Chapter II: Part 2

For more than a week the "Half Moon" lay in the Lower Bay and in the Narrows. Then, on the eleventh of September, she passed 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 passed 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 anchored 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 grasse. 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 shore. 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--passing 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 Saturday, by the grace of God 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 documents: 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 documents 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 document 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" Prickett 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 assurance 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 document 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 Prickett, 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 Prickett 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 Prickett 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 Prickett 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 Prickett'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. Prickett's account of the mutiny and of its cause has often been suspected. Even Purchas himself and Fox speak of it with distrust. But Prickett 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 documents, 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 gratitude 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. Prickett, 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 Prickett 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
assistant, 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."
Prickett tells only: "Thwart of Sheppey, our Master sent Master
Colbert back to the owners with his letter."]

Prickett'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 assertion 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 Prickett (admitting that Prickett 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.

Prickett 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 spacious sea, wherein he sayled above a hundred leagues South, confidently proud that he had won the passage"! It was his resolve to push on until he could be sure that he truly "had won the passage" that won him to his death.

When they had entered that spacious sea--rounding the cape which then received its name of Cape Wolstenholme--they came to where sorrel and scurvy-grass grew plentifully, and where there was "great store of fowle." Prickett records that the crew urged Hudson "to stay a daye or two in this place, telling him what refreshment might there bee had. But by no means would he stay, who was not pleased with the motion." This refers to August 3d, the day on which Hudson's log ends. Prickett adds, significantly: "So we left the fowle, and lost our way downe to the South West."

By September, the "Discovery" was come into James Bay, at the southern extremity of Hudson's Bay; and then it was that the serious trouble began. By Prickett's showing, there seems to have been a clash of opinions in regard to the ship's course; and of so violent a sort that strong measures were required to maintain discipline. The outcome was that "our Master took occasion to revive old matters, and to displace Robert Juet from being his mate, and the boatswaine from his place, for the words spoken in the first great bay of ice."

For what happened at that time we have a better authority than Prickett. The "Note" of Thomas Widowes covers this episode; and, in covering it, throws light upon the mutinous conditions which prevailed increasingly as the voyage went on. As the only contemporary document giving Hudson's side of the matter it is of first importance--we may be very sure that it would not have come down to us had it been discovered by the mutineers--and I cite it here in full as Purchas prints it:

"The tenth day of September, 1610, after dinner, our Master called all the Companie together, to heare and beare witnesse of the abuse of some of the Companie (it having beene the request of Robert Juet), that the Master should redresse some abuses and slanders, as hee called them, against this Juet: which thing after the Master had examined and heard with equitie what hee could say for himselfe, there were proued so many and great abuses, and mutinous matters against the Master, and [the] action by Juet, that there was danger to have suffered them longer: and it was fit time to punish and cut off farther occasions of the like mutinies.

"It was proved to his face, first with Bennet Mathew, our Trumpet, upon our first sight of Island [Iceland], and he confest, that he supposed that in the action would be man slaughter, and proue bloodie to some.

"Secondly, at our coming from Island, in hearing of the Companie, hee did threaten to turne the head of the Ship home from the action, which at that time was by our Master wisely pacified, hoping of amendment.

"Thirdly, it was deposed by Philip Staffe, our Carpenter, and Ladlie Arnold [Arnold Ludlow] to his face upon the holy Bible, that hee perswaded them to keepe Muskets charged, and Swords readie in their Cabbins, for they should be charged with shot ere the Voyage was over.

"Fourthly, wee being pestered in the Ice, hee had used words tending to mutinie, discouragement, and slander of the action, which easily took effect in those that were timorous; and had not the Master in time preuented, it might easily have overthrowne the Voyage: and now lately being imbayed in a deepe Bay, which the Master had desire to see, for some reasons to himselfe knowne, his word tended altogether to put the Companie into a fray [fear] of extremitie, by wintering in cold: Jesting at our Master's hope to see Bantam by Candlemas.

"For these and diuers other base slanders against the Master, hee was deposed, and Robert Bylot [Bileth, or Byleth], who had showed himself honestly respecting the good of the action, was placed in his stead the Masters Mate.

