Year 1577 (MDLXXVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar.
Sir Martin Frobisher was an English sailor and privateer who made three voyages to the New World looking for the North-west Passage. He probably sighted Resolution Island near Labrador in north-eastern Canada, before entering Frobisher Bay and landing on present-day Baffin Island. On his second voyage, Frobisher found what he thought was gold ore and carried 200 tons of it home on three ships, where initial assaying determined it to be worth a profit of £5.20 per ton. Encouraged, Frobisher returned to Canada with an even larger fleet and dug several mines around Frobisher Bay. He carried 1,350 tons of the ore back to England, where, after years of smelting, it was realized that the ore was a worthless rock containing the mineral hornblende. As an English privateer, he plundered riches from French ships. He was later knighted for his service in repelling the Spanish Armada in 1588.
Frobisher Bay is an inlet of the Davis Strait in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Canada. It is located in the southeastern corner of Baffin Island. Its length is about 230 km (140 mi) and its width varies from about 40 km (25 mi) at its outlet into the Davis Strait to roughly 20 km (12 mi) towards its inner end.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert was an English adventurer, explorer, member of parliament and soldier who served during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and was a pioneer of the English colonial empire in North America and the Plantations of Ireland. He was a maternal half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh and a cousin of Sir Richard Grenville.
The 16th century in Canada saw the first contacts, since the Norsemen 500 years earlier, between the indigenous peoples in Canada living near the Atlantic coast and European fishermen, whalers, traders, and explorers.
Martin Pring (1580–1626) was an English explorer from Bristol, England who in 1603 at the age of 23 was captain of an expedition to North America to assess commercial potential; he explored areas of present-day Maine, New Hampshire, and Cape Cod in Massachusetts. In the process, he named what is now Plymouth Harbor 'Whitson Bay' and a nearby hill 'Mount Aldworth' after the two Bristol merchants who provided him with ships and supplies. The harbour was later renamed by the Pilgrim fathers.
Foxe Peninsula is a peninsula found at the southern end of Baffin Island in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Canada. It juts out from the southern end of the island in a southwestern direction, dividing Foxe Basin and Hudson Strait. Its western extremity is Cape Queen; to the southeast lies the Inuit hamlet of Kinngait. At the western coast is Inuksuk Point, which contains more than 100 inuksuit.
The European explorer-colonial historical record in North America begins in the second half of the 16th century, with ongoing European exploration.
St Stephen's Church in St Stephen's Avenue, is the parish church for the city of Bristol, England.
Cornelis or Cornelius Ketel was a Dutch Mannerist painter, active in Elizabethan London from 1573 to 1581, and in Amsterdam till his death. Ketel, known essentially as a portrait-painter, was also a poet and orator, and from 1595 a sculptor as well.
James Alday (1516–1576?) was a 16th-century English navigator, explorer and privateer. He participated in raids against the Spanish with fellow privateers James Logan and William Cooke during the 1540s and is credited, along with Sebastian Cabot and Henry Ostrich, of the start of regular trading between England and the Barbary coast.
Aid or Ayde was an 18-gun ship of the Royal Navy. She was built at Deptford Dockyard, being launched on 6 October 1562. She was rebuilt in 1580 and was broken up in 1599. For the majority of her service, she was commanded by Sir Martin Frobisher.
The English overseas possessions, also known as the English colonial empire, comprised a variety of overseas territories that were colonised, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the former Kingdom of England during the centuries before the Acts of Union of 1707 between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland created the Kingdom of Great Britain. The many English possessions then became the foundation of the British Empire and its fast-growing naval and mercantile power, which until then had yet to overtake those of the Dutch Republic, the Kingdom of Portugal, and the Crown of Castile.
Admiral Luke Warde, was an English naval officer who served during the Tudor period.
The Battle of Flores (1592), also known as Cruising Voyage to the Azores of 1592, or the Capture of the Madre de Deus describes a series of naval engagements that took place from 20 May to 19 August 1592, during the Anglo-Spanish War. The battle was part of an expedition by an English fleet initially led by Sir Walter Raleigh, and then by Martin Frobisher and John Burgh. The expedition involved the capture of a number of Portuguese and Spanish ships including the large Portuguese carrack Madre de Deus, after a long naval battle off the island of Flores in the Azores. The expedition, particularly the capture of the great carrack, was a financial and military success. The rich cargo aboard the carrack, which at the time equaled nearly half the size of the Kingdom of England's royal annual revenue, was subject to mass theft when it arrived in Dartmouth, England, followed by quarrels over the shares of the prize. The expedition had formative consequences for the English both financially and on the future of English exploration.
Christopher Schutz (1521–1592) also commonly known in England as Jonas Schutz, was a German-born metallurgist who worked in England for several decades. He built England's first blast furnace at Tintern, and was one of the principal assayers of the worthless ore brought from Baffin Island by Sir Martin Frobisher.
Giovanni Battista Agnello was a Venetian alchemist working in London in the 1560s and 1570s. He was the author of the second book in Italian printed in England, Espositione sopra vn libro intitolato Apocalypsis spiritus secreti. He was also the first to declare that the ore brought back by Martin Frobisher from Baffin Island contained gold.
Arnaq or Egnock was the name given by the English to an Inuk woman from what is now Baffin Island, Nunavut, who was taken hostage by Sir Martin Frobisher on his second journey to find the Northwest Passage. She, her infant son and an Inuk man named as Kalicho were among the first Inuit and first indigenous people from North America to visit England and among the best documented of the Tudor period. They were brought back to the English port of Bristol at the end of September 1577 and died in November of the same year.
Edward Dodding was an English physician who completed the post-mortem examination of Kalicho, one of three Inuit who died soon after they were brought to England by Martin Frobisher in 1577. His post-mortem notes on Kalicho are unusually detailed for their time and provide insights into contemporary medical knowledge and the attitudes of the English towards indigenous people.
Kodlunarn Island, known as Qallunaaq in Inuktitut and originally named Countess of Warwick Island, is a small island located in Frobisher Bay in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. During the 1570s, explorer Martin Frobisher led expeditions to the island to mine what he believed was gold ore. The ore turned out to be worthless, and the island was ignored by explorers until Charles Francis Hall, inspired by oral history accounts from the Inuit of Frobisher Bay, visited the site in 1861 to investigate the remains of Frobisher's expeditions. Notable features of the island include two large mining trenches and the remains of a stone house built by Frobisher in 1578. Kodlunarn Island was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1964.
