Okay, let's just dive right in. I want you to,
for a second, just visualize a map of North America.
Unless you're driving, of course. Please don't
close your eyes if you're driving. Right. But
for everyone else, picture the East Coast, the
Canadian North. What names just, you know, jump
out at you? Well, you can't miss them, really.
There's the Hudson River slicing right past Manhattan.
A pretty big landmark. Huge. And then you have
the colossal Hudson Bay, which just dominates
the map of Canada. Then, of course, the Hudson
Strait, Hudson County, the Henry Hudson Bridge.
His name is everywhere. It's like it's literally
carved into the bedrock of the continent. It
is. You can't navigate the geography or the history
of the Western Hemisphere without tripping over
his name. But this is where the story gets...
Incredibly strange. Yeah. And honestly, it's
a little unsettling. The man himself. He's a
ghost. A complete ghost. It's one of the most
profound ironies in the history of exploration.
I mean, we're talking about a figure who is just
monumental. Yeah. Geographically, commercially.
Culturally. Absolutely. And yet, if you try to
find Henry Hudson, the person, you know, what
drove him, his background, even what he looked
like, he just evaporates. We have no portrait
of him. We don't really know where he was born.
And the ending of his story. See? It's not the
typical hero returns home to a parade narrative,
to put it mildly. No, this is a mystery. It's
a story about obsession. And ultimately, it's
this terrifying story about a very cold, very
lonely end. It really is. It's the story of this
brilliant, maybe obsessive navigator who is cast
adrift by his own men. In a tiny open boat. In
the middle of the frozen Arctic, never to be
seen by Europeans again. That image, just the
sheer silence of it, has always stuck with me.
So our mission for this deep dive is to try and
track down this lost navigator. We're going to
look at how his obsession with the Northwest
Passage, and the Northeast Passage for that matter,
how it accidentally redrew the map of the world.
And we're going to have to dig into the ship
laws, the court testimonies, and all the modern
analysis to figure it out. Not just what he found,
but maybe why he lost everything. And we have
to be really careful with those sources, right?
Because as we'll see, the people telling this
story had a... a very vested interest in making
Henry Hudson look bad. Or at least, you know,
deserving of his fate. Exactly. History is written
by the survivors, even if the survivors are mutineers.
So let's start at the beginning. Or I guess the
lack of a beginning. You said he's a ghost. What
do we actually know about Hudson before he steps
onto a ship in 1607? Almost nothing. It is genuinely
bizarre. I mean, usually with figures of this
magnitude, think Drake or Raleigh or Columbus.
We have birth records. We have family letters,
something. Right. There's a paper trail. There
is. With Hudson, he enters the historical record
in 1607 as a fully formed middle -aged man. He's
already a captain. He's already experienced.
He just pops into existence at age 40. Essentially,
yes. Historians speculate he was born around
1565, probably in London. There's this persistent
theory that his father might have been a wealthy
alderman, a founding member of the Muscovy Company.
Ah, which would explain the connections. It would
explain a lot. But it's all circumstantial. We
don't know his education. We don't know where
he learned to sail. But he must have had some
serious credentials. I mean, you don't just walk
up to a major trading conglomerate like the Muscovy
Company and say, hey, give me a ship. I want
to go sail to the North Pole. Precisely. When
he first appears, he's being hired by the Muscovy
Company of London. And this was, you know, one
of the most powerful joint start companies in
the world. They wouldn't trust a novice with
that kind of capital. So what was the mission?
Because this is the part of the research that
really stopped me in my tracks. The plan wasn't
just go explore north. No, it was much more specific.
frankly, scientifically wild. They wanted to
sail right over the top of the world. Yes. The
goal was to reach Catheso, China, and the Spice
Islands by sailing directly across the North
Pole. Now, to a modern listener, that sounds
insane. We know the North Pole is, or at least
it was, a permanent ice cap. Why on earth did
a group of wealthy, educated London merchants
think you could sail a wooden ship across it?
Well, this is where we have to kind of get into
the headspace of 17th century science. They weren't
stupid. They just had a different understanding
of physics. Okay. There was a prevailing theory
championed by cartographers like Robert Thorne
that the Arctic was only frozen at the edges.
Like a ring of ice. Exactly. And the logic was
based on the midnight sun. They knew that during
the Arctic summer, the sun doesn't set for months.
