Description
Book SynopsisFrom the book: They were five weeks out of England, driving through a storm on the icy edge of the world, when a sudden blast knocked Gabriel on her side. The helmsman tried frantically to turn the tiny ship into the wind that pinned it down, but the rudder had lifted clear of the surface and took no purchase. Water poured over the side, roaring into hatches as the wind drove the vessel across the waves and the crew clung frozen in despair. Only the captain acted, scrambling along the almost-horizontal upper sides, casting off lines to spill wind from the sails, forcing the crew into action to cut away the mizzenmast and the broken foreyard, then preventing them from doing the same to the mainmast. Finally Gabriel rose sluggishly, heavy with seawater but steering slowly off the wind. A tangle of broken rigging and sodden sails, she wallowed before the storm through the remainder of the day and all of the following night, while the captain restored order and set men to pumping the ship
Trade Review"Robert McGhee's The Arctic Voyages of Martin Frobisher conclusively demonstrates that human venality and cupidity four centuries ago was well up to modern standards. McGhee casts new light upon one of the most controversial of all arctic ventures - a colossal mining scam perpetrated by Martin Frobisher and his associates in the late sixteenth century - which McGhee tellingly likens to the infamous Bre-X fraud of our own times." Farley Mowat
