Part 3
It is not presumable that the alert, watchful, shrewd Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East India Company were ignorant of the discoveries, explorations, and important events in the western world nor of the charters of 1606 granted by King James which seemed to leave an unoccupied and an unknown territory extending from the thirty-eight to the forty-eight degrees of North latitude which would furnish the Netherlands a desirable base for their operations in America against Spain. Perhaps that territory might be secured under the right of prior discovery if a small craft was sent out nominally to sail northeast as a blind but really westward for the double purpose either of finding a shorter route to India or obtaining a desirable foothold in the New World.
Let us see whether we may ascertain more about Hudson's views, preparation, and knowledge before the contract was entered into with the Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East India Company. In his second voyage in the employ of the Muscovy Company, under date of August 7, 1608, he made the following entry into his journal: "I used all diligence to arrive in London, for being at Nova Zembla on the 8th day of July and void of hope of a northeast route except by Vaygats, for which I was not fitted to try or prove, I therefore resolved to use all means I could to sail to the _northwest_ (which would have been in direct violation of his instructions) and to make trial at Lumley's Inlet and Captain Davis Straits, hoping to run into it a hundred leagues and return." He did not carry out his resolve but indicated his desire to seek a _northwestern_ passage then.
Henry Hudson was not wild, erratic, nor a rover. Perhaps no one whom Hudson met in London so much determined his course as did Captain John Smith, a very remarkable English adventurer--a daring rover in early life, entering military service in several of the European governments, captured, imprisoned, and escaped to play such a prominent part in establishing the first permanent English settlement in Virginia in the United States. Captain John Smith's name is almost always associated with that of Pocahontas (the daughter of the famous Chief Powhatan) who while yet a girl but twelve years is said to have interposed her body and thereby saved the life of Captain Smith from the uplifted war clubs of the Indians about to descend upon him. Captain Smith also corresponded with Hudson, gave him maps of North America and advised him as to the course to be pursued in seeking a westward watercourse to India. Perhaps the maps most serviceable to Hudson in his voyage westward in 1609 were those of New France, which plainly represented the Grande river (subsequently called the Hudson river), and were published in the sixteenth century. Hudson was also a theorist. He believed in an "Open Polar Sea" and so far as is known was the first to promulgate that theory, entertained and followed by searchers after the North Pole. Hudson made the acquaintance and won the friendship of learned geographers in Amsterdam, prominent among them was the Reverend Peter Plancius, who said it was reasonable that the sea should be open near the Pole where the sun shines incessantly for months though with less heat than where it shines only a few hours by day and the hours of the night intervening, cooling. Hudson said his experience convinced him, for after passing beyond a certain line (about 66° north latitude) the sea became more open as he went further north. This Doctor Peter Plancius was a member of the Reformed Church and as such driven from his Belgian home by the Spaniards, he heartily co-operated with Usselinx in his plan to form a West India Company. He was often in consultation with Hudson in Amsterdam and to his chapter on "Norumbega (said to be somewhere in New England) et Virginia" he added a map which, imperfect in some respect--incorrect in its latitudes--was serviceable to Hudson in his westward voyage. The French map of about 1517 and the map of Thomas Hood, an Englishman, published in 1594, which shows under latitude 40° north (New York city is 40° 43' north) the mouth of a river called Rio de San Antonio, the name given by the earliest Spanish discoverers to what later on became known as the Hudson river. In this connection it may not be amiss to call attention to the historical fact that Giovanni da Verrazano, a Florentine navigator in the employ of Francis I, King of France, entered the New York bay and saw at least the mouth of the river which the French called the "Grande river" in 1524, eighty-five years before Henry Hudson saw it. It is further claimed that soon after the French built a fort on Castle Island near Albany and there carried on a trade in furs with the Indians. Some historians discredit this French claim, which, however, seems sustained though it never resulted in advantage to the French. A map made by Vaz Dornado at Lisbon in 1571 gives the Hudson river in almost its entire course from the mountains to the bay. A copy of this map made in 1580, which went to Munich, was probably seen by Dr. Plancius, Hudson's friend and adviser. _Johannes de Laet_, a director of the West India company and a copatroon of Rensselaerwick with Kilian Van Rensselaer, admits in his book that the object of the West India Company was _war on Spain, and he congratulates the country upon its success_.
