Vessels and crew
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The Royal Society and the Royal Navy worked together to commission the Northwest Passage expedition of 1741. [1] [2] [3]
The commander of the expedition, Christopher Middleton, had been a captain of ships of the Hudson's Bay Company, sailing on these ships that made annual voyages to supply the company's outposts, since 1721. [1] [2] [3] He had a scientific mind, and had published observations that earned him election the Royal Society, in 1737. He commanded HMS Furnace, while his cousin and protege, William Moor, also formerly a captain of Hudson's Bay Company ships, commanded HMS Discovery. [4]
Arthur Dobbs, a member of the Irish House of Commons played an influential role in organizing the expedition. [1] [2] [5]
J.C. Beaglehole, in his Life of Captain James Cook, notes that the expedition was commissioned in 1740, the same year George Anson was directed to lead a squadron into the Pacific Ocean, to attack Spanish shipping. [6] He noted that Middleton's orders suggested he might rendezvous with Anson, off California.
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Ice blocks navigation in Hudson's Bay for over half the year. Middleton was able to get the government to put pressure on the Hudson's Bay Company to allow his ships to moor off Fort Prince of Wales, at the mouth of the Churchill River, and to provide room for his crew, during the winter of 1742, so he could begin his expedition as soon as the Bay was free of ice.
His crew were housed in an older wooden fort that had been abandoned, in place of the new stone fort. Ten of his crew died, over the winter, and many others lost fingers and toes to frostbite.
The expedition was able to set off in June 1742. [7] They proceeded north to a deep indentation he eventually named Wager Bay, after Charles Wager, First Lord of the Admiralty.
Dobbs thought that Middleton's reports that he did not find a Northwest Passage were part of a hoax, and the two men conducted a pamphlet campaign, denouncing each other. [5] [7]
Captain James Cook's third and final expedition sent him back to the Pacific Ocean, to look for a Northwest Passage from the Pacific end. Cook consulted with Middleton, prior to his departure.
Captain James Cook was a British explorer, cartographer and naval officer famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.
The Northwest Passage (NWP) is the sea lane between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Arctic Archipelago of Canada. The eastern route along the Arctic coasts of Norway and Siberia is accordingly called the Northeast Passage (NEP). The various islands of the archipelago are separated from one another and from Mainland Canada by a series of Arctic waterways collectively known as the Northwest Passages, Northwestern Passages or the Canadian Internal Waters.
HMS Endeavour was a British Royal Navy research vessel that Lieutenant James Cook commanded to Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia on his first voyage of discovery from 1768 to 1771.
Events from the year 1741 in Canada.
Christopher Middleton was a British navigator with the Hudson's Bay Company and Royal Navy officer. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 7 April 1737.
Zachary Hicks was a Royal Navy officer, second-in-command on Lieutenant James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific and the first among Cook's crew to sight mainland Australia. A dependable officer who had risen swiftly through the ranks, Hicks conducted liaison and military duties for Cook, including command of shore parties in Rio de Janeiro and the kidnapping of a Tahitian chieftain in order to force indigenous assistance in the recovery of deserters. Hicks' quick thinking while in temporary command of HMS Endeavour also saved the lives of Cook, Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander when they were attacked by Māori in New Zealand in November 1769.
Glyndwr Williams was a professor of history at Queen Mary, University of London since 1974, specialising in the history of exploration and the history of Europe overseas. He was appointed a professor emeritus of the University of London in 1997.
The first voyage of James Cook was a combined Royal Navy and Royal Society expedition to the south Pacific Ocean aboard HMS Endeavour, from 1768 to 1771. It was the first of three Pacific voyages of which James Cook was the commander. The aims of this first expedition were to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun, and to seek evidence of the postulated Terra Australis Incognita or "undiscovered southern land".
HMS Wager was a square-rigged sixth-rate Royal Navy ship of 28 guns. She was built as an East Indiaman in about 1734 and made two voyages to India for the East India Company before the Royal Navy purchased her in 1739. She formed part of a squadron under Commodore George Anson and was wrecked on the south coast of Chile on 14 May 1741. The wreck of Wager became famous for the subsequent adventures of the survivors who found themselves marooned on the desolate Wager Island in the middle of a Patagonian winter, and in particular because of the Wager Mutiny that followed.
William Moor was a British sailor and explorer associated with the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and the annual supply ships to the bay area.
William Wales was a British mathematician and astronomer who sailed on Captain Cook's second voyage of discovery, then became Master of the Royal Mathematical School at Christ's Hospital and a Fellow of the Royal Society.
