Read Ebook: Henry Hudson: A Brief Statement of His Aims and His Achievements by Janvier Thomas A Thomas Allibone

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But the starting point of this geographical error is immaterial. The important fact is that Hudson entertained it: and so was led to offer for first choice to his mutinous crew that they should "go to the coast of America in the latitude of forty degrees." His readiness with that proposition, when the chance to make it came, confirms my belief that his own desire was to sail westward, and that he made the most of his opportunity. And the essential point, after all, is not whether the mutiny forced him to change, or merely gave him an excuse for changing, his ordered course: it is that he was equal to the emergency when the mutiny came, and so controlled it that--instead of going back, defeated of his purpose, to Holland--he deliberately took the risk of personal loss that attended breaking his contract and traversing his orders, and continued on new lines his exploring voyage. It is indicative of Hudson's character that he met that cast of fate against him most resolutely; and most resolutely played up to it with a strong hand.

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 intervening time, until his coming, may have made our harbor one of their stations--for refitting and watering--on their voyages from and to Portugal and Spain.

The exploring work of John and of Sebastian Cabot, who sailed along our coast, but who missed our harbor, does not come within my range: save to note that Sebastian Cabot pretty certainly was one of the several navigators, including Frobisher and Davis, who entered Hudson's Strait before Hudson's time.

Lacking the full report that Gomez presumably made of his voyage, and lacking the original of his chart, it is impossible to decide whether he did or did not pass through the Narrows and enter the Upper Bay. Doctor Asher holds that he did make that passage; and adds: "It is certain that the later Spanish seamen who followed in his track in after years were familiar with the river, and called it the Rio de Gamas." In support of this strong assertion he cites the still-extant "Rutters," or "Routiers," of the period--the ocean guide-books showing the distances from place to place, marking convenient stations for watering and refitting, and describing the entrances to rivers and to harbors--"from which we learn," he declares, "that the Rio de Gamas, the name then regularly applied to the Hudson on the charts of the time, was one of these stages between New Foundland and the colonies of Central America."

In regard to Verrazano--admitting his report to be genuine--the fact that he did pass through the Narrows into the Upper Bay is not open to dispute. He therefore must have seen--as, a little later, Gomez may have seen--the true mouth of Hudson's river eighty-five years before Hudson, by actual exploration of it, made himself its discoverer. But Verrazano, by his own showing, came but a little way into the Upper Bay--which he called a lake--and he made no exploration of a practical sort of the harbor that he had found.

It is but simple justice to Verrazano and to Gomez to put on record here, along with the story of Hudson's effective discovery, the story of their ineffective finding. Fate was against them as distinctly as it was with Hudson. They came under adverse conditions, and they came too soon. Back of the explorer in the French service there was not an alert power eager for colonial expansion. Back of the explorer in the Spanish service there was a power so busied with colonial expansion on a huge scale--in that very year, 1524, Cortes was completing his conquest of Mexico, and Pizarro was beginning his conquest of Peru--that a farther enlargement of the colonization contract was impossible.

Therefore we may fall back upon the assured fact--in which I see again the touch of fatalism--that not until Hudson came at the right moment, and at the right moment gave an accurate account of his explorations to a power that was ready immediately to colonize the land that he had found, were our port and our river, notwithstanding their earlier technical discovery, truly discovered to the world. As for the river, it assuredly is Hudson's very own.

