Henry Hudson
Henry Hudson made four voyages looking for a passage to Asia, found neither, and was set adrift by his own crew. Nothing is known of him before 1607, when the English Muscovy Company sent him to find a route to the Far East across the North Pole itself — on the theory, seriously held, that the sun's constant summer presence would have melted the polar sea. He reached about 80 degrees north, further than anyone recorded, and found ice. He went again in 1608 looking for a north-east passage above Russia and was stopped by ice at Novaya Zemlya. The Dutch East India Company hired him in 1609 for another north-east attempt. He got as far as the ice, found his crew mutinous, and turned west instead — sailing to America on his own initiative, on a rumour from John Smith of a passage in the middle latitudes. He explored the river that carries his name as far as present-day Albany, hoping it was a strait, and traded with the Lenape and Mahican; the reports produced Dutch claims to New Netherland. The fourth voyage in 1610 was English again. He entered the enormous bay now named for him, believed he had found the Pacific, and spent three months charting its eastern shore before being frozen in for the winter at James Bay. The crew mutinied in June 1611 and put Hudson, his teenage son John and seven others, most of them sick, into an open shallop with a gun, some powder, an iron pot and a little meal, and cut it loose. They were never seen again, and no trace of the boat was ever found. Eight of the mutineers reached England, where four were tried for murder years later and all were acquitted — partly because the survivors blamed the dead ringleaders, and partly because the men knew the route to the bay and the country wanted it.
- Lived: 1565 CE – 1611 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: explorer, navigator