"Also Francis Clement the Boatson, at this time was put from his Office, and William Wilson, a man thought more fit, preferred to his place. This man had basely carried himselfe to our Master and the action.

"Also Adrian Mooter was appointed Boatsons mate: and a promise by the Master, that from this day Juats wages should remain to Bylot, and the Boatsons overplus of wages should bee equally diuided betweene Wilson and one John King, to the owners good liking, one of the Quarter Masters, who had very well carryed themselves to the furtherance of the businesse.

"Also the Master promised, if the Offenders yet behaued themselves henceforth honestly, hee would be a means for their good, and that hee would forget injuries, with other admonitions."

Hudson's fame is the brighter for this testament of the poor "Student in the Mathematickes" whose loyalty to his commander cost him his life. At times, Hudson seems to have temporized with his mutinous crews. In this grave crisis he did not temporize. For cause, he disrated his chief officers: and so asserted in that desolate place, as fearlessly as he would have asserted it in an English harbor, that aboard his ship his will was law.

But his strong action only scotched the mutiny. Prickett's narrative of the doings of the ensuing seven weeks deals with what he implies was purposeless sailing up and down James Bay. He casts reflections upon Hudson's seamanship in such phrases as "our Master would have the anchor up, against the mind of all who knew what belongeth thereto"; and in all that he writes there is a perceptible note of resentment of the Master's doings that reflects the mutinous feeling on board. Especially does this feeling show in his account of their settling into winter quarters: "Having spent three moneths in a labyrinth without end, being now the last of October, we went downe to the East, to the bottome of the Bay; but returned without speeding of that we went for. The next day we went to the South and South West, and found a place, whereunto we brought our ship and haled her aground. And this was the first of November. By the tenth thereof we were frozen in."

And then the Arctic night closed down upon them: and with it the certainty that they were prisoners in that desolate freezing darkness until the sun should come again and set them free.

XI

Nerves go to pieces in the Arctic. Captain Back, who commanded the "Terror" on her first northern voyage (1836), has told how there comes, as the icy night drags on, "a weariness of heart, a blank feeling, which gets the better of the whole man"; and Colonel Brainard, of the Greely expedition, wrote: "Take any set of men, however carefully selected, and let them be thrown as intimately together as are the members of an exploring expedition--hearing the same voices, seeing the same faces, day after day--and they will soon become weary of one another's society and impatient of one another's faults."

The Greely expedition--composed of twenty-five men, of whom only seven were found alive by the rescue party--in many ways parallels, and pointedly illustrates, the Hudson expedition. There was dissension in Greely's command almost from the start. Surgeon Pavy's angry protests compelled the sending back in the "Proteus"--paralleling the sending back of Coleburne in the pink--of one member of the company; and Lieutenant Kislingbury--paralleling Juet's insubordination--objected so strongly to Greely's regulations that he gave in his resignation and tried, unsuccessfully, to overtake the "Proteus" and go home in her. Being returned to Fort Conger, he was not restored to his rank, and remained--as Juet remained after being superseded--a malcontent.

One of the commentators on the expedition thus has summarized the conditions of that dreadful winter of 1883-84: "It was now October, and the situation of the explorers was becoming desperate, but the bickerings seem to have increased with their peril. As the weary days of starvation and death wore on, nearly every member of the party developed a grievance. Israel was reprimanded by Greely for falsely accusing Brainard of unfairness in the distribution of articles. Bender annoyed the whole camp by his complaints regarding his bed-clothes; Pavy and Henry accused Fredericks, the cook, of not giving them their fair share of food; and Pavy and Kislingbury had a quarrel that barely stopped short of blows. Then Jewell was accused of selecting the heaviest dishes of those issued.... Bender and Schneider had a fist fight in their sleeping bag; and on one occasion Bender was so violent that a general mutiny was imminent, and Greely says in his written record:

'If I could have got Long's gun I would have killed him.' Bender brutally treated Ellison, who was very weak; and Schneider abused Whistler as he was dying--the second occurrence of the kind.... The thefts of food by Henry, and his execution, formed a culmination to the dissensions, though it did not entirely stop them. Never was there a more terrible example of the demoralizing effects of the conditions of Arctic life and privations upon men who in other circumstances were able to dwell at peace with their fellows."

