Profile of James Knight on Famous Like Me

James Knight (c. 1640 – c. 1720) was a director of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and explorer who died on an expedition in search of the Northwest Passage.

Knight was born in England and joined the Hudson's Bay Company in 1676 as a carpenter; in 1682 he became Chief Factor of the trading post of Fort Albany in James Bay where he made himself rich. In 1697 he bought stock in HBC and in 1711 he gained a seat on the board of directors.

The long wars of the Grand Alliance and the Spanish Succession with France had spread to Canada and battered the HBC; four of the company's five trading posts had been lost to the French. However, among the provisions of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 was the restoration of these posts and in 1714 Knight was sent out to take possession of York Fort and restore the company's fortunes. Despite the damage to the fort from the French occupation, and the hardships of the climate he succeeded in rebuilding the company's business, and in 1719 it paid its first dividend for 20 years.

Knight was determined to explore the country to the north and west of Hudson's Bay, hoping to find mineral resources and perhaps the Northwest Passage. In 1715 he organized a mission to promote peace between the local Cree and the Chipewyans who lived further north. The mission was accompanied by Thanadelthur, a Chipewyan woman who had been captured by Cree and escaped to York Fort. With Thanadelthur acting as interpreter, the mission travelled more than 1,000 km northwest, returning to York Fort in 1716 with ten Chipewyans. They carried copper knives, but Knight convinced himself that their stories of a river where lumps of "yellow mettle" could be found — perhaps Coppermine River — indicated the presence of gold. And their stories of a sea to the west — probably the Great Slave Lake — he interpreted as a bay leading to the Pacific.

In 1717 Knight established a new trading post at the mouth of the Churchill River, but another mission north from there experienced only terrible hardship in the winter of 1717–1718 and made no discoveries. Knight returned to Britain in 1718 and persuaded the company governor, Sir Bibye Lake, to fund an expedition on two vessels, the ship Albany of 100 tons, and the sloop Discovery of 40 tons. Knight sailed on 5 June 1719 with two other company ships; they parted in Hudson's Bay in July, and never returned.

Their fate was uncertain for many years. We now know that the two ships reached Marble Island in the northwest of Hudson's Bay and anchored in a sheltered inlet at the east of the island. The expedition landed their supplies, built buildings of stone and brick, and spent the winter ashore. However, for some reason they were unable to sail again in the spring, for the wrecks of both ships lie at the bottom of the bay where they were found by divers in 1991–1992. It is possible that they were damaged in passing the shallow bar, or that they were crushed by ice during the winter.

In 1767 a whaling expedition discovered the 1719 camp and found many graves, and in 1769 another whaler reported being told by an elderly Inuk of Marble Island that the expedition had starved to death over two winters in 1719–1721. However, archaeological investigations have cast doubt on this version of events; only one human vertebra and three teeth were found around the buildings. The graves elsewhere on Marble Island are Inuit, not European. The plentiful remains of local wildlife — caribou, seals, geese — suggest that the explorers did not starve, or at least not in the first winter. But piles of coal suggest that they didn't spend a second winter. It seems much more likely that the expedition attempted to escape, either by crossing the 30 km strait to the mainland while frozen, or else by setting sail in the ships' boats in the spring or summer of 1720.

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