Hudson · 1610
Henry Hudson and the discovery of Hudson Bay
On the morning of Friday the third of August 1610, on the North-Atlantic at the approximately-60-degrees-north latitude west of the Resolution-Island coast at the eastern-entrance of what is now the Hudson-Strait, the approximately-forty-five-year-old English navigator Henry Hudson, the master of the small fifty-five-ton English-bark Discovery on the Company-of-Adventurers fourth-voyage in search of the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean, sailed his Discovery vessel into the narrow Hudson-Strait between the Baffin-Island and the Labrador-Peninsula on the strength of his personal-conviction that the westward-running tidal-current on the Strait-eastern-entrance indicated a large-westward-running ocean-passage beyond. The Discovery sailed westward across the four-hundred-mile Hudson-Strait across August-and-early-September 1610, emerged on the second-of-August into the vast inland-sea (the Hudson Bay, approximately one-thousand-mile-long and five-hundred-mile-wide Arctic-Canadian inland-sea) that Hudson named for his Discovery-Company-of-Adventurers patron the merchant adventurer Sir Dudley Digges (the original-name Digges-Bay was renamed Hudson-Bay across the subsequent-Royal-Society-and-Hudson's-Bay-Company nomenclature-tradition), and across the September-1610 period sailed south down the east-coast of the Hudson-Bay to the southern-Hudson-Bay James-Bay region. The Hudson-Bay 1610 discovery is the foundational moment of the Canadian-and-British North-American Arctic geographical record and the foundational European-discovery of the vast inland-sea that has carried Hudson's name continuously since.
An explorer is rarely remembered for the discovery that ended in his own death by mutiny in an open boat in the inland-sea he had discovered. Hudson sailed into the Hudson Strait on the third of August 1610 on the personal-conviction that the westward-tidal-current at the Strait-entrance was the westward-Northwest-Passage signal he had been seeking on his previous-three-voyages. The Hudson-Strait opened to the vast-inland-sea he named Digges-Bay. The Hudson-Bay carried his name into the foundational Canadian-geographical record on the strength of the 1612-and-1613 Sir-Thomas-Button Hudson-Bay-rescue-mission that recovered the Discovery-crew-mutineers and reported the Hudson-Bay discovery to the London Discovery-Company patrons.
THE LONDON NAVIGATOR
Henry Hudson was born in England around 1565 on the approximate-date that the Hudson-grandfather Henry Hudson (the Muscovy Company-founder who had been one of the original-Muscovy-Company-Russia-trade-founders of the 1555 Muscovy-Company foundation) lived through his Muscovy-Company-merchant-career into the 1570s. The Hudson grandson Henry was raised in the Muscovy-Company-merchant family environment, took up the merchant-navigator profession on the Muscovy-Company-and-East-India-Company seafaring-circuit, and emerged by the 1600s as one of the leading senior-English Arctic-and-North-Atlantic navigators on the Muscovy-Company-and-Dutch-East-India-Company commercial-exploration circuits.
He took the first Muscovy-Company Arctic-exploration voyage in 1607 in command of the Hopewell on the Muscovy-Company Greenland-and-Spitsbergen Arctic-exploration on the Northeast-Passage hypothesis, reached the Greenland-east-coast and the Spitsbergen-archipelago, and returned in October 1607 with the first-detailed-English Spitsbergen-discovery report. He took the second Muscovy-Company Arctic-exploration voyage in 1608 in command of the Hopewell on the Novaya-Zemlya Northeast-Passage hypothesis, was stopped by the Arctic ice-pack at the Novaya-Zemlya-eastern-coast, and returned in August 1608.
THE HALF MOON VOYAGE
He took the third Dutch-East-India-Company Arctic-exploration voyage in 1609 in command of the Halve Maen on the Dutch-East-India-Company Northeast-Passage hypothesis, deviated from the Dutch-East-India-Company instructions to the Northwest-Passage hypothesis when the Novaya-Zemlya-eastern ice-pack stopped the Northeast-Passage attempt, sailed westward across the North-Atlantic to the American-east-coast, and across August-and-September 1609 explored the North-American-east-coast from the Nova-Scotia-coast south to the Chesapeake-Bay region. He sailed up the Hudson-River from the Manhattan-Island-southern tip in mid-September 1609 to approximately the modern-Albany-New-York position (the 150-mile-up-the-Hudson penetration), and on the strength of his 1609 Hudson-River-voyage the Dutch-West-India-Company subsequently established the New-Netherland colony (the 1614 Dutch-New-Netherland-colony-foundation that established the New-Amsterdam Dutch-settlement that the 1664-English-conquest renamed New York). The Hudson-River-modern-name has carried his name on the American-Atlantic-coast geographic-record continuously since the 1609-Hudson voyage.