Jean Wagenaar, a Dutch historian, a historiographer, the secretary of the city of Amsterdam, held in the highest esteem, who had free access to the archives and whose statements are not to be discredited, says the company "_sent out a skipper to discover a passage to China by the Northwest not by the Northeast_." _A resolution of the States of Holland, quoted by this same authority, proves that previous to Hudson's voyage, the Dutch knew that they would find terra firma north of the Spanish possessions and contiguous to them._
_Resolved, "That by carrying the war over to America, the Spaniards be attacked there where their weakest point is, but whence they draw the most of their resources."_
As much has appeared in this article concerning the sincerity of the motives actuating the parties to the contract of January 8, 1609, and as doubts and adverse criticisms had been expressed and no authority given therefor--they seemed conjectures--perhaps not unreasonable, plausible but requiring confirmation--_proof_ to be entitled to credit.
Not, however, until the latter half of the nineteenth century was any documentary evidence on that subject obtainable and published, though efforts had been made before.
The Hon. Henry Cruse Murphy, born in Brooklyn in 1810, prepared in the High School for Columbia College, where he graduated with honor in 1830, studied law, was admitted to practice in 1833, married in 1834, mayor of Brooklyn, member of two State constitutional conventions, five times elected to the Senate of the State of New York, a gentleman of culture and refinement, author and founder of the Brooklyn Eagle, whom, in 1857, President Buchanan appointed Minister to The Hague, exceptionally well qualified to represent the United States. His pleasing manners enabled him to obtain most valuable information about the war between Spain and the Netherlands, and also about the early settlement of North America. He first gives to the public an exact copy of that contract of January, 1609, where there could be no doubt that the navigator's name was _Henry_, not Hendrick.
The Minister says: "The following memoir is the result of an investigation made for the purpose of ascertaining more precisely than has hitherto been explained, the circumstances which originated the voyage made on behalf of the Dutch East India Company by Henry Hudson; the motives, purposes and character of its projectors and the designs of the navigator himself at the time he sailed upon that expedition. We have examined the records of the East India Company, comprising the registers or book of resolutions of the general of the company, styled the Council of Seventeen, and the Chambers of Amsterdam, Zealand, etc., with some other documents among the archives of the Kingdom at The Hague, where all the books and papers of the company have been brought from the several chambers, have been arranged and kept. A copy of the contract between Hudson and two members of the Chamber of Amsterdam (as given on previous pages), was found appended to a history of the company never published, but prepared at its request by Mr. P. Van Dam, who held the position of counsel of the company for the extraordinary period of fifty-four years, that is, from 1652 until his death in 1706."
The Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company had, among its members, enterprising merchants who had a particular motive in seeking to secure Hudson's services. They wished to forestall others, and especially their own country, in the discovery, and thus prevent any interference with their chartered monopoly of the East India trade. The evidence of this policy distinctly appears in the resolutions and proceedings of the general council of all the chambers of the company, called the "Council of Seventeen."
The company itself, shortly after its organization, took into consideration the expediency of making an attempt to explore the northern passage and of soliciting the necessary privileges from the government. It is quite apparent, therefore, that the fears and the hopes of opening that route still existed in the minds of some of the directors.
The Council of Seventeen determined finally that it was inexpedient to make the trial. Their determination was, however, accompanied by a remarkable resolution. The final action of the Council of Seventeen took place on the 7th of August, 1603, and is thus entered in the minutes: "It is likewise for deliberation and resolution whether the voyage by the North shall also be undertaken and negotiations be had with the Noble Lord States in regards to terms and privileges for that purpose seeing that some private persons have already been in communication with said Lords; the more so as this matter at the meeting of the 17 on the 27th of Feby last past was postponed as appears by the 17th section of the proceedings of that meeting."
In the margin is the following disposition of that subject: "The contents hereof are rejected as it is deemed not serviceable to the Co, and therefore if this navigation should be undertaken by any private person it ought by all means to be prevented." The company was realizing by the southern route enormous profits, dividing among its stockholders 37 per cent. for its first two years.
The States General, by a decree on the 1st of July, 1606, expressly prohibited from navigating by the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan, and in the following September, by another decree, the subjects of the Netherlands were prohibited from carrying on the trade.
The entire period is so short, concerning which we know anything about Henry Hudson, do we really know enough of him to form a true and fair estimate of his character?
We do know that Hudson had made two (and we don't know how many more) voyages north of Siberia, in the employ of the Muscovy Company, intending to go east and then south, down to Cathay, but did not succeed. He had, however, been exposed, inured to the arctic colds, privations and dangers, and had won the rank of captain. What did he know about the recently explored seas and lands or what more did he need to know about them, if he was in the employ of the Dutch East India Company through its Amsterdam Chambers, two directors to pursue the same course he had on the two voyages he had for the Muscovy Company?
Before Henry Hudson had signed the famous contract on the 8th of January, 1609, he had been a careful geographical student, as far as he had opportunity.
