"To discover a passage by the North Pole to Japan and China"... these were the instructions given to Henry Hudson when he set sail from London in 1607. For the courageous England sea captain, the expedition marked the beginning of a daring and dangerous career.
The voyages of Henry Hudson is a vivid account of the four journeys that took him northeast around Norway and northwest to Greenland and the New World. With the help of actual eyewitness records of the period. Eugene Rachlis has skillfully re-created Hudson's exciting encounters with warlike Indians and Eskimos, his narrow escapes from gales and icebergs, and his difficulties with a mutinous crew.
It is an irony of history that both the Hudson River and Hudson Bay were a disappointment to the great explorer whose name they bear. There was no short passage to China at the end of either. And he died without realizing that his bold voyages had helped to open up the New World for the colonizers who were to follow him.
From the dust jacket
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