Born c. 1565,
England
Disappeared 1611,
Atlantic Ocean
Nothing is known about the early life and career of Henry Hudson. He undertook his first recorded voyage in 1607, when he was hired by the Muscovy Company of England to search for the Northeast Passage, a sea route around the northern coast of Siberia to China. Hudson explored the coast of the Svalbard Islands in the Arctic Ocean and sighted Jan Mayen Island east of Greenland, but he did not find a sea passage to China. In 1608 he ventured out to try again, but when his ship encountered heavy ice, he was forced to turn back without making any new discoveries.
In 1609 Hudson was hired by the Dutch East India Company to look for the Northeast Passage once again. He set out with the ship Half Moon and a mixed crew of English and Dutch sailors. Beyond the North Cape, located off the northern coast of Norway in the Arctic Ocean, the ship ran into heavy ice, and Hudson’s crew refused to go any farther. Instead of returning to Holland, however, Hudson decided to try to find the Northwest Passage to Asia. He turned the Half Moon west, heading for the coast of North America. His friend John Smith (see entry), the English explorer who had colonized Virginia, may have given Hudson this idea when he reportedly mentioned a large bay that might lead to a Northwest Passage.
Hudson and his crew reached the coast of Nova Scotia in July 1609, traveling as far as Chesapeake Bay before turning north to explore Delaware Bay. Continuing north, Hudson and his crew reached Sandy Hook, a peninsula at the entrance to New York Harbor, on September 12, 1609. The Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano (see entry) had already discovered the entrance to the harbor in 1524 but had not gone inland. Hudson sailed up the wide river that now bears his name to the site of present-day Albany; some of his crew members then rowed a boat even farther north.
During his voyage up and down the river, Hudson noted the richness of the land and recognized the opportunity for a prosperous fur trade. (His report inspired the Dutch to form a new company, The Dutch West India Company, which founded the colony of New Netherland, later New York, along the Hudson and Delaware rivers in 1614.) Hudson and his party had a few unfriendly encounters with Native Americans along the way. During a particularly violent skirmish, one of his crew members was killed by an arrow through the throat. Relations improved, however, when Hudson began trading European goods for food. Before heading back across the Atlantic, the Half Moon stayed for several days in New York Harbor on what Hudson described as “that side of the river that is called Manna-hata”—a Native American word for the island now called Manhattan.
On its return to Europe, the Half Moon stopped in the English port of Dartmouth on November 7, 1609. The authorities took Hudson and all the English crew members off the ship, forbidding them to work for a foreign country again. Hudson would not be discouraged, however, and he soon interested a group of English investors in supporting an expedition to renew the search for the Northwest Passage. This time he planned to explore farther north than on his previous voyage.
Hudson set sail for North America on April 17, 1610, in the ship Discovery. Almost immediately there were signs of trouble among the crew members, and Hudson apparently could not control the men. Nonetheless, they reached North America, and in June they sighted Resolution Island, which separates Davis Strait from what is now called Hudson Strait in northeastern Canada. The strait had already been discovered by Martin Frobisher, the English navigator, in 1578, but Hudson was the first to sail through it—a voyage that took six weeks.
Hudson and his crew then rounded Cape Wolstenholme, named after one of the backers of the voyage, and entered Hudson Bay. At this point Hudson believed he had sailed from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He soon recognized his mistake when the Discovery turned south into what is now known as James Bay, the southern extension of Hudson Bay, and he found they were landlocked.
By this time it was October and the bay was beginning to freeze, so the Englishmen were forced to spend the winter there. Because of Hudson’s lack of foresight, he and his crew did not have enough food and other necessities. Although they had made contact with nearby Native Americans, efforts at trading with them had failed. Everyone aboard the Discovery suffered through a very difficult winter, and there was frequent fighting among the crew members.
On June 12, 1611, the ice had melted enough for the Discovery to sail toward home. When the ship reached Charlton Island in the southern part of James Bay on June 23, the crew mutinied against Hudson. The following morning they put Hudson, his 19-year-old son, John, and six of the weaker crew members on a small boat and set them adrift. Hudson and his party were never seen or heard from again.
The Discovery continued north through Hudson Bay, piloted by Robert Bylot, and anchored at Digges Island at the entrance to Hudson Bay. During a battle with a party of Inuit, the ringleader of the mutiny, Henry Greene, and several other crewmen were killed. The ship finally landed in southern Ireland, where the crew was rescued and taken to London; only eight men survived the voyage back across the Atlantic. No one was ever convicted of any charges connected with the mutiny or with the banishment of Hudson, his son, and the other crew members.
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