Hero Tales from History — Henry Hudson, The Man Who Put Himself on the Map
HENRY HUDSON, THE MAN WHO PUT HIMSELF ON THE MAP
Just as Magellan set out to discover a way through America from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, so Henry Hudson determined to find a northwest passage from ocean to ocean.
The reason for wishing to cross in the north from one ocean to the other was to save going “round the Horn,” as sailors call the long voyage around Cape Horn, the southern point of South America.
We now know that there is no northwest passage;
at least, if there is such a waterway it is so near the North Pole that it is always frozen up.
But Henry Hudson, like all sailors in his time, thought that it would be a simple matter to sail through the open polar sea and pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific north of North America.
In 1607 this bold British navigator undertook a voyage in the employ, as he wrote in his journal, of “certain worshipful Merchants of London.
” The object of this voyage was to explore the coast of Greenland and, as he explained, “for to discover a passage by the North Pole to Japan and China.
” His crew numbered only twelve persons, including one boy, his own son John.
After sailing about for five months, suffering great hardships, Hudson returned to London without discovering that northern passage.
The next year he started out again, this time sailing north-east along the coast of Norway, and returned after four months without finding anything but hardships.
Hudson’s third voyage was made in the employ of the Dutch East India Company.
He sailed from Amsterdam, Holland, with a crew of twenty men and his young son, on the _Half Moon_.
He started out a second time for a north-east passage, but he found so many difficulties that he turned his prow westward again, determined to discover the way past North America.
About the 4th of July, 1609, he came to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, where he saw a fleet of Frenchmen fishing for cod.
After catching over a hundred of these fish for themselves, the crew of the _Half Moon_ proceeded to the southwest, as Hudson had heard from his friend, Captain John Smith, that there was an open way to the Pacific south of Virginia.
After wandering down the coast and back, the _Half Moon_ entered a broad bay and anchored beside an island which the natives called Manhattan.
Hudson took possession of this region in the name of his Dutch employers and named it New Netherland.
Here he traded with the Indians and sailed a little way up the beautiful river which now bears his name.
“Here,” one of his men wrote in the journal, “the land grew very high and mountainous.
” Hudson and his crew were afraid of the Indians.
They captured two red men and tried to hold them as prisoners.
They thought that the other Indians would treat the white men well for fear that Hudson would kill these two prisoners.
But they made their escape through a porthole and swam to the shore.
As the _Half Moon_ got under way again, the two Indians and their friends stood on the bank, war-whooping, brandishing tomahawks, and calling for vengeance.
The _Half Moon_ sailed on upstream, and towards night came to anchor near what is now Catskill Landing.
“There,” as it is written in the journal of the voyage, “we found very loving people and very old men, where we were well used.
Our boat went to fish and caught great store of very good fish.
” The next morning the fishing was not so good, “the [Illustration: THE DISCOVERY OF THE HUDSON RIVER _From the painting by Warren Sheppard © 1895, by The Woolfall Co. _] savages having been there in their canoes all night.
” In the two days following the ship went only five miles farther up the river.
Hudson was kindly received by an old chief who gave him the best cheer he could.
The natives came flocking on board the ship, bringing grapes, pumpkins, and beaver and otter skins, which they traded with the sailors for hatchets, knives, beads, and trinkets.
The ship’s “log” states that they gave some of the savages brandy to drink.
One of these men fell sound asleep, to the astonishment of the others, who feared he had been poisoned.
They took to their canoes and paddled for shore.
After a long powwow a few of the Indians returned with a quantity of beads.
They wanted to pay the white men to lift the spell which they had put upon the sleeping Indian.
The next day the intoxicated Indian was walking about, well and happy, after his first taste of “firewater.
” This made his friends believe in the white men again, and the journal goes on to say: “So, at three of the clock in the afternoon they came aboard, and brought tobacco and more beads, and gave them to our master; and made an oration, and showed him all the country round about.
Then they sent one of their company on land, who presently returned, and brought a great platter full of venison dressed by themselves, and they caused him to eat with them.
Then they made him reverence and departed, all save the old men that lay aboard.
” Hudson found that it would not be safe to take the ship beyond the site of the present city of Albany; so the _Half Moon’s_ prow was turned down stream.
On the way back the sailors were met by the two escaped prisoners with quite a company of savages.
More than a hundred braves surrounded the ship.
One climbed up the rudder and others swarmed over the sides.
The crew fired upon them with their muskets, and with the cannon, blew holes in their canoes.
The “thunder and lightning” from the guns frightened the Indians so that they fled to the shore and took to the woods.
Hudson himself had had enough.
The _Half Moon_ lifted its anchor and sailed away from the river whose name is Henry Hudson’s most glorious monument.
Stopping in England on his way to Holland, he was engaged by the London Company to make another voyage in their behalf the following year.
This time the ship he commanded was the _Discovery_.
The course was past Iceland, around the southern part of Greenland, sighting Desolation Island, which he charted as in the northern part of Davis Strait.
Through the strait which now bears his name he entered the sea known for all time as Hudson Bay.
This crew was a bad set of men.
One young fellow whom Captain Hudson had picked up and befriended in London proved the worst of the gang.
They did not face their hardships and sufferings with real courage.
When starvation stared them in the face, every man looked out for himself.
They hoarded food, and robbed and fought one another like wild beasts.
At last they turned against Hudson, saying that he had brought them there to starve.
The young man to whom Hudson had been kindest of all bound his master.
The rest tied up the six men who were most loyal to their chief, and Hudson’s son.
These eight men were put bound into the ship’s boat.
Then the crew hoisted the sail of the _Discovery_.
They towed the little boat for a time, as if they were loath to do the dastardly deed that they had planned.
But when they reached the open sea they cut the rope, and the little boat containing Henry Hudson and his son was never again seen by white men.
The ungrateful young man met a fate he richly deserved.
In a fight with Arctic savages he was killed, and several of the rest were mortally wounded.
Still others died of want before the few remaining deserters were picked up, starving, by a passing vessel.
Their names are forgotten, and they are only remembered at all because of their wicked treachery.
But the map of North America is a fitting monument to the heroic but ill-fated adventurer and discoverer, Henry Hudson.
