Martin Frobisher, Elizabethan Privateer. (Reviews).

James McDermott. Martin Frobisher, Elizabethan Privateer 

New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001. xvi + 509 pp. + 17 pls. $35. ISBN: 0-300-08380-7.

Although the exploits of Martin Frobisher figure in every account of Elizabethan exploration and privateering and his name is preserved in the geographical term Frobisher's Bay (near Hudson's Bay but discovered forty years earlier), relatively little has been known about his personal life and no earlier scholarly biography has appeared. James McDermott, an independent scholar, has been interested in Frobisher for more than thirty years; the present study began when he was associated with the Canadian Museum of Civilization's Meta Incognita project, which drew upon documentary, archaeological, and sociological evidence to examine Frobisher's voyages and contacts with the Inuit natives of Baffin Island.

Frobisher was born in Yorkshire but following the death of his father lived in London with his uncle Sir John Yorke, the wealthy master of the mint. He first went to sea as an eighteen-year-old apprentice in 1553. He was involved in the pacification of Ireland, 1572-74, and made his first voyage seeking a Northwest Passage to the Orient in 1576. His discovery of what was thought to be gold-rich ore led to a second voyage in 1577. This achievement represented the zenith of Frobisher's reputation, though the ore later proved to be worthless. In 1578 he attempted to plant a colony of Cornish miners in the New World. This led to further contacts with Inuit natives but soon failed, as did an attempt to colonize Roanoke. In 1587 Frobisher joined in the raid on Cadiz intended to forestall the sailing of the Spanish Armada. During an attack on a Spanish fort in Brittany in 1594 he was shot in the thigh. The wound did not appear life-threatening, but inept medical treatment led to infection which was responsible for F robisher's premature death at the age of fifty-nine.

Documentary information about Frobisher's private life is minimal, and in many places McDermott has been forced to describe general conditions which suggest what the mariner's life must have been like. Much of this reads too much like social or maritime history which is well known and might be studied elsewhere, but some is relevant and of special interest. An example is the aside on mariners' diet and the medicines (mainly purges) used to treat malnutrition and other common complaints (125-27). McDermott does describe Frobisher's marriages, the first an irresponsible early union with a Yorkshire widow whom Frobisher deserted and left penniless, the second a late marriage to Lord Wentworth's daughter Dorothy, another widow whose daughter married Martin Frobisher junior, probably the mariner's nephew. He had no children of his own. His will demonstrated his determination to leave his property to distant male family members rather than these closer female relatives.

The most fascinating aspect of this new biography is McDermott's detailed examination of Frobisher's character. He does not come out very well: an "unimaginative Yorkshireman" (401), Frobisher was impulsive, unreliable, uncooperative, not a good subordinate, a "harsh and violent commander" with a "hugely uncertain temper" (428). But he was intrepid and fearless, and he had an unusual sense of humanity, never robbing his victims, torturing them, or throwing them overboard, as other Elizabethan captains did. The Queen was right when she wrote him, "You haue wonne your selfe reputation" (430). He deserved his fame.