The worthless rocks of Martin Frobisher
He thought he found gold in the Arctic
After Martin Frobisher left his life of a privateering and pirating, he began looking towards a new destiny.
He wanted to find the fabled Northwest Passage over North America.
Frobisher made his first attempt to find the passage when he left London on June 7, 1576. A month later, he reached Greenland and continued on through the Davis Strait. He eventually reached the mouth of what is now Frobisher Bay. He believed this was the entry to the Northwest Passage.
After he turned back towards England, one of his men grabbed black stone from Hall’s Island off the coast of Baffin Island. Frobisher wrote it was,
"as great as a half-penny loaf"
Frobisher thought little of it and wanted to use it as evidence of his travels. He gave the stone to Michael Lok, who took it to the Royal Assayer in the Tower of London, and two other experts.
They each told him they were worthless and contained no gold.
The rocks were then taken to an Italian alchemist in London who said the rocks contained gold.
Convinced that he had found gold, Frobisher launched a second, much larger exhibition in 1577 to gather more ore. In the Arctic, he kidnapped three Inuit who all died soon after their arrival in England.
Frobisher’s men had mined about 200 tons of ore but before that ore could be completely assayed, Frobisher left on his third expedition.
This time he was told to establish a colony of 100 men. Their goal was to mine 1,400 tons of ore.
Through the summer of 1578, the ore was mined. On Aug. 31, 1578, the fleet set sail to return to England, the colony having failed.
As it turned out, the ore was worthless. After several efforts to extract gold from the ore, it was discovered it was hornblende.
Most of the rocks were used to patch roads around Dartford. The Cathay Company, created on the belief the ore contained gold, was completely bankrupted.
Michael Lok was ruined over the matter and was sent to debtors prison several times.
Some of the ore was saved, and one rock made its way back to North America centuries later and now sits at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec.
As for Frobisher, he fought for England against the Spanish Armada in 1588 and was knighted for valour on July 26 of that year. He then spent the next two years harassing Spanish ships.
In October 1594, at the Siege of Fort Crozon, he was shot in the thigh. The surgeon extracted the musket ball but left the wadding behind. This led to an infection and the death of Frobisher on Nov. 22, 1594.