Hudson Bay - History

History

English explorers and colonists named Hudson Bay after Henry Hudson, who explored the bay beginning August 2, 1610, on his ship the Discovery. On his fourth voyage to North America, Hudson worked his way around the west coast of Greenland and into the bay, mapping much of its eastern coast. The Discovery became trapped in the ice over the winter, and the crew survived onshore at the southern tip of James Bay. When the ice cleared in the spring Hudson wanted to explore the rest of the area, but the crew mutinied on June 22, 1611. They left Hudson and others adrift in a small boat. No one knows the fate of Hudson and the crewmembers stranded with him, but historians see no evidence that they survived for long afterwards.

In 1668 the Nonsuch reached the bay and successfully traded for beaver pelts, leading to the creation of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), which still bears the historic name. The HBC negotiated a trading monopoly from the British crown for the Hudson Bay watershed, called Rupert's Land. France contested this grant by sending several military expeditions to the region, but abandoned its claim in the Treaty of Utrecht (April 1713). See Anglo-French conflicts on Hudson Bay.

During this period, the Hudson's Bay Company built several forts and trading posts along the coast at the mouth of the major rivers (such as Fort Severn, Ontario, York Factory, Manitoba, and Churchill, Manitoba). The strategic locations were bases for inland exploration. More importantly, they were used as trading posts with the indigenous peoples who came to the posts with furs from their trapping season. The HBC shipped the furs on to Europe and continued to use these posts until the beginning of the 20th century. The port of Churchill is still today an important shipping link for trade with Europe and Russia.

In 1870, when HBC's trade monopoly was abolished, it ceded Rupert's Land—an area of approximately 3.9 million km²—to Canada as part of the Northwest Territories. Starting in 1913, the Bay was extensively charted by the Canadian Government's CSS Acadia to develop it for navigation. This mapping progress resulted in the establishment of Churchill, Manitoba, as a deep-sea port for wheat exports in 1929, after unsuccessful attempts at Port Nelson.

Due to a change in naming conventions, Hudson's Bay is now called Hudson Bay. As a result, the names of the body of water and the company are often mistaken for one another.