September 12, 1575

England

Disappeared 1611

Atlantic Ocean

English navigator and explorer

Portrait: Henry Hudson. Reproduced by permission of Department of Library Service, American Museum of Natural History.

"[The chiefs] concluded it [the Half Moon] to be a large canoe or house, in which the great Mannitto (great or Supreme Being) himself was, and that he was probably coming to visit them."

Translation of traditional Delaware story by John Heckewelder.

Henry Hudson was an English explorer whose career was marked by both success and failure. Although he never managed to find either the Northeast Passage or the Northwest Passage to China, he did explore what came to be known as the Hudson River and the Hudson Bay (in present-day New York). His exploration of the Hudson River in 1609 led to the formation of the Dutch West India Company, a group which founded the colony of New Netherland (later New...