and instructed Frobisher and Hall in the use of navigational instruments and the mathematics of navigation, as well as advising them which books, charts, and instruments the expedition should purchase. The fleet left Blackwall on 27 May and headed down the Thames, ostensibly having, per the instructions of the Privy Council, a maximum complement of 120 men, including 90 mariners, gunners and carpenters to crew the ship, as well as refiners, merchants, and thirty Cornish miners; this figure included a group of convicts to be expatriated and put to use as miners in the new lands. Frobisher had exceeded the assigned quota of crewmen by at least twenty men, and perhaps by as many as forty. Letters from the Privy Council were waiting for him at Harwich, however, commanding him to trim the excess; consequently, he sent the convicts and several seamen ashore at the harbour on May 31 and set sail northwards to Scotland. The fleet anchored at St Magnus Sound in the Orkney Islands on 7 June to take on water, and weighed anchor that evening. It enjoyed fair weather and favourable winds on its passage across the Atlantic, and "Friesland" (southern Greenland) was first sighted on 4 July. Hall and Frobisher each attempted landing in the ship's boat but were driven back by fog and the certain knowledge of unseen ice in the water before them. On 8 July, presented with no opportunity to land, Frobisher set his course westwards. The ships were caught almost immediately in severe storms and separated, each of them lowering their sails for long intervals. They continued this way for several days, tracking before the wind until the weather cleared on 17 July and the fleet was able to regroup, a testament to the skill of the masters. A sailor aboard Ayde spied Hall's Island at the mouth of Frobisher Bay the same evening. The next day, Frobisher and a small party landed at Little Hall's Island in Ayde's pinnace to search for more samples of the black ore acquired originally by Robert Garrard, but found none. On 19 July, Frobisher and forty of his best men landed at Hall's Island and made their way to its highest point, which he dubbed Mount Warwick in honour of the Earl of Warwick, one of the principal investors in the expedition. There they piled a cairn of stones to mark possession of the new