Henry Hudson

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For other people named Henry Hudson, see Henry Hudson (disambiguation).
Henry Hudson

This speculative portrait from Cyclopedia of Universal History is one of several used to represent Henry Hudson.[1]
Born c. 1560/70s
England
Occupation English Sea Commander, Author

Henry Hudson (born c. 1560s/70s) was an English sea explorer and navigator in the early 17th century.[2]

Hudson made two attempts on behalf of English merchants to find a prospective Northwest Passage to Cathay (today's China) via a route above the Arctic Circle. Hudson explored the region around modern New York metropolitan area while looking for a western route to Asia under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company.[3] He explored the river which eventually was named for him, and laid thereby the foundation for Dutch colonization of the region.

Hudson discovered a strait and immense bay on his final expedition while searching for the Northwest Passage. In 1611, after wintering on the shore of James Bay, Hudson wanted to press on to the west, but most of his crew mutinied. The mutineers cast Hudson, his son and 7 others adrift;[4] the Hudsons, and those cast off at their side, were never seen again.

Birth and early life

Details of Hudson's birth and early life are mostly unknown.[5] Some sources have identified Hudson as having been born in about 1565,[6] but others date his birth to around 1570.[7][8] Other historians assert even less certainty; Mancall, for instance, states that '[Hudson] was probably born in the 1560s,"[9] while Pennington gives no date at all.[5] Hudson is thought to have spent many years at sea, beginning as a cabin boy and gradually working his way up to ship's captain.

1607 and 1608 voyages

In 1607, the Muscovy Company of England hired Hudson to find a northerly route to the Pacific coast of Asia. The English were battling the Dutch for northwest routes. It was thought at the time that, because the sun shone for three months in the northern latitudes in the summer, the ice would melt and a ship could make it across the top of the world.

Hudson sailed on 1 May with a crew of ten men and a boy on the 80-ton Hopewell.[10] They reached the east coast of Greenland on 14 June, coasting it northward until the 22nd. Here they named a headland "Young's Cape", a "very high mount, like a round castle" near it "Mount of God's Mercy" and land at 73° N "Hold-with-Hope". After turning east, they sighted "Newland" (i.e Spitsbergen) on the 27th, near the mouth of the great bay Hudson later simply named the "Great Indraught" (Isfjorden). On 13 July Hudson and his crew thought they had sailed as far north as 80° 23' N,[11] but more likely only reached 79° 23' N. The following day they entered what Hudson later in the voyage named "Whales Bay" (Krossfjorden and Kongsfjorden), naming its northwestern point "Collins Cape" (Kapp Mitra) after his boatswain, William Collins. They sailed north the following two days. On the 16th they reached as far north as Hakluyt's Headland (which Thomas Edge claims Hudson named on this voyage) at 79° 49' N, thinking they saw the land continue to 82° N (Svalbard's northernmost point is 80° 49' N) when really it trended to the east. Encountering ice packed along the north coast, they were forced to turn back south. Hudson wanted to make his return "by the north of Greenland to Davis his Streights (Davis Strait), and so for Kingdom of England," but ice conditions would have made this impossible. The expedition returned to Tilbury Hope on the Thames on 15 September.

Many authors[12] have wrongly stated that it was the discovery of large numbers of whales in Spitsbergen waters by Hudson during this voyage that led to several nations sending whaling expeditions to the islands. While he did indeed report seeing many whales, it was not his reports that led to the trade, but that by Jonas Poole in 1610 which led to the establishment of English whaling and the voyages of Nicholas Woodcock and Willem Cornelisz. van Muyden in 1612 that led to the establishment of Dutch, French and Spanish whaling.[13]

In 1608, English merchants of the East India and Muscovy Companies again sent Hudson in the Hopewell on another attempt at a passage to the Indies, this time to the east around northern Russia. Leaving London on 22 April, the ship traveled almost 2,500 miles, making it to Novaya Zemlya well above the Arctic Circle in July, but even in the summer the ice was impenetrable and they turned back, arriving at Gravesend on 26 August.[14]

Hudson's alleged discovery of Jan Mayen

According to Thomas Edge, "William [sic] Hudson" in 1608 discovered an island he named "Hudson's Tutches" (Touches) at 71°,[15] the latitude of Jan Mayen. However, he only could have come across Jan Mayen in 1607 (if he had made an illogical detour) and made no mention of it in his journal.[16] There is also no cartographical proof of this supposed discovery.[17] Jonas Poole in 1611 and Robert Fotherby in 1615 both had possession of Hudson's journal while searching for his elusive Hold-with-Hope (on the east coast of Greenland), but neither had any knowledge of his (later) alleged discovery of Jan Mayen. The latter actually found Jan Mayen, thinking it a new discovery and naming it "Sir Thomas Smith's Island".[18][19]

1609 voyage

Map of Hudson's voyages to North America.
Replica of Henry Hudson's ship Halve Maen, donated in 1909 by the Dutch to the United States on the occasion of the 300-year anniversary of the discovery of what is now New York.