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 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 sounding one and twentie fathoms; and in running one glasse we had but sixteene fathoms, then seventeene, and so shoalder and shoalder untill it came to twelve fathoms. We saw a great fire but could not see the land. Then we came to ten fathoms, whereupon we brought our tacks aboord, and stood to the eastward east south east, foure glasses. Then the sunne arose, and we steered away north againe, and saw the land from the west by north to the north west by north, all like broken islands, and our soundings were eleven and ten fathoms. Then we looft in for the shoare, and faire by the shoare we had seven fathoms. The course along the land we found to be north east by north. From the land which we had first sight of, untill we came to a great lake of water as we could judge it to be, being drowned land, which made it to rise like islands, which was in length ten leagues. The mouth of that land hath many shoalds, and the sea breaketh on them as it is cast out of the mouth of it. And from that lake or bay the land lyeth north by east, and we had a great streame out of the bay; and from thence our sounding was ten fathoms two leagues from the land. At five of the clocke we anchored, being little winde, and rode in eight fathoms water.... This night I found the land to hall the compasse 8 degrees. For to the northward off us we saw high hils . For the day before we found not above two degrees of variation. This is a very good land to fall with, and a pleasant land to see.

"The third, the morning mystie, untill ten of the clocke. Then it cleered, and the wind came to the south south east, so wee weighed and stood to the northward. The land is very pleasant and high, and bold to fall withal. At three of the clocke in the after noone, we came to three great rivers . So we stood along to the northermost , thinking to have gone into it, but we found it to have a very shoald barre before it, for we had but ten foot water. Then we cast about to the southward, and found two fathoms, three fathoms, and three and a quarter, till we came to the souther side of them; then we had five and sixe fathoms, and anchored. So wee sent in our boate to sound, and they found no lesse water than foure, five, sixe, and seven fathoms, and returned in an houre and a halfe. So we weighed and went in, and rode in five fathoms, oze ground, and saw many salmons, and mullets, and rayes, very great. The height is 40 degrees 30 minutes."

That is the authoritative account of Hudson's great finding. I have quoted it in full partly because of the thrilling interest that it has for us; but more to show that the record of his explorations--the "Half Moon's" log being written throughout with the same definiteness and accuracy--gave what neither Gomez nor Verrazano gave: clear directions for finding with certainty the haven that he, and those earlier navigators, had found by chance. On that fact, and on the other fact that his directions promptly were utilized, rests his claim to be the practical discoverer of the harbor of New York.

For more than a week the "Half Moon" lay in the Lower Bay and in the Narrows. Then, on the eleventh of September, she passed fairly beyond Staten Island and came out into the Upper Bay: and Hudson saw the great river--which on that day became his river--stretching broadly to the north. I can imagine that when he found that wide waterway, leading from the ocean into the heart of the continent--and found it precisely where his friend Captain John Smith had told him he would find it, "under 40 degrees"--his hopes were very high. The first part of the story being confirmed, it was a fair inference that the second part would be confirmed; that presently, sailing through the "strait" that he had entered, he would come out, as Magellan had come out from the other strait, upon the Pacific--with clear water before him to the coasts of Cathay.

That glad hope must have filled his heart during the ensuing fortnight; and even then it must have died out slowly through another week--while the "Half Moon" worked her way northward as far as where Albany now stands. Twice in the course of his voyage inland--on September 14th, when his run was from Yonkers to Peekskill--he reasonably may have believed that he was on the very edge of his great discovery. As the river widened hugely into the Tappan Sea, and again widened hugely into Haverstraw Bay, it well may have seemed to him that he was come to the ocean outlet--and that in a few hours more he would have the waters of the Pacific beneath his keel. Then, as he passed through the Southern Gate of the Highlands, and thence onward, his hope must have waned--until on September 22d it vanished utterly away. Under that date Juet wrote in his log: "This night, at ten of the clocke, our boat returned in a showre of raine from sounding the river; and found it to bee at an end for shipping to goe in."

After telling about the fight, Juet adds: "Within a while after wee got downe two leagues beyond that place and anchored in a bay , cleere from all danger of them on the other side of the river, where we saw a very good piece of ground . And hard by it there was a cliffe that looked of the colour of a white greene, as though it were either copper or silver myne. And I thinke it to be one of them, by the trees that grow upon it. For they be all burned, and the other places are greene as grasse. It is on that side of the river that is called Manna-hata. There we saw no people to trouble us, and rode quietly all night, but had much wind and raine."