About the beginning of the seventeenth century, after the Belgians, on account of their religious views, had been expelled from Belgium, and many of them gone to Holland--mostly to Amsterdam, then that city and London, England, became the great rendezvous for navigators, discoverers, would-be discoverers, or explorers, to discuss matters, compare notes, and get all information possible on such subjects.
The Muscovy Company had headquarters in London, where Hudson would go, and there he met, it is known, Captain John Smith, and it is probable that there he met and formed a favorable opinion of Jodocus Hondius, who was his interpreter, adviser, and witness to the contract of January 8th. He was an educated gentleman, a minister of the Reformed Church, a Belgian, driven out of his country, went to London, a geographer, map-maker and portrait painter. He painted Queen Elizabeth's portrait. The center around which the Belgians then gathered as their brightest man in discovery was Peter Plancius, another Belgian, a Calvinistic minister driven from Belgium, and who had settled in Amsterdam, and was a devoted friend and adviser of Hudson. Hudson before he had engaged with the Amsterdam directors had seen and examined the most important maps of the French, English, Spanish and Portuguese, and especially of the Arctic regions, New York and Canada, and had borrowed some of them from Plancius and Smith, and those that he wanted most were about the northwest and above 35° north latitude.
Hudson's friends were warm, zealous to help him, that they might lessen the power and vindictiveness of the Spaniards.
Captain John Smith sent Captain Henry Hudson important maps and instructions from Virginia, before Hudson set sail in the "Half Moon." Smith's advice to Hudson seems to have been to seek a passage to the Pacific ocean at about 40° north latitude or about 50° north latitude, or still farther north, and seek a passage through Lumly inlet or some other entrance into the Hudson bay. Hudson made extraordinary preparations if he did not expect to pursue that course for the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company.
That Henry Hudson first discovered, at least first reported, the "Open Sea" north of 66° north is conceded, and that has been confirmed by several Arctic explorers since--prominent among them Dr. Kane. That Sebastian Cabot discovered Hudson straits in about 1517 is admitted.
Jodocus Hondius, a warm friend of Hudson, tried to dissuade him from entering Hudson bay in hopes to find a passage to the Pacific, for he told him that a relative of his had explored the bay, and that there was no communication with the Pacific ocean.
Read, Jr., says our sense of the loss of Hudson's own journal in conclusion with his discovery of Delaware bay is indeed irreparable. Our sense of the loss is increased by the remembrance that the Hudson river, Hudson strait and Hudson bay had been visited long before Hudson explored them. George Weymouth had visited the mouth of Hudson straits.
Gerard Mercator's celebrated map of the world, made at Duisburg, Germany, in 1569, shows the French fort on the east side of the Grande (or Hudson) river. He outlined the Hudson to the height of its navigation with the Mohawk as far as the French had explored it.
_Winsor_, 1520, vol. 4, p. 434. The Pompey Stone and Spaniards in New York State, found in Oneida county with its Spanish inscriptions and date of 1520, and the names of places given in their corruption by the Dutch in a grant conveying part of Albany county. We can no longer hesitate to believe that the heathen reported by Danskon and other writers mentioned before had some foundation, and that the Spaniards knew and had explored the country on the Hudson long before the Dutch came, but had thought, as Peter Martys expresses it, after the failure of Estibon Comez and the Leconcrado d'Aillen "To the South, to the South for the great and exceeding riches of the Equator. They that seek gold must not go to the cold North." The Spaniards never considered New Netherlands of any value itself.
The Pompey Stone was located near where the Cardiff Giant was found and I do not build on it.
That Giovanni de Verazzano, in the French ship "La Dauphin," with a crew of fifty men, commissioned by Francis I, King of France, to make discoveries of new lands entered the lower and upper bays of what now is New York, and the mouth of the North, or now called the Hudson river, is conceded. He tried to ascend the river, thinking it the water route to the South sea or the Pacific ocean on the way to Cathay and the East Indies. A violent gale sprang up and compelled him to go to sea, and his discoveries along the coast of North America, from Florida to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, resulted in the French claiming that territory as La Nouvelle France (New France), an extent of more than 1,100 miles.
The valuable furs and peltries of New France induced French merchants, ship owners and capitalists to send many vessels with merchandise to trade with the Indians. Some of these vessels sailed up the river (North or Hudson) to the height of its navigation, where the Mohawk enters into it. For protection and for a trading-house, the French built a fortified trading-house or castle in 1540, lying in the little bay on the west side of the river, called by the French the "Grande river," near the site of Albany. Before the castle was completed the island was inundated by a great freshet. The earliest Europeans, coming to what is now New York, did not come intending to settle, but to gain in dealing in furs and peltry, and in that pursuit they became well acquainted with the topography of the country. On many of the maps of New France the Grande river is plainly represented from Sandy Hook to its navigable limits, about 175 miles.
