The season was advancing; already the days were very short and the nights long and cold. Realizing it was time to find shelter for the winter, he cast about to discover a suitable location. By the first of November he had the vessel hauled aground, and ten days later it was frozen in. The stock of provisions was very low, but the men supplemented it by killing or trapping anything that was serviceable for food, and after game left them in the spring, they lived on such birds as they could secure; when these, too, migrated, they ate moss, frogs, and buds.
With the breaking up of the ice in the spring, preparations were made for returning home.
In Hudson’s own bay, in the cold embrace of the shores he had explored, Henry Hudson divided the last remnants of food equally among his men. They were a famished, despairing crew, maddened with suffering. The cry for bread was in their vitals, and there was no bread. Hunger and misery made their brains reel, robbed them of their godliness, and reduced them to wild animals at bay. It took but the encouragement of one of their number, Green by name, to incite them to mutiny.
The Death of Henry Hudson
From the painting by Collier
On June 21, “The ship’s company, both sick and well, were in berths, dispersed generally two and two about the ship. King, one of the crew who was supposed to be friendly to Hudson, was up, and in the morning they secured him in the hold by fastening down the hatches. Green then went and held the carpenter in conversation to amuse him, while two of the crew, keeping just before Hudson, and one, named Wilson, behind him, bound his hands. He asked what they were about, and they told him he should know when he was in the shallop. Another mutineer, Juet, went down to King in the hold, who kept him at bay, being armed with his sword. He came upon deck to Hudson, whom he found with his hands tied. Hudson was heard to call to the carpenter, and tell him he was bound. Two of the devoted party, who were sick, told the mutineers their knavery would be punished. They paid no attention; the shallop was hauled up to the side of the vessel, and the sick and lame were made to get into it. The carpenter, whom they had agreed to retain in the vessel, asked them if they would not be hanged when they reached England, and boldly refused to remain with them, preferring to share the fate of Hudson and the sick men.”
The crew then set sail, and the boat in which were Hudson and his companions was never seen again. After many hardships and vicissitudes and much loss of life through the onslaught of the natives, where they landed to secure food, a remnant of the unfortunate crew found their way past the Cape of God’s Mercies and thence to Cape Desolation in Greenland. Pursuing their homeward course, they were reduced to the last extremities by hunger, one-half a fowl fried in tallow per man being their only sustenance each twenty-four hours.
Just before their last bird was devoured, they sighted the north of Ireland, where they landed, and later made their way to Plymouth.
BAFFIN