Henry Hudson’s Last Voyage 1610-11

Captain Henry Hudson, an English explorer and navigator, was employed by the Dutch East India Company to sail the Northwest passage and find a faster route to the Orient. Once his boat, the Discovery, passed Greenland, its closeness to the magnetic Pole rendered its compass useless and Hudson ended up sailing southwards, instead of westwards. Driven by fierce tides filled with ice-floes, the Discovery over-wintered, ice-bound, at James Bay from 1 November 1610–16 June 1611. The crew developed scurvy and were so hungry they began eating moss. The haughty attitude of Henry Hudson and his insistence on imposing tight rationing compounded the crew’s anger – they had already lost respect for him, considering him incompetent for failing to navigate them through the passage. Eventually on 22 June 1611, they mutinied. Henry Hudson, his son and a shipmate were cast adrift in a small rowing boat, never to be seen again.