The ships were, however, being furnished in the docks, and after all the many conferences in Fleet Street and Mark Lane, and even at Greenwich Court, still the money came slowly in. At last, by May 1576, two strongly built barques, the _Gabriel_ and the _Michael_, each of 25 tons burden, together with a small pinnace of 10 tons, lay ready in the Thames, hard by old London Bridge. Frobisher received his commission as admiral, Hall and Griffin were masters, and Chancellor purser of the voyage. They numbered about forty officers and men, and started on the 7th of June. As they sailed off Deptford the pinnace was run down by a vessel coming up stream; her bowsprit and foremast were broken, and twenty-four hours were spent in doing repairs. At midday on Friday the vessels sailed past Greenwich, firing guns as a salute in honour of the Court. The Queen sat at a window watching them, and waved her hand in token of farewell. Anon she sent a messenger in a rowing-boat to tell her brave seamen that she liked well their doings and thanked them for it, and also willed that Master Frobisher should come the next day to the Court to take his leave of her. This he did with a beating heart; for was not his ambition of fifteen years being now satisfied! They sailed round the western coast of England and Scotland, and halted in the Shetlands to calk the _Gabriel_, for she was leaking, and to take in water. Sailing west from the Faroe Islands they caught sight of "some high and ragged land rising like pinnacles of steeples"--perhaps the south of Greenland. They could not land for "the great store of ice that lay along the coast, and the great mists that troubled them not a little." As they sailed north and west a great storm arose and swept away the pinnace, so that they saw her no more. Next day they lost the _Michael_, but her crew, after waiting about on the ice-bound coast of Labrador, concluded that Frobisher and the rest in the _Gabriel_ were drowned, and so they returned home and came to Bristol on the 1st of September. And now Frobisher in the _Gabriel_, with eighteen mariners and gentlemen, pushed boldly on, undaunted by the strange perils that surrounded them, and they reached the group of islands lying westward of what is now called Davis's Straits. Neither could they land for the ice, snow, and fog, but at last found a resting-place on an island which Frobisher called "Hall's Island," for that Hall, master of the _Gabriel_, there first landed. Thence he sailed into a bay and called it "Frobisher's Straits," thinking it would lead them to India. Once, on landing, they saw some things floating in the sea afar off, which they thought to be porpoises, but on coming nearer they found they were men in small leathern boats. These brought salmon for barter, laying it down on the rocks and signing to the English to do the same with their goods. If not satisfied the natives took up their fish and went away.