Discovery of Hudson Bay—The Hudson's Bay Company
No one will probably ever tell the world by whom Hudson Bay was first discovered. It seems reasonable to infer from the Cabot planisphere of 1544 that the entrance to…
From: 1498 C.E. To: 1915 C.E.
Location: Hudson Bay, Canada
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Discovery of Hudson Bay—The Hudson's Bay Company” from The Hudson Bay Road (1498-1915) by Auguste de Tremaudan, 1915.
No one will probably ever tell the world by whom Hudson Bay was first discovered. It seems reasonable to infer from the Cabot planisphere of 1544 that the entrance to the strait was reached by this famous navigator as early as 1498. A number of maps ranging from that of Ruysch in 1508 to that of Ortelius in 1570 undoubtedly refer to the mouth of Hudson Strait, and Dr. G. M. Asher is authority for the statement that between the years 1558 and 1567 Portuguese voyagers "seem to have advanced slowly, step by step, first along the shores of Newfoundland, then up the mouth of Hudson's Strait, then through that strait, and at last into Hudson's Bay." It seems also certain that Davis passed over the entrance of Hudson Strait in August 1587, and that Weymouth sailed up as far as Charles Island, on the south side of the strait, in 1602, five years before Henry Hudson's first voyage in search of the North Pole, which gave this unfortunate navigator his first idea of a North-West passage, seven years before the old commander discovered the river which bears his name and on which is to be found the world's second largest city, New York, eight years before the Discovery sailed into James Bay, nine years before this bark's mutinous crew cast Hudson with his young son upon the waters that he had discovered, to perish. For "so passed Henry Hudson down the Long Trail on June 21, 1611! Did he suffer that blackest of all despair—loss of vision, of faith in his dream? Did life suddenly seem to him a cruel joke in which he had played the part of the fool? Who can tell?
"What became of him? A silence as of a grave in the sea rests over his fate. Barely the shadow of a legend illumines his last hours; though Indians of Hudson Bay to this day tell folk-lore yams of the first Englishman who came to the bay and was wrecked. When Radisson came overland to the bay fifty years later he found an old house all marked by bullets. Did Hudson take his last stand inside that house? Did the loyal Ipswich man fight his last fight against the powers of darkness there where the Goddess of Death lines her shores with the bodies of the dead? Also, the Indians told Radisson childish fables of a 'ship with sails' having come to the bay; but many ships came in those fifty years: Button's to hunt in vain for Hudson; Munck, the Dane's, to meet a fate worse than Hudson's.
"Hudson's shallop went down to as utter silence as the watery graves of those old sea Vikings who rode out to meet death on the billow. A famous painting represents Hudson huddled panic-stricken with his child and the ragged cast-aways in a boat driving to ruin among the ice fields. I like better to think as we know last of him—standing with bound arms and face to face, shouting defiance at the fleeing enemy. They could kill him, but they could not crush him! It was more as a Viking would have liked to die. He had left the world benefited more than he could have dreamed—this pathfinder of two empires' commerce. He had fought his fight. He had done his work. He had chased his idea down the Long Trail. What more could the most favoured child of the gods ask? With one's task done, better to die in harness than rot in some garret of obscurity, or grow garrulous in an imbecile old age—the fate of so many great benefactors of humanity!"
The accounts of all Hudson's voyages were written by himself or under his orders: they being the first authentic relations of voyages in those parts, it seems just that he should be credited with the discovery of the great inland sea which bears his name.
The following year Admiral Sir Thomas Button undertook to follow up Hudson's discoveries and to search for him: he spent the winter of 1612-13 at Port Nelson which he named after his mate who died there. Scurvy decimated his crews and he sailed back to England disheartened. He was followed in 1614 by Captain Gibbon who, however, did not go farther than Labrador, and, in 1615-16, by Baffin, who discovered the land of that name.
Jens Munck, the Danish sailor-boy who had attained fame in Iceland, Nova Zembla, and Russia, then appeared on the scene. On Sunday, May 16, 1619, he put out for Hudson Bay and in September discovered the Indian River of the Strangers, now known as Churchill, moving up stream to a point since known as Munck's Cove. At that time the country was covered with timber to the water's edge: Munck decided to winter there. Not familiar with the excessive cold climate of the country, the navigator and his little party fell victims to scurvy and one after the other sixty-one of the men died, Munck himself penning what he intended to be his farewell to the world in the following words:
"As I have now no more hope of life in this world, I request for the sake of God if any Christians should happen to come here, they will bury my poor body together with the others found, and this my journal forward to the King... Herewith, good-night to all the world, and my soul to God...
