The Pirate Queen (31 page)

Dee also accepted government research projects to earn his daily crust. In 1570, Christopher Hatton and Leicester commissioned Dee, through Edward Dyer, to write a “state of the nation” paper. The resulting
Britannicae Republicae Synopsis
is one of the most perceptive and helpful overviews of the realm’s political institutions, economy, and defenses.
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This document clearly identifies the problems besetting Elizabeth’s England, from urban degeneration to a declining textile industry, currency debasement to decline in trade, religious strife to unemployment and vagrancy. What is significant, though, is Dee’s use of the word “republic.” He was emphasizing the ancient need to engage the people in a newfound patriotism, as part of a “common weal” or commonwealth. His philosophy was neoplatonist in approach, and he urged philanthropy from those who could afford it in good works at home in order to promote public prosperity.

But this was not Dee’s sole or, indeed, his most important use to the queen. Elizabeth also used Dee’s services to interpret signs. He had been hastily summoned to Windsor to explain the sudden appearance of a new star in the constellation Cassiopeia. Surely, it forebode something of great import—either for good or evil, Elizabeth asked. And if there was some means by which evil for the realm could be turned to good, Dee was the only person the queen trusted to tell her how that might best be achieved. Elizabeth had
long believed in her own royal “magic,” and her highly rated divine royal touch was said to prove her legitimate claim to the throne.

Of course, Dee had already been called to cast her horoscope for the most propitious date for her coronation back in 1559. By this time, Elizabeth had long accepted his advice on the geography, cosmology, or astrology relating to maritime expansion. Dee had read every rare book imaginable on these subjects, and he was increasingly aware of “signs” in the heavens, based on his knowledge of the Hermetic tradition, which blended principles of the ancients with Cabala, early Christianity, and Egyptian philosophical religions. When Dee predicted that the new star was a portent of her rise in the world—in economic, political, and religious terms—the queen was grateful, and pacified.

But Elizabeth was never one to rest on her laurels. She knew that the only way in which Dee’s prediction would come true was through shedding her isolationist tendencies, expanding trade, and exploring the new worlds beyond the equinoctial. Burghley was alarmed by the implications of Dee’s advice, where the likes of Leicester, Walsingham, Christopher Hatton, and Philip Sidney were entranced.

So when Richard Grenville, the former “sheriff of Cork” in Ireland, had petitioned the queen as well as Lord Admiral Clinton on March 22, 1574, with a proposal to sail to the northwest rather than the northeast to find a passage to Cathay, the paper seemed as if it had surely been written in consultation with Dr. Dee. Grenville’s proposed plan, entitled “The Discovery Traffic and Enjoining of Lands South of the Equator Not Already Possessed or Subdued by Any Christian Prince,” was at great pains to deny trespass upon any Spanish-or Portuguese-held lands. The expedition’s main purpose, Grenville claimed, would be to explore Terra Australis Incognita. At the behest of the lord admiral, who may well have been an investor, the queen granted a letter patent for Grenville to set sail. The 200-ton
Castle of Comfort
was purchased jointly with John Hawkins, and preparations for the voyage began.

Whether Elizabeth heard, or suspected, that Grenville’s real objective was to emulate Drake’s escapades in the West Indies, is difficult to say. But the new Spanish ambassador, Bernardino de
Mendoza,
⁷
had certainly had wind of it, and he reminded Elizabeth of how hard they had all worked to bring about this new era of peace. On reflection, the queen, in one of her aggravating “second thoughts,” cancelled the letter patent to Grenville and forbade the adventurer from sailing on his first transatlantic voyage. The
Castle of Comfort
was leased out instead to the Prince de Condé for his Huguenot roving, with Grenville and Hawkins receiving a share of any profits.
⁸
Within the year, Grenville received his knighthood for “services to Ireland,” perhaps to assuage his bruised ego.

It would only be in 1579, when John Oxenham was tortured by the Inquisition after his capture in Panama two years earlier, that the true purpose of the Grenville expedition was known. To avoid any further agony, Oxenham avowed that the project was “to come and found a settlement on the River Plate and then pass the Strait [meaning the Magellan Strait] and establish settlements wherever a good country for such could be found.”
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But how would Oxenham have come by that information? Drake is the most likely answer.

