Christopher Middleton (late 17th century – 12 February, 1770) was an English naval officer and navigator. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 7 April 1737.
Middleton was appointed on 5 March 1741 to the command of the Royal Navy's sloop, HMS Furnace, which was refitted at Deptford Dockyard and re-rigged as a three-masted ship. In May 1741 he left England in the Furnace, accompanied by a smaller vessel, the purchased HMS Discovery under the command of Commander William Moor, and sailed to North America in search of a Northwest Passage to the East Indies. He spent the winter at the entrance of the Churchill River in Hudson Bay. He then proceeded as far north as Repulse Bay, but was prevented from going further by the ice. He returned to England in 1742, where he was presented with the Copley Medal by the Royal Society to whom he presented a paper on "The extraordinary degrees and surprising effects of Cold in Hudson's Bay".
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