Martin Frobisher gold scam solved?

The 400-year-old riddle of why British explorer Martin Frobisher carted 12 boatloads of worthless black rock from near Baffin Island to England at great expense and loss of life has been solved – at least to the satisfaction of two Quebec City researchers.

Greed and fraudulent behaviour are what appear to have driven Frobisher’s three trips to Kodlunarn Island at the end of the bay that bears his name, where he mined tons of rock that was falsely touted as gold-laden ore in the Eastern Arctic’s first mining venture.

Georges Beaudoin, a geologist, and Réginald Auger, a historian, from Université Laval are now convinced that the samples Frobisher carted back between 1576 and 1577 to prove the Arctic rock’s high gold content were worthless and that they were “salted” with gold in England.

Beaudoin tested the remains of five pieces of lead that Auger found 10 years ago on Kodlunarn Island.

The results of Beaudoin’s analyses appear in the recent edition of the Canadian Journal of Earth Scientists.

These coin-sized beads are made of lead that Frobisher’s chemists used to test the precious metal content in the rocks.

They melted the lead in a process called assaying, which is still used today.

In assaying, melted lead soaks up the precious metals and allows chemists to see the quantities of precious metals, such as gold or silver, that exist in the rocks.

Beaudoin’s analyses of the lead from Kodlunarn Island shows no gold, indicating that Frobisher’s on-site assayers didn’t tamper or “salt” the worthless local rock with gold.

But in England, tests on Kodlunarn rocks showed more than 100,000 times higher levels of gold.

“They probably contaminated their samples when they did the same analyses in London,” said Beaudoin in an interview from Quebec City.

Based on the false results Frobisher received in London, he received the financial backing that enabled him to return to the island. His last trip involved 15 boats and 400 men. He returned with 12 loads containing 1136 tons of worthless rock.

“Power and greed were likely the ultimate reasons for not objectively assessing all assay results. It was as much the fault of the promoters as that of investors with huge political power, such as Queen Elizabeth I who… put aside her plans to discover a passage to China, and the venture focused its efforts on securing as much of the precious ore as possible,” the two researchers conclude in their article.

Frobisher may not even have been in on the scam when he first came back with the first and second batches of rocks in 1576.

“Maybe he thought he was not equipped to make analyses and that’s why he brought the samples back,” Beaudoin said.

On Frobisher’s third and last trip to Kodlunarn Island, he returned with better testing equipment and used more ovens to test the ore.

“Perhaps they were a bit uncertain,” Beaudoin said.

Frobisher may not have been a con man at all, but been merely stupid or blinded by his desire to develop an English outpost en route to China.

Frobisher’s grasp of metallurgy was so weak, he may have actually believed the rocks he collected were full of gold.

In 1576, Frobisher and his crew first set out from England to discover riches and perhaps a pathway to China or Cathay through the Northwest Passage. Their knowledge of nature – they imagined a narwhal tusk to be a “sea unicorne” horn and tested it as an antidote to poison – wasn’t much better than their knowledge of geography.

Frobisher thought the bay that would someday bear his name was actually a strait with Asia on one side and North America on the other.

As a geologist, Beaudoin, who has never been to the North, was intrigued by the 426-year old scam because it’s a cautionary tale that also applies to contemporary mineral exploration.

“It’s interesting to go back into the past, see the results and look at the behaviour of the people which is quite similar to people’s today,” he said. “Human nature hasn’t changed that much. We see the same desire for riches, instant wealth, as well as people losing their rationality.”