Out of those conditions came like results aboard Hudson's ship: discontent developing into insubordination; hatred of the commander; hatred of each other; petty squabblings leading on to tragedies--as minor ills were magnified into catastrophes and little injuries into deadly wrongs. Strictly in keeping with the mean traditions of the Arctic is the fact that the point of departure of the final mutiny was a wrangle that arose over the ownership of "a gray cloth gowne."

Prickett records: "About the middle of this moneth of November dyed John Williams our Gunner. God pardon the Masters uncharitable dealing with this man. Now for that I am come to speake of him, out of whose ashes (as it were) that unhappie deed grew which brought a scandall upon all that are returned home, and upon the action itself, the multitude (like the dog) running after the stone, but not at the caster; therefore, not to wronge the living nor slander the dead, I will (by the leave of God) deliver the truth as neere as I can."

Prickett's deliverance of the truth leaves much to be desired. Without giving any information in regard to Hudson's "uncharitable dealing" with the gunner, he takes a fresh departure in these words: "You shall understand that our Master kept (in his house at London) a young man named Henrie Greene, borne in Kent, of worshipfull parents, but by his leud life and conversation hee had lost the good will of all his frinds, and had spent all that hee had. This man our Master would have to sea with him because hee could write well.... This Henrie Greene was not set down in the owners booke, nor any wages for him.... At Island the Surgeon and hee fell out in Dutch, and hee beat him ashoare in English, which set all the Companie in a rage soe that wee had much adoe to get the Surgeon aboord. [This curiously parallels the fight between Surgeon Pavy and Lieutenant Kislingbury] ... Robert Juet, (the Masters Mate) would needs burne his finger in the embers, and tolde the Carpenter a long tale (when hee was drunke) that our Master had brought in Greene to cracke his credit that should displease him: which wordes came to the Masters eares, who when hee understood it, would have gone back to Island, when hee was fortie leagues from thence, to have sent home his Mate Robert Juet in a fisherman. But, being otherwise perswaded, all was well.... Now when our Gunner was dead, and (as the order is in such cases) if the Company stand in neede of any thing that belonged to the man deceased, then it is brought to the mayne mast, and there sold to them that will give moste for the same. This Gunner had a gray cloth gowne, which Greene prayed the Master to friend him so much as to let him have it, paying for it as another would give. The Master saith hee should, and thereupon hee answered some, that sought to have it, that Greene should have it, and none else, and soe it rested.

"Now out of season and time the Master calleth the Carpenter to goe in hand with an house on shoare, which at the beginning our Master would not heare, when it might have been done. The Carpenter told him, that the snow and froste were such, as hee neither could nor would goe in hand with such worke. Which when our Master heard, hee ferreted him out of his cabbin to strike him, calling him by many foule names, and threatening to hang him. The Carpenter told him that hee knew what belonged to his place better than himselfe, and that he was no house carpenter. So this passed, and the house was (after) made with much labour, but to no end. The next day after the Master and the Carpenter fell out, the Carpenter took his peece and Henrie Greene with him, for it was an order that none should goe out alone, but one with a peece and another with a pike. This did move the Master soe much the more against Henrie Greene, that Robert Billot his Mate [who had been promoted to Juet's place] must have the gowne, and had it delivered unto him; which when Henrie Greene saw he challenged the Masters promise [to him]. But the Master did so raile on Greene, with so many words of disgrace, telling him that all his friends would not trust him with twenty shillings, and therefore why should hee. As for wages hee had none, nor none should have if hee did not please him well. Yet the Master had promised him to make his wages as good as any mans in the ship; and to have him one of the Princes guard when we came home. But you shall see how the devil out of this soe wrought with Greene that he did the Master what mischiefe hee could in seeking to discredit him, and to thrust him and many other honest men out of the ship in the end. To speake of all our trouble in this time of Winter (which was so colde, as it lamed the most of our Companie and my selfe doe yet feele it) would bee too tedious."

