Company had instructed him to "obtain as much knowledge of the lands as can be done without any considerable loss of time, and if it is possible, return immediately in order to make a faithfu l report and relation of the voyage to the Directors." And when he should have either made it to his original destination or returned to Amsterdam, he instead was making his way up the North American coastline, about to tack towards the northwest, into New York harbor. Hudson fo llowed the river up the wesr side of Manhattan in hopes that it might lead across the continent. He and his crew encountered some of the thousands ofNative Anlericans who lived on both sides of the river that the Mahicans called "Mahicanituck." As the H alve Maen approached the headwaters of the ri ver, it became clear that this was another dead end and they turned back. Upon reaching the ocean, they set a course across the Atlantic. Hudson, already in defiance of his contract, sailed for England , from where he sent a report back to his employers in Amsterdam. Hudson never made it back to the Netherlands; he was arrested for sailing "to the detriment of his country." 111e Durch members of his crew sail ed Halve Maen back to Amsterdam and delivered Hudson's logbooks and charts to their employers. Hudson was released and immediately began preparing for a return voyage to North America, hoping to find the entrance to the Northwest Passage furilier north. By then, both the Durch and the English were eager to send subsequent expeditions west. Based on Hudson's 1609 voyage, the Dutch laid claim to the territory where he had explored, an area stretching from the Delmarva Peninsula (Delaware) to Buzzards Bay (Massachusetts). New Netherland and the Dutch trading post New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island only stayed under Dutch rule until 1664 when the English ousted them, but their cultural influences remain. As for Hudson, a man un interested in the new territory he had only recently explored, he was intent on pursuing his original quest to find a new route to the Pacific. In April ofl6 10, Hudson put to sea in Discovery, the little ship that had brought the original Jamestown settlers to America in 1607. In late Jun e, D iscovery reached the strait leading to the large bay now named for its captain. 111e size of the bay looked promising, and
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Hudson headed south along the eastern side of the bay. As autumn turned into winter, Discovery was cruisi ng James Bay (at the lower end of Hudson Bay) and became trapped in the ice. Hudson and his crew, including his ten-year-old son John , spent the wi nter frozen in . They were ill-prepared for this part of the expedition and suffered considerably from scurvy and malnutrition. Tensions mounted, and when they we re finally able to get underway again the following spring, the crew turned on their captain . On 22June 16 11 , Henry Hudson , his son John , and seven othercrewmembers, either loyal co their captain or sickly-or both, were cast adrift in the ship's shallop. No one would see them again. The Discovery and her mutinous crew sailed for England, but not all aboard would make it home: some of thecrewwerekilledin a bloody encounter with the Inuit at Digge's Island; others died at sea in the Atlantic.
Hudson never came close ro reaching his goal of finding a navigable sea route ro the Indies either through No rth America or northeast across the top of Russia, but his discoveries had lasting consequences. H e is co nsidered the father of the English whaling industry in the seventeenth century for his discovery of pods of whales off Spitsbergen Island; his unauthorized cruise along the Eas tern seaboard allowed the Ne therlands to lay cl aim to terrirory in North America; and his voyages extended the scope of knowledge of polar regions, both to the east and west, that others built upon in subsequent voyages. The Dutch established the fur trade in New Netherland and founded New Amsterdam as its major trading post in 1625. In 1664, the Dutch ceded New Netherland to England. J, Deirdre O'Regan is the editor of Sea History.
The Last Voyage of Henry Hudson by john Collier (1850-1934) No trace ofHudson and the others with him who were set adrift in a small shallop in the Arctic has ever been found, but many have imagined the gruesome end they must have come to in the .frigid north. With them was Hudson's ten-year-old son, john.
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