a year-round colony. But Frobisher's dream turned into a nightmare, and his colony was lost to history for nearly three centuries.
In this brilliantly conceived dual narrative, Robert Ruby interweaves Frobisher's saga with that of the nineteenth-century American Charles Francis Hall, whose explorations of this same landscape enabled him to hear the oral history of the Inuit, passed down through generations. It was these stories that unlocked the mystery of Frobisher's lost colony.
Unknown Shore is the story of two men's travels, and of what these men shared three centuries apart. Ultimately, it is a tale of men driven by greed and ambition, of the hard labor of exploration, of the Inuit and their land, and of great gambles gone wrong.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466873414 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Holt, Henry & Company, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 06/10/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 317 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Robert Ruby, author of Jericho and Unknown Shore, has worked as the Baltimore Sun bureau chief in Paris and in the Middle East. He now lives in Baltimore and is an editor at the newspaper.
Read an Excerpt
Unknown Shore
The Lost History of England's Arctic Colony
By Robert Ruby
Henry Holt and Company
Copyright © 2001 Robert RubyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-7341-4
CHAPTER 1
Different Directions
The one portrait that is unquestionably Martin Frobisher painted from life hangs quite high above the porter's desk at the Bodleian Library at Oxford. You have to step back all the way to the opposite wall to pick out the figure from the gloom.
Frobisher almost storms off the canvas. I did not expect a contemplative figure by Titian or a sweet smile, but nor did I expect this hard stare. He grips a pistol in his right hand, index finger at the trigger, but looks far deadlier himself, cocked with temperament. Your eyes travel first to that pistol. Here is force and aggression, the painting says; here is someone who will fire the gun or bludgeon you, even at the cost of breaking the bones in his hands, rather than give way. His left hand hovers near the hilt of a sword in a golden scabbard. This is not the look of a listener. You marvel at his not striking the painter. Standing so imperiously, he dwarfs anyone seeking to walk past the porter.
The portrait dates to 1577 — in retrospect, the best of times for Frobisher. The painter is Cornelis Ketel, a prestigious name of the time. Born in the Netherlands, Ketel became a favorite of wealthy London merchants with connections to the royal court. He was commissioned to paint Frobisher and the thirty-ton Gabriel, among others. His patrons were evidently quite satisfied, because he came to the attention of Queen Elizabeth: Ketel is probably the artist responsible for a portrait of the queen dated to about 1580. That portrait is unsigned, but the pose — a mirror image of the posture Frobisher adopts — and the queen's slender, long-fingered hands are Ketel's mark. The royal hands that in her portrait grip a sieve — a symbol of virginity, borrowed from Roman mythology — are the same strikingly feminine hands with which Frobisher wields his pistol and sword.
In Frobisher's portrait, a globe stands on a table behind him, to signal his knowledge of distant places. A similar prop was used to the same effect in later portraits of Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh. The table and the wall behind it appear to be draped with velvet, and Frobisher stands on a stone floor as fine as that at the Bodleian.
You look for a beautiful face or the suggestion of a muscled body, but Martin Frobisher broods. His face seems small above a high ruff, a new fashion permitted by the court's recent discovery of starch. His brown beard is roughly trimmed. Unlike most subjects of Elizabethan portraits, he looks uncomfortable in his fashionable gold-colored doublet and puffy trousers, which reach just below the knee to the requisite tight hose. He is a ruffian in courtier's clothes, ill at ease in an outfit for fawning at court.
The portrait brings a little irony to the Bodleian. Frobisher was not illiterate, but it is a close call. His correspondence in the British Library and the Public Record Office shows an airy, irregular scrawl, the handwriting of an unpracticed hand moving across smooth vellum the color of fresh cream. The spelling of English words was still in flux in the 1500s, but this too Frobisher took quite far. He was breathtakingly inventive in his writings; an otherwise admiring biographer called his spellings "terrifying." They preserve the voice of a person from the north of England, far from London, guessing his way through the written language.
