Customer Reviews

Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson

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2 star:		(3)
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I picked up the book from my library after seeing a mention of it on Glenn Reynolds blog and was fairly disappointed in it.

The structure of the book follows Hudson on four journeys: Two due north, one to the Hudson River area of the Atlantic coast, and then his journey to Hudson Bay ending in James Bay. After the mutiny, the book concludes with the trials of the mutineers.

The author doesn't seem to have enough source material to write an entire book on Hudson's journeys. Hudson's early life is fairly anonymous, the circumstances surrounding his death are completely unknown. Against these book-ends, there's only sketchy narrative pieced together from ship logs and from journals very few of which are his own. If this were a book about mutiny on 17th century English ships or northwest passage exploration, Hudson's tale would make an interesting chapter or three.

Next, get yourself a good map of the Hudson Bay, Hudson River and the Arctic Circle before even cracking the book open.

My copy of the book didn't have any kind of useful map other reviewers have mentioned (I wonder if this was an insert in later printings). Without it, the book is confusing and requires constant trips to an atlas to find out what the author is talking about. The maps included in the text are worthless for following the narrative: illegibly small, blurry, and of course dated. Islands and channels are named, but modern names for these places often aren't given alongside. The players in this story were confused about distance and heading, and the author's descriptive style doesn't clear that up for the modern reader either.

Speaking of narrative: Mancall is not a storyteller. He bounces around through the story unevenly, giving away later events that aren't so well known under a guise of foreshadowing. There was undoubtedly a great deal of tension on the ship before Hudson was marooned, but it fails to come through the pages. Twice he drags us through the examination of the mutineers, repeating the same facts but without any drama. He makes it clear that the treatment of mutineers changes between the first and second examinations, but doesn't give much a sense of why that makes the second one necessary or important.

One more nit. The author's previous book was about Richard Hakluyt. Throughout this book, the name is dropped over and over again but without a clear connection of what it has to do with this story. I can understand wanting to re-use your research, or pitching your other book, but please tie it all together. To give you a sense of this sillyness, I recall one passage similar to "Hakluyt may have have written about this".

This book needed a cruel editor.

There probably are better books about Hudson, and there are most certainly better books about English exploration of the Northwest Passage and the New World in the early 17th century. Seek them out.

Basically, the book is a credible account of the efforts to find a Northwest Passage in the early to mid-seventeenth century. Mancall does a good job in establishing the economic importance of finding an Arctic route to the Spice Islands. Mancall's research of journals and accounts appears to be exhaustive, but unfortunately the book is a rather dry read. The author may be excused for lack of drama in some respects since the Hudson's journals and those from his associates apparently were rather cursory--unlike Pigafetta's. Even so, the story could be much more compelling had the author visited Hudson Bay or had first hand knowledge of working a sailing vessel in Arctic waters. Much more vivid are the works of Samuel Eliot Morison and Dallas Murphy because they sailed the routes of the voyages they write about.

The two page map of Hudson's voyages (1607-1611) is very welcome and an essential part to understanding the narrative--particularly the inset map of Hudson Bay. The reproductions of early maps, paintings/drawings from other expeditions scattered throughout the book are generally too small and dark to be useful. The large map itself has mislabeled the Provinces of Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba. Also, Davis Strait should have been noted as well as the degrees latitude.
Tom Ogle, South Carolina

Henry Hudson is a man mostly forgotten by the history books. People know his Bay and his River, but how many know the man himself disappeared during one of his voyages to find the Northwest Passage. The search for the Passage has sparked many mysteries, the foremost being John Franklin. Almost two hundred years before Franklin, Hudson sought the Passage.

This account of what happened to Hudson is an interesting look into the world of sailing in the early 1600s. At times the book moves slowly, in fact, I skipped a chapter which didn't seem to make much of a difference to the story. It's hard to write an entire book, I imagine, about a man who is most famous for his death and disappearence and about which almost nothing else is known.

