HUDSON BAY

inland sea indenting east-central Canada. With an area of 316,000 square miles (819,000 square km), it is bounded by Nunavut territory (north and west), Manitoba and Ontario (south), and Quebec (east). It is connected with the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson Strait (northeast) and with the Arctic Ocean via the Foxe Channel (north). The bay is named for Henry Hudson, who, in 1610, on board the aptly named Discovery, was seeking a Northwest Passage to Asia. The east coast of Hudson Bay proper was mapped two years later, the south coast was traced in 1631, and the explorer Luke Foxe lent his name to Foxe Channel in the same year. The west coast was not mapped until the early 1820s, and the first bathymetric measurements of the area were made by Canadians during 192931. Air reconnaissance superseded naval researches from the second half of the 20th century. Additional reading Farley Mowat (ed.), Ordeal by Ice (1960; revised ed., 1973), is a collection of original sketches of British expeditions carried out through the 16th-19th centuries, including a history of the discovery of Hudson Bay.