Thus, then, was the Hudson’s Bay Company incorporated. Its first stock book of 1667 before incorporation, shows the Duke of York to have £300 of stock; Prince Rupert, £470; Carterett, £770 in all; Albermarle, £500; Craven, £300; Arlington, £200; Shaftsbury, £600; Viner, £300; Colleton, £300; Hungerford, £300; Sir James Hayes, £1800; Sir John Kirke, £300; Lady Margaret Drax, £300—with others, in all a capital of £10,500. The most of these shares were not subscribed in cash. It may be inferred that the Duke of York and Prince Rupert and Carterett and Sir James Hayes received their shares for obtaining the ships from the Admiralty. Indeed, it is more than probable that very little actual cash was subscribed for the first voyages. The seamen were impressed and not usually paid, as the account books show, until after the sale of the furs, and the provisions were probably supplied on credit by those merchants who are credited with shares. At least, the absence of any cash account or strong box for the first years, gives that impression. Mr. Portman, the merchant, it is, or Mr. Young, or Mr. Kirke, or Robinson, or Colleton who advance money to Radisson and Groseillers as they need it, and the stock accounts of these shareholders are credited with the amounts so advanced. Gillam and Stannard, the captains, are credited with £160 and £280 in the venture, as if they, too, accepted their remuneration in stock.
The charter was granted in May. June saw Radisson and Groseillers off for the bay with three ships, The Wavero under Captain Newland, The Shaftsbury under Captain Shepperd, The Prince Rupert under Gillam, in all some forty men. The vessels were loaned from the Admiralty. Bayly went as governor to Rupert River, Gorst as secretary; Peter Romulus, the French apothecary, as surgeon at £20 a year. While the two big ships spent the summer at Charles Fort, Radisson took the small boat Wavero along the south shore westward, apparently seeking passage to the South Sea. Monsibi flats, now known as Moose, and Schatawan, now known as Albany, and Cape Henrietta Maria named after royalty, were passed on the cruise up west and north to Nelson, where Radisson himself erected the English King’s Arms. Only a boat of shallow draft could coast these regions of salt swamps, muddy flats and bowlder-strewn rocky waters. Moose River with its enormous drive of ice stranded on the flats for miles each spring was found by Radisson to have three channels. Ninety-six miles northwest from Moose was Albany River with an island just at its outlet suitable for the building of a fort. Cape Henrietta Maria, three hundred miles from Moose, marked where James Bay widened out to the main waters of Hudson Bay. All this coast was so shallow and cut by gravel bars that it could be explored only by anchoring The Wavero off shore and approaching the tamarack swamps of the land by canoe, but the whole region was an ideal game preserve that has never failed of its supply of furs from the day that Radisson first examined it in 1670 to the present. Black ducks, pintail, teal, partridge, promised abundance of food to hunters here, and Radisson must have noticed the walrus, porpoise and seal floundering about in the bay promising another source of profit to the Company. North of Henrietta Cape, Radisson was on known ground. Button and Fox and James had explored this coast, Port Nelson with its two magnificent harbors—Nelson and Hayes River—taking its name from Button’s seaman, Nelson, who was buried here. Groseillers wintered on the bay but Radisson came home to England on The Prince Rupert with Gillam and passed the winter in London as advisor to the company. This year, the Company held its meetings at Prince Rupert’s lodgings in Whitehall.
In the summer of 71, Radisson was again on the bay cruising as before, to Moose, and Albany, and Nelson with a cargo of some two hundred muskets, four hundred powderhorns and five hundred hatchets for trade. Though Radisson as well as Groseillers spent the years of 1771-72 on the bay, there was no mistaking the fact—not so many Indians were bringing furs to Rupert River for trade. Radisson reported conditions when he returned to London in the fall of ’72, and he linked himself more closely to the interests of the Company by marrying Mary, the daughter of Sir John Kirke.
