Month: February 2026

Where we poor sailors do sometimes dwell – The Middleton Northwest Passage Expedition Roll of Honour

This post commemorates the sailors who perished during Christopher Middleton’s Royal Navy exploration mission to Hudson’s Bay (1741-42).1 It can serve as a Roll of Honour for these early explorers. For the context to this effort to locate the fabled passage to the Pacific in the waters of Hudson’s Bay, please see our post on HMS Furnace‘s unique exploration design. Our next post will argue that Middleton’s ship crews should be considered the first Royal Navy polar explorers (forthcoming).

Throughout the many wars and infrequent peace of the eighteenth century, the Royal Navy expanded into a massive fleet sailing from establishments strategically located along the seaborne trade routes. This growth came at a tragic cost: the human toll of crewing this British “wooden world” was staggering.2 Amidst all this death, it may seem odd to commemorate a dozen seafaring explorers who died in an incredibly remote outpost of British Empire. These were some of the very first deaths in a program of British naval exploration of what is now Canada.3 They would not be the last.

Christopher Middleton’s Northwest Passage Expedition departed the Nore, 8 June 1741. He had experienced significant problems filling out the complements of both his small ships, at their anchorage of Gallions Reach, near Woolwich.4 The seamen who wound up crossing the Atlantic to go looking for a northwest passage in Hudson’s Bay included conscripted men.5 According to their commanding officer, these ninety men were a “crew of rogues.”6 After transiting the Hudson’s Straits into the Bay, a council of officers decided to head for the Churchill River (present-day Manitoba), to overwinter. They would commence their search mission early the next navigation season. At their arrival near the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) establishment, Fort Prince of Wales, crews laboriously cut both ships into secure docks to overwinter in Sloop Cove.

John Wigate’s map, “Chart of the seas thro which H. M. S. Furnace passed for discovering a passage from Hudson’s Bay to the South Sea.” Despite falsified sections of the NW coast of Hudson’s Bay (to support Arthur Dobbs’ spurious claims), this 1746 map includes this remarkably accurate inset plan of the mouth of Churchill River. On the northern shore, the “Old Factory,” Sloop Cove (“Winter Cove”), and the impressive Vauban-style “New Fort” are clearly indicated. If any of the crew were buried ashore, they should be located closer to the old factory. Credit:
Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans, GE SH 18 PF 123 DIV 3 P 6 via Wikimedia commons.

These northern explorers weren’t equipped with the types of cold weather gear that later expeditions would benefit from. While the officers were lodged at the new fort, crew spent a difficult winter billeted in the “Old Factory,” the former HBC trading post. Several members suffered from frost bite, and the naval surgeons were routinely called over to the old HBC factory to amputate damaged toes before gangrene spread. Worse still, scurvy made an early appearance in the Fall. This dreaded mariner’s disease continued to be a feature of the Expedition all the way back to the Thames, and would eventually claim ten lives. But for Middleton’s desperate attempts to secure fresh meat and vegetables, and the intervention of local indigenous hunters (from the Dene and Cree communities who traded near the HBC Fort and who supplied the expedition with huge quantities of foul), there would have been many more deaths.

The transcribed page of the journal for 29 December 1741, recording P. Bennett’s death – the first Middleton Expedition death at Churchill. Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Arthur Dobbs fonds, LAC MG18-D-4 volume 4.

I feel it important to compile the names of these early explorers, their dates of death, and the causes, based on the original expedition journal entries and associated contextual documents found in William Barr and Glyndwr Williams’ edited Hakluyt Society publication:


✝William Clark, sailmaker Furnace 28 July 1741 drowned after a fall from fore shrouds in Hudson’s Straits7;

✝Pashler Bennett (or possibly “Paskler Bennet” 29 Dec. 1741 (scurvy at Churchill)8;

✝Christopher Row 13 February 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝Edward Matthews 21 February 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝Abraham Page 13 March 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝John Blair 21 March 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝Henry Spencer 26 March 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝James Thrumshaw 28 March 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝Ralph Pearce Carpenter’s Mate Discovery 9 April 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝Robert Rattery 31 May 1742 (scurvy at Churchill);

✝John Furnix 24 May 1742 (scurvy at Churchill)9;

✝John Matthews Master’s Servant Furnace 20 June 1742 (drowned at Sloop Cove near Churchill)

Sloop Cove rock inscriptions from 1741 overwintering of HMS Furnace and Discovery, as photographed in 1930. A series of inscriptions, including one by explorer Samuel Hearne, are preserved at the Sloop Cove National Historic Site. This may be the closest thing to a memorial the lost crew of the Middleton Expedition have. Credit: Northwest Territories (Album 31). Credit: A.E. Porild, Canada. Dept. Indian and Northern Affairs / Library and Archives Canada / e010983471

In some sources Middleton referred to two or three additional deaths. If anyone locates a reference to these other fatalities, or has any information about any known shore burials of the men who died near Churchill, please leave us a comment below.

Click for endnotes: