Peter C. Mancall · 2009 · sea

Peter Mancall's account of Henry Hudson's fourth voyage, 1610 to 1611. A search for the Northwest Passage that reached an inland sea the size of the Mediterranean, wintered by accident at the bottom of it, and ended with the captain set adrift in an open boat by his own crew - none of whom was ever punished.

1. 1
   London

   April 1610, and Hudson takes communion at St Ethelburga's before sailing on his fourth attempt at a passage to Asia - the previous three having failed for the Dutch and the English in turn.

2. 2
   Iceland

   North about, and a fortnight held up by ice and contrary winds - and the first serious quarrel aboard the Discovery, over a crewman Hudson had brought without telling the backers.

3. 3
   Greenland

   The Desolation coast, and then west into the strait that would take his name - three hundred miles of ice, fog and tide running at ten knots, which took them six weeks.

4. 4
   Hudson Strait

   Through, and out into an inland sea so large that Hudson concluded he had found the Pacific - and spent three months sailing south down its eastern shore looking for the way out.

5. 5
   James Bay

   The bottom of it, and no exit - and by then too late in the season to leave, so the Discovery is run aground for a winter nobody had provisioned for.

6. 6
   Rupert River

   The wintering, on short rations in a country with no game they knew how to take - scurvy, frostbite, and a captain accused by his crew of hoarding food, which is where the mutiny starts.

7. 7
   The shallop

   22 June 1611: Hudson, his son John and seven sick or loyal men put over the side into an open boat with no food and cut loose - and never seen by any European again.

8. 8
   Digges Islands

   The mutineers stop to take birds at the strait's mouth and are ambushed by Inuit - four killed including the ringleader, which the survivors would later find convenient when explaining themselves.

9. 9
   Plymouth

   Eight men home of twenty-three, tried for murder and acquitted - because they were the only Englishmen alive who knew the way back into the bay, and the Company wanted to go again.