Existing comment:
HENRY HUDSON ENTERING NEW YORK BAY
(September 11, 1609)
Henry Hudson Entering New York Bay
Copyright, 1898, by Edward Moran.
HENRY HUDSON ENTERING NEW YORK BAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1609.[I]
Previous to his discovery of the Hudson River, Henry Hudson, an Englishman, sometimes erroneously called Hendrick Hudson because the ship in which he sailed was fitted out under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company and the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce, had made three voyages to find a northwest passage to China and India. To reach those shores via the Atlantic seems to have been the goal of all the early discoverers, including Columbus and also De Soto, who, before his Florida expedition, had explored the coast of Central America, on the Pacific Ocean, in search of a passage through the American continent; and even Hudson sailed up the Hudson River in the expectation that it would lead on to the Pacific Ocean and thus to Asia. Hudson was not the only Englishman who had received encouragement and assistance from Holland when his own land had failed him, the same as did the Pilgrims soon thereafter, when they sought refuge in that enlightened and enterprising country.
He sailed from Amsterdam on April 6, 1609, in a clumsy, two-masted craft with square sails called the "Half Moon," a Dutch galiot of only ninety tons, with a crew of twenty men, in an extreme northwesterly direction, but being driven back by the ice, skirted along the[Pg 54] Atlantic coast, passing through Casco Bay, Maine, as far south as Chesapeake Bay, and thence again northward, and entered Raritan Bay, south of Staten Island, on September 11, 1609, into the present harbor of New York, and, on September 14th, sailed up the Hudson River almost as far as Albany.
The return voyage down the Hudson to its mouth, owing to adverse winds, occupied eleven days, and on November 7, 1609, he landed at Dartmouth, England, where, owing to the jealousy of the English Government, the crew was detained and his ship seized, although she had borne the Dutch flag and Hudson had claimed the sovereignty of the soil for that country over that portion of the American continent which he had discovered. It was to all intents and purposes a discovery, as the first definite historic account of the existence of this part of the new world dated from this voyage, of which he kept a careful journal, however probable it may be that, before him, other Europeans had looked upon Manhattan Island and the Hudson River, in view of the many expeditions to America during the long period from the tenth to the seventeenth centuries.
The discovery of Hudson led almost immediately to numerous trading voyages, and thereafter to temporary, and then to regular and permanent colonization, and finally to the foundation of the great City of New York. Also with Hudson, the same as with Columbus and De Soto, is thus linked a discovery far greater in its consequences than if he had succeeded in reaching the goal which he originally set out to find. Like theirs, also his ending was sad and tragic, for on a subsequent northwestern voyage, his mutinous crew cast him, together with his son and seven of his faithful men, adrift amid the ice of Hudson Bay, which bears his name, thus like De Soto perishing in the very waters which he had discovered.[Pg 55]
His life is wrapt in mystery; nothing is known of it except during the four years occupied with his voyages (1607 to 1611), and that he was probably the son of Christopher Hudson, one of the factors of the Muscovy Company. There is not even an authentic portrait of him in existence.
The interest of this painting centers in the scene, which it vividly depicts, of the effect upon the natives of this first sight of a ship. Nothing could be more intense than the expression of mingled fear and defiant surprise portrayed in the face and attitude of the young Indian warrior, that so strange an object should dare to approach his hitherto undisputed domain of the shore. This interest is heightened through the grouping of the squaw and Indian dog, with the Indian hut or tepee in the background on the edge of the forest, and the rocky shore in the foreground. The ship itself is subordinated to the representation of this idea, being only dimly seen in the distance.
Through this conception, the artist was enabled to present a picture which adds to the variety of the series, and at the same time demonstrates his surpassing mastery of figure and landscape painting as well.
The above from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24990/24990-h/24990-h.htm |