He was born in the Yorkshire village called Altofts. In Yorkshire, every vowel and every r is pliable and stretched to its ultimate limit. Through his correspondence, Martin Frobisher can still be heard to speak a few words. Service, in his handwriting, becomes sarves (SAAR-vez). Towards is touards (toe-ORDS). He writes in one of his letters, "Since my comynge fourthe I hayd butt 3 dayyes liberty." Aye hed buht 3 dahys.
The flux and inventiveness extended to his name. In letters written on consecutive days to Elizabeth's Lord Treasurer, the person we call Frobisher signed himself Frobiser at the end of one page, but Furbissher on the outer leaf. In the next day's letter he was Frobissher.
One of his descendants is the keeper of a lovingly researched family tree. It records a total of twenty-four generations, beginning with John Frobysler, who was of Scottish extraction and came to Wales about 1255. By the end of the 1300s one of John Frobysler's great-great-grandchildren, named Frobyser, was in Altofts in Yorkshire. Every entry on the tree is neatly written in black India ink, and the inky branches cover a living room wall. Martin's father, Barnard, rests on a branch called Frobysher. One of Martin's older brothers is Ffrubisher. The flux was in the era and not just the untutored man.
He was probably forty-two in the portrait. His descendants' best reckoning for his year of birth is 1535. The date fits with what little is known of him as a child in Altofts with two older brothers and two sisters. His reputation would radically change more than once, which in a sense is reflected by the portrait by Cornelis Ketel. Sometime after Ketel completed the painting, the canvas was trimmed. The right side of the canvas betrays the cutting. One of Frobisher's shoes walks off the right edge of the painting. It was not what the painter intended; given the styles of the time, the image was awkward. And though this is to make almost too much of it, the trimming mirrors the changes Frobisher suffered in his own standing.
* * *
People knew even then, in 1535, that Altofts would never boom. Wakefield, three miles to the south, was the market town with the cloth mills, while a mile to the east, Normanton had the church. Altofts, then as now, was a kink in a narrow road where a few cows grazed.
Today, Altofts' High Green Street passes, in four blocks, the butcher shop, the post office, the traffic light, the gas station, and the pub before terminating at Church Street. The houses, all in the same dark red brick, stand in rows as orderly as sailors aboard a ship awaiting inspection by an admiral. On Church Street is the cemetery and the elementary school — Martin Frobisher First School, 187 pupils. Every block has a large crop of For Sale signs and posters objecting to plans for using an old quarry as a toxic-waste dump. From certain angles, the town looks intensely urban; the houses crowd the edge of the road. Nevertheless, it remains just a detour from Wakefield and Normanton. Holsteins stand in a pasture between the cemetery and the brown trickle of the River Calder. If they raise their heads they can see the roaring river of traffic on the M62 near the big junction that swings the cars north to Leeds.
In Frobisher's day, Yorkshire farmers planted corn. When rain threatened to turn all of Yorkshire's West Riding into marsh, or when corn prices dropped, they kept more of the land in pasture for the cows. A big farm would have ten acres and five cows. A successful yeoman might add chickens, bees, and a dozen sheep. The women of the household knitted rough wool stockings for extra income, or took wool cloth to the mills at Wakefield for more expert weaving.
Barnard Frobisher was several classes above having to worry about making ends meet. As one of the major landowners, he held the post of bailiff and was churchwarden in Normanton. He would have been knowledgeable about finance. Margaret Frobisher, his wife, was the sister (or perhaps cousin) of Sir John Yorke, the master of the Royal Mint at the Tower of London. Martin was the Frobishers' fourth child, and he lived amid the commotion of his older brothers, John and Davey, and Jane and Margaret, his sisters. He was schooled enough to acquire his imperfect scrawl. But the most important event of his childhood was the death of his father when Martin was seven. His mother died seven years later. As the orphaned third son, he went to live in the household of Uncle John Yorke: of those years, nothing is known.
It is not until 1553 that Frobisher reemerges, walking onto the docks at Portsmouth, on the English Channel, at age eighteen. Whether by his own choice or that of John Yorke, he was about to go to sea.
