"Anno, 1607, Aprill the nineteenth, at Saint Ethelburge, in Bishops
Gate street, did communicate with the rest of the parishioners,
these persons, seamen, purposing to goe to sea foure days after,
for to discover a passage by the North Pole to Japan and China.
First, Henry Hudson, master. Secondly, William Colines, his mate.
Thirdly, James Young. Fourthly, John Colman. Fiftly, John Cooke.
Sixtly, James Beubery. Seventhly, James Skrutton. Eightly, John
Pleyce. Ninthly, Thomas Barter. Tenthly, Richard Day. Eleventhly,
James Knight. Twelfthly, John Hudson, a boy."
With those words Purchas prefaced his account of what is
known--because we have no record of earlier voyages--as Hudson's
first voyage; and with those words our certain knowledge of
Hudson's life begins.
St. Ethelburga's, a restful pause in the bustle of Bishopsgate
Street, still stands--the worse, to be sure, for the clutter of
little shops that has been built in front of it, and for
incongruous interior renovation--and I am very grateful to Purchas
for having preserved the scrap of information that links Hudson's
living body with that church which still is alive: into which may
pass by the very doorway that he passed through those who venerate
his memory; and there may stand within the very walls and beneath
the very roof that sheltered him when he and his ship's company
partook of the Sacrament together three hundred years ago. Purchas,
no doubt, could have told all that we so gladly would know of
Hudson's early history. But he did not tell it--and we must rest
content, I think well content, with that poetic beginning at the
chancel rail of St. Ethelburga's of the strong life that less than
four years later came to its epic ending.
The voyage made in the year 1607, for which Hudson and his crew
prepared by making their peace with God in St. Ethelburga's, had
nothing to do with America; nor did his voyage of the year
following have anything to do with this continent. Both of those
adventures were set forth by the Muscovy Company in search of a
northeast passage to the Indies; and, while they failed in their
main purpose, they added important facts concerning the coasts of
Spitzbergen and of Nova Zembla to the existing stock of
geographical knowledge, and yielded practical results in that they
extended England's Russian trade.
The most notable scientific accomplishment of the first voyage was
the high northing made. By observation (July 23, 1607) Hudson was
in 80° 23'. By reckoning, two days later, he was in 81°. His
reckoning, because of his ignorance of the currents, always has
been considered doubtful. His observed position recently has been
questioned by Sir Martin Conway, who has arrived at the conclusion:
"It is demonstrably probable that for 80° 23' we should read 79°
23'."[1] But even with this reduction accepted, the fact remains
that until the year 1773, when Captain Phipps reached 80° 48',
Hudson held the record for "farthest north."
[Footnote 1: "Hudson's Voyage to Spitzbergen in 1607," by Sir
Martin Conway. _The Geographical Journal_, February, 1900.]
To the second voyage belongs the often-quoted incident of the
mermaid. The log of that voyage that has come down to us was kept
by Hudson himself; and this is what he wrote in it (June 15, 1608)
with his own hand: "All day and night cleere sunshine. The wind at
east. The latitude at noone 75 degrees 7 minutes. We held westward
by our account 13 leagues. In the afternoon, the sea was asswaged,
and the wind being at east we set sayle, and stood south and by
east, and south southeast as we could. This morning one of our
companie looking over boord saw a mermaid, and calling up some of
the companie to see her, one more came up and by that time shee was
come close to the ships side, looking earnestly on the men. A
little after a sea came and overturned her. From the navill upward
her backe and breasts were like a womans, as they say that saw her,
but her body as big as one of us. Her skin very white, and long
haire hanging downe behinde of colour blacke. In her going downe
they saw her tayle, which was like the tayle of a porposse, and
speckled like a macrell. Their names that saw her were Thomas
Hilles and Robert Rayner."
[Illustration: FROM DE BREY. EDITION 1619]
I am sorry to say that the too-conscientious Doctor Asher, in
editing this log, felt called upon to add, in a foot-note:
"Probably a seal"; and to quote, in support of his prosaic
suggestion, various unnecessary facts about seals observed a few
centuries later in the same waters by Doctor Kane. For my own part,
I much prefer to believe in the mermaid--and, by so believing, to
create in my own heart somewhat of the feeling which was in the
hearts of those old seafarers in a time when sea-prodigies and
sea-mysteries were to be counted with as among the perils of every
ocean voyage.
This belief of mine is not a mere whimsical fancy. Unless we take
as real what the shipmen of Hudson's time took as real, we not
only miss the strong romance which was so large a part of their
life, but we go wide of understanding the brave spirit in which
their exploring work was done. Adventuring into tempests in their
cockle-shell ships they took as a matter of course--and were brave
in that way without any thought of their bravery. As a part of the
day's work, also, they took their wretched quarters aboard ship and
their wretched, and usually insufficient, food. Their highest
courage was reserved for facing the fearsome dangers which existed
only in their imaginations--but which were as real to them as were
the dangers of wreck and of starvation and of battlings with wild
beasts, brute or human, in strange new-found lands. It followed of
necessity that men leading lives so full of physical hardship, and
so beset by wondering dread, were moody and discontented--and so
easily went on from sullen anger into open mutiny. And equally did
it follow that the shipmasters who held those surly brutes to the
collar--driving them to their work with blows, and now and then
killing one of them by way of encouraging the others to
obedience--were as absolutely fearless and as absolutely strong of
will as men could be. All of these conditions we must recognize,
and must try to realize, if we would understand the work that was
cut out for Hudson, and for every master navigator, in that cruel
and harsh and yet ardently romantic time.