This book is all about locating the northwest passage to the Pacific Ocean. The early European explorers certainly had to be a hardy group to endure all of the hardships that were presented to them. Henry Hudson made four trips across the north Atlantic including one along the east coast of the present-day United States and then up the river that now bears his name as far as where Albany is now located searching for a route to the Pacific. Hudson's persistence in pursuing a northwest passage led to a revolt by some of his men on his 1610 trip. After spending a horrible winter iced in at James Bay when spring arrived Hudson, his son, and a few loyalists were cast adrift to fend for themselves with the remainder of the group leaving for a return trip to England. Alas, some of those men died fighting local Inuit in the area and never did return. I guess we can say that Hudson's stubborness in insisting on forging ahead in search of the elusive passage led to his, and several others, demise. The author speculates as to what may have happened to Hudson and his remaining crew, but we obviously can't be sure. In any case of the eight men of the original twenty-three who returned to England no one was ever persecuted for their actions towards Hudson.

I feel I learned a lot from this book. I knew that Hudson was cast adrift, but was unaware of many of the details regarding this trip. Also, it was informative to learn about the possibilities that may have taken place. I wasn't aware that the crew may have perished on shore in the James Bay area and not necessarily in the waters. If you look at a map of the area you will find places named not only after Hudson, but also Martin Frobisher, Luke Foxe, and William Baffin. There is a reason places are named as they are, and this book will tell you something about the person behind the name.

This is an accessible and interesting book but buyers shouldn't expect a gripping account of Hudson's final moments. Remember--despite the cover and title--that it's a history book. The author covers a lot more than just Hudson and in places where no information is available about Hudson himself, he references other explorers in similar conditions. It's helpful, but by the end it does seem like a lot of filler and not a lot about the subject itself. Still, an interesting read on the period.

I saw this book discussed on The Daily Show, and thought it would be interesting to learn more about Hudson, so I decided I'd check it out. It was so-so - definitely interesting, and I did learn a lot, but man, there were parts that were seriously dry. Snoozeworthy. Good bedtime reading. You get the picture.

I liked the background chapters on the macro-view - ie the spice trade, where exploration was in the early 17th century, etc. That was a very good read. And I enjoyed reading the descriptions of what other sailors who had to winter in the area several years later had to go through. The thing that really bugged me, though, were that there kept being these tantalizing teasers that made you think that maybe there was new evidence that he was about to uncover showing that Hudson wound up living quite happily for years and years, or something showing new evidence of some definite things that happened to him. He kept talking about other explorers who unknowingly found hints of what had happened to him. And when it comes down to it, it was all speculation anyway. And that bothered me. (I felt like Ralphie in The Christmas Story when he got his Little Orphan Annie decoder and the secret message turned out to be a commercial). I got to the end and I was like, "that's it? Seriously? That's really it?" and I paged around through the notes thinking maybe there was some secret passage with more information for the people who really wanted it, but none was found. I was left with essentially the same thing that I got in two paragraphs in my 6th grade history book.

That sounds harsh, and I do respect the author's interest in the topic and explaining it in more detail. And the story of what happened to Hudson with the mutiny is definitely fascinating. I suppose it's because there is really so little evidence, but I didn't get any real sense of what any of the characters were going through, or any real personality of them. Still, it has good background information and I don't regret reading it. Oh, one final note, there seriously needed to be more maps. He kept talking about places that I'm sure were familiar to him after years and years of research, but seriously, I was having to go to google maps all the time to look up places because they weren't on the one modern map in the front of the book.

With 20009 the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's landmark third voyage, it is understandable there is interest in his accomplishments. If Americans recall Hudson at all, it is for this particular voyage for the Dutch that led to the discovery and exploration of Chesapeake Bay and the river in modern-day New York that bears his name. Typically though Hudson is somewhat lost in the array of explorers who mapped the Americas. While his name lives on, few Americans are familiar with his ill-fated fourth and final voyage of 1610 and 1611; "Fatal Journey" seeks to redress this. Canadians in particular are well acquainted with Hudson's fourth voyage as it gave the name to present day Hudson Bay, the site of Hudson's demise.