Young men became sailors because they planned on joining their family's trading business, or because they wished to escape farming, or because they lacked an inheritance. In general, they went to sea to improve their station. Change of that kind was harder to accomplish in a village or in guild-regulated crafts. Farmers remained farmers; craftsmen — bakers, brewers, carpenters, coopers, grocers, haberdashers — likewise expected to stay in place. Ideally, a young would-be mariner would acquire the necessary sailing skills aboard a vessel owned by relatives. As a second choice he could be apprenticed at age eleven or twelve as a ship's "boy." In either situation, the young man could reasonably hope to rise through the ranks aboard merchant ships.
John Yorke had invested money in three ships at the Portsmouth dock. The term for him was adventurer, which had a different meaning than it does today. Adventurers invested their capital — ventured it — in outfitting vessels. These entrepreneurs either owned the ships outright, supplied the merchandise for trading, provided the rigging and weapons, or played all those roles. In return, they received a share of the profits from the voyage. As investors, they regularly mixed private and public roles. Adventurers might simultaneously own ships and serve as commanders in the Royal Navy. If blessed with the right connections at court, adventurers would borrow vessels from the navy for modest sums and reduce their costs further by "borrowing" the navy's munitions and victuals.
In that way, John Yorke and adventurers like him could enrich themselves. A senior government minister could own a vessel, lease it to the Royal Navy, then persuade the navy to provision the ship for double the number of sailors actually on board. The owner would profit from the lease and pocket an additional sum from selling the extra supplies that the navy had provided at no charge. Such practices were regarded as proof of a man's energy and cleverness.
For a young man on the Portsmouth docks, though, merchant ships held more promise than did the Royal Navy. In 1553 the Royal Navy consisted of mostly worn-out hulls from the wars against France and the Scots. King Henry VIII had borrowed money at 14 percent interest to pay for the fighting, and his nine-year-old son, Edward VI, had inherited the debts along with the ships. For lack of money for repairs, most of the ships were rotting in the Thames. They were used for the dull work of transporting soldiers north to fight the Scots or the Irish, or to the Continent to fight the French, or for endlessly patrolling the English Channel. The navy was regarded as a conveyance system without much intrinsic value — a dead end except for officers at the top. Sailors in the navy earned about six pounds a year, while on an adventurer's ship they could pocket more in a voyage lasting just a few months. On an adventurer's ship they had their monthly wage, the additional income earned from trading goods of their own at the ports of call, and prize money from captured vessels. If their captain captured a foreign ship, the sailors were entitled to a third of the seized cargo and had the right to pillage whatever was on deck or belonged to the prisoners.
The biggest risk takers were fishermen sailing from Bristol for cod. Bristol ships had reached Iceland by 1410, and some Bristol captains had at least heard talk of Greenland. Searching for fish, a few Bristol ships probably reached the Norse settlements on Greenland's western coast. Even with the expense of the voyage, fish were cheaper and more plentiful than poultry or meat. From Greenland, a big summer storm could blow a ship west across the Davis Strait, through the fields of icebergs that glow a soft blue-green. One big blow, and a ship could reach North America: the Norse had already made that crossing. From Greenland, they had reached a rocky landscape they named Helluland, which is probably modern-day Baffin Island. Farther south was a forested territory they called Markland — probably Labrador. South of Markland, in about A.D. 1000, they came to Vineland, which is Newfoundland. They judged this island inviting enough to establish a settlement there.
Giovanni Caboto, of Genoa and Venice, had sailed west from Bristol in 1497. After a month at sea aboard the caravel Mathew, he reached a rocky coast whose waters teemed with cod. John Cabot, as he is better remembered, saw unmistakable signs of habitation on the one occasion he went ashore: trees had been felled, and his men found snares for catching game. He concluded that his "New Found Land" was near Cathay, and claimed it for England. He returned to Bristol a hero. "He is called Great Admiral," a Venetian living in London wrote home, "and vast honor is paid to him and he goes dressed in silk, and these English run after him like mad."
Bristol fishermen had probably come to those waters even before Cabot did. They may have reached the New World in advance of Christopher Columbus. After Cabot's return, a Bristol merchant reminded Columbus in a letter that, "as your Lordship knows," Bristol men had long ago reached those northern waters. Being fishermen, the Bristol men had apparently been reluctant to publicize the location of their find. They caught and gutted the cod, salted them, and dried the fish in the open air until sufficiently cured for the month-long trip to England. It seemed wise to keep detailed descriptions of the fishing grounds to themselves.
