Michael Lok had this map produced touting what he claimed to be the discovery of the Northwest Passage and showing an island named for him, 1582.
Courtesy of the Osher Map Library, University of Southern Maine
But Frobisher had returned to London in October 1576— at least a year earlier than expected— with little to show for his exploits. Although he swore he had sighted the entrance to the Northwest Passage( and he very well might have), his crew had threatened mutiny after one of the ships had been lost in heavy weather, and they refused to sail any deeper into the strait. Frobisher did capture an Inuit native, however, as proof of the fleet’ s westward progress, and he also brought back a few black stones— a friable shale— picked up on one of the islands north of Newfoundland.
Lok saw Frobisher’ s voyage as an encouraging first step in what he believed would be a difficult, but ultimately rewarding, venture. So he began preparations for a second, more ambitious voyage. To assemble a fleet of larger, more capable vessels, Lok budgeted for a total expense of £ 4,500. By March of 1577, he had managed to raise more than £ 3,000 and had scored a major coup when he enticed Queen Elizabeth I— usually not an active investor in New World ventures— to give her blessing and support to the enterprise. She even went so far as to lend her flagship, the Ayde, to the cause.
Even so, Lok found himself in a precarious financial situation. He was at risk of losing his entire investment in the first voyage, nearly £ 1,000, if the second one did not produce results. And he was reluctant to dispatch the second fleet with just £ 3,000 in funding— especially since much of it was in the form of pledges, not cash or goods. No wonder he was beginning to feel great concern.
That’ s when the miracle happened.
As the story goes( the details are uncertain), pieces of the souvenir rocks had been distributed to a few of the investors. For some reason, perhaps because such shale was known to burn well as fuel, the wife of one of the merchant adventurers, possibly Lok’ s own wife, tossed a chunk into a fire burning at the hearth. After a time, someone glanced toward the flames and noticed that the rock had begun to“ glister” with a golden sparkle.
Lok or one of his friends, intrigued, extracted it from the fire. It was then“ quenched” with a bit of vinegar, a 17thcentury makeshift method of homemade assaying. To Lok, at least, the quick evaluation made it seem quite likely that the rock contained gold.
The possibility that Frobisher had
14 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Summer 2018 | www. MoAF. org