1745-1792

English Explorer

The first European to travel across the vast interior of northern Canada, Samuel Hearne also became the first to reach the Arctic Ocean from North America via an overland route. The findings of his journey, including the discovery of the Coppermine River, added to the growing knowledge that no viable Northwest Passage existed between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

Born in London in 1745, Hearne was the son of an engineer who died when Hearne was three years old. By age 11, he was working as a servant on a Royal Navy ship, and would remain in the naval service until the age of 18. At that point he took a post as mate on a trading ship bound for Churchill, Manitoba.

Samuel Hearne. (Library of Congress. Reproduced with permission.)

Churchill was a fur-trading post, but at that time Hearne's employer, the Hudson's Bay Company, had...