The Grenville petition had angered the Muscovy Company, too, which had been granted an exclusive license to explore the Northeast Passage to Cathay. The queen’s Letter Patent was an infringement on their rights. And while the lord admiral had supported Grenville, Francis Walsingham, a major shareholder in the Muscovy Company, did not. It wasn’t the first time that the company had objected to “interlopers” seeking royal approval. Humphrey Gilbert had run afoul of the Muscovy Company in the 1560s when he had initially mooted a voyage to Cathay via the northwest. He soon realized that he’d have to give up the idea, or undertake his enterprise as a mere servant of the company.

But all this would soon change. A new type of adventurer was appearing on the scene. They were essentially pirates—with little education, and fewer manners still. They were ruthless, hotheaded, and, at heart, fairly unpleasant men. But they often had the backing of the queen’s gentlemen adventurers, since they had been rovers for decades. Martin Frobisher was just such a man.

Frobisher was a corsair-turned-merchant adventurer who had spent time in jail in England and Guinea for his roving activities. The nephew of Sir John Yorke, one of the Muscovy Company’s leading
lights and a steward at the Tower of London and the mint, was a pioneer himself in the now defunct Guinea trade. It was Yorke who had arranged for the fourteen-year-old Frobisher to go on Wyndham’s ill-fated Guinea voyage. Frobisher was one of the few lucky ones to have survived. A year later, he had returned as part of the Leicester-backed adventure to establish a fort on the Gold Coast. Soon Frobisher fell out with his uncle, but he was clever enough to know that in order to conquer vested interest of any of the “companies,” he needed a powerful champion.
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Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Robert’s older brother, was just that man. By the end of 1574, the Muscovy Company was forced to bow to Warwick’s pressure with the queen, and stood aside while Frobisher was granted a license, along with the merchant adventurer Michael Lok, to explore the eastern coast of North America for a Northwest Passage to Cathay. Lok, a London member of the Mercers’ Company, had previously been agent of the Muscovy Company. When he agreed to provide personal loans of more than £800 cash ($277,382 or £149,936 today) to the expedition, the Letter Patent was granted again.
¹¹
Lok thereby became the major promoter of the voyage. Having traveled widely himself in the services of the company, Lok considered that he was an amateur cosmographer, and he became an avid student at the Dee nursery.

At a meeting in Mortlake with the experienced Muscovy pilot and former Dee pupil Stephen Borough, Lok agreed to a deal with the queen’s cosmographer to instruct his partner and fleet captain, Martin Frobisher, in the art of navigation. Dee moved into Muscovy House and began at once to teach Frobisher and his ship’s master, Christopher Hall, the navigational experiences of Columbus, and how to keep proper records. He also gave Frobisher, who was after all a novice to transatlantic crossings, a grounding in the importance of frequent depth soundings, how to take and calculate readings for latitude and longitude, how to deal with the natives, and how to ascertain if ores might be valuable. But Frobisher and Hall were, by and large, ignorant, and were unable to understand the importance of the simplest mathematical exercise.

Nonetheless, Dee prevailed as best he could, despite the widely held view that mathematics was “without convenient practise at sea.” Where Frobisher found it difficult to see the importance of calculations,
the mathematics in Lok’s accounts of the Frobisher voyages reveal in wretched detail the huge expectations for success from 1576 to their utter failure to live up to those high hopes in 1579.
¹²

While the first voyage was meant to leave England for the east coast of America in 1575, subscribers were like the illusive gold dust they sought on an ill wind, and the expedition had to be delayed. At the end of the day, Lok’s and Frobisher’s expectations had to be scaled down, and the voyage was limited to two small barks and a pinnace instead of the three larger ships originally contemplated. When Frobisher was looking around later for people to blame, Lok told him that potential investors’ reluctance to invest was due to Frobisher’s reputation as a pirate. Whatever the truth of the matter, it was Lok’s salesmanship that stressed the varied luxury commodities that the road to Cathay might yield, the English woolens the natives might purchase, the precious metals its shores certainly possessed, and the train oil that its oceans held that finally clinched the share purchases. But despite Lok’s enthusiasm, the total cash raised was a mere £875 ($303,387 or £163,993 today). Since costs for the expedition had already come to £1,613 19s. 3d. ($561,697 or £303,620 today), Lok had to make good on the rest from his own pocket. Out of the eighteen shareholders, Lord Burghley, Sir Francis Walsingham, Philip Sidney, Thomas Randolph (ambassador to Scotland), and the Earls of Leicester, Warwick, and Sussex were the most prominent, having invested £50 each.

