Hudson Bay

Hudson Bay, historically also called Hudson's Bay, is a saltwater body in northeastern Canada covering 1,230,000 square kilometers. It sits north of Ontario, west of Quebec, northeast of Manitoba, and southeast of Nunavut, but politically it belongs entirely to Nunavut. This inland marginal sea is part of the Arctic Ocean. To the northeast, Hudson Strait links it to the Labrador Sea and Atlantic Ocean; to the north, Foxe Channel connects it to the Arctic Ocean. Its drainage basin spans about 3,861,400 square kilometers, including parts of southeastern Nunavut, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, all of Manitoba, and portions of the U.S. states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Montana. The southern arm is called James Bay.

In Eastern Cree, Hudson and James Bay are called Wînipekw (southern dialect) or Wînipâkw (northern dialect), meaning muddy or brackish water—the same root as Lake Winnipeg and the city of Winnipeg.

The bay is named for Henry Hudson, an Englishman sailing for the Dutch East India Company, who also gave his name to the river he explored in 1609. It is the world's second-largest bay by area, after the Bay of Bengal. Hudson Bay is relatively shallow, averaging about 100 meters deep, and is considered an epicontinental sea. It stretches roughly 1,370 kilometers long and 1,050 kilometers wide. On the east, Hudson Strait connects it to the Arctic Ocean via Davis Strait; on the north, Foxe Basin and Fury and Hecla Strait link it to the Arctic Ocean. The International Hydrographic Organization's 2002 draft classifies it as part of the Arctic Ocean (Subdivision 9.11), though some authorities include it in the Atlantic due to its greater water budget connection with that ocean.

European discovery of Hudson Bay resulted from the search for a western route to Cathay and the East Indies, pursued since the late 15th century. Henry Hudson first explored the bay on 2 August 1610 aboard the *Discovery*, mapping much of its eastern coast. The ship became trapped in ice over winter, and the crew survived at the southern tip of James Bay. In spring 1611, as ice receded, Hudson wanted to continue exploring, but on 22 June the crew mutinied, setting Hudson and others adrift in a small boat. Their fate remains unknown, though historical documents suggest they did not survive long. In May 1612, Sir Thomas Button sailed from England with two ships to search for Hudson and continue the quest for the Northwest Passage.

In 1668, the *Nonsuch* reached the bay and traded for beaver pelts, leading to the creation of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), which still bears the historic name. The HBC secured a trading monopoly from the English Crown for the Hudson Bay watershed, called Rupert's Land. In 1670, the Crown granted a charter for fur trading within the drainage basin. France contested this with military expeditions but abandoned its claim in the Treaty of Utrecht (April 1713). That treaty, negotiated in Utrecht, Netherlands, ended the War of the Spanish Succession and forced France to cede the Hudson Bay region, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.

During this period, the HBC built factories (forts and trading posts) along the coast at major river mouths, such as Fort Severn, York Factory, Churchill, and Prince of Wales Fort. These served as bases for inland exploration and as trading posts where Indigenous peoples brought furs. The HBC shipped furs to Europe and continued using some posts into the 20th century.

The HBC's trade monopoly ended in 1870 with a British Order in Council called the Deed of Surrender, which ceded Rupert's Land (about 3,900,000 square kilometers) to Canada as part of the Northwest Territories. In 1912, the western shore south of 60° and, via the Quebec Boundaries Extension Act, 1912, the entire eastern shore were transferred to adjacent provinces, but the bay and its offshore islands remained in the Northwest Territories. Starting in 1913, the Canadian government's CSS *Acadia* extensively charted the bay for navigation. This led to the establishment of Churchill, Manitoba, as a deep-sea port for wheat exports in 1929, after failed attempts at Port Nelson. The Port of Churchill was a key shipping link for trade with Europe and Russia until its closure in 2016.