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lizabethan Englishmen
also saw the Arctic as a possible path to the riches of the Orient,
bypassing the southern routes
from which Spanish and Portuguese merchants were gaining so much wealth.
In 1576, soldier and adventurer Humphrey Gilbert
published a pamphlet titled A Discourse of a Discoverie for a New Pasage
to Cataia. He set out the evidence for a
Northwest Passage to Asia across the top of North America, and described the
commercial advantages for opening such a trade route. Not only
could England become wealthy through trade in gold, silver,
precious stones and spices, but it could settle the newly
discovered strait with "such needie people of our Countrie
which now trouble the common welth, and through want here at home,
are enforced to commit outragious offences, whereby they are dayly
consumed with the Gallows."
A group of London merchants formed a plan of
sending Martin Frobisher to find the
Northwest Passage on their behalf.
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A passage to the north of North America was assumed to exist on this
1565 world map by the Flemish geographer Ortelius.
Courtesy of Bernard Allaire
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By the 1570s, the renaissance in learning and technology that
had begun a century earlier in southern Europe was finally
reaching England. One of the leading scholars of the day was
Dr. John Dee, who joined the partnership seeking
a Northwest Passage. Dee provided navigational instruments, instructed
Frobisher's officers in their use, and assembled the books, maps
and other information on what they were likely to encounter on
this far edge of the world.
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Latitude is calculated by measuring the height of the noon sun above
the horizon. The cross-staff or Jacob's staff replaced the quadrant
as the favoured instrument of mariners. The cross-staff was a
wooden rod with a peep-hole at one end, and a sliding cross-piece.
The navigator placed his eye against one end of the staff, and slid
the cross-piece until he saw the lower tip at the horizon and the
upper tip at the sun or North Star. The altitude of the celestial
body could then be read from a scale marked on the main staff.
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With three tiny ships, Frobisher set out from London on June 7,
1576. As they passed down the Thames, Queen Elizabeth I waved
them farewell from the window of her palace at Greenwich, and sent
a messenger aboard to express her thanks for their hazardous
undertaking.
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