His crew became quarrelsome, and some of them mutinous. Among the worst were two he had favored most—one his mate, Juet, and another, a Mr. Green, a worthless, degenerate fellow. Juet was tried for insubordination—for attempting to incite to mutiny—found guilty and deposed. The winter of 1610-1611 was a hard one—their provisions were short, owing to a treatment of a native by some of the crew—they could obtain no game from the Indians, nor could they catch fish. It was said, perhaps falsely, that Hudson became very tyrannical, and said something that his enemies thought he meant to prolong his scanty supplies by getting rid of several of the crew. June, 1611, a few days after leaving one of the most southern harbors of James bay (a southern portion of Hudson bay) where they had wintered, a mutiny broke out among the crew. Hudson was seized and bound, and he, his son and seven others, principally sick and infirm, were put in a small boat and set adrift upon the waves, destined soon to perish.
Thus ended, in tragedy, the career of a remarkable man, whose appearance upon the theater had not extended a half dozen years.
To commemorate the tercentenary of Hendrick Hudson’s discovery of the Hudson river would be on a false basis—at war with historical facts. Hudson’s name was Henry (as has been clearly established) and not Hendrick, as doubtless the Dutch wanted him to become a Hollander on his entering the service of the Dutch East India Company.
There is no evidence that Henry Hudson was ever in Holland except late in the year 1608 and early in the year 1609. It is certain that he did not see Holland after his expedition on behalf of the Dutch East India Company, and that born in England, he remained an Englishman, for that government forbid him, as an Englishman, to leave and enter any other service.
It seems most remarkable that in Hudson’s honor, as a discoverer, should have been named a strait (Hudson strait discovered by Sebastian Cabot in 1517), Hudson bay, the Hudson Bay Company territory, which originally included all the land which was drained into Hudson bay—territory ample for an empire—which Hudson did not discover and probably never put his foot on its soil, and the Hudson river, which has been clearly shown he did not discover. Unless the word discoverer has a different meaning from what the public understand by it and lexicographers primarily ascribe to it, Hudson, in none of these cases, was a discoverer. He was an explorer, and as such was a benefactor, and deserved credit. We would “render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s.”
Henry Hudson was a bold, skillful navigator, a careful explorer, and had the ability and spirit to have made important discoveries had the time and circumstances favored. It often happens that the discoverer, the inventor, merits less honor than the party coming after, who makes that discovery or invention serviceable—useful, as it had not been before. Robert Fulton was not the discoverer of the application of steam as a motive power in navigation, but he built the “Clermont”—propelled it by steam from New York to Albany, took the wind out of sails, revolutionized navigation, and received the honors. Samuel Finley Breese Morse was not the discoverer, the inventor of the electrical telegraph, but he made it serviceable—of practical utility—almost ignoring distance in the transmission of news, and he won the honors.
Henry Hudson did not discover a new and shorter water route to India, nor did he discover the Hudson river. He, however, did explore the Hudson river, and his glowing accounts of it, and the country through which it flows, attracted immigration, settlements, and was an important element in the founding of the new nation in the western world. The name, it is to be hoped, the true name of Hudson, Henry, and not Hendrick, will be cherished, for whom living, so little was done. His widow, in extreme poverty, applied to the British government for another of her sons, and he was received and sent to the Government Naval School, and an allowance was made for his outfit. Henry Hudson appears to have had a large family.
The river which Hudson sailed up and down in 1609 has borne many names, given by different peoples at different times. The red men bestow names descriptive or characteristic—while there are no known laws or rules which the white men observe in naming. At the advent of the Europeans to North America many tribes of Indians inhabited the territory from Florida to the St. Lawrence, and back to the Mississippi river, and prominent among them were the Lenapes, to which the Mohicans belonged. These Indians called the river Mah-i-can-i-tuk, meaning “the flowing waters.” The Iroquois called it Co-hat-a-tea, or “river that flows from the mountains.” It was called the Mauritius, in honor of Prince Maurice of Nassau. Rio de Montagne was a name given to it. The French usually called it “Le Grande.” The Spanish called it “The River of the Mountains.” It was often called the “North river” in contradistinction to the “South river”—the Delaware.
That Henry Hudson was greatly pleased in exploring this river is not surprising. “There is no river in the western world comparable with it in picturesqueness and beauty, nor has it a superior, if an equal, in these respects, in Europe. In some stretches of the Clyde and the Rhine are features resembling the Hudson, and the Elbe has in sections, such delicately penciled effects, but no European river is so lordly in its bearing, none flows in such state to the sea.” It has been said that no other river in the world presents so great a variety of views as the Hudson.
“Throughout its whole length, from the wilderness to the sea, from the Adirondacks to Staten Island, a distance of 325 miles, there is a combination of the finest pictures, illustrating some of the best scenery of the old world,” which some quaint writer (to me unknown) describes as follows: “The tourist with only a slight stretch of the fancy may find Loch Katrine nestled among the mountains of our own Highlands; in the Catskills may be seen from Sunset Mountain of Arran; and in the Palisades, the Giant’s Causeway of Ireland.” He divides the Hudson river into five stretches, reaches or divisions, representing five distinct characteristics, namely: Grandeur, Repose, Sublimity, The Picturesque, and Beauty.