It's shining 24 hours a day. Right. So they theorized
that this constant solar energy would generate
enough heat to melt the ice at the high latitudes.
So they thought if you could just punch through
that outer rim of ice, you'd sail into a warm,
maybe even tropical polar sea. That was the dream.
A polinia, an open polar sea. They believed the
constant friction of the ocean currents and the
relentless sun would keep the top of the world
open. can see why it was so seductive. Oh, absolutely.
A direct route to China, shaving off thousands
of miles. A straight line north. It would change
the world economy overnight. It's a beautiful
theory. Logically sound, if you just ignore thermodynamics.
Right. So Hudson buys into this. He takes a ship,
the Hopewell. Which was not a large vessel. Oh,
tiny. About 80 tons. He takes a crew of 10 men
and one boy, his own son, John. And on May 1st,
1607, they set sail to test this open polar sea
theory. They head straight for the ice. They
reach the coast of Greenland in mid -May. And
this is where we start to see Hudson the Explorer
at work. He's meticulous. He's mapping. He's
naming things. He names a Young's Cape and a
Mount of God's Mercy. Mount of God's Mercy sounds
like the name you come up with when you're already
in serious trouble. It really does. It implies
they were navigating through some pretty dangerous
waters. For sure. They pushed further north,
reaching what they called Newland, which we now
know is Spitsbergen or Small Bard. They made
it incredibly far north. He even named a spot
Hold With Hope. Hold With Hope. Wow. The names
alone really tell the psychological story of
the crew. They do, and they managed to reach
roughly 80 degrees north latitude. Hudson himself
estimated they went even higher, maybe 82 degrees.
Which was probably a bit of an exaggeration.
Modern analysis suggests he was slightly off,
you know, due to the primitive instruments. But
it doesn't matter. Getting an 80 -ton wooden
boat to 80 degrees north is an incredible feat
of seamanship. You have to imagine the conditions.
Fog, shifting pack ice, the rigging freezing
solid. It's terrifying. But the theory, the big
beautiful theory, was just wrong. Completely
wrong. As they pushed north, the ice... didn't
thin out. It got thicker. They finally hit the
polar ice pack. There was no warm sea. There
was just a wall of white. So the mission to cross
the pole is a failure. But this voyage isn't
a total loss, is it? Because in his logs, Hudson
mentioned something else, something he saw in
the water. Yes. While he's dodging all these
icebergs, he notes that the waters around Spitsbergen
are teeming with whales. Great numbers of whales
is how he puts it in the log. And that one little
sentence basically launches an economic gold
rush. It does. Hudson didn't find spices, but
he found oil. His report, and the credit is sometimes
debated between him and another explorer, a guy
named Jonas Poole, but his report effectively
kickstarts the Arctic whaling industry. Within
a few years, the Dutch, the English, the French,
the Spanish, they're all swarming those waters.
They nearly hunt the bowhead whale to extinction
in that region. It's the law of unintended consequences.
He goes looking for a shortcut to silk and spices,
and instead he lights up the street lamps of
London with whale oil. Exactly. And that brings
us to the end of the 1607 voyage. He returns
to England, having failed to find the passage,
but having proven he could navigate the ice better
than almost anyone else alive at the time. Which
buys him another shot. So 1608, he's back in
the same ship, the Hopewell. Right. And the Muscovy
Company is still backing him, but they've kind
of cooled on the whole North Pole idea. I'd imagine
so. The over -the -top theory is busted. So they
pivot. They pivot to the Northeast Passage. The
idea is to sail east, over the top of Scandinavia
and Russia, and then come down into the Pacific
that way. Which, spoiler alert, is also incredibly
difficult. It's the Northern Sea Route. Even
today, with nuclear icebreakers, it's not exactly
a leisure cruise. And in a wooden sailing ship.
It was brutal. Hudson made it to Novaya Zemlya,
which is a long archipelago in the Arctic Ocean,
just north of Russia. But just like the year
before, they hit the ice. I feel like a pattern
is emerging here. Hudson is a very capable, technical
sailor. He gets the ship to the very edge of
the known world. But he keeps running into the
physical reality that the world is much, much
colder than the investors in London think it
is. The ice always wins in this era. He tried
everything. He tried to ram the ice. He tried
to sail along the edge of it. But by July, it
was clear there was no way through. He had to
turn back. Now, there's a weird footnote about
this 1608 voyage. You see it in some older history
books. This claim that Hudson discovered Jan
Mayen Island. Right. You'll see references to
a place called Hudson's Touches. But this is
almost certainly a myth. Why do you say that?
