The Story of the Elizabethans - 2020

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Jenkinson made it back to England alive

and, rather than abandoning his career in

exploration, began searching for routes along

which to establish a trade network with Persia

via Russia. In the course of his travels, he

made a map of the region between Russia and

Uzbekistan (see p104) that became the main

source of European knowledge of the region.

Jenkinson’s expedition to Central Asia

was among a remarkable series of journeys

eastward by Elizabethan travellers whose

feats of exploration have been largely

forgotten. Between them, men such as

Jenkinson, Christopher Borough and John

Newberry travelled through the Middle East,

and Ralph Fitch ventured as far as Myanmar

(Burma) and Malaysia. The information they

gathered about territories, people and trading

relationships proved invaluable as England

moved from exploration to empire – it was key

in the establishment of the Levant Company

in 1592 and the East India Company in 1600.

These explorers had demonstrated the

impracticality of both land and sea routes

east to China. By the 1580s, the English had

instead begun to search for the fabled North-

West Passage around North America to the far

east – an endeavour epitomised by the stories

of Martin Frobisher and John Davis. Though

both had spent most of their lives at sea, and

knew a great deal about ships and maritime

survival, subarctic sailing was new to them.

Remarkably, their first forays into uncharted

waters in small wooden ships, braving freez-

ing temperatures and pack ice, with scarce

opportunities for obtaining food, did not

convince either man to stay at home. Instead,

between them they made a series of six ambi-

tious voyages to find a north-west passage to

China – demonstrating the confidence English

explorers and their backers had gained during

the course of Elizabeth’s reign.

Frobisher’s voyages were the best-funded

of the Elizabethan period – partly because

he believed he had found a source of gold

on Baffin Island, just south of the Arctic

Circle, on his first expedition of 1576. This

discovery sparked the first English attempt

at colonisation. Frobisher’s backers (includ-

ing the queen) endorsed the ludicrous idea

of establishing a settlement on the island

using prefabricated wooden housing shipped

across from England. Luckily for future

would-be colonisers – who would surely have

By the 1580s,

the English had

begun to search

for the fabled

North-West

Passage

Elizabethans and the world / Explorers