In 1609 Hudson was chosen by merchants of the Dutch East India Company in the Netherlands to find an easterly passage to Asia. He was told to sail through the Arctic Ocean north of Russia, into the Pacific and so to the Far East. Hudson departed Amsterdam on 4 April in command of the Dutch ship Halve Maen.[20] He could not complete the specified route because ice blocked the passage, as with all previous such voyages, and he turned the ship around in mid-May while somewhere east of Norway's North Cape. At that point, acting entirely outside his instructions, Hudson pointed the ship west to try to find a passage in that direction.[21]

Having heard rumors of a passage to the Pacific, by way of John Smith of Jamestown and Samuel de Champlain, Hudson and his crew decided to try to seek a westerly passage through North America. The Native Americans who gave the information to Smith and Champlain were likely referring to what are known today as the Great Lakes.

They reached the Grand Banks, south of Newfoundland, on 2 July, and in mid-July made landfall near what is now LaHave, Nova Scotia.[22] Here they encountered Native Americans who were accustomed to trading with the French; they were willing to trade beaver pelts, but apparently no trades occurred.[23] The ship stayed in the area about ten days, the crew replacing a broken mast and fishing for food. On the 25th a dozen men from the Halve Maen, using muskets and small cannon, went ashore and assaulted the village near their anchorage. They drove the people from the settlement and took their boat and other property (probably pelts and trade goods).[24]

On 4 August the ship was at Cape Cod, from which Hudson sailed south to the entrance of the Chesapeake Bay. Rather than entering the Chesapeake he explored the coast to the north, finding Delaware Bay but continuing on north. On 3 September he reached the estuary of the river that initially was called the "North River" or "Mauritius" and now carries his name. He was not the first to discover the estuary, though, as it had been known since the voyage of Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524. On 6 September 1609 John Colman of his crew was killed by Indians with an arrow to his neck.[25] Hudson sailed into the upper bay on 11 September,[26] and the following day began a journey up what is now known as the Hudson River.[27] Over the next ten days his ship ascended the river, reaching a point about where the present-day capital of Albany is located.[28]

On 23 September, Hudson decided to return to Europe.[29] He put in at Dartmouth on 7 November, and was detained by authorities who wanted access to his log. He managed to pass the log to the Dutch ambassador to England, who sent it, along with his report, to Amsterdam.[30]

While exploring the river, Hudson had traded with several native groups, mainly obtaining furs. His voyage was used to establish Dutch claims to the region and to the fur trade that prospered there when a trading post was established at Albany in 1614. New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island became the capital of New Netherland in 1625.

1610–1611 voyage

In 1610, Hudson managed to get backing for another voyage, this time under the English flag. The funding came from the Virginia Company and the British East India Company. At the helm of his new ship, the Discovery, he stayed to the north (some claim he deliberately stayed too far south on his Dutch-funded voyage), reaching Iceland on 11 May, the south of Greenland on 4 June, and then rounding the southern tip of Greenland.

A map of Hudson's fourth voyage

Excitement was very high due to the expectation that the ship had finally found the Northwest Passage through the continent. On 25 June, the explorers reached what is now the Hudson Strait at the northern tip of Labrador. Following the southern coast of the strait on 2 August, the ship entered Hudson Bay. Hudson spent the following months mapping and exploring its eastern shores, but he and his crew did not find a passage to Asia. In November, however, the ship became trapped in the ice in the James Bay, and the crew moved ashore for the winter.

John Collier's painting of Henry Hudson with his son and some crew members after a mutiny on his icebound ship. The boat was set adrift and never heard from again.

Mutiny

When the ice cleared in the spring of 1611, Hudson planned to use his Discovery to further explore Hudson Bay with the continuing goal of discovering the Passage; however, most of the members of his crew ardently desired to return home. Matters came to a head and much of the crew mutinied in June.

