The Great Company / Being a History of the Honourable Company of Merchants-Adventurers Trading into Hudson's Bay

by Beckles Willson

It was late in August before the scheme was detailed. It was explained that the Company's assets in quick and dead stock and lands were £94,500. With this as a basis, it was proposed to enlarge the stock to the sum of £378,000, dividing this into 3,780 shares of £100 each. Before this could be carried out, however, the existing stock, being but £31,500, or 315 shares, was to be made and reckoned 945 shares of £100 value each. By such means a result of £94,500 actual capital would appear. A majority of partners favoured the scheme, and the proposal was carried amidst the greatest enthusiasm. Its purpose was to unload the stock at an inflated figure, far even in excess of that actually named by its promoters. Had it succeeded and the flotation been carried out, it would have doubtless administered a death-blow to the Company as then organized, and would probably have involved the revocation of its charter in view of what was soon to occur. But the plan met with a sudden arrest by an event which then happened, and which in beggaring multitudes altered the whole disposition of the public with regard to joint stock enterprises.

A general impression had gained ground that the South Sea Company's stock had attained high-water mark, and so many holders rushed to realize that the price fell, on June 3rd, to 640. The directors were not yet ready for their coup. Agents were despatched by them to buy up and support the market, and the result was that by nightfall of that day the quoted price was £750. By means of this and similarly unscrupulous devices, the shares were sent, early in August, to 1,000. This was the long-awaited opportunity. Many of the directors sold out; a general anxiety began to prevail and the shares began to drop. In view of this change in affairs, the Hudson's Bay Company's meeting for September 3rd was deferred. On the 12th, South Sea shares were selling at 400, and the decline continued. The country was thrown into the greatest excitement, and by the time December had arrived, Parliament had been hastily summoned to consider the calamity.

With what happened subsequently, to the authors and participators in this celebrated joint stock swindle, it is not my present purpose to deal, except to say that the Hudson's Bay Company was saved in the nick of time from sharing the fate of its neighbour and rival. A meeting on the 23rd of December was held, at which it was resolved that the "said subscription be vacated; and that the Company's seal be taken off from the said instrument."

Nevertheless one permanent result remained. The capital had been trebled, and it was now further resolved that each subscriber should have £30 of stock "for each £10 by him paid in." This trebled, the total capital stood, at the beginning of 1721, at £94,500.

The Company had had a narrow escape. To what extent its shares would have been inflated may be conjectured; but it is certain that it could not have avoided being swept into the vortex and sharing the same fate which overtook so many of its commercial contemporaries. Its enemies were on the watch, and they would have proved relentless. The revocation of its charter would have accomplished its final downfall. Already the Company was being assailed because it had not complied with one of the provisions named in that instrument: that of making search for a north-west passage.

It was not, however, to quiet these reproaches, so persistently levelled at it, that a year before the bursting of the South Sea Bubble an expedition was actually set on foot to accomplish the long-deferred exploration.

Knight, the Company's aged Governor at York Factory, had long listened to the tales of the Indians concerning the copper mines to the north; and resolved, on his return to England, to bring the matter before the Company. This he did, but it was by no means an easy matter to induce the Adventurers to consent to the expense of further exploration. Nevertheless Knight's insistence prevailed, more especially as, besides the profitable results to be obtained through such a voyage, he was careful to point out that the Company were expected by their charter to undertake such an expedition.

Expedition to explore the north-west passage.

In 1719 the Company, therefore, fitted out two ships for the purpose of discovery north of Churchill. One of these, called the Albany, a frigate, was commanded by George Barlow, whom we have already seen as Deputy-Governor at Albany in 1704, when the French failed to capture that post. The other, named the Discovery, a sloop, under David Vaughan. But the command of the expedition itself was entrusted to Knight, who was a man of great experience in the Company's service, who had been for many years Governor of different Factories in the Bay, and who had made the first settlement at Churchill River.

Nevertheless, in spite of the experience Knight possessed of the Company's business, and its methods of trade with the Indians, there was nothing to lead any one to suppose him especially adapted for the present enterprise, having nothing to direct him but the slender and imperfect accounts which he, in common with many other of the Company's servants had received from the Indians, who, as we have seen, were at that time little known and less understood.