Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 28.djvu/154

 Hudson , in the Half Moon, stretched across the Atlantic to the coast of Nova Scotia, and thence southwards as far as lat. 35°; from which turning northwards he carefully examined the coast, looking into Chesapeake and Delaware Bays and reaching Sandy Hook on 2 Sept. The story of a strait through the continent in or about lat. 40° had been long since discredited, but had lately been revived, apparently by Indian reports of the great chain of lakes; and Hudson, having now satisfied himself of its falsehood, devoted the next month to an examination of the river which has since borne his name, and which he ascended to near the position of the present Albany. On 4 Oct. he came again into the sea, and returned to England on 7 Nov. This was the end of Hudson's Dutch connection, and on 17 April 1610 he sailed from London in the Discovery, fitted out at the cost of Sir Thomas Smythe, Sir Dudley Digges, and John Wolstenholme, to attempt the north-west passage. By the end of June he had groped his way into the strait since known by his name; on 3 Aug. he passed out of it, between Digges Island and Cape Wolstenholme, into the bay beyond, and spent the next three months ‘in a labyrinth without end,’ apparently in the examination of the eastern shore and the adjacent islands. By the end of October the Discovery was in the extreme south of James Bay, and on 1 Nov. was hauled aground in a place judged fitting to winter in, possibly near Moose Fort; on the 10th she was frozen in. The winter passed miserably enough; provisions were not too plentiful, and the supply of game or fish was scanty. Some months before Hudson had quarrelled with his mate, Juet, whom he displaced, appointing Robert Bylot [q.v.] in his stead. There was consequently an ill-feeling in the ship which the winter hardships did not lessen. It may well be that Hudson's temper became morose and suspicious: he was accused of favouritism, and of unfairly distributing the provisions. He had a violent quarrel with one of his favourites, a dissolute fellow named Green, who acted as his clerk, and now reviled him in the strongest terms. Finally, as they broke out of the ice, he displaced Bylot, and appointed one King to do his duty. This seems to have turned the scale. It is impossible to speak of the details, for the accounts are very meagre and all come through a suspicious channel. It is, however, certain that on 23 June 1611 Hudson was seized, bound, and put into the small boat or shallop: with him eight others, including John, his son, and King the new mate, after a sharp struggle, in which four men were killed, were put into the boat; it was then cut adrift and never seen again. That Hudson and all his companions perished miserably cannot be doubted. On board the Discovery Bylot was elected master: provisions were very short, and in endeavouring to kill some deer their party was attacked by the Eskimos, and Green with four others slain. On the passage home Juet and others died. Only a miserable remnant survived to reach England, and those almost spent with famine and sickness. They were thrown into prison, but would seem to have been very shortly released and admitted to further employment and confidence. Bylot sailed the following year in Button's voyage to Hudson's Bay [see, ]. It is probable that the death of Juet, and still more of Green, stood the mutineers in good stead: the whole blame of the murder of Hudson and his companions was laid on them, and those who came home were perhaps judged to have expiated their crime by their sufferings.

Hudson's personality is shadowy in the extreme, and his achievements have been the subject of much exaggeration and misrepresentation. The river, the strait, the bay, and the vast tract of land which bear his name have kept his memory alive; but in point of fact not one of these was discovered by Hudson. All that can be seriously claimed for him is that he pushed his explorations further than his predecessors, and left of them a more distinct but still imperfect record. It has been conclusively shown by Dr. Asher that the river, the strait, and the bay were all marked in maps many years before the time of Hudson. What Hudson really did was to show, in four several voyages, that the passage to Cathay was certainly not the simple thing that it had been represented by Thorne and others; that there was no strait through the continent of North America in a low latitude, and that if there was one in a high latitude it could scarcely be of any practical value. He tried in fact all the routes that had been suggested, and these having all failed, there is little doubt that had he lived he would have examined beyond Davis Strait and have anticipated Baffin's discoveries of a few years later [see Baffin, William (DNB00)]. He was a bold, energetic, and able man, zealous in the cause to which he had devoted himself, though prevented by cruel fortune from achieving any distinct success. Hudson's son John, the companion of all his historical voyages, perished with him. In April 1614 his widow applied to the East India Company for some employment for another son, 'she being left very poor.' The company considered that the boy had a just claim on them, as his