In 1607 and 1608, Hudson made two attempts on behalf of English merchants to find a rumoured Northeast Passage to Cathay via a route above the Arctic Circle.
16 Facts About Henry Hudson
2.
Henry Hudson's voyages helped to establish European contact with the native peoples of North America, and contributed to the development of trade and commerce.
3.
In 1611, after wintering on the shore of James Bay, Henry Hudson wanted to press on to the west, but most of his crew mutinied.
4.
When Henry Hudson first entered the historical record in 1607, he was already an experienced mariner with sufficient credentials to be commissioned the leader of an expedition charged with a search for a trade route across the North Pole.
5.
In 1607, the Muscovy Company of England hired Henry Hudson to find a northerly route to the Pacific coast of Asia.
6.
Henry Hudson wanted to make his return "by the north of Greenland to Davis his Streights, and so for Kingdom of England", but ice conditions would have made this impossible.
7.
Henry Hudson reported large numbers of whales in Spitsbergen waters during this voyage.
8.
In 1609, Henry Hudson was chosen by merchants of the Dutch East India Company in the Netherlands to find an easterly passage to Asia.
9.
Henry Hudson had been told to sail through the Arctic Ocean north of Russia, into the Pacific and so to the Far East.
10.
At that point, acting outside his instructions, Henry Hudson pointed the ship west and decided to try to seek a westerly passage through North America.
11.
Henry Hudson was not the first European to discover the estuary, though, as it had been known since the voyage of Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524.
12.
Henry Hudson managed to pass the log to the Dutch ambassador to England, who sent it, along with his report, to Amsterdam.
13.
Henry Hudson's voyage was used to establish Dutch claims to the region and to the fur trade that prospered there when a trading post was established at Albany in 1614.
14.
In 1610, Henry Hudson obtained backing for another voyage, this time under the English flag.
15.
Henry Hudson spent the following months mapping and exploring its eastern shores, but he and his crew did not find a passage to Asia.
16.
The bay visited by and named after Henry Hudson is three times the size of the Baltic Sea, and its many large estuaries afford access to otherwise landlocked parts of Western Canada and the Arctic.