The Company expressed itself as "ready to convey the persons desired, with their baggage and instruments, to and from Fort Churchill, and to provide them with lodging and medicine while there, gratis, they to find their own bedding." The Company demanded £250 for diet during the absence of the astronomers from England, which would be about eighteen months. The Adventurers recommended the Society to send the intended building in frame, with all necessary implements, tools, etc., which "will be conveyed upon freight, the Royal Society likewise paying for any clothing that may be supplied the observers during their residence in Hudson's Bay."
It is interesting to record that the expedition was entirely successful. The two astronomers went out to Prince of Wales' Fort, and returned in the Prince Rupert, after having witnessed the transit of Venus on the 3rd of June, 1769.
Towards the middle of the century there had grown up a deep prejudice and opposition towards the Hudson's Bay Company from the sailors and watermen who frequented the Thames.
It was alleged that the Company did nothing to make itself popular; its rules were strict and its wages to seamen were low, albeit it had never suffered very much from this prejudice until the return of the Middleton expedition. Many absurd stories became current as to the Company's policy and the life led by the servants at the factories. These travellers' tales had been thoroughly threshed out by the enquiry of 1749. The opponents of the Company had told their "shocking narratives." It was only natural, perhaps, that these should be passed about from mouth to mouth, and so become exaggerated beyond bounds. Upon the discharge and death of Captain Coats a demonstration against the Company had been talked of at Wapping and Gravesend, but nothing came of it but a few hootings and bawlings as the ships sailed away on their annual voyages to the Bay.
By 1768, however, the dissatisfaction had spread to the Company's own seamen, and now took an active form. The time was well chosen by the malcontents, because the public were ready at that time to sympathize with the movement for the amelioration of the conditions which characterized the merchant service generally.
The Company's seamen strike.
A numerous body of seamen forcibly entered the Company's ships in the River Thames, demanding that wages should be raised to 40s. per month. They struck the topgallant masts and yards, and lowered the lower yards close down, and got them in fore and aft. The consequence was that the crews of the Company's ships and brigantine were compelled to quit their vessels.
The moment the tidings of this reached the Governor and Company it was deemed advisable for the Deputy Governor, Thomas Berens and James Fitzgerald, Esquires, to "attend his Majesty's principal Secretaries of State, and such other gentlemen in the Administration as they shall find necessary, and represent the urgent situation of the Company's affairs in general."
This was done forthwith, and the facts of the situation placed before Viscount Weymouth and Sir Edward Hawke First Lord of the Admiralty.
Secretary of State Weymouth appeared well disposed to do all the service in his power to redress the present grievances; that a memorial should be presented on the Company's behalf.