Charlton Island (Sivukutaitiarruvik) is an uninhabited

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

located in

James Bay James Bay (french: Baie James; cr, ᐐᓂᐯᒄ, Wînipekw, dirty water) is a large body of water located on the southern end of Hudson Bay in Canada. Both bodies of water extend from the Arctic Ocean, of which James Bay is the southernmost par ...

Qikiqtaaluk Region The Qikiqtaaluk Region, Qikiqtani Region (Inuktitut syllabics: ᕿᑭᖅᑖᓗᒃ ) or Baffin Region is the easternmost, northernmost, and southernmost administrative region of Nunavut, Canada. Qikiqtaaluk is the traditional Inuktitut name f ...

Nunavut Nunavut ( , ; iu, ᓄᓇᕗᑦ , ; ) is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' ...

, Canada. Located northwest of

Rupert Bay Rupert Bay is a large bay located on the south-east shore of James Bay, in Canada. Although the coast is part of the province of Quebec, the waters of the bay are under jurisdiction of Nunavut Territory. Geography This bay has a width of 16 ...

, it has an area of .

Thomas James Thomas James (c. 1573 – August 1629) was an English librarian and Anglican clergyman, the first librarian of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Life He was born about 1573 at Newport, Isle of Wight. In 1586 he was admitted a scholar of Winchest ...

, who gave his name to James Bay, wintered here in 1631 and named the island after Prince Charles.Arthur S. Morton,"A History of the Canadian West",page 34 The founders of Fort-Rupert (1668) must have seen it and

Charles Bayly Charles Bayly, ( fl. 1630–1680), the first overseas governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, likely spent his early years in the court of Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I. He was an English born French Roman Catholic in this Protes ...

was nearly driven ashore here in 1674. Some time before 1679 Bayly proposed making Charlton Island a central depot and meeting place for the three posts around James Bay. This seems to have been done until 1685 or later. After the

Hudson Bay expedition (1686) The Hudson Bay expedition of 1686 was one of the Anglo-French conflicts on Hudson Bay. It was the first of several expeditions sent from New France against the trading outposts of the Hudson's Bay Company in the southern reaches of Hudson Bay. ...

the French planned to send their prisoners there. Little is heard of the island until 1803. About 1802 the

North West Company The North West Company was a fur trading business headquartered in Montreal from 1779 to 1821. It competed with increasing success against the Hudson's Bay Company in what is present-day Western Canada and Northwestern Ontario. With great weal ...

acquired the

brig A brig is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: two masts which are both square rig, square-rigged. Brigs originated in the second half of the 18th century and were a common type of smaller merchant vessel or warship from then until the ...

, and placed it under Captain Richards, a former Hudson's Bay Company man, and John George McTavish, the younger brother of the Chief of Clan McTavish. In the summer of 1803 it left Montreal for Hudson Bay. At the same time a force under Angus Shaw left the Tadoussac area for James Bay. They met at Charlton Island in HBC territory and claimed the island for the NWC. They built Fort St. Andrews there and two forts at the mouths of the Moose River and Eastmain River. The purpose, in part, was to pressure the HBC into granting the NWC transit rights through Hudson Bay. What happened after that is not clear.

References

Islands of James Bay Uninhabited islands of Qikiqtaaluk Region Hudson's Bay Company trading posts in Nunavut Former populated places in the Qikiqtaaluk Region {{QikiqtaalukNU-geo-stub