Well, if you actually plot his course from the
1608 logs, hitting Yan Mayan would have required
a massive, completely illogical detour that he
just didn't have time for. Plus, his own journal
doesn't mention it at all. So it's just people
wanting to credit him with everything they could.
I think so. He was becoming a celebrity explorer.
It's like how every witty quote gets attributed
to Mark Twain or Winston Churchill. Every island
in the north got attributed to Hudson for a while.
So 1608 is another bust. He comes back to London
and the Muscovy Company, I'm guessing they're
done right. They've spent a lot of money for
two trips that went nowhere. They lose faith.
They basically tell him, look, Henry, you're
a great sailor, but this just isn't working.
They cut his funding. But Hudson isn't the kind
of guy who just retires to a cottage. He's obsessed.
And this leads to what I think is the most fascinating
pivot in his career. The 1609 voyage. The rogue
voyage. Exactly. Because he doesn't sail for
England this time. No. He crosses the channel.
He goes to the rivals. He gets hired by the VOC,
the Dutch East India Company. And we really need
to contextualize the VOC for a second. This isn't
just a company. This is like Google, Amazon and
the U .S. Navy all rolled into one. They were
the first global megacorporation. They had their
own army, their own currency, the power to wage
war. And they were in a fierce trade war with
England. So for Hudson and Englishmen to go work
for them. It was borderline craziness. It certainly
wasn't looked upon kindly back in London. But
the Dutch hire him. They give him a new ship,
the famous half -mean, the half -moon. And what
are his orders? This is critical. His contract
was very, very specific. The VOC directors in
Amsterdam were conservative. They told him, try
the Northeast Passage again. Go back to the place
where you just failed last time. Essentially,
yes. Go back to Novaya Zemlya. Try to find the
route over Russia. So Hudson sets off in April
1609. He gets near the North Cape of Norway,
and surprise, surprise, he hits ice. Heavy storms.
The crew, which was a mix of Dutch and English
sailors who couldn't even understand each other,
they start getting mutinous. So most captains
in this situation have two choices. Go home and
face the music or keep banging their head against
the ice. But Hudson takes option C. He goes rogue.
He commits what is essentially grand larceny
and corporate disobedience. He ignores his orders.
He proposes a new plan to the crew. He turns
the half moon around. But instead of heading
back to Amsterdam, he points the ship west. Across
the Atlantic. Right. Towards North America. He
just decides to freelance. He had been corresponding
with his friend Captain John Smith. Yes, the
John Smith from Jamestown. No way. Yes. And Smith
had sent him a map and some rumors that there
was a passage through the North American continent
somewhere around 40 degrees latitude. So he bets
his life, his crew, and a stolen Dutch ship.
on a rumor from John Smith. It was a massive
gamble. If he found the passage to Asia, the
Dutch would forgive him. He'd be a hero. If he
failed, well, he'd be a mutineer who stole a
company asset. So they crossed the Atlantic.
They reached the Grand Banks of Newfoundland
in July. And this is where we need to talk about
Hudson's leadership style, especially with the
indigenous people they meet, because the logs
came to a pretty disturbing picture. They do,
and it often gets glossed over in the heroic
explorer narrative. They land near what is now
Le Havre in Nova Scotia to repair a broken mast.
The indigenous people there, likely the Mi 'kmaq,
were actually quite accustomed to Europeans.
They had been trading with French fishermen for
decades. So they came out to the ship ready to
trade beaver pelts. So this wasn't a hostile
first contact. It was a business opportunity.
It started that way. But Hudson's crew was on
edge. And on July 25th, the log records a really
shocking escalation. Hudson's mate writes that
they took the ship's boat, loaded it with 12
men armed with muskets and a murderer. Which
is type of small cannon, right? A small cannon,
yes. And they went ashore. They assaulted the
village, drove the people into the woods and
stole their boat and all their goods. That is
just straight up piracy. Why? Why did they do
that? The log is vague. It suggests they feared
the natives were stealing from them. But the
response is so disproportionate. It really shows
that Hudson either had very little control over
his men or he condoned this kind of violence.