THE DISCOVERY VOYAGE
He took the fourth Company-of-Adventurers Arctic-exploration voyage in 1610 on the Northwest-Passage hypothesis with the financial-backing of the London-merchant-adventurers Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Dudley Digges, and John Wolstenholme. The Discovery vessel was a small 55-ton English-bark with a 22-man crew including the Hudson-son John Hudson as the ship's-boy, the mate Robert Juet (the Hudson-veteran who had sailed with him on the 1609-Halve-Maen voyage), and the junior-officer Henry Greene (the Hudson-personal-protégé who would become the 1611-mutiny-leader on the James-Bay marooning).
The Discovery sailed from London on the seventeenth of April 1610, reached the Iceland-eastern-coast on the eleventh of May, and the Greenland-east-coast on the fourth of June. Hudson sailed westward across the Davis-Strait from the Greenland-east-coast in early-July 1610, reached the Resolution-Island eastern-entrance of what is now the Hudson-Strait on the second of August 1610, and sailed into the Hudson-Strait westward on the morning of the third of August 1610 on the strength of his personal-conviction that the westward-tidal-current at the Strait-eastern-entrance indicated a large westward-ocean-passage.
THE INLAND SEA
The Discovery sailed westward across the Hudson-Strait through the August-and-early-September 1610 period, with the crew growing increasingly anxious at the westward-progress and the narrowing of the Strait-into-the-Foxe-Basin northern arm. Hudson held the Discovery on the westward-course against the crew-protest, and on the second of August 1610 (the Hudson-second voyage-anniversary) the Discovery emerged from the western-end of the Hudson-Strait into the vast inland-sea that Hudson recognised as the westward-passage he had sought.
Hudson named the inland-sea Digges-Bay for his Company-of-Adventurers patron Sir Dudley Digges (the original-name was Digges-Bay across the Hudson-journal record), and sailed south down the east-coast of the bay across the September-1610 period to the southern-bay James-Bay region. The Discovery wintered out the 1610-to-1611 winter at the James-Bay southern shore, on short rations from the inadequate-provisioning-and-supply Hudson-voyage-planning failure.
THE MUTINY
On the twenty-fourth of June 1611, on the Hudson-Bay return-voyage attempt, the Discovery-crew under the Henry-Greene mutiny-leadership seized Hudson, his son John Hudson, and seven other crew members including the loyal-Hudson-supporters Philip Staffe, John King, Adam Moore, Sydrack Faner, Michael Bute, Thomas Wydhouse and Adrian Motter. The mutineers set the nine marooned-crew adrift in the Discovery shallop (the small-open-boat the Discovery had carried for the coastal-exploration use) at the James-Bay-southern-shore. The Discovery sailed eastward away from the marooned-shallop on the Hudson-Strait return-route. The marooned Hudson-and-companions were never seen again. The Hudson-Bay southern-shore where they were marooned in June 1611 has carried the Hudson-name on the James-Bay-southern-coast geographic-record continuously since.
THE STANDING HUDSON LEGACY
The Discovery-crew returned to London in October 1611 with only eight survivors of the original twenty-two. The mutiny-leaders were arrested but never prosecuted on the Privy-Council need-for-the-Northwest-Passage navigational-information from the survivors. The 1612-and-1613 Sir Thomas Button Hudson-Bay rescue-mission attempted to recover the Hudson-marooned-party (no remains were found), and on the strength of the Button-voyage report the Hudson-Bay was named for Hudson in the 1613 English-Admiralty-naming-decision (the original Digges-Bay was renamed Hudson-Bay).
The Hudson's Bay Company was founded by Royal Charter on the second of May 1670 by the Hudson-Bay-fur-trade investors under the King-Charles-II charter for the exclusive fur-trade-monopoly across the Hudson-Bay watershed (the Hudson-Bay-Company territory of approximately 1.5 million square miles, the largest-private-corporate territory in history). The Hudson's Bay Company continues today as the Canadian-retail-and-fur-trade corporation Hudson's Bay Holdings; its Royal-Charter of 1670 makes it the oldest continuously-operating commercial company in the English-speaking world. The Hudson name in modern Canadian-and-British North-American geographic memory carries the weight of the third-of-August 1610 Discovery-entry into the Hudson-Strait.