Henry Hudson
As time passed, people became convinced that the land which Columbus had reached was not the shore of Asia as they had at first thought. For more than a hundred years, however, they thought that it was only a narrow body of land and that a passage, or many passages, would be found connecting the Atlantic with the ocean to the west and opening a direct route to India. It was not strange that they held this theory. The early explorers had reached the land at its narrowest part and beheld from the Isthmus of Panama the great western ocean. They did not know that the unexplored land broadened into great continents to the north and south.
As years passed, people became more and more anxious to find a short passage to India. The Turks controlled and blocked the overland passage to Asia. The ocean route by way of Africa was long and roundabout; for the Dutch this had also the disadvantage of making it necessary for their ships to pass and repass their enemy Spain and their trade-rival Portugal. The Dutch had, by long and desperate fighting, freed themselves from Spanish control and they had become the great sea-traders of the world.
In the beginning of the seventeenth century they had about three thousand vessels on the seas—more than all the rest of Europe combined. Most of these wereunder control of the Dutch East India Company, the largest and richest trading association in the world. They traveled the long ocean route south of Africa and brought back tea, coffee, spices, silks, and dye-woods from Asia. If only they could find a direct way to Asia how their profits would be increased! Early in the seventeenth century they heard of a sailor in England who had been to seek this direct route and they engaged him to make a voyage for them. This sailor was Henry Hudson.
When and where he was born and what were the events of his early life, we do not know. He was an Englishman by birth, a brave, energetic man by nature, a navigator by profession. We first hear of him in 1607, four days before he started on a voyage for some London merchants, to seek a northeast passage to India. He had a small vessel with only ten men, besides himself and his little son John who accompanied him on all his voyages. Hudson left London in April, 1607. He sailed along the coast of Greenland and was at last turned back by the ice barrier between Greenland and Spitzbergen. He made two interesting observations in these unknown seas—first, the changing color of the sea near Spitzbergen,—green, blue, dark, transparent,—second, the great number of whales which afterwards were the source of a profitable industry. Unable to carry out his purpose, he returned to England after an absence of four and a half months.
In April of the next year, 1608, the London merchants sent him out again to seek the northeast passage. He reached Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla and vainly endeavored to find a passage through the ice; in August he returned from his unsuccessful voyage. The London merchants now gave up the scheme—at least for the time.
But the Dutch heard of Hudson and asked him to make a voyage for them. He agreed to undertake for the Dutch East India Company a third voyage in search of a northeast passage to India. He set out in April, 1609, with two vessels, the Half Moon and the Good Hope, and a crew of about twenty men, some Dutch, some English. As before he sailed to the northeast, and as before his passage was blocked by ice. The Good Hope returned to Amsterdam, it is supposed, after a mutiny near Nova Zembla.
But Hudson and the Half Moon did not return. Having for the third time failed to find the northeast passage he sought, he resolved to look for one to the northwest. This was probably suggested to him by a letter and maps which his friend Captain John Smith had sent him. Smith expressed the opinion that north of the English colony, Virginia, there was a sea which led into the Western Ocean. Sailing past Greenland, Newfoundland, and Cape Cod, Hudson reached the coast of Virginia, and entered the Delaware River.
Turning northward he kept near the shore till heobserved an opening in the land, New York Bay, which he entered. This bay had been entered before. Verrazano, an Italian sailor in command of a French ship, had sailed in and out of it. French vessels had afterwards traded there, but had made no settlements.
Into this bay emptied a river which Hudson thought might connect the eastern and the western ocean; up this river he sailed about a hundred and fifty miles, as far as the present site of Albany; then he turned back, being convinced that the stream did not afford the passage he sought. He spent a month exploring this river, to which his name was given. The land was “pleasant with grass and flowers and goodly trees.” It was, he said, “good ground for corn and other garden herbs, with great store of goodly oaks.” The natives, he said, were a “sensible and warlike people.” He carried on trade with the Indians who brought tobacco, maize, beans, grapes, pumpkins, and skins, to exchange for knives, beads, and trinkets. There arose disputes and in a fight one white man and several Indians were killed.
On Hudson’s way back to Holland, he stopped in England to leave some English sailors; there he was detained, being ordered by the English government to “stay and serve his own country.” His charts and records were delivered to the Dutch who laid claim to the country he had found, calling the Delaware the “South River,” and the Hudson the “Great NorthRiver,” and the country between “New Netherlands.”
In April, 1610, Hudson sailed on his fourth and last voyage, to seek for English merchants the northwest passage. His little vessel the Discovery entered the strait and bay which bear his name, and he spent three months exploring the coast. In November the vessel was frozen in and the crew spent the winter on the northern sea, suffering from scarcity of food as well as from the severe climate. When summer came, Hudson wished to continue his search. He believed that men should, to use his own words, resolve “To achieve what they have undertaken, or else to give reason wherefore it will not be.”
His crew wished to return home and mutinied against him. One midsummer day, they seized him, his son, and seven loyal seamen, and set them adrift in a boat. The little craft floated off on the summer sea and nothing more was ever heard of it or of a soul on board. An old Dutch legend says that Hudson and his men came safe to shore and made their home in the fair land he had discovered. Years later, when thunder rumbled in the heights along the Hudson River, the old Dutch folks would shake their heads and say, “Hendrik Hudson and his crew are playing ninepins.”