Janice Weaver - Hudson

TEXT COPYRIGHT 2010 BY JANICE WEAVER
ILLUSTRATIONS COPYRIGHT 2010 BY DAVID CRAIG

Published in Canada by Tundra Books,
75 Sherbourne Street, Toronto, Ontario M5A 2P9

Published in the United States by Tundra Books of Northern New York,
P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901

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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Weaver, Janice
Hudson / Janice Weaver ; David Craig, illustrator.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN: 978-1-77049-096-3

1. Hudson, Henry, d. 1611Juvenile literature. 2. CanadaDiscovery and explorationBritishJuvenile literature. 3. AmericaDiscovery and explorationBritishJuvenile literature. 4. ExplorersGreat BritainBiographyJuvenile literature. 5. ExplorersCanadaBiographyJuvenile literature. I. Craig, David II. Title.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

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Now were all the poor men in the shallop, whose names are as follows: Henry Hudson, John Hudson, Arnold Ludlow, Syracke Fanner, Philip Staffe, Thomas Woodhouse, Adam Moore, Henry King, and Michael Butte.

A BACUK P RICKETT, 1611

U nlike most early explorers, Henry Hudson discovered no new land or territory. On all four of his voyages, he surveyed waters and traveled coastlines that others had been to before him. He wasnt even able to find the passage to Asia he sought for so long. Some people think this made him a failure.

In fact, history has not been kind to Henry Hudson. When hes written about at all, hes usually depicted as a short-tempered man who played favorites with his crew and was driven by an overriding ambition that others couldnt match. But to sail through dangerous, ice-filled waters with only a small crew in a rickety old boat, he must also have been a man of rare courage and vision. And in pushing through the strait and into the great bay that both now bear his name, he helped draw the map of North America and, in doing so, advanced our understanding of the world.

W e know almost nothing about the explorer Henry Hudson apart from what happened to him between 1607, when he first set sail from England in search of a northern passage to Asia, and 1611, when he was cast adrift by his crew in the great Canadian bay that is named for him. Those four years are well documented in the journals kept by Hudson and his men, in his reports to his employers back home, and in the trial transcripts of those who mutinied against him. But the rest of his life is shrouded in mystery.

Although historians have uncovered very little information about Hudsons early years, they think he was most likely born in London in about 1570. We know that he had a wife named Katherine and three sons called John, Richard, and Oliver. We dont know anything about his parents, but it seems likely that his grandfather also named Henry was a founder of the Muscovy Company, a firm that traded goods between England and Russia, and that he was a man of great wealth and influence.

The younger Hudson was born at a time Jacques Cartier had tried to establish a French colony at Hochelaga (now Montreal).

In England, Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne, struggling with conflicts between Protestants and Catholics, arguments over who would succeed her, uprisings and plots against her, and a prolonged war with Spain. At the same time, her nation was growing into an important seafaring power, and English ships and explorers had started traveling the world to find and develop new trade routes. Back home, people were becoming more prosperous, and many were learning to read and write, ushering in a golden age of art and culture.

Into this tumultuous and exciting time came Henry Hudson, a man driven like so many others of his day by a desire to stretch the limits of human knowledge.

Who Was HENRY HUDSON?

W e know surprisingly little about Henry Hudson for a man who left his name on so much of the map of North America. We dont even know for sure what he looked like. All the portraits we have of him were made after his death by people who never knew him, so they may not look anything like him. In some, like the famous painting on , hes shown as an old man with a long, grizzled beard. He was probably only about forty when he disappeared, however, so in the original illustrations for this book, he is portrayed as a much younger man, still in the prime of his life.

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Queen Elizabeth I ruled England from 1558 to 1603()

T he first certain reference we have to Henry Hudson is from 1607, when he was hired by the John Daviss three voyages to the Canadian Arctic in the late 1580s.

Hudson had apparently convinced the owners of the Muscovy Company that he would be able to sail right over the top of the world and down the other side to China. He knew that above the son John, then about sixteen years old, to find it.

The ART of NAVIGATION

S ailors in Henry Hudsons time had no easy method of figuring out exactly where they were. There was no reliable way of calculating longitude (from east to west) in those days, and the instruments for determining latitude (from north to south) were fairly unsophisticated. The most important tool in the navigators arsenal was the astrolabe, which he used to measure the angle between the horizon and the North Star to establish latitude. An instrument called a nocturnal would help him calculate the time from the position of certain stars in the night sky, and a magnetic compass would show him which direction was north. Finally, the log was used to record a ships estimated speed and the passage of time, and a navigator could then use this information to determine the distance traveled.