Descriptions of the successful mutiny are one-sided, because the only survivors who could tell their story were the mutineers and those who went along with the mutiny. Allegedly in the latter class was ship's navigator Abacuk Pricket, a survivor who kept a journal that was to become a key source for the narrative of the mutiny. According to Pricket, the leaders of the mutiny were Henry Greene and Robert Juet. Pricket's narrative tells how the mutineers set Hudson, his teenage son John, and seven crewmen—men who were either sick and infirm or loyal to Hudson—adrift from the Discovery in a small shallop, an open boat, effectively marooning them in Hudson Bay. The Pricket journal reports that the mutineers provided the castaways with clothing, powder and shot, some pikes, an iron pot, some meal, and other miscellaneous items.

After the mutiny, Captain Hudson's shallop broke out oars and tried to keep pace with the Discovery for some time. Pricket recalled that the mutineers finally tired of the David-Goliath pursuit and unfurled additional sails aboard the Discovery, enabling the larger vessel to leave the tiny open boat behind. Hudson and the other seven aboard the shallop were never seen again, and their fate is unknown.[4]

Pricket's journal and testimony have been severely criticized for bias, on two grounds. Firstly, prior to the mutiny the alleged leaders of the uprising, Greene and Juet, had been friends and loyal seamen of Captain Hudson. Secondly, Greene and Juet did not survive the return voyage to England. Pricket knew he and the other survivors of the mutiny would be tried in England for piracy, and it would have been in his interest, and the interest of the other survivors, to put together a narrative that would place the blame for the mutiny upon men who were no longer alive to defend themselves.

In any case, the Pricket narrative became the controlling story of the expedition's disastrous end. Only 8 of the 13 mutinous crewmen survived the return voyage to Europe. They were arrested in England, and some were indeed put on trial, but no punishment was ever imposed for the mutiny. One theory holds that the survivors were considered too valuable as sources of information for it to be wise to execute them, as they had traveled to the New World and could describe sailing routes and conditions.[31] Perhaps for this reason, they were charged with murder—of which they were acquitted—rather than mutiny, of which they most certainly would have been convicted and executed.

Legacy

The gulf or bay discovered by Hudson is twice the size of the Baltic Sea, and its many large estuaries afford access to otherwise landlocked parts of Western Canada and the Arctic. This allowed the Hudson's Bay Company to exploit a lucrative fur trade along its shores for more than two centuries, growing powerful enough to influence the history and present international boundaries of Western North America. Hudson Strait became the entrance to the Arctic for all ships engaged in the search for the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic side.

The Hudson River in New York and New Jersey, explored earlier by Hudson, is named after him, as are Hudson County, New Jersey, the Henry Hudson Bridge, and the town of Hudson, New York.

