Hudson Bay

Many Scots sailed into Hudson Bay, not directly as a result of the Clearances but because they were working for the Hudson's Bay Company. The company's vessels often called at Stromness in Orkney and hired men for work in Arctic Canada and they had a recruiting agent in Stornoway to encourage Lewismen to come to the Talamh Fuar, the cold land.

It was not usually a gateway for emigrant families. The exception was in the settling of Red River. It was thought that taking the Kildonan settlers to Hudson Bay would provide the most direct route for them to Red River overland. They were supposed to put in at York Factory, the company's principal North American base (shown in the 1882 engraving), but as the linked article describes, the emigrants spent their first winter well away from this post. Not that York Factory would have provided them with luxury. A 19th century Hudson's Bay clerk described it as 'a monstrous blot on a swampy spot with a partial view of the frozen sea'.

Voyages