That is all that Prickett tells about their wintering; but what he leaves untold, as "too tedious," easily may be filled in. Beginning with that brabble over the "gray cloth gowne," there must have gone on in Hudson's party the same bickerings and wranglings that went on in Greely's party, and the same development of small animosities into burning hatreds. And it all, with Hudson's people, must have been rougher and fiercer and deadlier than it was with Greely's people: because Hudson's crew was of a time when sea-men, for cause, were called sea-wolves; while Greely's crew was the better (yet exhibited scant evidence of it) by an additional two centuries and a half of civilization, and was made up (though with little to show for it) of picked men.

XII

The end came in the spring-time. Through the winter the party had "such store of fowle," and later had for a while so good a supply of fish, that starvation was staved off. When the ice broke up, about the middle of June, Hudson sailed from his winter quarters and went out a little way into Hudson's Bay. There they were caught and held in the floating ice--with their stores almost exhausted, and with no more fowl nor fish to be had. Then the nip of hunger came; and with it came openly the mutiny that secretly had been fermenting through those months of cold and gloom.

Prickett writes: "Being thus in the ice on Saturday, the one and twentieth of June, at night, Wilson the boat swayne, and Henry Greene, came to mee lying (in my cabbin) lame, and told mee that they and the rest of their associates would shift the company and turne the Master and all the sicke men into the shallop, and let them shift for themselves. For there was not fourteen daies victuall left for all the company, at that poore allowance they were at, and that there they lay, the Master not caring to goe one way or other: and that they had not eaten any thing these three dayes, and therefore were resolute, either to mend or end, and what they had begun they would goe through with it, or dye."

According to his own account, Prickett made answer to this precious pair of scoundrels that he "marvelled to heare so much from them, considering that they were married men, and had wives and children, and that for their sakes they should not commit so foule a thing in the sight of God and man as that would bee"; to which Greene replied that "he knew the worst, which was, to be hanged when hee came home, and therefore of the two he would rather be hanged at home than starved abroad." With that deliverance "Henry Greene went his way, and presently came Juet, who, because he was an ancient man, I hoped to have found some reason in him. But hee was worse than Henry Greene, for he sware plainly that he would justifie this deed when he came home."

More of the conspirators came to Prickett to urge him to join them in their intended crime. We have his weak word for it that he refused, and that he tried to stay them; to which he weakly adds: "I hoped that some one or other would give some notice, either to the Carpenter [or to] John King or the Master." That he did not try to give "some notice" himself is the blackest count against him. The just inference may be drawn from his narrative, as a whole, that he was a liar; and from this particular section of it the farther inference may be drawn that he was a coward.

In the dawn of the Sunday morning the outbreak came. Prickett tells that it began by clapping the hatch over John King (one of the faithful men), who had gone down into the hold for water; and continues: "In the meane time Henrie Greene and another went to the carpenter [Philip Staffe] and held him with a talke till the Master came out of his cabbin (which hee soone did); then came John Thomas and Bennet before him, while Wilson bound his arms behind him. He asked them what they meant. They told him he should know when he was in the shallop. Now Juet, while this was a-doing, came to John King into the hold, who was provided for him, for he had got a sword of his own, and kept him at a bay, and might have killed him, but others came to helpe him, and so he came up to the Master. The Master called to the Carpenter, and told him that he was bound, but I heard no answer he made. Now Arnold Lodlo and Michael Bute rayled at them, and told them their knaverie would show itselfe. Then was the shallop haled up to the ship side, and the poore sicke and lame men were called upon to get them out of their cabbins into the shallop.

"The Master called to me, who came out of my cabbin as well as I could, to the hatch way to speake with him: where, on my knees, I besought them, for the love of God, to remember themselves, and to doe as they would be done unto. They bade me keepe myselfe well, and get me into my cabbin; not suffering the Master to speake with me. But when I came into my cabbin againe, hee called to me at the horne which gave light into my cabbin, and told me that Juet would overthrow us all; nay (said I) it is that villaine Henrie Greene, and I spake it not softly. Now was the Carpenter at libertie, who asked them if they would bee hanged when they came home: and, as for himselfe, hee said, hee would not stay in the ship unless they would force him. They bade him goe then, for they would not stay him....

