In 1719, the Company made extensive preparations for an exploration of the northern parts of Hudson bay. The expedition consisted of a frigate, commanded by Captain Vaughan, and a sloop by Captain Barlow, the chief command being entrusted to Captain James Knight, who had been governor of a number of the forts, but who was eighty years of age. The expedition sailed from England in June, well stored with provisions, with a house in frame and a large stock of goods for trade. Their instructions were to proceed to the northward, by Sir Thomas Roe’s Welcome, as far as 64° latitude, in search of the Anian strait. As the ships did not return to England in 1720, fears were entertained for their safety, and orders were despatched by the next ship to send the Whalebone, John Scroggs, master, in search of them. The instructions reached Churchill too late to be acted upon that season, and Scroggs did not sail until 1722. After considerable trouble with shallow water and shoals along the coast, he managed to reach Marble island, where pieces of wreck were found, but they were considered of no importance by Scroggs, who returned without continuing the search. Hopes were long entertained that Knight had made his way to the Pacific, and it was not until 1767 that the fate of the expedition became known. That year the Company started a whale fishery at Marble island, and one of the boats engaged in the fishery accidently discovered a harbour near the east end of the island; at its head guns, anchors, cables and many other articles were found. The wrecks of the ships lay in five fathoms of water, and the remains of the house were still in existence, with two skulls on the ground near by. Hearne learned from the Eskimos that the ships arrived late in the summer, that the larger one received much damage entering the harbour, that soon after arriving the house was built and that the white men numbered about fifty. When the natives again visited them, during the following summer, their number was greatly reduced, and the remainder were unhealthy. The carpenters were then at work on a boat. By the beginning of winter the number was reduced to twenty, and in the following summer only five remained alive, all of whom died within a few days after the arrival of the natives. That such a disaster could occur within two hundred and fifty miles of Churchill is astonishing at the present day, when so much more is known of the comparative ease with which long journeys may be made over the snow and ice in the springtime.
After this disastrous termination of their first expedition by sea, the Company was not eager to undertake another, but they were practically forced to do so by Arthur Dobbs, a zealous and enthusiastic advocate of the northwest passage. On his insistence, two sloops were sent northward from Churchill, in 1737, to open trade with the natives, and to look for a northern passage to the westward; the latter seems never to have been seriously undertaken, and did not at all satisfy Dobbs.
In 1741, Captain Middleton, who had been long in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company, was selected by the Admiralty to conduct an expedition of discovery up the Welcome. He sailed with two small vessels, and wintered at Churchill. The following summer he proceeded northward, and discovered Wager inlet and Repulse bay, the south headland of which he named Cape Hope. Being unable to proceed farther on account of ice, he walked fifteen miles to a high point, from which he saw a frozen strait, turning round the north end of Southampton island, with the flood tide coming from Fox channel into Repulse bay. On Middleton’s return, Dobbs was greatly disappointed, and preferred charges against Middleton to the Admiralty, accusing him of want of honesty in the report of his proceedings, and of concealing everything that told in favour of a passage, so that he might serve the interests of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which he, Dobbs, alleged would be injured by the discovery of a northwest passage. The honest reply of Middleton and the evidences which he adduced of the truth of his statements satisfied the Admiralty, but it was not until eighty years later that the correctness of his statements was verified by Parry. In the meantime Dobbs had influence enough to procure the passage of an Act of Parliament, offering a reward of £20,000 for the discovery of a northwest passage; and was also instrumental in raising sufficient money to outfit two ships to earn the reward. They sailed in 1746, and wintered at Port Nelson. Their captains agreed only on one point, and that was that they were not expected to explore Repulse bay and the Frozen strait, and, after an examination, that Wager inlet could connect only with the Welcome. On the 25th of August a council was held, and a ‘definitive resolution was taken to bear away without further delay for England’—‘the discovery being finished,’ as the narrative puts it. Both ships had entered Chesterfield inlet, which had been examined as far as an overfall or cascade. The account of this was not thought satisfactory in England, so, to settle the question the Hudson’s Bay Company sent Captain Christopher in a sloop to examine it again, in 1761. On his return he reported that he had navigated the inlet for more than 150 miles in a westerly direction, until he found the water fresh, but had not seen its end. On this, Mr. Norton was sent, in 1762, to trace it to its extremity, which he did, and found it to end at a distance of 170 miles from its entrance, in a fresh water lake seventy-two miles in length, and from twenty to twenty-five miles wide. In 1791 Captain Duncan examined, for the Hudson’s Bay Company, Corbets or Rankin inlet, which proved to be a bay, and Chesterfield inlet, which he found to agree with Norton’s description.