From today's perspective it is hard to grasp the dangers Hudson and his crew faced. The Americas were uncharted unmapped wilderness, fraught with the potential for disaster, and Hudson was sailing with no back up, no support network, no Plan B if things took a turn for the worse. And turn for the worse things did. Rather than returning to England as winter draws near, Hudson opts to hunker down so he can resume exploration in the spring. But Hudson has no idea what Canada's winter's are like. His ship becomes trapped in the ice. In the remote wilderness, far from anyone who could help Hudson and his crew begin to run low on provisions. Eventually his crew becomes so desperate to eat they try and chase down polar bears for food. When spring comes Hudson announces his intention to resume exploring rather than return to England the crew mutinies. The Elizabethan social code of conduct begins to break down as the crew questions the leadership of Hudson, their senior officer and leader. Mancall explores the psychology of the crew and what lead them to mutiny and the somewhat delusional beliefs they held about how they could explain what had happened once they returned to England. Some felt the investors would be glad the ship and most of her crew returned. Others felt justified in removing Hudson and felt if they had a chance to explain their side the courts would take pity on them. Others wanted to spin various explanations to desperately avoid the hangman's noose. As you read how the surviving crew came to a decision on how to explain their actions you come to realize that even in the vast wilderness of North America it was hard to cover up your own misdeeds. In the end the crew dispatches Hudson, Hudson's son John, and seven other crew members into a small boat to fend for themselves.

Mancall doesn't spend much time pondering the fate of Hudson and his fellow castaways; they likely survived a month at most before perishing. Instead "Fatal Journey" seeks to add flesh and blood to the Age of Exploration rather than having it remain a series of names, dates and places we learned by rote in school. Explorers didn't always succeed and there was a true cost to be paid, as in Hudson's case, when things went horribly wrong. Mancall admits early on there are few primary source documents to use regarding Hudson's fourth voyage other than a journal written by crewman Abacuk Pricket some years after the fact. Such later recollections are notoriously unreliable and it doesn't help that Pricket's journal portrays his own actions in the most favorable light. But as Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney would point out in both "Captive Histories" and "Captors and Captives" you can glean valuable insights from unreliable materials once you strip away biases and a lack of objectivity. "Fatal Journey" is less about creating a hagiography of Henry Hudson than it is about his crew members, who contributed much as much to the exploration as Hudson. Certainly it was Hudson's vision and determination, but he couldn't have gone it alone and every crew member played an important role. Ultimately "Fatal Journey" seeks to shed light on the unsung heroes and participants in the Age of Exploration, that vast multitude of nameless souls who contributed equally. It was they who ultimately led to the success of the explorers, or, as in the case of Hudson, to their demise.

I've always thought Hudson to be an interesting character and this book tells quite alot more about him than we learned way back in grade school. I've pictured what it must have been like when he sailed his ship, The Half Moom, up that river that now bears his name, but later expeditions were not what he expected and he never found that passage to the spice islands..........I did NOT know how he met his end and that surprised me. I would recommend this book to anyone having an interest in early European explorers.

This book was very difficult to stay interested in from the beginning. The author states several times in the first chapter there was very little accurate record keeping or actual first hand accounts of the story that he is telling as non-fiction. The author tries to cobble together a likely story of what would be possible at the time, based on general accounts of people unrelated to the story. The only truly concrete information is from sketchy ship logs and the trial that resulted on the return of the mutinous crew.
Overall it was a tough and uninspiring read.

This wasn't at all what I expected. It read more like a history book regarding the economic battle between nations to finding the NE or NW passage to spices and riches.
The actual account of Hudson's voyages and especially his fatal voyage was minor in comparison to events that wrapped around the trips.
An ok read - just not for me.