The only immediate results of the discovery to Radisson and Groseilliers were condign punishment, disgrace, and almost utter ruin. When they came back to the St Lawrence in the summer of 1663 with several hundred Indians and a flotilla of canoes swarming over the surface of the river below the heights of Quebec, and conveying a great cargo of beaver skins, the avaricious old governor affected furious rage because the two traders had broken the law by going to the woods without his permission. The explorers were heavily fined, and a large quantity of their beaver was seized to satisfy the revenue tax. Of the immense cargo brought down, Radisson and Groseilliers were permitted to keep only a small remainder.
Groseilliers sailed for France to appeal to the home authorities for redress, but the friends of the governor at the French court proved too strong for him and nothing was done. He then tried to interest merchants of Rochelle in an expedition to Hudson Bay by sea, and from one of them he obtained a vague promise of a ship for the following year. It was agreed that in the following spring Radisson and Groseilliers should join this ship at Isle Percé at the mouth of the St Lawrence. So it happened that, in the spring of 1664, the two explorers, having returned to Three Rivers, secretly took passage in a fishing schooner bound for Anticosti, whence they went south to Isle Percé to meet the ship they expected from Rochelle. But again they were to be disappointed; a Jesuit just out from France informed them that no ship would come. What now should the explorers do? They could not go back to Three Rivers, for their attempt to make another journey without a licence rendered them liable to punishment. They went to Cape Breton, and from there to the English at Port Royal in Nova Scotia.
At Port Royal they found a Boston captain, Zachariah Gillam, who plied in vessels to and fro from the American Plantations to England. Gillam offered his vessel for a voyage to Hudson Bay; but the season was late, and when the vessel reached the rocky walls of Labrador the captain lost heart and refused to enter the driving straits. The ship returned and landed the explorers in Boston. They then clubbed the last of their fortunes together and entered into an agreement with shipowners of Boston to take two ships to Hudson Bay on their own account in the following spring. But, while fishing to obtain provisions for the voyage, one of the vessels was wrecked, and, instead of sailing for the North Sea, Radisson and Groseilliers found themselves in Boston involved in a lawsuit for the value of the lost ship. When they emerged from this they were destitute.