Henry Hudson: New World Explorer Quiz

Answer: The seventeenth (1600s)

Hudson sailed the ocean blue in the seventeenth century. Almost everything we know about him happened between 1607 and 1611.

Answer: The Muscovy Company

The Muscovy Company traded goods between England and Russia. Ships carried out English wool and brought back Russian furs, among other items. As trade expanded, the company's agents began to serve as a diplomatic link between the two nations.

Answer: The Canadian Arctic

Some believe Hudson sailed to the Canadian Arctic as part of the explorer John Davis's journeys there in the 1580s. Davis was seeking the Northwest Passage. He explored Baffin Island and the strait that bears his name, and narrowly missed discovering what we now call Hudson Bay. He was one of the greatest early Arctic explorers.

Answer: Towards the Arctic Circle

Hudson had convinced the owners of the Muscovy Company that he would be able to sail over the top of the Arctic Circle and down the other side to China. His theory, which was commonly held at the time, was that the constant summer sun in the Arctic would melt the ice and make the land warmer the farther north he went.

He made it as far as the northern tip of Spitsbergen, an island about a thousand kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. It was the farthest north any ship had ever sailed to that point.

Answer: His teenage son John

Hudson's son John, then about sixteen years old, joined his father on this 1607 voyage and every subsequent one as well.

Answer: The Half Moon

The Half Moon was owned by the Dutch East India Company, and Hudson sailed to the New World under the Dutch flag. He was supposed to sail towards the Arctic Circle again, but he abandoned that route after a near mutiny and headed instead for the warmer waters of the British colony of Virginia.

Answer: The Hudson River Valley

Hudson thought the river that now bears his name would carry his ship through North America to Asia. He travelled almost as far as modern-day Albany before the water became too shallow for him to carry on. But he and his crew did find a habitable land rich in resources, including "much slate and other good stone for houses." By the mid-1620s, the Dutch had founded New Amsterdam (now New York City) on the tip of the island of Manhattan.

Answer: Its crew mutinied

The Discovery was forced to spend the winter of 1610-11 trapped in the ice of Hudson Bay. By the time the ice broke up, the men were ravaged by scurvy and had less than two weeks' worth of food left. They began plotting against Hudson and accused him of hiding rations for his own use.

When he accused them of the same thing in turn, and demanded that some men's sea chests be opened and searched, he sealed his fate.

Answer: The master's mate, Robert Juet

The mutiny was most likely led by Robert Juet, who had caused problems for Hudson on his two previous voyages as well. Philip Staffe, the ship's carpenter, showed great courage and loyalty in insisting he be lowered into the small ship with his captain. Abacuk Prickett kept a journal of the voyage and provided the only complete record we have of the mutiny. And it's thanks to the navigator, Robert Bylot, that most of the mutineers eventually made it safely back home. Robert Juet was not one of the lucky ones; he starved to death almost in sight of Ireland.

Answer: Nothing

The men were not charged with mutiny, but murder. They all vigorously defended themselves, arguing that Hudson and the others had gone voluntarily into the shallop, and that the threat of starvation justified their actions. In the end, the court ruled that it wasn't a crime to cast someone adrift within sight of inhabited land. No trace of the nine castaways was ever found.