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fter assays of the
small sample of ore brought back from the Arctic in 1576
suggested a high gold content, future
expeditions refocused on mining large
quantities of that ore from Kodlunarn Island and other sites in the area.
Two types of ore were tested: "black
ore" the bulk of what was retrieved, and "red ore" from a
single location. Most of the assays showed a silver content even higher
than that of gold. But it was the gold that most interested the
Elizabethan investors.
Since mining became the driving goal of the larger expeditions,
and since the failure of the ore to yield the expected gold was
responsible for the financial failure of the venture, understanding
the nature of the ore is one key to the history of the Frobisher
voyages. One focus of recent investigations,
led by geologist Donald Hogarth, has therefore been to locate samples of
the ore and subject them to modern scientific testing.
He tracked down ore mined by Frobisher at three locations:
- The Baffin Island region mines
- Frobisher's teams are known to have extracted ore from at least ten
sites. The two
surface mines on Kodlunarn
Island are the best known. One, the "Ship's Trench",
was probably opened in 1577 and produced 158 tons of ore. The second, the
"Reservoir" trench, was probably mined in 1578, producing only 65
tons of hard rock extracted with great difficulty. The most productive mine,
named after the Countess of Sussex, was on the Baffin Island mainland.
Working the site for about two weeks, 60 miners extracted 455 tons
of ore. Lying between these two sites was a third, on Newland Island.
It was just a small excavation, from which only 5 tons of ore were
taken in 1578. The locations of the other mines are known only a
pproximately - the precise sites have not been rediscovered.
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Reservoir Trench, Kodlunarn Island
Photograph: Robert McGhee
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- Smerwick Harbour, Ireland
- One of the ships of the 1578 expedition, the Emanuel of
Bridgwater, probably damaged by ice and storms in the Arctic
seas, had difficulties on the return journey and barely managed to
reach the Irish coast. Its captain was forced to beach the ship
in the bay of Smerwick. The crew managed to unload about 100 tons
of the ore it was carrying, leaving some still in the wreck.
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Smerwick Harbour, Ireland
Photograph: Donald Hogarth
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- Dartford, England
- The ore from the 1578 expedition was taken to a
smelting works at Dartford
specially constructed for it. After it was found that the
ore was worthless, it was discarded and used by locals for
building material. Some can still be seen today in the
boundary walls around the site of
the manor house.
Scientific tests were made on 66 samples of "black ore"
from these various locations. Except for two samples from Dartford,
the gold content was found to be extremely low - hundreds or even
thousands of times less the amount claimed by some of the
Elizabethan assayers. Half the samples had less gold than any
average piece of rock would be expected to contain. Hornblende was
the main mineral identified in the black ore samples; feldspar,
pyroxenes, mica, and spinel were found in lesser quantities.
These analyses lead us to suspect that either incompetence or
fraud may have been factors in the
Elizabethan assays.
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