"Now were all the poore men in the shallop, whose names are as followeth: Henrie Hudson, John Hudson, Arnold Lodlo, Sidrack Faner, Philip Staffe, Thomas Woodhouse or Wydhouse, Adam Moore, Henrie [sic] King, Michael Bute. The Carpenter got of them a peece, and powder, and shot, and some pikes, an iron pot, with some meale, and other things. They stood out of the ice, the shallop being fast to the sterne of the shippe, and so (when they were nigh out, for I cannot say they were cleane out) they cut her head fast from the sterne of our ship, then out with their top sayles, and toward the east they stood in a cleere sea.

"In the end they took in their top sayles, righted their helme, and lay under their fore sayle till they had ransacked and searched all places in the ship. In the hold they found one of the vessels of meale whole, and the other halfe spent, for wee had but two; wee found also two firkins of batter, some twentie seven pieces of porke, halfe a bushell of pease; but in the Masters cabbin we found two hundred of bisket cakes, a pecke of meale, of beere to the quantitie of a butt, one with another. Now it was said that the shallop was come within sight, they let fall the main sayle, and out with their top sayles, and fly as from an enemy. Then I prayed them yet to remember themselves; but William Wilson (more than the rest) would heare of no such matter. Comming nigh the east shore they cast about, and stood to the west and came to an iland and anchored.... Heere we lay that night, and the best part of the next day, in all which time we saw not the shallop, or ever after."

That is the story of Hudson's murder as we get it from his murderers; and even from Prickett's biased narrative so complete a case is made out against the mutineers that there is comfort in knowing that some of them, and the worst of them, came quickly to their just reward.

XIII

A month later, July 28, a halt was made in the mouth of Hudson's Strait to search for "fowle" for food on the homeward voyage. There "savages" were encountered, seemingly of so friendly a nature that on the day following the first meeting with them a boat's crew--of which Prickett was one--went ashore unarmed. Then came a sudden attack. Prickett himself was set upon in the boat--of which, "being lame," he had been left keeper--by a savage whom he managed to kill. What happened to the others he thus tells:

"Whiles I was thus assaulted in the boat, our men were set upon on the shoare. John Thomas and William Wilson had their bowels cut, and Michael Perse and Henry Greene, being mortally wounded, came tumbling into the boat together. When Andrew Moter saw this medley, hee came running downe the rockes and leaped into the sea, and so swamme to the boat, hanging on the sterne thereof, till Michael Perse took him in, who manfully made good the head of the boat against the savages, that pressed sore upon us. Now Michael Perse had got an hatchet, wherewith I saw him strike one of them, that he lay sprawling in the sea. Henry Greene crieth _Coragio_, and layeth about him with his truncheon. I cryed to them to cleere the boat, and Andrew Moter cryed to bee taken in. The savages betooke them to their bowes and arrowes, which they sent amongst us, wherewith Henry Greene was slaine out-right, and Michael Perse received many wounds, and so did the rest. Michael Perse cleereth [unfastened] the boate, and puts it from the shoare, and helpeth Andrew Moter in; but in turning of the boat I received a cruell wound in my backe with an arrow. Michael Perse and Andrew Moter rowed the boate away, which, when the savages saw, they ranne to their boats, and I feared they would have launched them to have followed us, but they did not, and our ship was in the middle of the channel and could not see us.

"Now, when they had rowed a good way from the shoare, Michael Perse fainted, and could row no more. Then was Andrew Moter driven to stand in the boat head, and waft to the ship, which at first saw us not, and when they did they could not tell what to make of us, but in the end they stood for us, and so tooke us up. Henry Greene was throwne out of the boat into the sea, and the rest were had aboard, the savage [with whom Prickett had fought] being yet alive, yet without sense. But they died all there that day, William Wilson swearing and cursing in most fearefull manner. Michael Perse lived two dayes after, and then died. Thus you have heard the tragicall end of Henry Greene and his mates, whom they called captaine, these four being the only lustie men in all the ship."