And that lack of discipline that's going to come
back to haunt him. Big time. So they loot the
village and they flee south. They cruise down
the coast past Cape Cod all the way to the Chesapeake
Bay. And then they turn back north looking for
this magical passage Smith told him about. And
on September 3rd, 1609, they find it. A massive
break in the coastline. A huge river estuary.
The Hudson. The Hudson. Now, he wasn't the first
European to see it. Verrazzano spotted it in
1524. But Hudson is the one who actually sails
into it. And you can see why he got so excited.
Oh, yeah. The river is wide. The water's salty.
The tides are strong. Well, it looks like a straight.
It looks like the way to the Pacific. But again,
the violence follows them. Just days after arriving,
they have a skirmish with the Lenape people.
Yes, a small boat crew was returning to the half
moon when they were attacked. A sailor named
John Coleman was shot in the neck with an arrow
and died. Which should have been a sign to maybe,
you know, leave. You'd think. But Hudson presses
on. And strangely, the relations with the local
people fluctuate wildly. One day they are shooting
at each other. The next day, Hudson is going
ashore, drinking with the chiefs, trading knives
for oysters and beans. It sounds completely chaotic.
Yeah. But they keep sailing upriver, past Manhattan,
past the Palisades, all the way up to where Albany
is today. And this is the heartbreak moment of
the 1609 voyage. As they sail north, the river
starts to narrow. The water, which was salty
at Manhattan, turns brackish, and then it turns
fresh. And fresh water means? It means it's a
river. It's draining a continent, not cutting
through it. It's a dead end. Wow. Imagine the
mood on that ship. They've risked everything.
Crossed an ocean, fought battles, sailed 150
miles inland, only to realize they were in Albany,
not China. It must have been crushing. On September
23rd, they turn around. Hudson has failed to
find the passage again. But this is the key for
the listener. Even though he considered it a
failure, this voyage changed the world. Absolutely.
Hudson noted the rich land, the timber, and most
importantly, the furs. The beaver pelts. When
the Dutch finally got his logs, they didn't care
about the route to China anymore. They saw a
commercial empire. Exactly. Because of Hudson's
failure, we get New Netherland, we get New Amsterdam,
and eventually we get New York City. History
is so weird. He fails to do what he wanted, but
he accidentally founds the capital of the modern
world. It's failing up on a geopolitical scale.
So he sails back. But he doesn't go back to Amsterdam,
does he? No, and this is a bit suspicious. He
lands in Dartmouth, England. Some historians
think the English sailors on the crew forced
him to land there. Others think Hudson was just
done with the Dutch. Either way, the English
authorities immediately detain him. They ground
him. They say, you are an Englishman. You should
not be sailing for foreign powers. They forbade
him from leaving the country. But his maps and
logs still made their way back to the Dutch.
they did which secured their claim but now hudson
is back in london and the english merchants the
virginia company the british east india company
they look at his logs and they think okay he
failed but he found something interesting they're
ready to roll the dice one more time and this
sets the stage for the final act the fatal journey
of 1610 they give him a ship The Discovery. The
Discovery. It's a small ship, right? Very small.
About 55 tons. And he assembles a crew. But this
crew, there are some bad apples in the barrel
right from day one. Who are the key players we
need to know about? Well, there's Robert Jewett,
the elderly mate who had been with him on the
half moon. He was cynical, bitter, and had already
shown signs of being insubordinate. Okay. And
then there's Henry Green. Green is a character
straight out of a Dickens novel. He was a young
man from a good family, but he was a bit of a
scoundrel. Hudson apparently knew his family
or had taken pity on him. Green wasn't a sailor.
He was more of a clerk or a guest on the ship.
And Hudson protected him. He did. Gave him a
good bunk. Treated him almost like a son. Which
makes his eventual betrayal even more hideous.
So they sail in April 1610. They head northwest.
They round the tip of Greenland and enter the
furious waters of what we now call the Hudson
Strait. And this is a nightmare stretch of water.
It's narrow, the currents are violent, and it's
just choked with ice. Most captains would have
turned back. But not Hudson. Hudson forced the
discovery through. He was absolutely relentless.
