Henry Hudson's Expeditions
Henry Hudson sailed up the river that now carries his name in September 1609, looking for a route to Asia. He was English and the voyage was Dutch. The East India Company had hired him to find a north-east passage over Russia, and when ice at Novaya Zemlya stopped him and his crew grew mutinous, he broke his contract and turned west instead — on the strength of letters and charts from John Smith suggesting a passage through North America somewhere north of Virginia. The Halve Maen entered the great bay in early September, and he took her some 240 kilometres upriver to about where Albany now stands before the water grew too shallow and fresh to be a strait. The voyage is documented in the mate's journal, which records trade with the Lenape and Mahican for furs, tobacco and maize, and an episode in which the crew gave a chief enough brandy to make him insensible, apparently as an experiment. There was also violence at the mouth of the river, in which a crewman was killed by an arrow through the throat. He was detained in England on the way home and forbidden to sail for foreigners again, and his report reached Amsterdam anyway. Dutch traders followed within three years, Fort Nassau went up in 1614 and New Amsterdam on Manhattan in 1625. The English took the colony in 1664 and renamed it New York. The river is also unusual physically. It is a tidal estuary for half its length, running both ways twice a day as far as Troy, which is why the Lenape name for it meant the river that flows both ways and why Hudson could believe for several days that he was in a strait.
- Year: 1609 CE
- Category: Exploration