Sir Lionel Duckett was also an active promoter, and it was he who paid for Dee’s time and expenses in the technical planning. The Mercator map was provided to Frobisher in place of the Ortelius map that had been favored by Gilbert in the 1560s, but as neither one had any real degree of accuracy, the results could only be based on a fiction. Both maps showed the North American coast at the same latitude as the British Isles, with the legendary Strait of Anian separating Asia and America. During the preparation stage, Lok thought it would be useful for the adventurers to meet with Sir Humphrey Gilbert and arranged the meeting. Naturally, Gilbert expounded on the virtues of the 1564 Ortelius map over the 1569 Mercator map, and the importance of the fabled islands in the North Atlantic called Friesland and Estotiland.
¹³
It was a case of the blind leading the blind.

Still, at Dee’s insistence, the Mercator map prevailed. Dee also ensured that they carry a brass
horologium universale
and an
armilla ptolomei
, among other instruments, to help the mariners get their bearings. Alas, these were better suited to Dee’s library than to a transatlantic voyage, particularly in the hands of men like Frobisher and Hall. Dee’s influence can also be seen by the library aboard Frobisher’s 30-ton bark,
Gabriel
, by the inclusion of André Thevet’s
Cosmographie universelle
(in French, of course) and his
New Found World or Antartctike
alongside Pedro de Medina’s
Regimiento de Navegación
(in Spanish), Cunningham’s
Cosmographical Glasse
, and Robert Recorde’s
Castle of Knowledge
. The great navigator, William Borough—who later fell out with Dee publicly—wished Frobisher well by presenting him with an astrolabe, but he still refused to invest in the voyage personally.
¹⁴

Despite all the unpromising financial omens, Frobisher set sail at last from a rainy London in the
Gabriel
with Christopher Hall, and Nicholas Chancellor (son of explorer Richard Chancellor) as his purser on June 7, 1576. There were seventeen men who crewed the ship as well. On the
Michael
(also a 30-ton bark), there was a crew of twelve, and the expedition’s unnamed 7-ton pinnace had a crew of three.

The bad omens continued. Before leaving Deptford, the pinnace struck another vessel, losing its bowsprit. The fleet assembled on the Thames in front of Greenwich Palace, and let off its demiculverins in salute to the queen. “Her Majesty,” Christopher Hall recorded in the ship’s log, “beholding the same, commended it, and bade us farewell, with shaking her hand at us out of the window.”
¹⁵

Following Mercator’s map, they headed west by north, expecting to land smartly across the Atlantic at the mouth of the Strait of Anian. In the Shetland Isles to the far north of Scotland, the
Michael
began to leak badly, and the ships had to put into shore for repairs. From there Frobisher sent a letter to “the worshipful and our approved good friend, M. Dee,” assuring him that “we do remember you, and hold ourselves bound to you as your poor disciples.”
¹⁶

Though they had made the crossing in two weeks, of course they couldn’t find the strait. In fact, they thought they had landed at the mythical island of Friesland, since Greenland was much farther to the north. (Naturally, it was Greenland.) They had entered the
unknown, the far northerly region that Dee called “Thule,” being neither land, sea, nor air. As they passed through sheer, spectacular towers of ice, an amazed Frobisher christened them “Dee’s Pinnacles” in honor of the teacher he had once shunned.

But nothing had prepared them for the harsh weather, the ice, the thick arctic fogs and snows in mid-summer. By the middle of July, a “great storm” raged, and the pinnace was sunk. The
Michael
stole away from the
Gabriel
and headed straight home for England. The skipper claimed on his return that the
Gabriel
was feared lost in the arctic gales, too. But Frobisher was made of sterner stuff than the
Michael’
s captain. Despite the
Gabriel
capsizing—saved only by Frobisher’s “valiant courage” in ordering the mizzen mast to be hacked away while he untangled the rigging and the sails filling with icy water—the ship sailed on. Drenched in freezing saltwater, alone in the desolate heaving sea, Frobisher sailed on for two days more before sighting land.