PART I A Brief Life of Henry Hudson CHAPTERS : I , II , III , IV , V , VI , VII , VIII , IX , X , XI , XII , XIII , XIV PART II Newly-discovered Documents ILLUSTRATIONS : Frontispiece , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10...

It is with great pleasure that I include in this volume contemporary Hudson documents which have remained neglected for three centuries, and here are published for the first time. As I explain more fully elsewhere, their discovery is due to the painstaking research of Mr. R.G. Marsden, M.A. My humble share in the matter has been to recognize the importance of Mr. Marsden's discovery; and to direct the particular search in the Record Office, in London, that has resulted in their present reproduct

letter I F ever a compelling Fate set its grip upon a man and drove him to an accomplishment beside his purpose and outside his thought, it was when Henry Hudson—having headed his ship upon an ordered course northeastward—directly traversed his orders by fetching that compass to the southwestward which ended by bringing him into what now is Hudson's River, and which led on quickly to the founding of what now is New York. Indeed, the late Thomas Aquinas, and the later Calvin, could have made out

Because of his full accomplishment of what others essayed and only partially accomplished, Hudson's name is the best known—excepting only that of Columbus—of all the names of explorers by land and sea. From Purchas's time downward it has headed the list of Arctic discoverers; in every history of America it has a leading place; on every map of North America it thrice is written large; here in New York, which owes its founding to his exploring voyage, it is uttered—as we refer to the river, the co

"Anno, 1607, Aprill the nineteenth, at Saint Ethelburge, in Bishops Gate street, did communicate with the rest of the parishioners, these persons, seamen, purposing to goe to sea foure days after, for to discover a passage by the North Pole to Japan and China. First, Henry Hudson, master. Secondly, William Colines, his mate. Thirdly, James Young. Fourthly, John Colman. Fiftly, John Cooke. Sixtly, James Beubery. Seventhly, James Skrutton. Eightly, John Pleyce. Ninthly, Thomas Barter. Tenthly, Ric

It is Hudson's third voyage—the one that brought him into our own river, and that led on directly to the founding of our own city—that has the deepest interest to us of New York. He made it in the service of the Dutch East India Company: but how he came to enter that service is one of the unsolved problems in his career. In itself, there was nothing out of the common in those days in an English shipmaster going captain in a Dutch vessel. But Hudson—by General Read's showing—was so strongly backe

Mr. Henry C. Murphy—to whose searchings in the archives of Holland we owe so much—found at The Hague a manuscript history of the East India Company, written by P. van Dam in the seventeenth century, in which a copy of Hudson's contract with the Company is preserved. The contract reads as follows: "On this eighth of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and nine, the Directors of the East India Company of the Chamber of Amsterdam of the ten years reckoning of the one part, and

Hudson sailed from the Texel in the "Half Moon" (possibly accompanied by a small vessel, the "Good Hope," that did not pursue the voyage) on March 27-April 6, 1609; and for more than a month—until he had doubled the North Cape and was well on toward Nova Zembla—went duly on his way. Then came the mutiny that made him change, or that gave him an excuse for changing, his ordered course. The log that has been preserved of this voyage was kept by Robert Juet; who was Hudson's mate on his second voya

As the direct result of breaking his orders, Hudson was the discoverer of our river—to which, therefore, his name properly has been given—and also was the first navigator by whom our harbor effectively was found. I use advisedly these precisely differentiating terms. On the distinctions which they make rests Hudson's claim to take practical precedence of Verrazano and of Gomez, who sailed in past Sandy Hook nearly a hundred years ahead of him; and of those shadowy nameless shipmen who in the int

From Juet's log I make the following extracts, telling of the "Half Moon's" approach to Sandy Hook and of her passage into the Lower Bay: "The first of September, faire weather, the wind variable betweene east and sooth; we steered away north north west. At noone we found our height [a little north of Cape May] to bee 39 degrees 3 minutes.... The second, in the morning close weather, the winde at south in the morning. From twelve untill two of the clocke we steered north north west, and had soun

What happened to Hudson when he reached Dartmouth has been recorded; and, broadly, why it happened. Hessel Gerritz wrote that "he ... returned safely to England, where he was accused of having undertaken a voyage to the detriment of his own country." Van Meteren wrote: "A long time elapsed, through contrary winds, before the Company could be informed of the arrival of the ship [the "Half Moon"] in England. Then they ordered the ship and crew to return [to Holland] as soon as possible. But when t

In the ruling of that, his last, adventure all of Hudson's malign stars seem to have been in the ascendant. His evil genius, Juet, again sailed with him as mate; and out of sheer good-will, apparently, he took along with him in the "Discovery" another villainous personage, one Henry Greene—who showed his gratitude for benefits conferred by joining eagerly with Juet in the mutiny that resulted in the murder of their common benefactor. Hudson, therefore, started on that dismal voyage with two fire

Nerves go to pieces in the Arctic. Captain Back, who commanded the "Terror" on her first northern voyage (1836), has told how there comes, as the icy night drags on, "a weariness of heart, a blank feeling, which gets the better of the whole man"; and Colonel Brainard, of the Greely expedition, wrote: "Take any set of men, however carefully selected, and let them be thrown as intimately together as are the members of an exploring expedition—hearing the same voices, seeing the same faces, day afte

The end came in the spring-time. Through the winter the party had "such store of fowle," and later had for a while so good a supply of fish, that starvation was staved off. When the ice broke up, about the middle of June, Hudson sailed from his winter quarters and went out a little way into Hudson's Bay. There they were caught and held in the floating ice—with their stores almost exhausted, and with no more fowl nor fish to be had. Then the nip of hunger came; and with it came openly the mutiny

A month later, July 28, a halt was made in the mouth of Hudson's Strait to search for "fowle" for food on the homeward voyage. There "savages" were encountered, seemingly of so friendly a nature that on the day following the first meeting with them a boat's crew—of which Prickett was one—went ashore unarmed. Then came a sudden attack. Prickett himself was set upon in the boat—of which, "being lame," he had been left keeper—by a savage whom he managed to kill. What happened to the others he thus

Hudson has no cause to quarrel with the rating that has been fixed for him in the eternal balances. All that he lost (or seemed to lose) in life has been more than made good to him in the flowing of the years since he fought out with Fate his last losing round. In his River and Strait and Bay he has such monuments set up before the whole world as have been awarded to only one other navigator. And they are his justly. Before his time, those great waterways, and that great inland sea, were mere ha

In an article entitled "English Ships in the Time of James I.," by R.G. Marsden, M.A., in Volume XIX of the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, I came upon this entry: "'Discovery' (or 'Hopewell,' or 'Good Hope') Hudson's ship on his last voyage; Baffin also sailed in her." A list of references to manuscript records followed; and one of the entries, relating to the High Court of Admiralty, read: "Exam. 42. 25 Jan. 1611. trial of some of the crew for the murder of Hudson." As I have sta

(24 October 1611) The 9 men turned out of the ship: Henry Hudson, master. John Hudson, his son. Arnold Ladley. John King, quarter master. Michael Butt, married. Thomas Woodhoase, a mathematician, put away in great distress. Adame Moore. Philip Staff, carpenter. Syracke Fanner, married. John Williams, died on 9 October. —Ivet [Juet], died coming home. Slain: Henry Greene. William Wilson. John Thomas. Michell Peerce. Men that came home: Robart Billet, master. Abecocke Prickett, a land man put in b