Sincerely believing that the honors awarded Henry Hudson, the famous navigator, are not on the true basis, and that at the tercentenary they are likely to be perpetuated against historical facts, I have cited evidence and will add but two more from his own countrymen, viz.: John Knox Laughton, Professor of History in Kings College, London, since 1885, and C. M. Asher, LL. D., "Henry Hudson, the Navigator. The original documents in which his career is recorded printed in London, 1860, for the highly distinguished historical body, the Hakluyt Society."
Professor Laughton, in the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 28, pp. 148 and 149, says: "Hudson's personality is shady 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 bears 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 them a more distinct but still imperfect record. It has been conclusively shown by Dr. Asher that the River, Strait and the Bay were all marked in maps many years before the time of Hudson.
"In April, 1614, Hudson's 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 father had perished in the service of the commonwealth; they accordingly placed him for nautical instruction in the Samaritan and gave five pounds toward his outfit." Henry Hudson, born about 1560.
Dr. Asher, in his publication, says: "_Hudson river, Hudson strait and Hudson bay remind every educated man of the illustrious navigator by whom they were explored._" But though the name of Henry Hudson possesses the preservative against oblivion, little more has been done in its behalf, and few persons have any accurate notion of the real extent of its merits. By considering Hudson as the discoverer of the three mighty waters that bear his name, we indeed both overrate and underrate his deserts. For it is certain that these localities _had_ repeatedly been visited, and even drawn on maps and charts long before he set out on his voyages.
Special attention is called to Justin Winsor's "America," and to Henry Cruse Murphy's "Hudson in Holland." The naming of the territorial empire of Prince Rupert's land upon which Hudson, perhaps, never set his foot, seems more than strange.
The retrospect has been long, and though only by glances, far from complete, doubtless it has been tedious, but to differ from public opinion it seemed necessary to give strong reasons.
Does it not, then, seem that the contract made by the Amsterdam directors and Henry Hudson was rather a blind, and for political reasons, than genuine?
Some historians say that Henry Hudson, when in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, set sail from Amsterdam March 25, 1609, and others April 4, 1609--there is no discrepancy, for the former is what is called Old Style, and the latter New Style, of reckoning time. Some authorities state Hudson had two vessels, namely, the "Good Hope" and the "Half Moon." The contract between the Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East India Company and Henry Hudson names the "Half Moon" and no other. Moreover, the Hon. Henry C. Murphy, when United States Minister to Holland, ascertained from the archives that the Amsterdam directors of the Dutch East India Company did have, in 1608, a vessel named "Good Hope," which sailed April 15, 1608, for the East Indies, and was captured by the Spaniards.
The crew of the "Half Moon," under Henry Hudson as master, consisted of about twenty, part Dutch and part English, many of them had served under him while he was in the employ of the Muscovy Company--his son being one of that number. The "Half Moon" was a yacht of about eighty tons burden. Hudson followed the route he had taken when in the employ of the Muscovy Company until he met with the same obstacles as in his previous expedition, namely, impenetrable ice, fogs and adverse winds which drove him backward. Then he submitted the choice to his crew to decide whether they should sail to the coast of America, latitude 40° north (New Jersey coast) or in search of Davis strait latitude, about 62° north. Many of his crew had been sailors in southern warmer waters and chose the lower latitude, while then, it is said, Hudson preferred the other, but must submit to the wishes of the crew. On the 14th of May Hudson sailed the "Half Moon" westward, and a fortnight later reached the Faroe islands, replenished his water casks, and set sail again, making slow progress for a month against fierce gales, but on the 2d of July was at the grand banks of Newfoundland, with foremast gone and the sails badly torn. There they found a large fleet of Frenchmen fishing, but had no intercourse with them. Becalmed, the "Half Moon" men caught cod. Having made the needed repairs they set sail again, and on the 12th of July Hudson was gladdened by the sight of America's shores. The "Half Moon" entered and anchored in a safe and large harbor (probably Penobscot bay) on the coast of Maine. Here an unfortunate and wanton attack was made by the crew upon the natives, and Hudson at once set sail, and did not approach land again until August 3d, when he sent five men ashore who returned loaded with rose trees and grapes. He supposed that the place was "Cape Cod," which Gonold had so named in 1602. Then for two weeks the "Half Moon" sailed south and came to the mouth of King James river in Virginia. Then Hudson coasted northerly and Friday, August 28th, entered the great Delaware bay. After exploring, he became satisfied that there was no passage-way there to China, and emerging from the bay went north, and September 3, 1609, entered and anchored under the shelter of what is called Sandy Hook. On the 12th of September Henry Hudson entered the Hudson river.