In 1607, English merchant backers in the Muscovy Company hired Henry Hudson to search for a short sea route to Asia through the Arctic. European traders wanted faster access to Asian markets than the long routes around Africa or through contested waters. This began Hudson’s recorded series of expeditions aimed at finding an Arctic passage.
Hudson’s 1607 voyage reached the Spitsbergen area, but heavy ice blocked any clear route farther north. Although the passage search failed, Hudson reported large numbers of whales and walruses. Those observations helped encourage later commercial whaling in the region.
In 1608, Hudson sailed again for the Muscovy Company, this time aiming for a northeast route past Russia. The plan depended on finding open water through Arctic sea ice near Novaya Zemlya. This second failure would push sponsors to consider other strategies and employers.
In 1609, Hudson entered Dutch service to search for a northern route to Asia, showing how international the passage race had become. When ice and conditions frustrated the original plan, Hudson crossed the Atlantic and explored along the North American coast instead. This shift tied Hudson’s work to later Dutch claims in the region.
In September 1609, Hudson sailed the Halve Maen into what is now New York Harbor while looking for a navigable route inland. His arrival opened a period of closer Dutch trading and exploration along the surrounding coast and rivers. The voyage became a key reference point for Dutch interest in the area.
Hudson sailed up the river that later took his name, reaching near the site of present-day Albany before turning back. The river exploration mattered because European powers used voyages like this to support later territorial claims and trading networks. It also convinced Hudson that this river was not a through-route to Asia.
After returning from Dutch service, Hudson gained new English backers to try again—now by the Northwest Passage (a hoped-for sea route through North America to Asia). He sailed from London in the ship Discovery in April 1610. This voyage would become his most famous and most tragic.
By late June 1610, Hudson had worked into the long channel between Labrador and northern islands that is now called Hudson Strait. This was a major breakthrough because it offered a real ocean entry into the Canadian Arctic interior. Hudson believed it might still lead to a passage to the Pacific.
On August 3, 1610, Discovery passed out of Hudson Strait into the vast body of water later named Hudson Bay. Hudson spent months exploring shorelines and islands, trying to find an outlet westward. Instead, the ship gradually moved into the southern arm called James Bay as the season worsened.
By late October 1610 the ship was deep in James Bay, and by November it was hauled ashore and frozen in for the winter. Food shortages, cold, and illness increased tension between Hudson and parts of his crew. This difficult winter set the stage for violence when the ice finally loosened.
In June 1611, as conditions improved, a group of crew members mutinied rather than continue Hudson’s search. They put Hudson, his teenage son John, and several others into a small open boat (a shallop) and cut them loose. Hudson and those set adrift were never seen again, and his exact fate remains unknown.
After abandoning Hudson, the remaining crew sailed Discovery back to England, and surviving accounts of the final voyage largely came from men involved in the mutiny. Hudson did not find a Northwest Passage, but his routes mapped key Arctic waterways, including the strait and bay that now bear his name. His final voyage helped shape later English interest in the Hudson Bay region even as it ended with a leadership crisis and loss of life.
Henry Hudson's Northwest Passage Searches (1607–1611)