"Jens Munck."
With two of his men, however, he survived the awful experience of the plague and, after a terrible voyage, reached Denmark again. He had planned to colonise the country he had discovered, but instead he had to go back to active service in the Danish navy. He died in 1628. Had he succeeded in bringing his countrymen to Churchill, "as far as the North-West is concerned, there would have been no British North America." ^
Fox and James followed in 1631, the former from Hull, with the help of Sir Thomas Roe and Sir John Wolstenholme, the latter from Bristol with the aid of merchants of that town. Both had letters for the Emperor of Japan.
Fox discovered successively Roe's Welcome, Marble Island, which he named Brooke Cobham after Sir John Brooke, one of his patrons, Mistake Bay, and other points. On August 2 he reached Fort Churchill believing the river to be the entrance to the South Sea. James was to fall into the same error. Resuming his voyage. Fox sailed down the coast to Port Nelson and remained there a few days, restoring a cross which he believed had been erected by Sir Thomas Button in 1613, and nailing on it the following inscription: "I suppose this Cross was first erected by Sir Thomas Button, 1613. It was again raised by Luke Foxe, Capt. of the Charles, in the right and possession of my dread Soverigne Charles the first. King of Great Brittaine, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, the 15 of August, 1631. This land is called New Wales." Munck had called the country New Denmark: neither name was to be preserved.
In the meantime James had sailed across the bay from the western end of Hudson Strait, arriving at Fort Churchill on August II, a few days only after Fox's departure. Leaving Fort Churchill, he did not land at Port Nelson, and therefore was first to explore the unknown coast beyond and the bay that bears his name. No more than his friend Fox had he the opportunity to deliver his letters to the Emperor of Japan. The two commanders parted at Cape Henrietta Maria, not to meet again until their return to England.
"Reviewing the geographical results of these several voyages into Hudson Bay, up to and including 1642, it is seen that Hudson discovered for the first time the general features of the strait, and the eastern coast of the bay down to its extreme foot. Button made known the rough outlines of the west coast, from Wager Bay to Port Nelson. Foxe and James both contributed to a more exact delineation of the coast covered by Button, and both almost simultaneously, though quite independently, explored the hitherto unknown coast from Port Nelson to Cape Henrietta, while James alone explored the eastern shores of James Bay, without correcting Hudson's error in dividing it into two. This odd mistake was not, in fact, rectified until many years later, when the explorations of the Hudson's Bay Company dispelled the illusion, and Cape Monmouth, with the long peninsula that lay behind it—on the maps—disappeared into thin air. Although the primary object of all these voyages was not accomplished, they resulted in a very important piece of exploration, the charting of the entire coast-line of one of the largest and most remarkable of inland seas."
For almost a half century, there seems to have been no further attempt on the part of the Europeans, either to discover the route to the South Sea by the so-called North-West passage, or to explore the strait and bays, for the purpose of settlement or commerce. Apparently the many sailors who had landed, some for a whole winter at a time, at different points of the inland sea coasts, had not had occasion to see furs in quantities sufficient to attract their attention, and what has proved to this day such an enormous source of inestimable revenues and profits, was not even dreamed of by these navigators, bent on a totally different mission. Fifty years after their time, men there were found who, in their pursuit of the fur trade, heard of Hudson Bay and set upon the task of again sailing into its waters, exploring its coasts, and fully investigating the natural resources of its district.
In France were born the two men who were destined to give Hudson Bay the fame it has retained to this day. One was Pierre Esprit de Radisson, a native of Paris, where he was bom in 1636, the other Ménart Chouart sieur Desgroseillers, who was born at Charly St. Cyr near Meaux in 1621. They were brothers-in-law, the latter having married Radisson's widowed sister. While there is no certainty as to the wanderings of these two men in search of adventure and fortune, it would appear that they had at least "obtained valuable information as to the geography of the regions about Hudson Bay, and the inexhaustible harvest of furs that awaited those enterprising enough to establish trading posts in this northern country."
