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1 Out of Obscurity

For a man who was the foremost northern navigator of his time, surprisingly little is known about Henry Hudson’s life before he made his first important voyage in 1607. No record of his birth has ever been found, but it has been estimated that he was probably born about 1570. That would make him thirty-seven, considered middle age in that era, by the time he first burst upon the historical stage. He and his wife Katherine had three sons: Oliver, John, and Richard, who was still a small boy at the time of Hudson’s disappearance. The family lived in a narrow, three-storey brick house in the suburb of St. Katherine, near the Tower of London. This was a fairly respectable neighbourhood, so while Hudson was not rich, he evidently had a comfortable income. He could even afford to pay for a maidservant to help Katherine with the daily chores. Today the Hudson family would be considered upper middle class.

Nothing is known of Hudson’s parents, but one of the founders of the Muscovy Company, an important trading firm, was Henry Heardson, who might have been Hudson’s grandfather. If so, that would help explain Hudson’s association with that company. Henry Heardson was also an alderman; a member of the London municipal government. This suggests that the family had political connections. Another founder of the Muscovy Company was Sebastian Cabot, son of the explorer John Cabot, who had discovered Newfoundland and its rich fishing grounds for England. Sebastian Cabot had searched for the Northwest Passage, and no doubt talked to Henry Heardson about finding a short route to China. A Christopher Hudson, who might have been Henry’s older brother, had been an agent for the Muscovy Company. A Thomas Hudson, who also might also have been an older brother, had been a sea captain for the Muscovy Company. At a time when Henry would have been in his mid-teens, Thomas met the explorer John Davis.

Though no details are known, Henry Hudson was well educated. He could read and write, do mathematics, and had a passion for books about exotic places. He knew how to use a quadrant to determine a ship’s position by the stars. It is quite possible that young Hudson sailed with John Davis in 1587, when Davis encountered what he called the Furious Overfall, while searching for the Northwest Passage. This body of water, with its powerful currents and ice floes that were so dangerous to wooden sailing ships, is now called Hudson Strait. After that voyage, Hudson almost certainly served aboard an English ship in the battle with the Spanish Armada in 1588.

By 1607 Hudson was a licensed pilot and ship’s captain, which meant he had to have had considerable experience at sea. He could have sailed merchant ships in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea. He might even have engaged in a little piracy. It was not at all uncommon for merchant sailors to turn to robbery on the high seas if an opportunity presented itself, and the ships of rival countries were always considered fair game. The depredations of English pirates were the main reason the king of Spain had sent the Armada to attack England.

While there is no solid evidence that Hudson explored with Davis, sailed as a merchant mariner or a pirate, or fought the Spanish Armada, none of these things would have been out of character for him. What is known for sure from surviving records is that he was a man who craved adventure. Hudson was at home on the deck of a ship. He was a driven man, with no fear of the unknown. If he had, in fact, seen the Furious Overfall while sailing with Davis, the idea of finding the Northwest Passage could have taken root in his mind then. Whatever its source, that idea became Hudson’s lifelong obsession.

No authenticated portrait of Henry Hudson is known to exist. All of the pictures alleged to be likenesses of him were made after his death, and come from the artists’ imaginations. A verbal description of Hudson written by a man who knew him says he was fair-haired and thin.

Accounts from his contemporaries portray Hudson as a good husband and father, but a moody man with a sharp temper. He was shy socially and he shunned public adulation. His friends included such notable individuals as Captain John Smith, the founder of the Jamestown Colony in Virginia; Sir Thomas Smythe, one of England’s greatest merchant adventurers; and Richard Hakluyt, the famous author and geographer. Hakluyt was a strong believer in exploration and colonization, and counted among his friends most of the renowned English sea captains of his time, including Sir Francis Drake. Smith, Smythe, and Hakluyt always spoke highly of Henry Hudson.

This is believed to be a likeness of Henry Hudson. However, all alleged portraits of Hudson were made after his death, so the authenticity of the image is uncertain.

Hudson was a straightforward man who wanted one thing: to sail a ship on voyages of discovery. For that he was better equipped intellectually and evidently had more experience than the average English sea captain. Hudson did, however, have failings; he was a poor judge of character, and he was not a good leader of men. These shortcomings would blight his career as an explorer, and ultimately bring about his destruction.

The driving force behind the Age of Exploration was profit. While men like Henry Hudson were always willing to venture into new territory to see what lay beyond the horizon, the fact remained that expeditions of discovery were expensive. Ships had to be purchased and provisioned. Sailors had to be paid. Money-conscious monarchs, always short of cash because of wars and extravagant lifestyles, were not willing to invest in expeditions unless they were guaranteed some sort of financial return. The great trading enterprises like the Muscovy Company and the East India Company of England were run by hardheaded businessmen who measured everything, including their own lives, in terms of pounds, shillings, and pence. They sponsored explorers not for the sheer sake of expanding knowledge, but to fill their own coffers.

