While Radisson became once more a man without habitat or country, the Hudson’s Bay Adventurers were in the very springtime of wonderful prosperity. Despite French interlopers coming overland from the St. Lawrence, the ships of 1679 brought home cargoes totaling 10,500 beaver, 1,100 marten, 200 otter, 700 elk and a vast quantity of such smaller furs as muskrat and ermine. Cash to the value of half the Company’s capital lay in the strong box as a working fund, and by 1681 dividends to the value of just twice the Company’s stock had been paid to the shareholders. The first speculation in the stock began about this time, the shares changing hands at an advance of 33 per cent. and a new lot of shareholders coming in, among whom was the famous architect—Christopher Wrenn. At this time, too, one, Mr. Phillips, was expelled as a shareholder for attempting to conduct a private trade through members of the crews. Prince Rupert continued to be governor till the time of his death, in 1682, when James, Duke of York, was chosen to succeed. At first, the governing committee had met only before the ships sailed and after they returned. Committee meetings were now held two or three times a week, a payment of 6s 8d being made to each man for attendance, a like amount being levied as a fine for absence, the fines to be kept in a Poor Box for the benefit of the service.
Bayly, who had been governor on the south coast of Hudson’s Bay, when Radisson left, now came home in health broken from long exposure, to die at Mr. Walker’s house on the Strand, whence he was buried with full military honors, the crew of The John and Alexander and the Adventurers marching by “torch light” to St. Paul’s Churchyard.
Hudson Bay—let it be repeated—can be compared in size only to the Mediterranean. One governor could no more command all the territory bordering it than one ruler could govern all the countries bordering the Mediterranean. Nixon was commissioned to succeed Bayly as governor of the South Shore—namely of Rupert and Moose Rivers, territory inland about the size of modern Germany, which the new governor was supposed to keep in order with a force of sixteen men from the crew of The John and Alexander and garrison of eight men at each of the two forts—thirty-two men in all, serving at salaries ranging from $60 (£12) to $100 (£20) a year, to police a barbarous pre-historic Germany; and the marvel is, they did it. Crime was almost unknown. Mr. Nixon’s princely salary as governor, poohbah, potentate, was £200 a year, and it is ordered, May, 1680, “that a cask of canary be sent out as a present to Governor Nixon.”
On the West Coast, it will be remembered, Lyddell had gone out as governor. That vague “West Coast”—though the Adventurers did not know it—meant a region the size of Russia. Lyddell was now succeeded by Sargeant, the bluffest, bravest, halest, heartiest of governors that ever donned the gold lace and pompous insignia of the Adventurers. Sargeant’s garrison never at any time numbered more than forty and usually did not exceed twelve. His fort was on an island at the mouth of Albany River, some one hundred miles north of Moose. It will be recalled that Radisson had traveled three hundred miles farther up the west coast to Port Nelson. The Company now decided to appoint a governor for that region, too, and John Bridgar was commissioned to go out in 1682 with Captain Gillam on the ship Prince Rupert—a bad combination, these two, whose chief qualification seemed to be swashbuckler valor, fearlessness of the sea, ability to break the heads of their men and to drown all remorse pottle deep in liquor. How did they rule, these little potentates of the wilds? With all the circumstance and pomp of war, couriers running beforehand when they traveled, drums beating, flags flying, muskets and cannon roaring salutes, a bugler tootling to the fore of a governor dressed in gaudiest regimentals, a line of white servants marching behind, though they were so poor they wore Indian garb and had in their hearts the hatred of the hireling for a tyrant; for over them the Company had power of life and death without redress. All very absurd, it seems, at this long distant time, but all very effective with the Indians, who mistook noise for power and display for greatness.
By royal edict, privateers were forbidden to go to Hudson Bay, whether from England or New England. Instead of two small ships borrowed from the Admiralty, the Adventurers now had four of their own and two chartered yearly—The Prudent Mary, and Albermarle frigate and Colleton yacht outward bound, The Prince Rupert and John and Alexander and Shaftsbury—which was wrecked—homeward bound, or vice versa. And there began to come into Company’s records, grand old names of grand old mariners—Vikings of the North—Mike Grimmington, who began before the mast of The Albemarle at thirty shillings a month, and Knight, of whose tragic fate more anon, and Walker, who came to blows with Governor Sargeant, outward bound. Those were not soft days for soft men. They were days of the primordial when the best man slept in his fighting gear and the victory went to the strong.
When Captain James had come out to follow up Hudson’s discoveries, he had left his name to James Bay and discovered Charlton Island, some forty miles from the South Shore. Now that the Company had so many ships afloat, Charlton Island became the rendezvous. The ships, that were to winter on the bay, went to their posts, but to Charlton Island came the cargoes for those homeward bound.
To Port Nelson, then, came Governor Bridgar on The Prince Rupert with Captain Gillam, in August, of 1682. Mike Grimmington is now second mate. Gillam must have been to Port Nelson before on trading ventures, but Governor Bridgar’s commission was to establish that fort which for two centuries was to be the battleground of Northern traders and may yet be the great port of Northern commerce. The whole region was called Nelson after Admiral Button’s mate, but it was to become better known as Fort Bourbon, when possessed by the French; as York, when it repassed to the English.
Shifting shoals of sand-drift barred the sea from the main coast for ten miles north and south, but across the shoals were gaps visible at low tide, through which the current broke with the swiftness of a river. Gillam ordered small boats out to sound and stake the ship’s course by flags erected in the sand at half tide. Between these flags, The Prince Rupert slowly moved inland. Inside the sand-bar, the coast was seen to be broken by the mouths of two great rivers—either one a miniature St. Lawrence, on the north the Nelson, on the south the Hayes. It was on the Hayes to the south that the Adventurers finally built their fur post, but Bridgar and Gillam now pushed The Prince Rupert’s carved prow slowly up the northern river, the Nelson. The stream was wide with a tremendous current and low, swampy, wooded banks. Each night sails were reefed and men sent ashore to seek a good site or sign of Indians. Night after night during the whole month of September, John Calvert, Robert Braddon, Richard Phineas, Robert Sally and Thomas Candy punted in and out of the coves along the Nelson, lighting bonfires, firing muskets, spying the shore for footstep of native. On the ship, Bridgar ordered the cannon fired as signals to distant Indians and for the first time in history the roar of heavy guns rolled across the swamps. Winter began to close in early. Ice was forming. Nipping frosts had painted the swamp woods in colors of fire. One afternoon toward October when The Prince Rupert was some seventeen miles from the sand-bar, gliding noiselessly with full-blown sails before a gentle wind, the smoke of an Indian signal shot skyward from the south shore.
In vain Bridgar fired muskets all that afternoon and waved flags, to call the savages to the ship. A solitary figure, seeming to be a spy, emerged from the brushwood, gazing stolidly at the apparition of the ship. Presently, two or three more figures were discovered moving through the swamp. The next morning Governor Bridgar ordered the gig-boat lowered, and accompanied by Gillam and an escort of six sailors—rowed ashore. First impressions count much with the Indians. On such occasion, Hudson’s Bay Company officers never failed of pompous ostentation—profusion of gold lace, cocked hats for officers, colored regimentals for underlings, a bugler to the fore, or a Scotchman blowing his bagpipes, with a show of burnished firearms and helmets.