In that entry the name Manna-hata was written for the first time, and was applied, not to our island but to the opposite Jersey shore. The explanation of Juet's record seems to be that the Indians known as the Mannahattes dwelt--or that Juet thought that they dwelt--on both sides of the river. That they did dwell on, and that they did give their name to, our island of Manhattan are facts absolutely established by the records of the ensuing three or four years.

During October 3d the "Half Moon" was storm-bound. On the 4th, Juet records "Faire weather, and the wind at north north west, wee weighed and came out of the river into which we had runne so farre." Thence, through the Upper Bay and the Narrows, and across the Lower Bay--with a boat out ahead to sound--they went onward into the Sandy Hook channel. "And by twelve of the clocke we were cleere of all the inlet. Then we took in our boat, and set our mayne sayle and sprit sayle and our top sayles, and steered away east south east, and south east by east, off into the mayne sea."

Juet's log continues and concludes--passing over unmentioned the mutiny that occurred before the ship's course definitely was set eastward--in these words: "We continued our course toward England, without seeing any land by the way, all the rest of this moneth of October. And on the seventh day of November , being Saturday, by the grace of God we safely arrived in the range of Dartmouth, in Devonshire, in the yeere 1609."

From the standpoint of the East India Company, Hudson's quest upon our coast and into our river--the most fruitful of all his adventurings, since the planting of our city was the outcome of it--was a failure. Hessel Gerritz wrote: "All that he did in the west in 1609 was to exchange his merchandise for furs in New France." And Hudson himself, no doubt, rated his great accomplishment--on which so large a part of his fame rests enduringly--as a mere waste of energy and of time. I hope that he knows about, and takes a comforting pride in--over there in the Shades--the great city which owes its founding to that seemingly bootless voyage!

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 in England. Then they ordered the ship and crew to return as soon as possible. But when they were going to do so, Henry Hudson and the other Englishmen of the ship were commanded by government there not to leave England but to serve their own country." Obviously, international trade jealousies were at the root of the matter. Conceivably, as I have stated, the Muscovy Company, a much interested party, was the prime mover in the seizure of Hudson out of the Dutch service. But we only know certainly that he was seized out of that service: with the result that he and Fate came to grips again; and that Fate's hold on him did not loosen until Death cast it off.

Hudson's fourth, and last, voyage was not made for the Muscovy Company; but those chiefly concerned in promoting it were members of that Company, and two of them were members of the first importance in the direction of its affairs. The adventure was set forth, mainly, by Sir Dudley Digges, Sir Thomas Smith, and Master John Wolstenholme--who severally are commemorated in the Arctic by Smith's Sound, Cape Digges, and Cape Wolstenholme--and the expedition got away from London in "the barke 'Discovery'" on April 17, 1610.

Purchas wrote a nearly contemporary history of this voyage that included three strictly contemporary documents: two of them certainly written aboard the "Discovery"; and the third either written aboard the ship on the voyage home, as is possible, or not long after the ship had arrived in England.

The first of these documents is "An Abstract of the Journal of Master Henry Hudson." This is Hudson's own log, but badly mutilated. It begins on the day of sailing, April 17th, and ends on the ensuing August 3d. There are many gaps in it, and the block of more than ten months is gone. The missing portions, presumably, were destroyed by the mutineers.

The second document is styled by Purchas: "A Note Found in the Deske of Thomas Wydowse, Student in the Mathematickes, hee being one of them who was put into the Shallop." Concerning this poor "student in the mathematickes" Prickett testified before the court: "Thomas Widowes was thrust out of the ship into the shallop, but whether he willed them take his keys and share his goods, to save his life, this examinate knoweth not." Practically, this is an assurance that he did make such an offer; and his despairing resistance to being outcast is implied also in the pathetic note following his name in the Trinity House list of the abandoned ones: "put away in great distress." There is nothing to show how he happened to be aboard the "Discovery," nor who he was. Possibly he may have been a son of the "Richard Widowes, goldsmith," who is named in the second charter of the Virginia Company. His "Note"--cited in full later on--exhibits clearly the evil conditions that obtained aboard the "Discovery"; and especially makes clear that Juet's mutinous disposition began to be manifested at a very early stage of the voyage.

