As soon as the French with three vessels of war appeared before the fort and demanded its capitulation, Hearne surrendered at discretion, without firing a shot. He was at once taken on board the French ships, and allowed to retain all his private papers and effects, while the furs and other property of the Hudson's Bay Company were either confiscated or burnt. After pillaging and destroying the fort, La Pérouse sailed southward to York Factory, which also surrendered to him as soon as he appeared before it, and then, with all his prisoners on board, including the Governors of Fort Prince of Wales, York, and Severn, he sailed for France.
Hearne does not appear to have been treated by La Pérouse as an enemy who had been taken prisoner at the capture of a hostile fort, but rather as a literary man whom he was anxious to encourage and patronise. While a prisoner on board the French ships he was treated with every consideration, and his generous captor, who was one of the foremost geographers of his time, read his manuscript journal with evident interest, and returned it to him on the express condition that he would print and publish it immediately on his arrival in England.
On the signing of peace with the French in the following year, Hearne was sent back by the Hudson's Bay Company to Churchill. He made no attempt to live again in the fort, which was very unfavourably situated for obtaining both wood and water, but took up his residence on the site of the original trading-post of the Hudson's Bay Company, five miles south of Fort Prince of Wales, where the buildings of the Company stand at the present day.
In 1784, while Hearne was at Churchill, there arrived from England a boy, fourteen years old, named David Thompson, who afterwards became the great geographer of North-Western America. Thompson remained at Churchill for only one year, during which time he copied some of Hearne's Journal, and though he did not carry away any very friendly feelings towards his superior officer, the knowledge which he gained of the interior country, and of the possibilities of travel through it, must have had a stimulating effect on him in after life. His note-books, which are now in possession of the Government of the Province of Ontario, are filled with detailed information about North-Western America, so much of which he subsequently explored. In 1787 Hearne left Churchill and returned to England, and from that date until his death, in 1792, he probably spent most of his time in revising and preparing his Journal for publication.
Before discussing Hearne's character and the extent and value of his work, it will be interesting to recount briefly the circumstances which led up to the expedition to the Coppermine River. In the seventeenth century the search for gold and silver monopolised the thoughts of many of the adventurers in the Southern Seas, but those adventurers who turned their attention to the more northern countries recognised that there were other sources of wealth beside the precious metals. They saw that the furs of many of the wild animals which roamed through the forests might easily be obtained from the natives in exchange for articles of European manufacture of but trifling value, and that these furs might be sold in the markets of Europe and Asia at an enormous profit. In this way what is known as the fur trade had its beginning on the American continent.
The Dutch, French, and English strove for shares in this lucrative trade, and many of the wars and massacres of that time had their origin in the strenuous endeavours of one or other of these nations to outwit its rivals. The Dutch had headquarters on the Hudson River, in what is now the State of New York, the French on the St. Lawrence River, in the present Provinces of Quebec and Ontario, while the English established themselves on the shores of Hudson Bay, founding a fur-trading company, which was destined to survive till the present time, and to be one of the greatest commercial corporations that the world has ever known.
This Company was called "The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England, trading into Hudson's Bay," or in brief, "The Hudson's Bay Company." At first it occupied a few small buildings, called factories or forts, situated at advantageous places near the mouths of rivers on the shore of Hudson Bay, where the Indians, who were accustomed to roam through the great unknown inland country, could come down in canoes to trade their furs for guns, knives, and other commodities brought from England by the white people.
About the beginning of the eighteenth century, some of the Indians who came to the more northern factories or trading-posts, and especially to those situated at the mouths of the Churchill and Nelson Rivers, brought with them rough pieces of native copper, and ornaments and weapons fashioned from this metal. On being asked where the copper came from, they said that they found it on the banks of a river, far away to the north, and that it could be collected from the surface in great abundance, but that the distance through which it was necessary for them to carry it prevented them from bringing much of it to the factories. These stories, along with the specimens which the Indians had in their possession, gradually aroused more and more interest in the minds of the fur-traders. At last they determined that there were far greater riches within their reach than could be obtained by trading with the Indians for furs, and decided to go in search of the copper mines whatever the cost of such a search might be. Among the first to take up this quest was Captain James Knight, a man of about eighty years of age, who had spent most of his life in trading for furs with the Indians, and who for several years had been in charge of York Factory for the Hudson's Bay Company. With him were Captain Barlow, another fur-trader from Fort Albany, and Captain Vaughan.
When the Committee, appointed in 1748 by the British House of Commons to inquire into the state and conditions of the countries adjoining Hudson Bay, was taking evidence, one of the chief witnesses was a Captain Carruthers, who in his evidence stated "that he had heard a good deal of a Copper Mine to the northward of the Churchill River—that the Governor (Knight) was mighty fond of the Discovery, and made great inquiries about it,—that the witness had seen copper which was said to be brought from thence,—that the Governor (Knight) was very earnest in this Discovery, which was always his topic."
Joseph Robson states that "Governor Knight and Captain Barlow being well assured that there were rich mines to the northward, from the accounts of the Indians of those parts who had brought some of the ore to the factory, they were bent upon making the discovery; and the Governor said he knew the way to the place as well as to his bedside."[4] In the year 1719, Captain Knight and his associates sailed from England in two ships, the Albany and the Discovery, well provided with stores and provisions, and even with strong iron-bound boxes in which to bring back the copper and other precious metals. Unfortunately the expedition was wrecked on Marble Island, and all the officers and crew were lost, although their fate was not definitely known until nearly half a century later.