In June 1670, one month after the charter was granted, three ships--the _Wavero_, the _Shaftesbury Pink_, and the _Prince Rupert_--conveying forty men and a cargo of supplies, sailed for Hudson Bay. Gillam commanded the _Prince Rupert_, Radisson went as general superintendent of trade, and Charles Bayly as governor of the fort at the Rupert river. 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_. He made observations at Moose and Albany rivers, and passed north to Nelson harbour, where Button had wintered half a century before. Here, on the projection of land between two great rivers--the future site of York Factory--Radisson erected the arms of the English king. The southern river he named Hayes, after Sir James Hayes, Prince Rupert's secretary. The mouth of this river was a good place to get furs, for down its broad tide came the canoes of the Assiniboines, the 'Stone Boilers' whom Radisson had met near Lake Superior long ago, and of the Crees, who had first told him of the Sea of the North. Radisson returned to England with Gillam on the _Prince Rupert_, while Groseilliers wintered on the Bay; and it appears that, during the next three years, Radisson spent the winters in London advising the Company, and the summers on the Bay, cruising and trading on the west coast. In 1672 he married Mary Kirke. Sir James Hayes said afterwards that he 'misled her into marrying him,' but there is nothing to show that the wife herself ever thought so. Perhaps Radisson hoped that his marriage to the daughter of one of the leading directors of the Company would strengthen his position. He received £100 a year for his services, but, although his efforts had turned a visionary search for the North-West Passage into a prosperous trading enterprise, he was not a shareholder in the Company. CHAPTER V FRENCH AND ENGLISH ON THE BAY