The third document is the most important, in that it gives--or professes to give--a complete history of the whole voyage. Purchas styles it: "A Larger Discourse of the Same Voyage, and the Successe Thereof, written by Abacucks Prickett, a servant of Sir Dudley Digges, whom the Mutineers had Saved in hope to procure his Master to worke their Pardon." Purchas wrote that "this report of Prickett may happely bee suspected by some as not so friendly to Hudson." Being essentially a bit of special pleading, intended to save his own neck and the necks of his companions, it has rested always under the suspicion that Purchas cast upon it. Nor is it relieved from suspicion by the fact that it is in accord with his sworn testimony, and with the sworn testimony of his fellows, before the High Court of Admiralty when he and they were on trial for their lives as mutineers. The imperfect record of this trial merely shows that Prickett and all of the other witnesses--with the partial exception of Byleth--told substantially the same story; and--as they all equally were in danger of hanging--that story most naturally was in their own favor and in much the same words. From the Trinity House record it appears that Prickett was "a land man put in by the Adventurers"; and in the court records he is described, most incongruously, as a "haberdasher"--facts which place him, as his own very remarkable narrative places him, on a level much above that of the ordinary seamen of Hudson's time.

Dr. Asher's comment upon Prickett's "Discourse," is a just determination of its value: "Though the paper he has left us is in form a narrative, the author's real intention was much more to defend the mutineers than to describe the voyage. As an apologetic essay, the 'Larger Discourse' is extremely clever. It manages to cast some, not too much, shadow upon Hudson himself. The main fault of the mutiny is thrown upon some men who had ceased to live when the ship reached home. Those who were then still alive are presented as guiltless, some as highly deserving. Prickett's account of the mutiny and of its cause has often been suspected. Even Purchas himself and Fox speak of it with distrust. But Prickett is the only eye-witness that has left us an account of these events; and we can therefore not correct his statements, whether they be true or false."

My fortunate finding of contemporary documents, unknown to Hudson's most authoritative historian, has produced other "eye-witnesses" who have "left us an account of these events"; but, obviously, their accounts--so harmoniously in agreement--do not affect the soundness of Dr. Asher's conclusions. The net result of it all being, as I have written, that our whole knowledge of Hudson's murder is only so much of the truth as his murderers were agreed upon to tell.

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 firebrands in his ship's company--and ship's companies of those days, without help from firebrands, were like enough to explode into mutiny of their own accord. I must repeat that the sailor-men of Hudson's time--and until long after Hudson's time--were little better than dangerous brutes; and the savage ferocity that was in them was kept in check only by meeting it with a more savage ferocity on the part of their superiors.

At the very outset of the voyage trouble began. Hudson wrote on April 22, when he was in the mouth of the Thames, off the Isle of Sheppey: "I caused Master Coleburne to bee put into a pinke bound for London, with my letter to the Adventurars imparting the reason why I put him out of the ship." He does not add what that reason was; nor is there any reference in what remains of his log to farther difficulties with his crew. The newly discovered testimony of the mutineers, cited later, refers only to the final mutiny. Prickett, therefore--in part borne out by the "Note" of poor Widowes--is our authority for the several mutinous outbreaks which occurred during the voyage; and Prickett wrote with a vagueness--using such phrases as "this day" and "this time," without adding a date--that helped him to muddle his narrative in the parts which we want to have, but which he did not want to have, most clear.

