The Third Voyage of Martin Frobisher to Baffin Island, 1578 (Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, Third Series, Volume 6) by James McDermott (Editor) - July 28, 2001

London: Hakluyt Society, 2001. Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, Third Series, Volume 6. Hardcover. First Edition. Blue cloth over boards with gilt titles to spine and vignette of sailing ship Victoria on front board. Fine book in a Fine jacket. Spine slightly faded. x + 268 pages, 5 half tone plates, 1 map.

Martin Frobisher's third (1578) voyage to Baffin island was the consequence of flawed logic and excessive optimism on the part of the adventurers of the ephemeral 'Company of Cathay'. Their original intention--to find a north-western route to the Far East--had been largely forgotten following the imagined discovery of gold and silver-bearing ore in the forbidding and icy landscape of Baffin Island which Frobisher had first sighted two years earlier. This was to be England's first experience of a "gold-rush," and if many refused to be swayed by the promise of an empire to rival that of Spain, others, including the Queen and many of her Privy Councillors, allowed their cupidity to override all caution. As the likelihood of future profits was downgraded in successive assays of the mineral samples, the adventurers accepted that a much larger expedition would be required to extract sufficient ore to provide an adequate return upon monies already spent. The result--a fleet of fifteen ships, crewed by almost five hundred men--remains the largest fleet ever to have visited Baffin Island. Their travails in arctic seas, near-comic failures of navigation and the backbreaking task of mining the largest possible amount of mineral ore in the time allowed by the brief arctic summer, were recorded in several eyewitness reports, all of which, for the first time, have been assembled in a single volume.