There was a great demand in Europe for products from the Far East: Exotic goods, such as spices and silks. Spices that improved the flavour of poorly preserved food, particularly meat. Garments, bedding, and various accessories made of silk became a fashion rage in Europe. A nobleman of the aristocracy or a gentleman of the growing urban middle class wanted a full wardrobe of silk garments, from his socks and underwear to his brightly coloured outer coat. The lady he escorted to a dinner party or the theatre simply had to be dressed in a fashionable silk gown. And no lady or gentleman was considered properly dressed without a scented silk handkerchief tucked into a bodice, sleeve, or pocket.

Because these commodities had to be transported incredibly long distances, they were very expensive. Caravans from the Orient carried the goods overland to the eastern Mediterranean, where they were sold at top prices. There, powerful Italian city states, such as Venice, had an iron grip on trade. They purchased the spices, silks, and other Eastern goods, and then added their own high mark up before selling the products to the rest of Europe. Thus, by the time an ounce of pepper or cinnamon, or a bolt of silk reached London, it was literally worth its weight in gold.

The monopoly the Italians had on trade with the Far East was not the only problem for the nations of Western Europe. Muslim armies had overrun North Africa and even much of Eastern Europe. Now the ships of Muslim pirates like the Barbary Corsairs and the Salee Rovers prowled the Mediterranean, preying on European shipping. These pirates wanted not only the cargoes the ships were carrying, but also the crewmen. White Europeans fetched good prices in the slave markets of North Africa.

The maritime nations of Western Europe began looking for other routes to the Far East. Portuguese navigators pioneered a shipping lane down around the African continent and into the Indian Ocean. This route was also very long — a round trip could take two years — and it was infested with pirates. The Portuguese government negotiated treaties with the various rulers to whom many of the pirates were subject, and gained safe passage for Portuguese ships. But the vessels of other European countries were not granted this protection, which suited the Portuguese.

When the Italian navigator Christopher Columbus, sailing for Spain, made his first monumental voyage in 1492, he was not looking for new lands. He was trying to prove that a ship could sail directly from Europe all the way to the Far East. When he landed at an island in what are now called the West Indies, he actually thought he was near India. Further exploration by Columbus and other mariners sailing for Spain and Portugal revealed that he had stumbled upon a “New World” that would eventually be called America. Spain and Portugal claimed the new lands for themselves and established colonial empires.

Meanwhile, the merchants of Western Europe still desperately wanted a new sea route to the Far East. They thought that America was just an island that their ships could sail around. But with each voyage of discovery the “island” kept getting bigger as more miles of coastline were added to the maps. Finally, a Portuguese explorer named Ferdinand Magellan, sailing for Spain, found the way around the southern tip of South America. Now a ship could actually sail from Europe to the Far East, via the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. But this route was still incredibly long and full of dangers. One of the worst hazards was scurvy, a disease caused by a vitamin-poor diet that plagued sailors on long voyages.

With Spain and Portugal jealously guarding the sea lanes of the South Atlantic, the French and the English began to search for a more northerly route through or around America — a Northwest Passage. They concluded that because the circumference of the Earth is smaller at the higher latitudes, the Northwest Passage would be the major link in a short, commercially viable trade route to the Far East. Moreover, the country that found and controlled the passage would not only profit from trade, but would have a major card to play in political dealings with other European countries.

French and English expeditions probed the east coasts of what are now Canada and the United States, looking for a way through a land mass whose size they did not know. The French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River, hoping it would lead him to the Pacific Ocean. He was disappointed, though his discoveries marked the beginning of a French empire in North America. John Cabot, an Italian sailing for England, was the first to add Newfoundland to English charts. Explorers who came after him, like Martin Frobisher and John Davis, made the initial attempts to unravel the riddles of the Arctic Ocean.

Sir Martin Frobisher followed in Hudson’s footsteps, discovering Frobisher Bay in Baffin Island, as well as a large amount of pyrite (fool’s gold).

Frobisher’s story illustrates how little Europeans knew of the Far North. When he sailed into an inlet of Baffin Island (Frobisher Bay), he thought he was in a channel that separated the continents of Asia and America. Frobisher’s exploration was sidetracked when he returned to England with a rock that assayers were convinced contained gold. The result was Canada’s first gold rush. Investors, including Queen Elizabeth I, sent Frobisher back as the leader of a major expedition to mine gold. It turned out that Frobisher had found worthless fool’s gold. The Queen of England lost a lot of money in the venture — an example of why monarchs were hesitant to invest in voyages — and Martin Frobisher’s career as an explorer was over.

However, Frobisher saw the Furious Overfall. He wanted to explore it, but could not because he had been ordered to mine gold. Years later John Davis, and maybe a youthful Henry Hudson, also saw that turbulent strait. Pans of ice that came barrelling down the Overfall like battering rams forced Davis to turn back. For a man like Hudson, the Furious Overfall was a challenge to be taken up with daring. If only he could get a chance at it!