I am glad that Prickett got "a cruell wound in the backe." Were it not that by the killing of him we should have lost his narrative, I should wish that that weak villain had been killed along with the stronger ones. They were strong. It was a brave fight that they made; and Henry Greene's last recorded word, "Coragio!" was worthy of the lips of a better man. But he and the others eminently deserved the death that the savages gave them, and it is good to know that Hudson's murder so soon was avenged. Juet's equally exemplary punishment, equally deserved, came a little later. On the homeward voyage the whole company got to the very edge, and Juet passed beyond the edge, of starvation. When the ship was only sixty or seventy leagues from Ireland, where she made her landfall, Prickett tells that he "dyed for meere want."

What befell the survivors of the "Discovery's" crew, on the ship's return to England, has remained until now unknown; and even now the account of them is inconclusive. In the Latin edition of the year 1613 of his "Detectio Freti" Hessel Gerritz wrote: "They exposed Hudson and the other officers in a boat on the open sea, and returned into their country. There they have been thrown into prison for their crime, and will be kept in prison until their captain shall be safely brought home. For that purpose some ships have been sent out last year by the late Prince of Wales and by the Directors of the Moscovia Company, about the return of which nothing as yet has been heard."

For three hundred years that statement of fact has ended Hudson's story. The fragmentary documents which I have been so fortunate as to obtain from the Record Office carry it a little, only a little, farther. Unhappily they stop short--giving no assurance that the mutineers got to the gallows that they deserved. All that they prove is that the few survivors were brought to trial: charged with having put the master of their ship, and others, "into a shallop, without food, drink, fire, clothing, or any necessaries, and then maliciously abandoning them: so that they came thereby to their death, and miserably perished."

There, unfinished, the record ends. What penalty, or that any penalty, was exacted of those who survived to be tried for Hudson's murder remains unknown. Their ignoble fate is hidden in a sordid darkness: fitly in contrast with his noble fate--that lies retired within a glorious mystery.

XIV

Hudson has no cause to quarrel with the rating that has been fixed for him in the eternal balances. All that he lost (or seemed to lose) in life has been more than made good to him in the flowing of the years since he fought out with Fate his last losing round.

In his River and Strait and Bay he has such monuments set up before the whole world as have been awarded to only one other navigator. And they are his justly. Before his time, those great waterways, and that great inland sea, were mere hazy geographical concepts. After his time they were clearly defined geographical facts. He did--and those who had seen them before him did not--make them effectively known. Here, in this city of New York--which owes to him its being--he has a monument of a different and of a nobler sort. Here, assuredly, down through the coming ages his memory will be honored actively, his name will be in men's mouths ceaselessly, so long as the city shall endure.

And I hold that Hudson's fame, as a most brave explorer and as a great discoverer, is not dimmed by the fact that up to a certain point he followed in other men's footsteps; nor do I think that his glory is lessened by his seeming predestination to go on fixed lines to a fixed end. On the contrary, I think that his fame is brightened by his willingness to follow, that he might--as he did--surpass his predecessors; and that his glory is increased by the resolute firmness with which he played up to his destiny. Holding fast to his great purpose to find a passage to the East by the North, he compelled every one of Fate's deals against him--until that last deal--to turn in his favor; and even in that last deal he won a death so heroically woful that exalted pity for him, almost as much as admiration for his great achievements, has kept his fame through the centuries very splendidly alive.

NEWLY-DISCOVERED DOCUMENTS

CONCERNING THE DOCUMENTS

In an article entitled "English Ships in the Time of James I.," by R.G. Marsden, M.A., in Volume XIX of the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, I came upon this entry: "'Discovery' (or 'Hopewell,' or 'Good Hope') Hudson's ship on his last voyage; Baffin also sailed in her." A list of references to manuscript records followed; and one of the entries, relating to the High Court of Admiralty, read: "Exam. 42. 25 Jan. 1611. trial of some of the crew for the murder of Hudson."

