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.
English ships fight the Spanish Armada, 1588
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.
Greenwich Palace on the River Thames waterfront, from a window of which Queen Elizabeth waved to the departing ships (by an unknown artist)
The Inuk 'Calichough' or 'Kalicho'. Watercolour by John White
Printed text in German telling of Martin Frobisher's third voyage. Illustrated are the three Inuit, Kalicho; Arnaq, and her child ‘Nuttaaq’, forcibly brought back to Bristol by Frobisher from his second expedition to Baffin Island in late 1577.
The man on this portrait has traditionally been identified as Frobisher, but there is some disagreement. (British School, Dulwich Picture Gallery)
