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Updated: June 9, 2025
The winter of 1673-74 found Radisson and Groseilliers back in England pressing the directors of the Company for better terms. The Governing Committee first required oaths of fealty. Conferences were multiplied and prolonged; but still Radisson and Groseilliers refused to go back to the Bay until something was done.
Radisson and Groseilliers made formal application to the governor for permission to trade on the Sea of the North. The governor's answer was that he would give the explorers a licence if they would take with them two of his servants and give them half the profits of the undertaking.
But, while fishing to obtain provisions for the voyage, one of the vessels was wrecked, and, instead of sailing for the North Sea, Radisson and Groseilliers found themselves in Boston involved in a lawsuit for the value of the lost ship. When they emerged from this they were destitute.
It is still the river of Marquette and Joliet, Nicolet, Groseilliers and Radisson, La Salle and Tonty, Hennepin and Accau, Gray Gowns and Black Gowns, Iberville and Bienville, St.
Gorst the secretary, Romulus the surgeon, and Groseilliers accompanied the expedition. The ships duly arrived at Fort Charles, and, while Bayly and his men prepared the fort for residence and Groseilliers plied trade with the Indians, Radisson cruised the west coast of the Bay on the Wavero.
Across the swamp boomed and rolled to their astonished ears the reverberation of cannon. Was it the pirate ship seen off Labrador? or was it the coming of the English Company's traders? Radisson's canoe slipped past the crude fort that Groseilliers had erected and entered the open Bay. Nothing was visible but the yellow sea, chopped to white caps by the autumn wind.
The two fur traders were related, Radisson's sister having married Groseilliers, who was a veteran of one of the Jesuit missions on Lake Huron. Radisson himself, although the hero of many exploits, was not yet twenty-six years of age. Did that Sea of the North of which they had heard find western outlet by the long-sought passage?
The only immediate results of the discovery to Radisson and Groseilliers were condign punishment, disgrace, and almost utter ruin.
By the time Radisson and Groseilliers reached Paris, Europe was ringing with the outrage involved in their exploits. Radisson found small comfort in Paris. Possibly Colbert's death had deprived him of a sympathetic protector, and the French court was as reluctant now to interfere with the actions of the colonial authorities at Quebec as it had been twenty years before.
What the letters to Radisson and Groseilliers contained we can only guess, but we do know that their contents, made the French explorers thoroughly dissatisfied with their position in the Hudson's Bay Company. Bayly accused the two Frenchmen of being in collusion with the Company's rivals. A quarrel followed and at this juncture Captain Gillam arrived on one of the Company's ships.
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