On their return from one of their expeditions about and possibly west of the Great Lakes, they had unsuccessfully endeavoured to interest friends at Three Rivers, as well as the government at Quebec. The man who was at the head of the latter had confiscated and turned to his own use 600,000 beaver skins that they had brought from the north and refused them any assistance. At Port Royal they had enlisted the services of the very man who later was to lead them to the shores which they sought. Captain Gillam: but "opposite Hudson Straits the navigator had been terrified by the ice and lost heart." The two adventurers then crossed the ocean and decided to ask the assistance of Charles II., King of England. Thus was formed in 1666 the famous Hudson's Bay Company, called in its charter of 1670 the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay. To this day Westem Canada almost reveres the memory of what is known as the oldest established company in the British Empire, if not in the world. Prince Rupert, cousin of King Charles, the Duke of Albemarle, Earl of Craven, Sir George Carteret, Sir John Robinson, Sir Peter Colleton, General Monck, and a number of other noblemen or merchants, as incorporators, were granted a charter with such vast and extraordinary powers that some of these make people of our epoch smile in wonderment. To quote the document itself, the company was given "the whole trade of all the seas, streights, and bays, rivers, lakes, creeks, and sounds, in whatever latitude they shall be, that lie within the entrance of the streights, commonly called Hudson's streights, together with all the lands, countries, and territories upon the coasts and confines of the seas, streights, bays, lakes, rivers, creeks, and sounds aforesaid, which are not now actually possessed by any of our subjects, or by the subjects of any other Christian prince or State."
"This was generous indeed. But some there are who, remembering the axiom, 'nobody giveth what he possesseth not,' may find this liberality of a cheap kind, since never before had an English monarch claimed as his what, on the 2nd of May 1670, Charles II. so kindly bestowed on his kinsman and future associates in the fur trade.”
Two small vessels, the Eagle and Nonsuch, had sailed in 1667 under the respective commands of Captains Starnard and Gillam, another, the Wavero, in 1668 and 1669, with Captain Newland. Port Nelson and Rupert Bay had been reached: Charles Fort, near Charlton Island, had been built: the first trading in furs had taken place: a new route of commerce had been established.
In rapid succession posts were located at Albany, Moose, Rupert, Nelson, Severn, Churchill Rivers, the whole territory itself receiving the name of Rupert's Land after the chief promoter and first governor of the company, the "fiery" Prince Rupert of Edgehill.
Unable to make satisfactory arrangements with the company, Radisson and Desgroseillers had in the meantime (1674) crossed over to France, the former once more changing his allegiance (1684), and from that time to the day of his death remaining in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company.
While serving under the flag of France, he had had no trouble to prove to the Gentlemen Adventurers of England that if he could do without them, they could not do without him. In fact, in its own interest, the company deemed it advisable to re-establish the two men in the positions which they had once occupied.
Without following the noble traders into all the details of their settlement and commerce on and about Hudson Bay and Rupert's Land, it may be mentioned as an important feature of the history of those times that the enmity which then existed between England and France had its natural repercussion even as far as the far-away waters of North America. No one can read the history of those days without admiring the daring exploits of de Troyes, d'Iberville, and La Perouse and without somewhat wondering at the easy surrenders of Samuel Heame at Fort Prince of Wales and Humphrey Martin at York Factory in 1782. But these may be explained from the fact that the Hudson's Bay Company was essentially a company of merchants and traders, as their motto implies, "Pro Pelle Cutem" ("Skin for skin"), who at times "forgot the flag that floated over it," in spite of the assertion of contemporary writers to the contrary.
The principal merit of the Hudson's Bay Company lies in having, for the 250 years that they have navigated it, proved beyond doubt to the world and principally to this continent that the Hudson Bay route is the shortest route of commerce between the old world and the new, and that the dangers in its course, of which more anon, are no worse than those to be met on other routes further south. In this alone there is enough glory for the Hudson's Bay Company to have the right to expect and receive both the admiration and the respect of every true Canadian and Britisher.
de Tremaudan, Auguste Henri. The Hudson Bay Road (1498-1915). J. M. Dent & Sons Limited, 1915.
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