Hudson-Fulton-Champlain
Quadricentennial
The
Dutch in the
Hudson River Valley
Native Americans
in the Hudson Valley
Henry Hudson and Early Hudson River History
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Henry Hudson was the first European to explore the Hudson River throughout its navigable length and leave behind a detailed description of his voyage. In the fall of 1609, Henry Hudson and his ship, the Half Moon, with a crew of 20 Dutch and English sailors explored the Hudson River from New York harbor up to present day Albany, NY.
Henry Hudson was already a famous explorer of Arctic waters when in 1608 he was hired by the Dutch East India Company to find a northeast, all-water route to Asia. The Dutch East India Company had a monopoly on trade with the Orient and wanted to shorten the lengthy and expensive voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to the Orient.
They provided Hudson with the 85-foot Half Moon to sail eastward through the polar regions to reach the far east. The Half Moon sailed from Amsterdam on April 4 or 6, 1609, and headed northeast along the coast of Norway. After encountering ice and cold that blocked his passage, Hudson turned and headed west.
Hudson sailed west across the North Atlantic and landed on the coast of Maine where the crew went ashore to cut timber to replace the Half Moon's mast, fished, and traded with the Native Americans. Hudson and the Half Moon then continued along the coast south to the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay. Hudson decided these weren't entrances to the passage to the Orient he was seeking, and the Half Moon turned north towards the mouth of the Hudson River.
On September 12, 1609, Hudson began his exploration of the river now named after him. Although no passage was discovered to the Orient, the area turned out to be one of the best fur trading regions in North America.
The Half Moon left the river on October 4, sailed across the Atlantic and reached England on Saturday, November 7. Hudson and the English crew members were not permitted to leave England, but eventually the Half Moon returned to Holland without them.
Hudson's voyage came 10 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock and two years after the Jamestown colony was established 60 miles south of the entrance to Chesapeake Bay.
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Additional Readings
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Hudson's Third Voyage — 1609: The New World and the Hudson River
The best day-by-day journal of Henry Hudson's third voyage of exploration for the Dutch East India Company. From Ian Chadwick's comprehensive Henry Hudson website. |
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Robert Juet's Journal of Hudson's 1609 Voyage
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| A Pleasant
Land to See Description of Hudson's voyage up the river. A narrative based on Robert Juet's journal From The Hudson, by Carl Carmer, Published: New York, Farrar & Rinehart, 1939 |
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| Henry
Hudson and His Exploration of the Hudson River A good summary of the early exploration of the Hudson River. Published in the Scientific American in 1909 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson's 1609 voyage. Scientific American, September 25, 1909 |
Life and Voyages of Henry Hudson, English Explorer and Navigator
A comprehensive chronology of the life and voyages of Henry Hudson, English explorer, mariner and adventurer, as well as some additional notes about his times, his contemporaries and his crew is available at Ian Chadwick's Henry Hudson website, the most comprehensive source for information about Henry Hudson's life and voyages. Hudson's exploration of the Hudson River was his third of four voyages of discovery.
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Half Moon Replica The original Half Moon (Halve Maen) was commissioned on March 25, 1609, for the Dutch East India Company. The Half Moon was a ship of exploration, designed to take a crew of twenty into unknown and uncharted waters in search of new trade routes. To celebrate the Dutch role in exploring and colonizing America, a replica of Henry Hudson's Half Moon was built at the Snow Dock in Albany, New York, and launched in June of 1989. The Half Moon sails as a living history exhibit - her cabins and decks furnished authentically with sea chests, weapons, tools, navigational instruments, and trade goods - taking visitors back to a time when European explorers competed to open new routes for trade with the East. |
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1909
Half Moon Replica Today's Half Moon replica
was not the first replica to be built. To celebrate the 1909 tricentennial
of Henry Hudson's voyage, a replica of the Half Moon was built in
Holland and donated to the people of New York as part of the Hudson-Fulton
Celebration of 1909.
From Saturday, September 25, to Monday, October 11, 1909, the State of New York commemorated the 300th anniversary of the discovery of the Hudson River by Henry Hudson in 1609 and the 100th anniversary of the first successful application of steam to navigation by Robert Fulton in 1807. The creation of a full scale replica of Henry Hudson's Half Moon was one of the accomplishments of this celebration, and this chapter describes how the Half Moon replica was designed and built. |
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Early Dutch in New York Although the Dutch only controlled the Hudson River Valley from 1609 until the English takeover in 1664, Dutch entrepreneurs established a series of trading posts, towns, and forts up and down the Hudson River that laid the groundwork for towns that still exist today. Fort Orange, the northernmost of the Dutch outposts, is todays Albany; New York was originally New Amsterdam, and the New Netherland's third major settlement, Wiltwyck, is known today as Kingston. |
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Indians in the Hudson River Valley |