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Half Moon Arriving

Hudson, embodying Europe itself, sets foot in a new land

By Steve Wick | Staff Writer

A group of Indians was fishing in the harbor when the Half Moon drifted ghostlike over the horizon. They thought the ship was a floating house, and the man on the deck -- who wore a bright, red jacket -- an evil spirit.

This man was no spirit -- he was Europe itself waiting to break out of its confines and move west across the Atlantic Ocean in search of new lands. His name was Henry Hudson, an Englishman working for Dutch businessmen who sought a passage to the Orient. As he piloted his Half Moon through the narrows and into a deep harbor, Hudson hoped that this route would take him there.

It was Sept. 3, 1609. As the Half Moon lay at anchor, a flag with a crescent moon at the peak of its mast, Hudson could see an island between two rivers to his north. To his east was a vast, wooded land of mystery no European had yet explored. Giovanni da Verrazano had seen it 84 years before when he sailed into this same harbor, and named it Flora. Now Hudson wanted to be the first to set foot on it.

Within a few years, the Dutch would give this place a different name -- Lange Eylandt.

On the morning of Sept. 4, Hudson lowered a rowboat and set out to sound the harbor. He knew what every sailor in unexplored waters knew -- to strike bottom could spell disaster. What they found was encouraging - the water in the harbor was deep all around.

Hudson's crew was divided between Englishmen and Dutchmen. Hudson himself was English-born, and already a well-known explorer. In 1607, he had sailed from England in search of a passage to Asia near the North Pole.

Word of Hudson's northern adventures reached the Dutch, who were setting up merchant companies to seek business in new lands and were eager to find their own paths to the Far East. They hoped such a passage existed somewhere near the center of the still unnamed American continent.

``Hudson stood before them full of enthusiasm, and expressed his ardent conviction that Asia might be reached by the Northeast,'' a historian wrote. Hudson was given command of the Half Moon.

After first heading toward northern waters, Hudson turned south, proceeding as far as the coast of Virginia, where the English, in 1607, had landed and set up the tiny colony at Jamestown. Then he turned north, as if homing in on the very narrows that Verrazano passed through.

On Sept. 3, Hudson's mate, an Englishman named Robert Juet, wrote in his journal:

The morning misty until ten o'clock, then it cleared, and the wind came to the south-south-east, so we weighed and stood to the northward. The land is very pleasant ... At three o'clock in the afternoon, we came to three great rivers. So we stood along the northernmost, thinking to have gone into it, but we found it to have a very shoal bar before it, for we had but ten foot water. Then we cast about to the southward, and found two fathoms, three fathoms, and three and a quarter, till we came to the southern side of them, then we had five and six fathoms, and anchored. So we sent in our boat to sound, and they found no less water than four, five, six, and seven fathoms ...

On Sept. 4, the Half Moon crept into the harbor, sounding every few minutes to make sure the water was deep enough. After dropping anchor, the small rowboat was lowered. Juet wrote:

Then our boat went on land with our net to fish, and caught ten great mullets, of a foot and a half long a piece, and a ray as great as four men could haul into the ship. So we trimmed our boat and road still all day. At night the wind blew hard at the north-west, and our anchor came home, and we drove on shore, but took no hurt, thanked be God, for the ground is soft sand and ooze. This day the people of the country came aboard of us, seeming very glad of our coming, and brought green tobacco, and gave us of it for knives and beads ...

Juet seemed to have a hard time describing the marvels around him. On Sept. 5, he wrote in his journal:

In the morning as soon as the day was light, the wind ceased and the flood came. So we heaved off our ship again into five fathoms of water, and sent our boat to sound the bay, and we found there was three fathoms hard by the southern shore. Our men went on land there, and saw great store of men, women and children, who gave them tobacco at their coming on land. So they went up into the woods, and saw great store of very goodly oaks, and some currants. For one of them came aboard and brought some dried, and gave me some, which were sweet and good. This day many of the people came aboard, some in mantles of feathers, and some in skins of divers sorts of good furs. Some women also came to us with hemp. They had red copper tobacco pipes, and other things of copper they did wear about their necks. At night they went on land again, so we rode very quiet, but durst not trust them.

The next day, tragedy struck.