Frobisher Bay is an inlet of the

Davis Strait The Davis Strait (Danish language, Danish: ''Davisstrædet'') is a southern arm of the Arctic Ocean that lies north of the Labrador Sea. It lies between mid-western Greenland and Baffin Island in Nunavut, Canada. To the north is Baffin Bay. The ...

in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of

Nunavut Nunavut is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' and the Nunavut Land Claims Agr ...

, Canada. It is located in the southeastern corner of Baffin Island. Its length is about and its width varies from about at its outlet into the Davis Strait to roughly towards its inner end. The capital of Nunavut, Iqaluit, known as Frobisher Bay from 1942 to 1987, lies near the innermost end of the bay.

Geography

Frobisher Bay has a tapered shape formed by two flanking

peninsula A peninsula is a landform that extends from a mainland and is only connected to land on one side. Peninsulas exist on each continent. The largest peninsula in the world is the Arabian Peninsula. Etymology The word ''peninsula'' derives , . T ...

s, the Hall Peninsula to the northeast, and the Meta Incognita Peninsula to the southwest. The Bay's funnel like shape ensures that the tidal variance at Iqaluit each day is about . This shape is due to the large outlet glacier centred over Foxe Basin during the

Quaternary glaciation The Quaternary glaciation, also known as the Pleistocene glaciation, is an alternating series of glacial period, glacial and interglacial, interglacial periods during the Quaternary period that began 2.58 Year#SI prefix multipliers, Ma (million ...

(Pleistocene), which gouged the Bay's basin, now flooded by the sea.Frobisher Bay
in

The Canadian Encyclopedia ''The Canadian Encyclopedia'' (TCE; ) is the national encyclopedia of Canada, published online by the Toronto-based historical organization Historica Canada, with financial support by the federal Department of Canadian Heritage and Society of Com ...

Within Frobisher Bay itself are a number of bays, inlets and

sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...

s. Among these are Wayne Bay and Ward Inlet (up towards the far northwestern end), and also Newell Sound, Leach Bay and Kneeland Bay (along the southwest shore). Hamlen Bay, Newton Fiord, Royer Cove, and Waddell Bay are located along the northeast shore. Frobisher Bay's whole coastline is marked with innumerable narrow inlets into which flow many small streams. There are high

cliff In geography and geology, a cliff or rock face is an area of Rock (geology), rock which has a general angle defined by the vertical, or nearly vertical. Cliffs are formed by the processes of weathering and erosion, with the effect of gravity. ...

s on both shores, rising to roughly on the northeast shore, and twice that on the southwest shore as a result of the tilting of the

Earth's crust Earth's crust is its thick outer shell of rock, referring to less than one percent of the planet's radius and volume. It is the top component of the lithosphere, a solidified division of Earth's layers that includes the crust and the upper ...

locally during the early Tertiary. Frobisher Bay is also studded with

island An island or isle is a piece of land, distinct from a continent, completely surrounded by water. There are continental islands, which were formed by being split from a continent by plate tectonics, and oceanic islands, which have never been ...

s. These include

Hill Island Hill Island is a Baffin Island offshore island located in the Arctic Archipelago in the territory of Nunavut Nunavut is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated o ...

and Faris Island near Iqaluit, Pugh, Pike, Fletcher and Bruce islands at the mouth of Wayne Bay, Augustus Island in Ward Inlet, and Chase, McLean,

Gabriel In the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), Gabriel ( ) is an archangel with the power to announce God's will to mankind, as the messenger of God. He is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Quran. Many Chris ...

and Nouyarn islands towards the Bay's mouth.

History

Frobisher Bay is named for the English navigator Sir Martin Frobisher, who, during his search for the Northwest Passage in 1576, became the first

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

an to visit it. Until

Hall In architecture, a hall is a relatively large space enclosed by a roof and walls. In the Iron Age and the Early Middle Ages in northern Europe, a mead hall was where a lord and his retainers ate and also slept. Later in the Middle Ages, the gre ...

's voyage in 1861, the Bay was thought by Europeans to be a strait separating Baffin Island from another island. The first

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...

service recorded on North American soil was a celebration of Holy Communion at Frobisher Bay in the last days of August or early September 1578. The

Anglican Church of Canada The Anglican Church of Canada (ACC or ACoC) is the Ecclesiastical province#Anglican Communion, province of the Anglican Communion in Canada. The official French-language name is ''l'Église anglicane du Canada''. In 2016, the Anglican Church of ...

Prayer Book A prayer book is a book containing prayers and perhaps devotional readings, for private or communal use, or in some cases, outlining the liturgy of religious services. Books containing mainly orders of religious services, or readings for them are ...

fixes the day of commemoration as September 3. The chaplain on Frobisher's voyage was " 'Maister Wolfall (probably Robert Wolfall), minister and preacher', who had been charged by Queen Elizabeth 'to serve God twice a day'."

References

* Andrews, John T. ''Cumberland Sound and Frobisher Bay, Southeastern Baffin Island, N.W.T''. Ottawa, Ont: National Research Council of Canada, 1987. * Eggertsson, Olafur, and Dosia Laeyendecker. 1995. "A Dendrochronological Study of the Origin of Driftwood in Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island, N.W.T., Canada". ''Arctic and Alpine Research''. 27, no. 2: 180. * Finkler, Harold W. ''Inuit and the Administration of Criminal Justice in the Northwest Territories The Case of Frobisher Bay''. Ottawa: Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1976. * Grainger, E. H. ''The Food of Ice Fauna and Zooplankton in Frobisher Bay''. Ste-Anne de Bellevue, Que: Arctic Biological Station, Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans, 1985. * Gullason, Lynda. ''Engendering Interaction Inuit-European Contact in Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island''. Ottawa: National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2001. * Henshaw, Anne Stevens. ''Central Inuit Household Economies Zooarchaeological, Environmental, and Historical Evidence from Outer Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island, Canada''. BAR international series, 871. Oxford, England: Archaeopress, 2000. * Mallon, S. T. ''Inuktitut, Frobisher Bay Version''. Yellowknife, N.W.T.: Dept. of Education, 1977. * Odess, Daniel. ''Interaction, Adaptation, and Culture Change Lithic Exchange in Frobisher Bay Dorset Society, Baffin Island, Arctic Canada''. 1996. * Roy, Sharat Kumar. ''The Upper Ordovician Fauna of Frobisher Bay, Baffin Land''. 1941. * Thomson, G. James. ''A Ring of Urgency An Engineering Memoir : from the Halls of Humberside to the Shores of Frobisher Bay''. Scarborough, Ont: Abbeyfield Publishers, 1995.

External links

{{Authority control Iqaluit Bays of Baffin Island

Geography

History

References

Further reading

External links