Note--The varying spelling, most obvious in proper names,
follows that of the documents.

As I have stated elsewhere, none of the historians who has dealt with matters relating to Hudson has told what became of his murderers when they returned to England. Hessel Gerritz alone has given the information (1613, two years after the event) that they "were to be" put on trial. Whether they were, or were not, put on trial has remained unknown. Any one who has engaged in the fascinating pursuit of elusive historical truth will understand, therefore, my warm delight, and my warm gratitude to Mr. Marsden, when this clew to hitherto unpublished facts concerning Hudson was placed in my hands.

Following it has not led me so far as, in my first enthusiasm, I hoped that it would lead me. The search that I have caused to be made in the Record Office, in London, has not brought to light even all of the documents referred to by Mr. Marsden. The record of the trial is incomplete; and, most regrettably, the most essential of all the documents is lacking: the judgment of the Court. So far as the mutineers are concerned, all that these documents prove is that they actually were brought to trial: what penalty was put upon them, or if any penalty was put upon them, still remains unknown.

But in another way these documents do possess a high value, and are of an exceptional interest, in that they exhibit the sworn testimony of six eye-witnesses to the fact as to the circumstances of Hudson's out-casting. Five of these witnesses now are produced (in print) for the first time. The sixth, Abacuck Prickett, was the author of the "Larger Discourse" that hitherto has been the sole source of information concerning the final mutiny on board the "Discovery." That Prickett's sworn testimony and unsworn narrative substantially are in agreement, as they are, is not surprising; nor does such agreement appreciably affect the truth of either of them. Sworn or unsworn, Prickett was not a person from whom pure truth could be expected when, as in this case, he was trying to tell a story that would save him from being hanged. Neither is the corroboration of Prickett's story by the five newly produced witnesses--they equally being in danger of hanging--in itself convincing. But certain of the details (e.g., the door between Hudson's cabin and the hold) brought out in this new testimony, together with the way in which it all hangs together, does raise the probability that the crew of the "Discovery" had more than a colorable grievance against Hudson, and does imply that Prickett's obviously biased narrative may be less far from the truth than heretofore it has been held to be.

The summing up of the Trinity House examination gives the crux of the matter: "They all charge the Master with wasting [i.e., filching] the victuals by a scuttle made out of his cabin into the hold, and it appears that he fed his favorites, as the surgeon, etc., and kept others at ordinary allowance. All say that, to save some from starving, they were content to put away [abandon] so many." It was from this presentment that the Elder Brethren drew the just conclusion--as we know from Prickett's characteristic denial under oath that he "ever knew or heard" such expression of their opinion--that "they deserved to be hanged for the same."

In the testimony of Edward Wilson, the surgeon--one of the "favorites"--the point is made, credited to Staffe, that "the reason why the Master should soe favour to give meate to some of the companie and not the rest" was because "it was necessary that some of them should be kepte upp"--in other words, that some members of the crew, without regard to the needs of the remainder, should receive food enough to give them strength to work the ship. This is an agreement, substantially, with the charge preferred against Hudson in the "Larger Discourse"; upon which Dr. Asher made the exculpating comment: "But even if this charge be a true one, Hudson's motives were certainly honorable; with such men as he had under his orders it was dangerous to deal openly. Their crime had no other cause than the fear that he would continue his search and expose them to new privations: and it seems that in providing for this emergency, he had even increased his dangers." Dr. Asher's excuse, I should add, refers more to concealment of food than to unfair apportionment.

I have no desire to play the part of devil's advocate; but--in the guise of that personage under his more respectable title of Promotor Fidei--it is my duty to point out that if Hudson deliberately did "keep up" himself and a favored few by putting the remainder on starvation rations--no matter what may have been his motives--he exceeded his ship-master's right over his crew of life and death. His doing so, if he did do so, did not justify mutiny. Mutiny is a sea-crime that no provocation justifies. But if the point at issue was who should die of hunger that the others should have food enough to keep them alive, then the mutineers could claim--and this is what virtually they did claim in making their defence--that they did by the Master in a swift and bold way precisely what in a slow and underhand way he was doing by them.