Martin Frobisher, Elizabethan Privateer (review)

Frobisher (c. 1535-1594) left his name on the map of North America, thanks to his attempts in the 1570s to find the Northwest Passage and to settle Englishmen at its mouth. Beginning his career as a pirate and privateer, he spent his life between the worlds of official and unofficial warfare against Spain and the opportunistic operations of merchants gambling on his abilities.

Frobisher is not a promising subject for a biography; there is little evidence of his inner life. Most of what can be known about him is discovered through others' records, rendering him less than three- dimensional. His abominable treatment of his wife and family match his behavior as a self-interested pirate and captain. Consequently, if this book were only about Frobisher the man, it would hardly be interesting. What McDermott has written, however, is more the history of Frobisher the enterprise. He has done a superb job of reconstructing the employments of Frobisher and putting them into the context of Elizabethan entrepreneurship, business organization, and military operations.

The first section of the book traces young Frobisher's apprenticeship as a captain, privateer, and outright pirate. His work as a privateer made him available for government service, and by the late 1560s, he was undertaking government commissions while carrying on less legal activities. Ironically, he was chosen to police the Channel against pirates in 1571. It was not until 1574 that he decided to pursue a legitimate living.

By then, he was famous as a courageous seaman, which is why he became involved in the search for the Northwest Passage. Michael Lok, the merchant behind the project, raised the money to send him sailing to the west in search of a northern sea route. He did not find it, though he thought that he had. Moreover, he also claimed to have found valuable ores at its mouth. He spent the rest of the 1570s in expeditions to North America, exploring, mining, and attempting settlement. In 1578, he led thirteen ships into the ice and, through strength of will and good seamanship, managed to come back with twelve loaded with ore. Since the ore turned out to be useless, interest in further projects evaporated.

McDermott speculates that Frobisher spent the early 1580s privateering, but the breakdown of relations with Spain provided him with employment opportunities. He sailed to the West Indies as one of Francis Drake's captains, and he participated brilliantly in the fight against the Spanish Armada. In an engagement near Portland Bill against four galleases, Frobisher mauled them. The Spanish attack presented him as "a man of limited talents with the conditions to fully realize them" (357). Frobisher's enthusiasm for fighting earned him appointment as an admiral, and got him the wound that killed him.

Frobisher's life illustrates the Elizabethan fog in which honest and dishonest seamanship could be practiced together. This book is an excellent study of business, politics, and warfare as practiced by a character who fully earned his reputation as a useful scoundrel.