He, along with his marooned crewmates, appear as mythic characters in the famous story "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving. He also appears in the time-travel novel Torn by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ All the portraits used to represent Henry Hudson were drawn after his death. See Butts, Edward (2009). Henry Hudson:New World Voyager. Toronto:Dundurn Press. p. 17. See also Hunter, Douglas (2007). God's Mercies:Rivalry, Betrayal and the Dream of Discovery. Doubleday Canada. p. 12.
  2. ↑ Sandler, Corey (2007). Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession. Citadel Press. ISBN 978-0=8065-2739-0 Check |isbn= value (help) 
  3. ↑ Nieuwe Wereldt ofte Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien, uit veelerhande Schriften ende Aen-teekeningen van verscheyden Natien (Leiden, Bonaventure & Abraham Elseviers, 1625) p.83: "/in den jare 1609 sonden de bewindt-hebbers van de gheoctroyeerde Oost-Indischische compagnie het jacht de halve mane/ daer voor schipper ende koopman op roer Hendrick Hudson, om in 't noordt-oosten een door-gaat naer China te soecken[...]"("in the year 1609 the administrators of the East Indies Compagny sent the half moon under Hudson to seek a northeast passage to China[...]")
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Did Henry Hudson's crew murder him? Yahoo news Possible alternative link:Did Henry Hudson's crew murder him in the Arctic?, which draws on Mancall, Peter C. (2009), Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson, Basic Books
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Pennington, Piers (1979). The Great Explorers. New York: Facts on File. p. 90. 
  6. ↑ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/274681/Henry-Hudson Henry Hudson's entry from china Britannica
  7. ↑ Butts, Edward (2009). Henry Hudson:New World Voyager. Toronto: Dundurn Press. p. 15. 
  8. ↑ Sandler, Corey (2007). Henry Hudson: Dreams and Obsession. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp. p. 26. 
  9. ↑ Mancall, Peter (2009). The Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson. Basic Books. p. 43. 
  10. ↑ The following paragraph relies on Asher (1860), pp. 1–22; and Conway (1906), pp. 23–30.
  11. ↑ Observations made during this voyage were often wrong, sometimes greatly so. See Conway (1906).
  12. ↑ Among them are Sandler (2008), p. 407; Umbreit (2005), p. 1; Shorto (2004), p. 21; Mulvaney (2001), p. 38; Davis et al. (1997), p. 31; Francis (1990), p. 30; Rudmose-Brown (1920), p. 312; Chisholm (Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911), p. 942; among many others.
  13. ↑ See Poole's commission from the Muscovy Company in Purchas (1625), p. 24. For Woodcock see Conway (1906), p. 53, among others.
  14. ↑ Hunter (2009), pp. 19–20.
  15. ↑ Purchas (1625), p. 11.
  16. ↑ "The above relation by Thomas Edge is obviously incorrect. Hudson's Christian name is wrongly given, and the year in which he visited the north coast of Spitsbergen was 1607, not 1608. Moreover, Hudson himself has given an account of the voyage and makes absolutely no mention of Hudson's Tutches. It would have been hardly possible indeed for him to visit Jan Mayen on his way home from Bear Island to the Thames." Wordie (1922), p. 182.
  17. ↑ Hacquebord (2004), p. 229.
  18. ↑ "Having perused Hudsons Jounrall written by his owne hand... ", p. 88. For Fotherby's 1615 voyage see Purchas (1625), pp. 82–89.
  19. ↑ Louwrens Hacquebord, "The Jan Mayen Whaling Industry" in Jan Mayen Island in Scientific Focus, pp. 230–31, Stig Skreslet, editor, Springer Verlag 2004
  20. ↑ Hunter (2009), p. 11.
  21. ↑ Hunter (2009), pp. 56–7.
  22. ↑ Hunter (2009), pp. 92–4.
  23. ↑ Hunter (2009), p. 98, and Juet (1609), 19 July entry.
  24. ↑ Hunter (2009), pp. 102–105, and Juet (1609), 25 July entry.
  25. ↑ Roberts, Sam (4 September 2009). "New York's Coldest Case: A Murder 400 Years Old". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-09-04. 
  26. ↑ Nevius, Michelle and James, "New York's many 9/11 anniversaries: the Staten Island Peace Conference", Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City, 2008-09-08. Retrieved 2009-05-31.
  27. ↑ Juet (1609).
  28. ↑ Hunter (2009), pp. 230–5.
  29. ↑ Hunter (2009), p. 235.
  30. ↑ Shorto 2004, p. 31
  31. ↑ "Dictionary of Canadian Biography". Biographi.ca. 18 October 2007. Retrieved 2009-10-22. 

References

  • Asher, Georg Michael (1860). Henry Hudson the Navigator. Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, 27. ISBN 1-4021-9558-3. 
  • Conway, William Martin (1906). No Man's Land: A History of Spitsbergen from Its Discovery in 1596 to the Beginning of the Scientific Exploration of the Country. Cambridge, At the University Press. 
  • Hacquebord, Lawrens. (2004). The Jan Mayen Whaling Industry. Its Exploitation of the Greenland Right Whale and its Impact on the Marine Ecosystem. In: S. Skreslet (ed.), Jan Mayen in Scientific Focus. Amsterdam, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 229–238.
  • Juet, Robert (1609), Juet's Journal of Hudson's 1609 Voyage from the 1625 edition of Purchas His Pilgrimes and transcribed 2006 by Brea Barthel, "Juet's Journal of Hudson's 1609 Voyage" (PDF). Retrieved 2009-10-22.  .
  • Purchas, S. 1625. Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes: Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and others. Volumes XIII and XIV (Reprint 1906 J. Maclehose and sons).
  • Hunter, Douglas (2009). Half Moon: Henry Hudson and the voyage that redrew the map of the New World. Bloomsbury Press. ISBN 1-59691-680-X 
  • Shorto, Russell (2004). The Island at the Center of the World. Vintage Books. ISBN 1-4000-7867-9 
  • Wordie, J.M. (1922) "Jan Mayen Island", The Geographical Journal Vol 59 (3).
  • Mancall, Peter C. (2009), Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson, Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-00511-X & ISBN 978-0-465-00511-6

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