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Hudson,
HENRY, navigator; born about the middle of the sixteenth
century; was first employed by English merchants, in 1607, to search
for a northeastern passage to India. He sailed from Gravesend on May
1, 1607, in a small vessel manned by only ten men and a boy-the
latter his son. In lat. 80° N., on the eastern coast of Greenland,
he was stopped by the ice-pack. He fought the ice-floes and storms
for many weeks, and then returned to England in September, bearing
only the fruit of the discovery of the island of Spitzbergen.
Neither he nor his employers were disheartened, and late in April,
1608, he sailed again, expecting to make a passage between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla. Again he was compelled by the ice to
turn back. His employers were now discouraged, and Hudson went over
to Holland and offered his services to the
Dutch East India Company,
and they were accepted. On April 6, 1609, he sailed from Amsterdam
in the Half Moon, a stanch vessel of 90 tons, and steered for Nova Zembla. Again the ice-barrier forbade his entrance to the polar
seas. Determined not to return fruitless to Amsterdam, he sailed
around the southern shores of Greenland, into the beaten track of
searchers after a northwest passage. Again he was repulsed by the
ice. Sailing southward, he discovered the American continent off the
coast of Maine, and in Casco Bay he repaired his storm-shattered
vessel. He then sailed southward as far as the Cape of
Virginia, touching at Cape
Cod on the way. Returning, he discovered Delaware Bay, and early in
September he entered Raritan Bay, south of Staten Island, and
afterwards entered the (present) harbor of
New York. Treating the
Indians unkindly, they were hostile, and one of his seamen was
killed by them, who attacked a boat's crew in canoes. From the north
flowed a large river into New York Bay. Believing it would afford a
northwest passage, he sailed up the stream, and was not undeceived
until he met fresh water in the Highlands. He kept on in his ship as
far as the site of Albany, and in small boats several miles farther.
Returning to the sea, he followed the coast southward as far as
Chesapeake Bay, and then returned to England and told the story of
his discoveries. The unworthy monarch on England's throne, jealous
of the advantage which the Dutch might derive from Hudson's
discoveries, detained him as an English subject; but the navigator
outwitted his sovereign, for he had sent an account of his voyage to
his Amsterdam employers by a trusty hand.

Henry Hudson Cut
Adrift
In 1610 he sailed from England on his fourth voyage, this time in
the northwest. He discovered the bay that bears his name (HUDSON
BAY) in the far north of the western hemisphere, and intended to
winter there; but a majority of his crew became mutinous and
compelled him to sail homeward. On the way his son and seven of his
men who had remained faithful to him were seized by the mutineers,
and, with the commander, were placed in an open shallop and
abandoned on the icy sea, where, of course, they soon perished. The
names of the wretched passengers in that little vessel, left to
perish, were Henry Hudson, John Hudson, Arnold Ludlow, Shadrach
Fanna, Philip Staffe, Thomas Woodhouse, Adam Moore, Henry King, and
Michael Bute. The compassionate carpenter of the ship furnished them
with a fowling-piece, some powder and shot, some meal and an iron
pot to cook it in, and a few other things. They were towed by the
ship out of the ice-floes to the open sea, and then cut adrift.
The fate of the castaways was revealed by one of the mutineers.
England sent an expedition in search of them, but no trace could be
found.
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