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SECOND CONTACT: PATTERNS OF “SECOND ENCOUNTERS”...
the next year with God’s help in two ships under Danish flag.!? Several other
documents (Ne 2-3, 5-9, 11-12, 14-16) of Bobé’s Diplomatarium Gronlandicum
support the claim that during the 16" century, Greenland was thought of by the
Danes as a forlorn land to be coveted because, first and foremost, it probably
still harboured the descendants of early Norwegian expatriates who were
potential Danish subjects; but also on account of its riches (think especially
of whales and fish). Once their own, Greenland has now become inaccessible
by any means, despite tenaciously reiterated vigorous efforts of the Danish
rulers, especially Frederic II. In a Latin missive directed to Elizabeth I, Queen
of England in August 1582, Frederic even begged permission to hire the
renowned Captain Martin Frobisher, English subject and experienced sailor
to Northeast America, for one or two years, clearly with a view to employing
him in re-discovering Greenland.”
BRITISH ADVANCES IN THE NORTHWEST ATLANTIC
IN THE 167 CENTURY
The Danish quest ran parallel with the major advances, especially those made
by the English in the North Atlantic in the last quarter of the 16'* century.
Greenland in itself, however, was tangential to English interests in this region,
which were more oriented towards the exploration of a northwest passage
to Cathay (China) and to the exploitation by fishing, and colonization, of
Newfoundland, under Queen Elizabeth I. Nevertheless, the earliest English
explorer here, Martin Frobisher had already sailed, in 1576, into what later
would be called Baffin Bay, after coasting southern Greenland." By virtue
of Frobisher’s (1577-1578) and John Davis’s (1585-1587) ensuing journeys,
and by the marked English interest in a Northwest Passage and presence in
Newfoundland — as attested by authors like Sir Humphrey Gilbert (A discourse
of a discoverie for a new passage to Cataia, 1576), Sir Anthony Parkhurst
(A letter to M. Richard Hakluyt of the Middle Temple, 1578), Edward
Hayes (A report of the voyage and successe thereof, attempted in the yeere of
Ibid. As F. Gad points out, Captain Alday’s second Greenland sailing came to nought (Gad,
History of Greenland, 195).
13 Bobé (ed.), Diplomatarium Groenlandicum, 11, document N® 13, dated 15 August 1582.
Vilhjalmur Stefansson (ed.), The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher in Search of a Passage
to Cathay and India by the North-west, A.D. 1576-8, 2 vols., London, The Argonaut, 1938;
Oswalt, Eskimos and Explorers, 26.
David Beers Quinn, The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Vol. 1,
London, Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1940, 129-164.
A letter to M. Richard Hakluyt of the Middle Temple, conteining a report of the true state
and comodities of Newfoundland, by M. Anthonie Parkhurst Gentleman, in Richard Hakluyt
(ed.), The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation,
Vol. 12 (America: Part I), Edinburgh, E. & G. Goldsmid, 1889, 299-305.
* 213 +