Document Number: |
AJ-133 |
Author: |
Juet, Robert, died 1611 |
Title: |
The Third Voyage of Master Henrie Hudson |
Source: |
Purchas, Samuel. Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes: Contayining a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others. (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1906). Volume 13, pages 333-374. |
Pages/Illustrations: |
43 / 0 |
Citable URL: |
www.americanjourneys.org/aj-133/ |
Author Note
Little is known about English navigator Henry Hudson and even
less about his crewmate Robert Juet. A group of English
investors hired Hudson in 1607 and again in 1608 to find a
Northeast Passage across northern Russia to Asia, but both
voyages failed. After the expedition described here, Hudson
renewed his search for a Northwest Passage in 1610, penetrating
the Arctic to reach the massive Canadian bay that bears his
name. Hudson’s ship was frozen in by mid-November and he and his
crew barely survived a precarious winter on the eastern shore of
Hudson Bay. When spring came and Hudson wanted to continue
exploring, his exhausted crew rebelled. The mutineers, including
Robert Juet, set Hudson, his son, and six other men adrift in an
open boat on June 22, 1611, and took the ship home to England.
Hudson was never heard from again. Juet died in September 1611
when the returning vessel was within sight of Ireland.
Expedition of 1609
The Dutch East India Company hired Hudson to make a third
attempt for a Northeast Passage in 1609, and he left at the
beginning of April. Encountering bitter winter weather north of
Scandinavia, Hudson on May 14, 1609, made an unauthorized detour
across the North Atlantic to explore for a northwest
passage instead. He had learned from John Smith of Smith’s
surveys south of forty degrees (see AJ-074) and determined to see
if a passage existed north of the point where Smith had left
off.
Hudson reached Newfoundland on June 15, 1609, turned south,
and spent a month near modern Kennebec on the coast of Maine to
repair his ship. He reached the vicinity of modern Norfolk,
Virginia, in August and then turned north, exploring Chesapeake
Bay, Delaware Bay, and the New Jersey shore before sailing into
New York harbor on September 3, 1609. He then followed the
Hudson River 150 miles into the interior, as far as navigation
would permit, penetrating almost to modern Albany by September
22, 1609.
Convinced that the Hudson River did not go all the way to Asia,
he left New York on October 4, 1609, and arrived November 7 in
England, where both ship and crew were impounded.
Document Note
Juet’s journal of Hudson’s third voyage fell into the hands
of Samuel Purchas (1575-1626), successor to Richard Hakluyt as
the leading English publisher of voyages and travels. Purchas
included it in his collection, Purchas, His Pilgrims,
issued in 1625, but died the following year; it remained out of
print until the 1905-1907 edition given here.
Other Internet and Reference Sources
Charting the Sea of Darkness, by Donald Johnson (Camden,
Maine: McGraw Hill/International Marine, 1993) prints the only
other surviving eyewitness accounts. English historian Ian
Chadwick has a comprehensive site on Hudson at
http://www.ianchadwick.com/hudson/ that contains maps,
day-by-day chronologies, and an annotated list of links to other
resources. |
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