And then... The breakthrough. On August 2nd,
the ship bursts out of the strait and into this
vast, open body of water. To the west, the horizon
is just water. They must have thought, this is
it. The Pacific Ocean. They were ecstatic. They
turned south, sailing into this massive inland
sea. They spent months exploring the eastern
shore, expecting to find palm trees or a route
to Japan any day. But it wasn't the Pacific.
It was Hudson Bay. A giant cul -de -sac. The
biggest dead end in the world. And as they sailed
south into what's now James Bay, the days got
shorter. The temperature just plummeted. They
were running out of time. And in November, the
trap snapped shut. The ice formed around the
ship. They were frozen in. They had to haul the
discovery onto the shore or risk it being crushed
by the ice. They were stranded in the Canadian
subarctic for the winter. We have to talk about
the psychology of this. It's dark for months.
It's 40 degrees below zero. They're living in
a wooden hut. covered in moss what happens to
the minds of these men he turns toxic scurvy
sets in their teeth are falling out their joints
are swelling they're running out of food and
they start to blame hudson for everything and
hudson doesn't handle it well no he hoards some
of the food he accuses men of stealing he demotes
his loyal officers and promotes the troublemakers
he just completely loses control and splits the
crew into factions and loses the room completely
and as spring finally approaches the big question
becomes What do we do when the ice melts and
the crew just wants to survive? They want to
go home. We ardently desire to return, as the
record says. But Hudson. Hudson is still chasing
the ghost. He still believes that if they just
sail a little further west, they'll find the
passage. He starts talking about restocking supplies
and continuing the search. And for the crew,
that's a death sentence. It is. They look at
this man who has led them into this frozen hell,
and they decide he is going to kill every last
one of them if they don't stop him. So, June
1611. The ice breaks up. The ship is afloat again.
And the whispers start. The plot is hatched by
Henry Green, the young man Hudson had saved from
the streets, and Robert Jewett, the bitter old
mate. The betrayal. How did it actually go down?
It was early in the morning. Hudson comes out
of his cabin. And the mutineers grab him immediately.
They bind his arms behind his back. Did anyone
try to fight for him? A few did. The ship's carpenter,
a man named Philip Staff, is the real hero of
this story. He wasn't on the mutineers list to
be marooned, but he looked at them and basically
said, I'd rather go down with the captain than
live with you lot. Wow. He voluntarily got into
the boat with Hudson. That is just incredible
integrity. So they lower the small open boat.
into the water and they throw in hudson they
throw in his teenage son john and then they throw
in the sick men the ones suffering from scurvy
who were useless to the crew a truly brutal move
what did they give them I mean, do they just
toss them out there with nothing at all? It was
a weirdly specific inventory. Prickett, the survivor
who wrote the only journal we have, says they
gave them a fouling piece, like a shotgun, some
powder, and shot a few pikes and an iron pot.
The iron pot. That detail always gets me. It's
such a domestic, mundane object. Like, here,
you can boil some water while you freeze to death.
It's a gesture that feels like it's born from
kilt. See? We aren't murdering you, we're giving
you a chance. But it was murder. So the Discovery
pulls up its anchor, and the shallop is in the
water. And this is the most chilling part of
the entire account. The men in the shallop, they
start rowing. They try to keep up with the big
ship. They are literally chasing their only hope
of survival. But the mutineers don't wait. No.
They unfurl the topsails. The Discovery catches
the wind and just pulls away. Prickett writes
that they watched the shallop until it was just
a speck on the horizon, and then it was gone.
And... That is the last time Henry Hudson was
ever seen by a European. Silence just returns
to the bay. Okay, now we need to put on our detective
hats. Because everything we just described, the
mutiny, the items in the boat, their final chase,
it all comes from one main source. A backup Prickett's
journal. And Prickett is not an unbiased observer.
Not even close. He's a guy who is trying to save
his own neck. Right. You have to remember the
legal context here. Mutiny is a capital offense.
In England, you hang for it. So when the Discovery
finally limped back to London, crude, by just
a handful of starving skeletons, they knew they
were walking into a trial for their lives. So
Prickett writes a journal that conveniently blames
everything on the two guys who are already dead.
It's the perfect defense. Oh, it was Henry Green
and Robert Jewett. They were the ringleaders.
They forced us to do it. And where were Green
and Jewett? Dead. Green was killed in a fight
with Inuit further north on the journey home.