On 3 June 1769, navigator Captain James Cook, naturalist Joseph Banks, astronomer Charles Green and naturalist Daniel Solander recorded the transit of Venus from the island of Tahiti during Cook's first voyage around the world. During a transit, Venus appears as a small black disc travelling across the Sun. Transits of Venus occur in a pattern that repeats itself every 243 years, with two transits that are eight years apart, separated by breaks of 121.5 and 105.5 years. These men, along with a crew of scientists, were commissioned by the Royal Society of London for the primary purpose of viewing the transit of Venus. Not only would their findings help expand scientific knowledge, it would help with navigation by accurately calculating the observer's longitude. At this time, longitude was difficult to determine and not always precise. A "secret" mission that followed the transit included the exploration of the South Pacific to find the legendary Terra Australis Incognita or "unknown land of the South."
The second voyage of James Cook, from 1772 to 1775, commissioned by the British government with advice from the Royal Society, was designed to circumnavigate the globe as far south as possible to finally determine whether there was any great southern landmass, or Terra Australis. On his first voyage, Cook had demonstrated by circumnavigating New Zealand that it was not attached to a larger landmass to the south, and he charted almost the entire eastern coastline of Australia, yet Terra Australis was believed to lie further south. Alexander Dalrymple and others of the Royal Society still believed that this massive southern continent should exist. After a delay brought about by the botanist Joseph Banks' unreasonable demands, the ships Resolution and Adventure were fitted for the voyage and set sail for the Antarctic in July 1772.
James Cook's third and final voyage took the route from Plymouth via Tenerife and Cape Town to New Zealand and the Hawaiian Islands, and along the North American coast to the Bering Strait.
Asleep by the frozen sea is a phrase coined by Joseph Robson to describe the policy of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) from its foundation in 1670 until the establishment of its first inland post in 1774. Unlike the French who sent Coureurs des bois inland to trade, the HBC built posts on Hudson Bay and waited for the Indians to bring furs to them. The decision to abandon this policy and move inland gradually turned the HBC into an informal government for western Canada and led ultimately to the confederation of western and eastern Canada.
The Pacific Northwest coast of North America was one of the last coastlines reached by European explorers. In terms of sailing time from Europe, it was one of the most distant places on earth. This article covers what Europeans knew or thought they knew before the area was explored by Captain Cook in 1778.
James Isham (1716–1761) was chief factor (master) at both York Factory and Fort Prince of Wales in Canada during the mid-1700s. He kept detailed journals that described life in the region, including flora and fauna that were unknown to people in England at that time. His journals are important historical documents and he is well known to scholars of the fur trade in Canada during the early years of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC).
HMS Discovery was a small ship, commissioned in 1741. She was commanded by Lieutenant William Moor as she accompanied the larger HMS Furnace, commanded by his cousin, Christopher Middleton, on an expedition to Hudson's Bay, to search for the Northwest Passage.
In 1746 a group of United Kingdom investors, led by Arthur Dobbs, commissioned a private Northwest Passage expedition of 1746.
An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of his Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, and successively performed by Commodore Byron, Captain Wallis, Captain Carteret, and Captain Cook, in the Dolphin, the Swallow, and the Endeavour: drawn up from the journals which were kept by the several commanders, and from the papers of Joseph Banks, Esq. is a 1773 book by John Hawkesworth about several Royal Navy voyages to the Pacific: the 1764–1766 and 1766–1768 voyages of HMS Dolphin under John Byron and Samuel Wallis, the voyage of HMS Swallow under Philip Carteret (1766–1769), as well as the 1768–1771 first voyage of James Cook on HMS Endeavour. Hawkesworth received an advance of £6,000 for editing the three volumes.
The instigator of both of these expeditions was the indefatigable Irish MP Arthur Dobbs who was one of the main publicists for the Northwest Passage. Dobbs fell out with Middleton after the latter failed to find a passage and a pamphlet war between the two ensued.
having penetrated it he was to explore the western American coast, form alliance with the inhabitants, take possession of the country, winter on the coast or on some suitable island or return through the passage, as he thought best, perhaps meet Anson off California
Middleton concluded that his new discovery was indeed a closed bay and did not lead to the North-West Passage. When the expedition left Wager Bay it headed north into Roes Welcome Sound. Ice made a journey into the Foxe Basin impossible and an investigation of Repulse Bay left Middleton satisfied that there was no route to the Pacific by heading west, so he set sail for England.