Henry Hudson Part 2

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.

Verrazano was an Italian, sailing in the French service. Gomez was a Portuguese, sailing in the Spanish service. Both sought a westerly way to the Indies, and both sought it in the same year--1524. Verrazano has left a report of his voyage, written immediately upon his return to France; and with it a vaguely drawn chart of the coasts which he explored. (It is my duty to add that certain zealous historians have denounced his report as a forgery, and his chart as a "fake"--a matter so much too large for discussion here that I content myself with expressing the opinion that these charges have not been sustained.) Gomez has left no report of his voyage, but a partial account of it may be pieced together from the maritime chronicles of his time. He also charted, with an approximate accuracy, the lands which he coasted; and while his chart has not been preserved in its original shape, there is good reason for believing that we have it embodied in the planisphere drawn by Juan Ribero, geographer to Charles V., in the year 1529. On that planisphere the seaboard of the present states of Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island is called "the land of Estevan Gomez."

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 pa.s.s through the Narrows and enter the Upper Bay. Doctor Asher holds that he did make that pa.s.sage; and adds: "It is certain that the later Spanish seamen who followed in his track in after years were familiar with the [Hudson] river, and called it the Rio de Gamas." In support of this strong a.s.sertion 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."[1]

[Footnote 1: Asher mentions, in this connection, that "Nantucket Island also figures in some of these rutters under the name of the island of Juan Luis, or Juan Fernandez, and is recommended as a most convenient stage for those who, coming from Europe, wish to proceed to the West Indies by way of the Bermudas."]

In regard to Verrazano--admitting his report to be genuine--the fact that he did pa.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FAC-SIMILE OF t.i.tLE-PAGE OF THE MOST FAMOUS SEA HANDBOOK OF HUDSON'S TIME]

Therefore we may fall back upon the a.s.sured 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 a.s.suredly is Hudson's very own.

VIII

From Juet's log I make the following extracts, telling of the "Half Moon's" approach to Sandy Hook and of her pa.s.sage 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 [a little north of Cape May] 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 gla.s.se 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 gla.s.ses. Then the sunne arose, and we steered away north againe, and saw the land [the low region about Sandy Hook] 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 sh.o.a.re, and faire by the sh.o.a.re 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 [the Lower Bay] 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 anch.o.r.ed, being little winde, and rode in eight fathoms water.... This night I found the land to hall the compa.s.se 8 degrees. For to the northward off us we saw high hils [Staten Island and the Highlands]. 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 [the Raritan, the Arthur Kill and the Narrows]. So we stood along to the northermost [the Narrows], 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 anch.o.r.ed. 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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."

That was the end of the adventure inland. Juet wrote on the 23d: "At twelve of the clocke we weighed, and went downe two leagues"; and thereafter his log records their movements and their doings--sometimes meeting with "loving people" with whom they had friendly dealings; sometimes meeting and having fights with people who were anything but loving--as the "Half Moon" dawdled slowly down the stream. By the 2d of October they were come abreast of about where Fort Lee now stands. There they had their last brush with the savages, killing ten or twelve of them without loss on their own side.

After telling about the fight, Juet adds: "Within a while after wee got downe two leagues beyond that place and anch.o.r.ed in a bay [north of Hoboken], cleere from all danger of them on the other side of the river, where we saw a very good piece of ground [for anchorage]. And hard by it there was a cliffe [Wiehawken] 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 gra.s.se. 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 sh.o.r.e. 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--pa.s.sing 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 (stilo novo), being Sat.u.r.day, by the grace of G.o.d we safely arrived in the range of Dartmouth, in Devonshire, in the yeere 1609."[1]

[Footnote 1: From Mr. Brodhead's "History of the State of New York" I reproduce the following note, that tells of the little "Half Moon's" dismal ending: "The subsequent career of the 'Half Moon' may, perhaps, interest the curious. The small 'ship book,' before referred to, which I found, in 1841, in the Company's archives at Amsterdam, besides recording the return of the yacht on the 15th of July, 1610, states that on the 2d of May, 1611, she sailed, in company with other vessels, to the East Indies, under the command of Laurens Reael; and that on the 6th of March, 1615, she was 'wrecked and lost' on the island of Mauritius."]

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 (1613) 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!

IX

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 [the "Half Moon"] in England. Then they ordered the ship and crew to return [to Holland] 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 doc.u.ments: 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 doc.u.ments 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 doc.u.ment 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" p.r.i.c.kett 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 a.s.surance 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 (1609) 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 doc.u.ment 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 p.r.i.c.kett, 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 p.r.i.c.kett 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 p.r.i.c.kett 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 p.r.i.c.kett 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 p.r.i.c.kett'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. p.r.i.c.kett's account of the mutiny and of its cause has often been suspected.

Even Purchas himself and Fox speak of it with distrust. But p.r.i.c.kett 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 doc.u.ments, 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.

X

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 grat.i.tude 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;[1] 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.

p.r.i.c.kett, 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 p.r.i.c.kett 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.

[Footnote 1: Captain Lake Fox has the following: "In the road of Lee, in the river Thames, he [Hudson] caused Master Coalbrand to be set in a pinke to be carried back againe to London. This Coalbrand was in every way held to be a better man than himselfe, being put in by the adventurers as his a.s.sistant, who envying the same (he having the command in his own hands) devised this course, to send himselfe the same way, though in a farre worse place, as hereafter followeth."

p.r.i.c.kett tells only: "Thwart of Sheppey, our Master sent Master Colbert back to the owners with his letter."]

p.r.i.c.kett'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 (as he told me after) he thought he should never have got out of this ice, but there have perished. Therefore he brought forth his card [chart] 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 (1602) exploration of it--with the discovery of which he popularly is credited; and, as Weymouth sailed into the strait a hundred leagues, his a.s.sertion 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 p.r.i.c.kett (admitting that p.r.i.c.kett told the truth) is that a dangerously ugly feeling was abroad among the crew nearly a year before that feeling culminated in the final tragedy.

p.r.i.c.kett 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 s.p.a.cious sea, wherein he sayled above a hundred leagues South, confidently proud that he had won the pa.s.sage"! It was his resolve to push on until he could be sure that he truly "had won the pa.s.sage" that won him to his death.