“It is ordered,” read the minutes of the Company, Oct. 23, 1673, “that The Prince Rupert arriving at Portsmouth, Captain Gillam do not stire from the shippe till Mr. Radisson take post to London with the report.” The report was not a good one. The French coming overland from Canada were intercepting the Indians on the way down to the bay. The Company decided to appoint another governor, William Lyddell, for the west coast, and when Radisson went back to the bay in ’74, a council was held to consider how to oppose the French. The captains of the ships were against moving west. Groseillers and Radisson urged Governor Bayly to build new forts at Moose and Albany and Nelson. Resentful of divided authority, Bayly hung between two opinions, but at length consented to leave Rupert River for the summer and cruise westward. When he came back to Fort Charles in August, he found it occupied by an emissary from New France, Father Albanel, an English Jesuit, with a passport from Frontenac recommending him to the English Governor, and with personal letters for the two Frenchmen.
Bayly’s rage knew no bounds. He received the priest as the passports from a friendly nation compelled him to do, but he flared out in open accusations against Radisson and Groseillers for being in collusion with rivals to the Company’s trade. A thousand fictions cling round this part of Radisson’s career. It is said that the two Frenchmen knocked down and were knocked down by the English Governor, that spies were set upon them to dog their steps when they went to the woods, that Bayly threatened to run them through, and that the two finally escaped through the forests overland back to New France with Albanel, the Jesuit.
All these are childish fictions directly contradicted by the facts of the case as stated in the official minutes of the Company. No doubt the little fort was a tempest in a teapot till the Jesuit departed, but quietus was given to the quarrels by the arrival, on September 17, of William Lyddell on The Prince Rupert, governor-elect for the west coast. Radisson decided to go home to England and lay the whole case before the Company. There is not the slightest doubt that he was desperately dissatisfied with his status among the Adventurers. He had found the territory. He had founded the Company. He had given the best years of his life to its advancement, and they had not even credited him as a shareholder. When he returned to England, they accepted proof of his loyalty, asking only that he take oath of fidelity, but financially, his case had already been prejudged. He was not to be a partner. At a meeting in June, it was ordered that he be allowed £100 a year for his services. That is, he was to be their servant. As a matter of fact, he was already in debt for living expenses. In his pocket were the letters Albanel had brought overland to the bay and offers direct from Mons. Colbert, himself, of a position in the French navy, payment of all debts and a gratuity of some £400 to begin life anew if he would go over to Paris. Six weeks from the time he had left the bay, Radisson quit the Company’s services in disgust. It was the old story of the injustice he had suffered in Quebec—he, the creator of the wealth, was to have a mere pittance from the monopolists. Radisson could not induce his English wife to go with him, but he sailed for France at the end of October in 1674.
As the operations of the Adventurers were now to become an international struggle for two hundred years, it is well to pause from the narrative of stirring events on the bay to take a glance forward on the scope and influence and power of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the history of America.
Notes on Chapter VII.—For authorities on this chapter see Chapters VIII and IX. To those familiar with the subject, this chapter will clear up a great many discrepancies. In the life of Radisson in Pathfinders of the West, it was necessary to state frankly that his movements could not be traced definitely at this period both as to locale and time. The facts of this chapter are taken solely from the official Stock Books, Minute Books, Sailing Directions and Journals of Hudson’s Bay House, London. Extracts from these minutes will be found after Chapter VIII and IX. One point in Pathfinders of the West, all authorities differ as to the time when Radisson left the company, Albanel’s Journal in the Jesuit Relations being of 1672, Gorst’s record of the quarrel in 1674, and other accounts placing the date as late as 1676. My examinations of the Hudson’s Bay records show that the rupture occurred in London in October, 1674. How, then, is Albanel’s Relation 1672? The passport from Frontenac, which Albanel delivered to Bayly—now on record in Hudson’s Bay Company papers—is dated, Quebec, Oct. 7, 1673. If the passport only left Quebec in October, 1673, and Albanel reached the bay in August, 1674—there is only one conclusion: the date of his journal, 1672, is wrong by two years. One can easily understand how this would occur in a journal made up of scraps of writing jotted down in canoes, in tepees, everywhere and anywhere, and then passed by couriers from hand to hand till it reached the Cramoisy printers of Paris.