“Unknown Shore” by Robert Ruby ‹ Bits

The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool.
Jane Wagner

Unknown Shore: The Lost History of England’s Arctic Colony by Robert Ruby

Book Review

Reviewed December 16, 2005
Rating: 4 stars

Unknown Shore recounts the practically-forgotten story of the Frobisher expeditions and the first attempt to colonize the New World. Martin Frobisher, an Elizabethan adventurer with a dangerously large ego and a particularly violent temper, initially set out to discover a northwest passage to Cathay, but instead stumbled across the Arctic, a place that was still a mysterious Ultima Thule to the English. During his first stay off the coast of Greenland, he managed to kidnap an Inuit to take home and display as a “curiosity,” accidentally leave five of his men behind when he left, and—most importantly, as it turned out—discover a strange kind of “black rock” which, when examined by assayers back in England, was reported to contain significant amounts of gold. Seized by gold fever, the English decided to send Frobisher back for more black rock, along with enough men and supplies to start a mining colony in the new land he’d discovered.

You don’t have to be a history major to know where this one is going: the would-be colony fails to take hold, and the black rock turns out to be worthless. And the route to Cathay? Never found—no such thing existed. The whole painful incident might have been buried by history, if Frobisher’s angry investors hadn’t made such a noise about their lost money. As it is, the voyages and their humiliating outcome remain a little-known historical footnote, despite the fact that Frobisher and his men were the first English people to set foot in the New World.

Interwoven with this story is the tale of an American, Charles Francis Hall, an eccentric Arctic enthusiast who set out—on his own—to discover the fate of the lost Franklin expedition. Along the way, he learned from the Inuit of another, much earlier group of white men who had come to their land. Investigating, Hall found the island that was to have housed the English colony, and the centuries-old trenches that marked their mining operations. He also proved once and for all that Frobisher’s Strait, the body of water Frobisher had insisted was a waterway, was actually a bay.

Ruby tells the story well, with little novelization. He does not put either Frobisher or Hall on a pedestal; if anything, he is a little too aware of their flaws, especially in comparison to the Inuit. (Particularly touching are the scenes of the Inuit captives, willfully misunderstood by their captors and inevitably doomed to die when they reach England.) He mostly steers clear, too, of the natural authorial urge to tell in depth the story of his own Arctic adventures while researching the book. The only major flaw in the book’s storytelling is the chunky “intertwining” of the parallel tales; Ruby spends a few chapters on Frobisher’s adventures, then—just when you’re really getting into the story—cuts away to Hall’s adventures; by the time you’re well into Hall’s story, it’s back to Frobisher again. Both stories are interesting, so interesting that you want to follow each one through right to the end—no breaks.

I picked this book up because of my interest in Arctic exploration, but it’s more than just another tale of the frozen north: it’s a fascinating and forgotten story of survival, politics, and human greed, peopled with interesting characters and strange adventures. Anyone interested in—well, in almost any aspect of human nature and exploration—would be well advised to read this.