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Hudson’s ship is enshrouded with fog and surrounded by a tossing sea of floating icebergs.
A New Danger Recorded: A New Land FoundAround the ship Hopewell, this twentieth day of June in 1607, Henry Hudson and his men could now see, floating in the frigid water, many pieces of ice that were "driving at the sea." Extreme care by the lookouts would have to be made to avoid contact with these ice floats, solid burgs that could easily sink the Hopewell if sharp contact was made. Throughout the rest of the day and the coming night a lookout was made, but then the worst happened to diminish visibility. As darkness fell and the twentieth moved into the "one and twentieth" day, the fog returned and grew thick with each passing hour of darkness. But this time the thick fog was short lived. On June 22 the weather once again cleared with the help of "a pretty gale." Now Hudson turned his ship northeast. Surely to the delight of all aboard, whales were sighted as well as strange birds that had the form of a duck but sported a feathered costume that displayed black and white bellies. Through most of the fog they had passed Hudson had not been certain that they were indeed off the coast of Greenland. But now the weather stayed clear enough, long enough, for them to observe the land beyond the waters. What they saw was an "unbroken sweep" of mountains capped and draped in pristine snow. As beautiful as the view may have been these mountains had never before been reported by any other voyager. Had Henry Hudson reached Greenland as planned? Or was this expanse he gazed upon an unvisited and unexplored winter paradise yet to be viewed by any European until now? To sail this close to Greenland had not been a part of Hudson's original plan. In spite of this, he continued to sail northward, unable to curb his curiosity. To find and explore a new land was the dream of any explorer and Hudson was no different than all of those who came before him, or those who came after. Once he realized that he had, as far as he knew, reached an unexplored part of the world he began to wonder, and hope, that here he would discover that waterway, yet to be found, that would be a passage to the Orient. The First Voyage of Henry Hudson continued.
The copyright of the article Hudson Sees Unexplored Territory in American History is owned by Mary Trotter Kion. Permission to republish Hudson Sees Unexplored Territory in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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