Samuel Hearne, a clerk in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company, started, in 1770, with a party of Chipeweyan Indians, and travelled overland on foot to the mouth of the Coppermine river, where the Indians massacred a number of Eskimos. On his return journey he passed Great Slave lake, and reached Fort Churchill in safety after one of the most remarkable journeys ever accomplished.
This ended for many years the attempts of the Hudson’s Bay Company at northern exploration, their undivided energies being required to maintain the trade struggle with their energetic rivals, the North-west Company.
Previous to the conquest of Canada, the French fur traders had carried their trading posts beyond the great lakes, across the wooded country to Lake Winnipeg, and thence up the Saskatchewan to the foot of the Rocky mountains. Shortly after the cession, a number of Scotch and Canadian merchants acquired the rights of the old French company, and prosecuted the trade with such increased vigour as to greatly diminish that of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who in self-defence were compelled to establish trading posts inland close to those of their rivals. In this manner the interior of British America was soon dotted with trading stations that extended over the whole territory from the bleak shores of the Atlantic to and beyond the Rocky mountains. The strong rivalry for furs soon led to collisions between the partizans of both companies, and blood was often shed; the natives were debauched with liquor, and general lawlessness continued until the amalgamation of the companies in 1820.
The wars with the American colonies and with France occupied the undivided attention of the British nation until after the final fall of Napoleon, and during this period nothing was done to further the renewal of the search for a northwest passage, until 1817, when Captain Scoresby published an account of the great disruption of the ice in the Greenland seas, and pointed to the ease with which explorations might then be carried on in the Arctics. He was aided by Sir John Barrow, secretary to the Admiralty, who, by his writings and personal influence, induced the British government to again undertake a series of Arctic explorations.
Two ships, well equipped for wintering in the north, were fitted out to explore the regions westward of Davis strait. The Isabella, commanded by Captain John Ross, and the Alexander, by Lieutenant William Edward Parry, were selected for this undertaking. They sailed on the 3rd of May, and were first stopped by ice just north of Disko island on the 17th of June. Melville bay was crossed with some difficulty, and a delay of a week occurred near Cape York. At midnight on the 19th of August the Isabella was in latitude 76° 54´ N., with the Cary islands bearing southeast; this was the most northerly point reached. Ross considered Smith sound a closed bay, and named the capes forming each side of it Isabella and Alexander, after the ships. He stated that the sound probably extended eighteen leagues; sailing down the western side, the mouths of Jones and Lancaster sounds were passed, both free from ice, but Ross did not enter them. He described Lancaster sound as closed by the Crocker mountains. The expedition returned to England in October, having practically accomplished nothing beyond confirming the statements of Baffin made many years before.
The report of Ross was not thought conclusive by the Admiralty, and in 1819 the Hecla and Griper were commissioned to explore Lancaster sound. Lieutenant Parry was given command in the Hecla, with Lieutenant Mathew Liddon in the Griper. The ships, without much difficulty, reached the mouth of Lancaster sound, and sailing over the supposed Croker mountains, continued westward past Regent inlet on the south, and Wellington channel and Byam Martin channel on the north, reached the south side of Melville island, where the winter was safely passed by both ships in a small cove called Winter harbour. The following summer an attempt was made to penetrate the heavy arctic ice which forms a perpetual barrier across the strait between Melville island and Banks island; this proving impossible, the expedition returned safely to England in October, 1820. Parry on his voyage passed over nearly half the distance between the Atlantic and Pacific, and saw from his farthest western point the shores of Banks island beyond the middle of that distance. He laid down, on the north of his track, the chain of islands bearing the names of North Devon, Cornwallis, Bathurst and Melville; and on the south, North Somerset, Cape Walker and Banks.
Sir W. E. Parry, in 1821, made his third voyage to the Arctic islands, in command of the Fury, having as second in command Captain G. F. Lyon, in the Hecla. This time the attempt was made through Hudson strait and up Fox channel. The first season, he examined Repulse bay and went into winter quarters at Winter island, a few miles beyond the eastern entrance of the Frozen strait of Middleton, whose accuracy was proved after being long clouded by the reckless attacks of Dobbs. The ships were released from the ice on the 28th of June, and no time was lost in pushing northward, until stopped by the heavy ice off the eastern mouth of Fury and Hecla strait, where the remainder of that season and the early part of the next were spent in trying to pass through the strait, the eastern part of which remained continuously blocked with heavy ice.