Cabot's crew apparently had great tolerance for roll and pitch. In the 1990s, to mark the five hundredth anniversary of his voyage, British shipwrights worked for two years building an approximate replica of the Mathew. Their new Mathew was equipped with a satellite navigation system, an array of radios, electronic chart plotters, and an engine driving twin bronze propellers. Polyester sails eliminated the problems of rot and stretch. Bronze bolts along with marine glue served as the fasteners, in place of wooden pegs. Instead of a shifting cargo of rocks as ballast, the hold of the new Mathew contained twenty-nine tons of lead ingots secured into form-fitting place. Yet all those improvements produced a ship that still frightened its modern-day crew. The vessel's trim in normal seas was deemed "barely adequate" but probably authentic. After encountering a gale, the new Mathew entered port at the end of a towrope. Shipwrights rewhittled the masts, rethought the rudder, and modified the propulsion system; the bunks were rejigged because the sixteen-member crew had found its quarters unendurably cramped. The ballast was moved into a new, external keel intended, as were the other changes, to improve the ship's stability. These problems hint at the awfulness of Cabot's voyage — how much the original Mathew must have alarmed everyone aboard.
John Cabot sailed west again in 1498 with five ships, carrying enough provisions for a year. One of the vessels, badly damaged by a storm, came ashore in Ireland several months later. Cabot was not on it, and neither he nor any of the other four ships were seen again. Within a few years Bristol merchants made the Newfoundland fishery a stable, profitable business. But protein, in the form of cod, interested them more than exploring the territory.
* * *
John Yorke had invested in at least one other voyage before Martin Frobisher arrived in Portsmouth. Backed by Yorke and others, Captain Thomas Wyndham in 1552 had led three ships to North Africa and profitably returned home with almonds, sugar, and dates.
In 1553, Yorke and his fellow adventurers raised their ambitions: the investors hired Wyndham to sail to the Guinea Coast, the underside of Africa's bulge into the Atlantic. Eighteen-year-old Frobisher planned to sail with him. Wyndham contributed a ship of his own, the Lion, to the expedition and became a full partner. The most serious drawback to the plan was that Portugal claimed a monopoly on trade in West Africa, including along the Guinea Coast. But the investors viewed that as just another risk of business.
Since the 1470s, Portuguese traders had profitably exchanged glass beads and colored cloth with African natives for slaves, who then were sent to Portugal's sugar plantations on the stifling, disease-ridden islands in the Gulf of Guinea. The mortality rate was 80 percent a year. Yellow fever and malaria killed the Portuguese, while the slaves died from overwork. In Lisbon this was deemed an acceptable expense. A loose string of trading posts along the coast obtained ivory and malagueta pepper, a hot spice that smelled like cardamom. Merchants in Antwerp called malagueta pepper "grains of paradise," or "Guinea grains." In the 1480s, stonemasons from Portugal built the fortified city of São Jorge da Mina, which became better known as just el Mina, "the Mine." In an average year the garrison at Mina sent home 750 pounds of gold from the African interior. To increase the harvest of metal, the Portuguese sold slaves captured elsewhere along the coast to the native traders who came to Mina, creating a gruesome sort of synergy. The slaves were forced to carry the other trade goods into the interior, then were sent farther inland to work the gold mines.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Unknown Shore by Robert Ruby. Copyright © 2001 Robert Ruby. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Epigraph,
Map,
PROLOGUE: North,
CHAPTER ONE: Different Directions,
CHAPTER TWO: "A Land of Ice",
CHAPTER THREE: A Cold Addiction,
CHAPTER FOUR: Treasure Island,
CHAPTER FIVE: Colonizing Dreams,
CHAPTER SIX: Kodlunarn,
CHAPTER SEVEN: Battles,
CHAPTER EIGHT: Destinations,
Notes,
Selected Bibliography,
Acknowledgments,
Index,
Also by Robert Ruby,
About the Author,
Copyright,