Prickett's first record of trouble refers to some period in July, at which time the "Discovery" was within the mouth of Hudson's Strait and was beset with ice. It reads: "Some of our men this day fell sicke, I will not say it was for feare, although I saw small signe of other griefe." His next entry seems to date a fortnight or so later, when the ship was farther within the strait and temporarily ice-bound: "Here our Master was in despaire, and he thought he should never have got out of this ice, but there have perished. Therefore he brought forth his card and showed all the company that hee was entered above an hundred leagues farther than ever any English was: and left it to their choice whether they should proceed any farther--yea or nay. Whereupon some were of one minde and some of another, some wishing themselves at home, and some not caring where so they were out of the ice. But there were some who then spake words which were remembered a great while after." This record shows that Hudson had with him a chart of the strait--presumably based on Weymouth's earlier exploration of it--with the discovery of which he popularly is credited; and, as Weymouth sailed into the strait a hundred leagues, his assertion that he had "entered a hundred leagues farther than ever any English was" obviously is an error. But the more important matter made clear by Prickett is that a dangerously ugly feeling was abroad among the crew nearly a year before that feeling culminated in the final tragedy.

Prickett concludes this episode by showing that Hudson's eager desire to press on prevailed: "After many words to no purpose, to worke we must on all hands, to get ourselves out and to cleere our ship."

And so the "Discovery" went onward--sometimes working her way through the ice, sometimes sailing freely in clear water--until Hudson triumphantly brought her, as Purchas puts it, into "a spacious sea, wherein he sayled above a hundred leagues South, confidently proud that he had won the passage"! It was his resolve to push on until he could be sure that he truly "had won the passage" that won him to his death.

When they had entered that spacious sea--rounding the cape which then received its name of Cape Wolstenholme--they came to where sorrel and scurvy-grass grew plentifully, and where there was "great store of fowle." Prickett records that the crew urged Hudson "to stay a daye or two in this place, telling him what refreshment might there bee had. But by no means would he stay, who was not pleased with the motion." This refers to August 3d, the day on which Hudson's log ends. Prickett adds, significantly: "So we left the fowle, and lost our way downe to the South West."

For what happened at that time we have a better authority than Prickett. The "Note" of Thomas Widowes covers this episode; and, in covering it, throws light upon the mutinous conditions which prevailed increasingly as the voyage went on. As the only contemporary document giving Hudson's side of the matter it is of first importance--we may be very sure that it would not have come down to us had it been discovered by the mutineers--and I cite it here in full as Purchas prints it:

"The tenth day of September, 1610, after dinner, our Master called all the Companie together, to heare and beare witnesse of the abuse of some of the Companie , that the Master should redresse some abuses and slanders, as hee called them, against this Juet: which thing after the Master had examined and heard with equitie what hee could say for himselfe, there were proued so many and great abuses, and mutinous matters against the Master, and action by Juet, that there was danger to have suffered them longer: and it was fit time to punish and cut off farther occasions of the like mutinies.

"It was proved to his face, first with Bennet Mathew, our Trumpet, upon our first sight of Island , and he confest, that he supposed that in the action would be man slaughter, and proue bloodie to some.

"Secondly, at our coming from Island, in hearing of the Companie, hee did threaten to turne the head of the Ship home from the action, which at that time was by our Master wisely pacified, hoping of amendment.

"Thirdly, it was deposed by Philip Staffe, our Carpenter, and Ladlie Arnold to his face upon the holy Bible, that hee perswaded them to keepe Muskets charged, and Swords readie in their Cabbins, for they should be charged with shot ere the Voyage was over.

"Fourthly, wee being pestered in the Ice, hee had used words tending to mutinie, discouragement, and slander of the action, which easily took effect in those that were timorous; and had not the Master in time preuented, it might easily have overthrowne the Voyage: and now lately being imbayed in a deepe Bay, which the Master had desire to see, for some reasons to himselfe knowne, his word tended altogether to put the Companie into a fray of extremitie, by wintering in cold: Jesting at our Master's hope to see Bantam by Candlemas.

"For these and diuers other base slanders against the Master, hee was deposed, and Robert Bylot , who had showed himself honestly respecting the good of the action, was placed in his stead the Masters Mate.

