henry hudson - the man, mystery, the mission

8/9/2019 Henry Hudson - The Man, Mystery, The Mission

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Henry Hudson: The Man,

mystery, the mission

Peter Mancall

Three of the most noteworthy bodies of water in NorthAmericathe Hudson River, Hudson Strait, and HudsonBaytake their names from the English explorer HenryHudson. No other explorer earned as much notice from


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mapmakers, not even Christopher Columbus. This raisesa significant question: was Hudson worthy of the honor?

Yet much of Hudsons life remains a mystery. He was

probably about forty years old when he entered thehistorical record in 1607 as the captain of an English shipcalled the Hopewell. He sailed from London in search of aquick route to the Spice Islands of the South Sea, themodern Pacific Ocean. After studying his maps herealized that the best course would take him across theNorth Pole and then into the Pacific. This was no foolsquest. Contemporary cartographers believed that the sunmelted the ice at the pole during the summer, whichmeant a ship could get through the region frozen the restof the year.

Not surprisingly, ice blocked Hudsons way and forcedhim to return home. But his determination to reach theEast Indies drove him to try again the next year, this timeaiming the Hopewell towards the Northeast Passage,which purportedly ran north of Russia. Again, ice blocked

his path so he sailed back to London. In 1609, the DutchEast India Company hired Hudson to make yet anothereffort to go through the Northeast Passage. When iceagain blocked the Halve Maen he followed a tip he hadreceived from Captain John Smith, who had learned fromthe Powhatans of a water route somewhere north of theChesapeake that cut through North America.

Hudson crossed the Atlantic and sailed along the coast

from the modern Maritime Provinces of Canada down tothe Chesapeake, before finally heading up the river thatnow bears his name, which seemed a possible opening tothe fabled channel. But he got no farther than modern-day Albany and decided to sail back to England. Hisexpedition of that year, currently being commemorated


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on its 400th anniversary, encouraged subsequent Dutchcolonization, which began in earnest a decade or so later.

In 1610 Hudson set off in the Discovery on another

journey for the East Indies, this time determined onmaking it through the Northwest Passage. He and hismen sailed through the body of water now named HudsonStrait and then into Hudson Bay, where they sailed as farsouth as they could and spent a brutal winter trapped byice in modern-day James Bay. When the ice finally thawedin June 1611, Hudsons crew mutinied. The rebelsbelieved that they had to get rid of Hudson because hiscommand of the Discovery put the entire expedition atrisk. His crime? According to the most detailed survivingreport, Hudson had insisted on distributing scanty foodsupplies among all the crew, even those who had becomeill or injured and hence were less likely to survive. Themutineers also claimed that their captain had hiddenrations for his favorites. For these infractions themutineers put Hudson, his seventeen-year old son, andseven others loyal to the captain on a small boat (known

as a shallop) and set them adrift. No one reported seeingthem again.

In sum, Hudsons naval record consisted of the commandof four voyages that never reached their intendeddestination and presumptive execution at the hands ofmen who believed he was not merely incompetent butdangerous. This hardly seems the sort of career thatwould inspire cartographers to spread his name soprominently around the map of North America. Themutineers and the mapmakers rendered different

judgments of Hudson. Four hundred years after themutiny, the time seems ripe for reassessment.


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Long-distance travel was almost unimaginably dangerousin the early modern era. The Portuguese lost so manyships to storms that an entire literary genre sprang up tocommemorate the victims. Even when they made land in

exotic environments, captains and crews faced disease-bearing microbes that often devastated them. Sir FrancisDrake, who had sailed around the world from 1577 to1580, later succumbed to dysentery near Puerto Rico.Explorers were also often unprepared to negotiate withlocal peoples or unable to understand the nature ofexisting regional tensions. Europeans gave credit toFerdinand Magellan for circumnavigating the globe, but

he died in a conflict in Cebu in the Philippines long beforehis ship made it back to the Atlantic.

Hudson understood what it took to complete a journey. The single most expensive item on a voyage ofexploration was the ship itself, and every vessel thatHudson commanded returned safely. Further, Hudsontwice sailed into the treacherous waters of the NorthAtlantic without losing a single member of his crew. One

of his men, felled by a Delaware arrow, died on his thirdexpeditionthough the mixed English-Dutch crewapparently killed quite a few Native Americans. Duringthe long winter of his fourth voyage in 1610-1611 onlyone man died despite frigid conditions that none of thecrew could have expected. If keeping a crew alive is onemeasure of a captains ability, then Hudson had anexemplary record.

Whats more, although Hudson never found the short-cutto East Indian riches, his journeys generated invaluableinformation about the North Atlantic. Six accounts,including three purportedly written by Hudson, detailedthe dangers posed by icebergs, the location of marine


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resources such as whales and seals, and expert adviceabout what it would take to survive in northern waters.His backers saw the merit in making these narrativeswidely available. In 1625 the minister Samuel Purchas

published them for the general benefit of the Englishreading public.

Henry Hudson died because some of the men hecommanded and trusted decided that he was unfit to betheir captain. They accused him of endangering theirlives, but his real crime was that he refused to give up hissearch for the East Indies when his men wanted to gohome. The mutineers were willing to sacrifice the crewsweakest members. Hudson was not. Scholars can debatethe significance of his four journeys, but history should bekinder toward him than those who put him into theshallop.

Peter Mancall is professor of History and Anthropology,University of Southern California, director of the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, and author of

Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson(Basic Books, 2009), on whichthis article is based. Hecan be found atHistory Network News, from where thisarticle was adapted.
http://hnn.us/http://hnn.us/

henry hudson - the man, mystery, the mission

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