And Jewett died of starvation just days before
they reached Ireland. How convenient. Incredibly
convenient. The ringleaders are dead, so the
survivors can all say we were just innocent bystanders.
And it worked. They were put on trial, but no
one was ever executed for the mutiny. No one.
Why? Was it just a lack of evidence? Partly.
But frankly, the London merchants were pragmatic.
These men had just been to the Hudson Bay. They
knew the route. They knew where the furs were.
Executing them would mean losing that intellectual
property. They were too valuable to hang. It's
cynical, but it's practical. But this leaves
us with the big question. Prickett says they
left them and they just vanished. But are there
other clues? Clues that the story didn't end
right there in the bay? There are. And this is
where we get into the realm of speculation, but
it's fascinating. There is the captive scone.
Tell me about this stone. It was found in the
1950s by a road crew near Deep River, Ontario,
which is about 600 kilometers south of where
Hudson was marooned. That's a long way. It's
a huge distance. And it's this massive slab of
rock with crude carvings on it. What does it
say? It has the initials HH. Year 1612 and the
single word captive. 1612. That's a full year
after the mutiny. And captive suggests he wasn't
free. Now, I have to be the skepticism police
here. Of course. The authenticity of this stone
is heavily, heavily debated. The Geological Survey
of Canada analyzed it. And while the weathering
looks consistent with age, there's no way to
carbon date a chisel mark. It could be a very
elaborate hoax. But if it's real? If it's real,
it implies Hudson, or at least someone from that
boat, survived the winter, traveled hundreds
of miles south down the river systems, and was
being held by a local tribe. It paints a picture
of a desperate struggle for survival that lasted
much longer than we think. And there's another
source, isn't there? One that's maybe even more
compelling. The Inuit oral history. Yes. This
is, to me, just incredible. In the 1990s, a researcher
named Dorothy Harley Eber interviewed Inuit elders
in the region, and they shared stories that had
been passed down for nearly 400 years. What was
the story they told? They spoke of a small boat
arriving with strange men, and specifically,
they describe an old man with a long white beard
and a young boy. That has to be Hudson and his
son, John. The description is uncanny. The Inuit
had never seen white men before? The story goes
that the men were starving. The Inuit took them
in. They fed them. So they didn't die immediately
on the water. According to this oral history,
no. But the ending. It's tragic in a whole different
way. The story says the old man eventually died
of illness or exhaustion. And the boy. What happened
to the boy? The Inuit adopted him, but they were
afraid he would try to run away and die in the
snow. So what did they do? The story says they
tethered him to the lodge. Like a pet or... Or
a precious object they didn't want to lose? That
is. That's haunting. A teenage English boy, alone
at the end of the world, tied to a post while
his father lies dead nearby. It's a heartbreaking
image, and while we can't prove it 100%, it aligns
with the timeline and the location better than
any other theory we have. What a heavy legacy.
The man appears from absolutely nowhere, and
he disappears into the snow, leaving only these
faint, tragic echoes. And a map. Right. Let's
zoom out for the takeaway. Hudson failed, right?
By every metric his employers set for him, he
was a disaster. He lost ships. He alienated crews.
He never found the passage to Asia. A perfect
record of failure. And yet, he is arguably one
of the most consequential explorers of the millennium.
Because he opened the door. His failure in New
York created the Dutch foothold that became the
economic engine of America. His failure in the
North opened up Hudson Bay, which led directly
to the Hudson's Bay Company. And that company
dominated the fur trade for two centuries and
effectively drew the borders of modern Canada.
He was the ultimate disruptor. He broke everything
he touched, but the pieces landed in a way that
built the modern world. He died searching for
a shortcut, completely unaware that his name
would be immortalized on the maps of two nations.
He wanted to find China. Instead, he found New
York and Canada. I want to leave the listener
with that final image. The discovery sailing
away. The sails filling with wind. The distance
growing between the big ship and that tiny, tiny
shallop. And the question of what was said in
those final moments. If Prickett was lying to
save his own neck. If the true didn't just sail
away cleanly. What really happened on that deck?
Was there a fight? Did Hudson beg? Or did he
just sit there, stern and silent, watching his
command, his son, and his entire world disappear
over the horizon? That is the secret the ice
keeps. Indeed. Thanks for diving deep with us
today. This has been The Deep Dive. Catch you
on the next one.