"Also Francis Clement the Boatson, at this time was put from his Office, and William Wilson, a man thought more fit, preferred to his place. This man had basely carried himselfe to our Master and the action.

"Also Adrian Mooter was appointed Boatsons mate: and a promise by the Master, that from this day Juats wages should remain to Bylot, and the Boatsons overplus of wages should bee equally diuided betweene Wilson and one John King, to the owners good liking, one of the Quarter Masters, who had very well carryed themselves to the furtherance of the businesse.

"Also the Master promised, if the Offenders yet behaued themselves henceforth honestly, hee would be a means for their good, and that hee would forget injuries, with other admonitions."

Hudson's fame is the brighter for this testament of the poor "Student in the Mathematickes" whose loyalty to his commander cost him his life. At times, Hudson seems to have temporized with his mutinous crews. In this grave crisis he did not temporize. For cause, he disrated his chief officers: and so asserted in that desolate place, as fearlessly as he would have asserted it in an English harbor, that aboard his ship his will was law.

And then the Arctic night closed down upon them: and with it the certainty that they were prisoners in that desolate freezing darkness until the sun should come again and set them free.

Nerves go to pieces in the Arctic. Captain Back, who commanded the "Terror" on her first northern voyage , 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 after day--and they will soon become weary of one another's society and impatient of one another's faults."

The Greely expedition--composed of twenty-five men, of whom only seven were found alive by the rescue party--in many ways parallels, and pointedly illustrates, the Hudson expedition. There was dissension in Greely's command almost from the start. Surgeon Pavy's angry protests compelled the sending back in the "Proteus"--paralleling the sending back of Coleburne in the pink--of one member of the company; and Lieutenant Kislingbury--paralleling Juet's insubordination--objected so strongly to Greely's regulations that he gave in his resignation and tried, unsuccessfully, to overtake the "Proteus" and go home in her. Being returned to Fort Conger, he was not restored to his rank, and remained--as Juet remained after being superseded--a malcontent.

One of the commentators on the expedition thus has summarized the conditions of that dreadful winter of 1883-84: "It was now October, and the situation of the explorers was becoming desperate, but the bickerings seem to have increased with their peril. As the weary days of starvation and death wore on, nearly every member of the party developed a grievance. Israel was reprimanded by Greely for falsely accusing Brainard of unfairness in the distribution of articles. Bender annoyed the whole camp by his complaints regarding his bed-clothes; Pavy and Henry accused Fredericks, the cook, of not giving them their fair share of food; and Pavy and Kislingbury had a quarrel that barely stopped short of blows. Then Jewell was accused of selecting the heaviest dishes of those issued.... Bender and Schneider had a fist fight in their sleeping bag; and on one occasion Bender was so violent that a general mutiny was imminent, and Greely says in his written record:

'If I could have got Long's gun I would have killed him.' Bender brutally treated Ellison, who was very weak; and Schneider abused Whistler as he was dying--the second occurrence of the kind.... The thefts of food by Henry, and his execution, formed a culmination to the dissensions, though it did not entirely stop them. Never was there a more terrible example of the demoralizing effects of the conditions of Arctic life and privations upon men who in other circumstances were able to dwell at peace with their fellows."

Out of those conditions came like results aboard Hudson's ship: discontent developing into insubordination; hatred of the commander; hatred of each other; petty squabblings leading on to tragedies--as minor ills were magnified into catastrophes and little injuries into deadly wrongs. Strictly in keeping with the mean traditions of the Arctic is the fact that the point of departure of the final mutiny was a wrangle that arose over the ownership of "a gray cloth gowne."

Prickett records: "About the middle of this moneth of November dyed John Williams our Gunner. God pardon the Masters uncharitable dealing with this man. Now for that I am come to speake of him, out of whose ashes that unhappie deed grew which brought a scandall upon all that are returned home, and upon the action itself, the multitude running after the stone, but not at the caster; therefore, not to wronge the living nor slander the dead, I will deliver the truth as neere as I can."

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