As the direct result of breaking his orders, Hudson was the
discoverer of our river--to which, therefore, his name properly has
been given--and also was the first navigator by whom our harbor
effectively was found. I use advisedly these precisely
differentiating terms. On the distinctions which they make rests
Hudson's claim to take practical precedence of Verrazano and of
Gomez, who sailed in past Sandy Hook nearly a hundred years ahead
of him; and of those shadowy nameless shipmen who in the
intervening time, until his coming, may have made our harbor one of
their stations--for refitting and watering--on their voyages from
and to Portugal and Spain.
The exploring work of John and of Sebastian Cabot, who sailed along
our coast, but who missed our harbor, does not come within my
range: save to note that Sebastian Cabot pretty certainly was one
of the several navigators, including Frobisher and Davis, who
entered Hudson's Strait before Hudson's time.
Verrazano was an Italian, sailing in the French service. Gomez was
a Portuguese, sailing in the Spanish service. Both sought a
westerly way to the Indies, and both sought it in the same
year--1524. Verrazano has left a report of his voyage, written
immediately upon his return to France; and with it a vaguely drawn
chart of the coasts which he explored. (It is my duty to add that
certain zealous historians have denounced his report as a forgery,
and his chart as a "fake"--a matter so much too large for
discussion here that I content myself with expressing the opinion
that these charges have not been sustained.) Gomez has left no
report of his voyage, but a partial account of it may be pieced
together from the maritime chronicles of his time. He also charted,
with an approximate accuracy, the lands which he coasted; and while
his chart has not been preserved in its original shape, there is
good reason for believing that we have it embodied in the
planisphere drawn by Juan Ribero, geographer to Charles V., in the
year 1529. On that planisphere the seaboard of the present states
of Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island is called "the
land of Estevan Gomez."
Lacking the full report that Gomez presumably made of his voyage,
and lacking the original of his chart, it is impossible to decide
whether he did or did not pass through the Narrows and enter the
Upper Bay. Doctor Asher holds that he did make that passage; and
adds: "It is certain that the later Spanish seamen who followed in
his track in after years were familiar with the [Hudson] river, and
called it the Rio de Gamas." In support of this strong assertion he
cites the still-extant "Rutters," or "Routiers," of the period--the
ocean guide-books showing the distances from place to place,
marking convenient stations for watering and refitting, and
describing the entrances to rivers and to harbors--"from which we
learn," he declares, "that the Rio de Gamas, the name then
regularly applied to the Hudson on the charts of the time, was one
of these stages between New Foundland and the colonies of Central
America."[1]
[Footnote 1: Asher mentions, in this connection, that
"Nantucket Island also figures in some of these rutters under
the name of the island of Juan Luis, or Juan Fernandez, and is
recommended as a most convenient stage for those who, coming
from Europe, wish to proceed to the West Indies by way of the
Bermudas."]
In regard to Verrazano--admitting his report to be genuine--the
fact that he did pass through the Narrows into the Upper Bay is not
open to dispute. He therefore must have seen--as, a little later,
Gomez may have seen--the true mouth of Hudson's river eighty-five
years before Hudson, by actual exploration of it, made himself its
discoverer. But Verrazano, by his own showing, came but a little
way into the Upper Bay--which he called a lake--and he made no
exploration of a practical sort of the harbor that he had found.
It is but simple justice to Verrazano and to Gomez to put on record
here, along with the story of Hudson's effective discovery, the
story of their ineffective finding. Fate was against them as
distinctly as it was with Hudson. They came under adverse
conditions, and they came too soon. Back of the explorer in the
French service there was not an alert power eager for colonial
expansion. Back of the explorer in the Spanish service there was a
power so busied with colonial expansion on a huge scale--in that
very year, 1524, Cortes was completing his conquest of Mexico, and
Pizarro was beginning his conquest of Peru--that a farther
enlargement of the colonization contract was impossible.
[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE OF THE MOST FAMOUS SEA
HANDBOOK OF HUDSON'S TIME]
Therefore we may fall back upon the assured fact--in which I see
again the touch of fatalism--that not until Hudson came at the
right moment, and at the right moment gave an accurate account of
his explorations to a power that was ready immediately to colonize
the land that he had found, were our port and our river,
notwithstanding their earlier technical discovery, truly discovered
to the world. As for the river, it assuredly is Hudson's very own.