Customer Reviews

Half Moon: Henry Hudson and the Voyage that Redrew the Map of the New World

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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 exploration of Chesapeake Bay and of 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. And while Hudson's demise on his fourth voyage was well chronicled in Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson Douglas Hunter seeks to tell the far more celebratory story of Hudson's third voyage that cemented Dutch claims to present-day New York.

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. "Half Moon" seeks to recapture the desire European nations had for finding a shorter trade route to Asia and the exploration it spurred. Turning to the few available experienced mariners nations were willing to expend treasure and prestige in efforts to find an elusive passage to Asia. From our present age these seem like scattershot trial and error, but there was a method to Hudson's madness as he defies orders and probes methodically for the fabled Northwest Passage. Thanks to Hudson's incessant probing the knowledge of the contours of the New World were greatly expanded and reshaped European thinking of what the Americas were and were not. Hunter painstakingly recreates the course of the voyage and in the process comes up with new discoveries of his own and new insight into Hudson and his crew. Drawing from primary sources such as logbooks and diaries Hunter not only reshapes our thinking of Hudson but gives us greater insight into his character and his motivations and those of his crew.

"Half Moon" 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. And while there is always a question of objectivity in original logbooks and diaries Hunter uses them in an objective manner, seeing them for what they are, much in the manner Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney would employ in both Captive Histories: English, French, And Native Narratives of the 1704 Deerfield Raid (Native Americans of the Northeast) and Captors And Captives: The 1704 French And Indian Raid on Deerfield (Native Americans of the Northeast: Culture, History, & the Contemporary). "Half Moon" is less about creating a hagiography of Henry Hudson than it is about challenging what we think we know about Hudson and the Age of Exploration.

Just in time for the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's discovery of the Hudson River, Half Moon: Henry Hudson and the Voyage that Redrew the Map of the New World tells the story of Hudson's second to last voyage on which he discovered the river that would one day bear his name. Hudson had been retained by the Dutch East India Company to find a passage to the Orient across the top of Asia. Hudson was mildly certain this could not be done, so after a short attempt to round the top of Russia he sailed the Half Moon to the east coast of North America, in violation of his contract, in an attempt to find a mid-continental passage to the Pacific. After ranging up and down the east coast, Hudson entered what would later be called New York Bay. He soon discovered the mouth of a river he thought would lead him either to the St. Lawrence River or to the Pacific Ocean. Hudson proceeded up the river as far as it was navigable, then came back down, and set sail for England, not wanting to return to Amsterdam after violating his contract. There are few surviving records from the voyage. The primary source was the journal of Robert Juet, one of Hudson's officers. In addition to the description of Hudson's voyage, Mr. Hunter describes previous and concurrent journeys to the New World as well as the European politics of exploration.

I found it interesting that even though by the time of Hudson's voyage, multiple trips had been made to North America by different explorers, there was no agreement on the shape of the coast line, the locations (or existence) of islands, or the locations of rivers and bays. This was due, in part, to the imprecise determination of longitude, as well as the inability to determine latitude at all.

I found Hunter's portrayal of the trip up the Hudson River interesting and engaging. Unfortunately, the journey up the river doesn't begin until well past the half way point in the book. Prior to that, Hudson sailed up and down the coast seemingly at random and I had a difficult time maintaining interest in this portion of the journey. While Mr. Hunter is obviously very knowledgeable regarding the tidal patterns, salinity, and currents of the New York Bay and its surrounding waterways, I began to feel my eyes glaze over whenever he began to discuss them.

There is a lack of source material covering this voyage and Hudson in general. Nothing is known of his life prior to 1607, just two years prior to this voyage. This is obviously not the fault of Mr. Hunter, who made a good effort with what was available. Perhaps the scarcity of source material precluded this subject from being treated in this format.

Overall I would not recommend Half Moon to the general reader. Anyone who already has an interest in Hudson and his travels might find it of interest. 2.5 stars.

I received an ARC of this book from Bloomsbury publishing.

This book was okay, and was worth reading, but it started extremely slowly. I felt that the author couldn't decide between writing adventure narrative and writing academic historical research, and in the end, produced something that was simply a poor effort at both.

The front half of the book was very hard to slog through for me, though I suppose someone with extensive background in the time period and other explorations may have enjoyed it more. Hunter spent a great deal of time describing arcane nautical minutiae, techniques, and history which admittedly did set a richer stage for the latter half of the book, but not so much as to make all that detail necessary. I think it was just too much arcana.

Also, Hunter engaged in what clearly was passionate and possibly heroic research to piece together the front-story to the expedition of the New Moon. Unfortunately for me, I thought his track of connect-the-dots was presented as much more concrete than it warranted. For example, several phrases and types of statements occurred so frequently that they distracted me and made me question what exactly the author actually knew or if he was just guessing at the entire story. These repeated statements were about who "may have" been related to whom, who "must have" met whom as well as where and when they must have met, how four or more different names used by several different people "surely were" referring to the same person, and what books, records, and maps Hudson "would have," "must have," or "surely was," familiar with, in possession of, or basing his explorations on.

The story he weaves is plausible, and I find the effort truly genious, and readily admit that part of my trouble may simply be my failure to be able to follow, but I just found the thread was consistently a bit thin, sketchy, conjectural, and hard to follow. If it was indeed simply my anemic intellect inhibiting my ability to see well-grounded validity in his arguments, then even so that simply illustrates my point that the book was not written to a clear target audience. If written to a layman as an adventure narrative, then get to the story; if written as academic research, then nail down what is concrete, and discard or more clearly mark what is conjectural.

The last half of the book was very rewarding, though, as it cut much of the arcana and got down to the story. If the first 10 chapters were cut down to 1, I would give it 4 stars out of five

I suspect that at the root of it all, Columbus is to blame - not for discovering the New World and beginning the European invasion that push aside whole civilizations - but rather for the confusion over which explorer discovered what, when, and for whom. Of course, this also begs the question of who actually discovered anything since the New World was only new to the Europeans and was very well known to its inhabitants. But Christopher Columbus, who discovered America for Spain, was actually an Italian from Genoa. So it should not come as a great surprise that Henrik Hudson who explored what would be called the Hudson River and secured New Amsterdam for the Dutch was actually an Englishman (and it would be the English who took New Amsterdam and launched it upon the path that would make it New York, New York).

Douglas Hunter has presented us with a new account of Henry Hudson's explorations that blends history, biography, and travelogue. His account also makes clear that these expeditions were not purely for science, nor merely for adventure, but were at their foundation the most speculative of business investments. As a journalist and historian, Hunter has written about the financial sector, business, sailing, modern professional sports, and other episodes in the history of exploration. This background is reflected in Hunter's narrative of the decisions made by Henry Hudson, whose voyages were business ventures heading beyond charted waters into the unknown when even his best maps and charts had to be used with care and attention in case by error or by ignorance they turned out to be wrong and perhaps fatally wrong.

Hudson's story is also about management and leadership. He had to deal with investors, his mostly Dutch crewmen and the senior subordinates on board ship, Native Americans who displayed at times hostility as well as friendly curiosity, and with various outsiders and even rivals who were also seeking the discovery that would make them wealthy and famous. The author does not hide the foreshadowing in his discussion of these issues, noting that Hudson would disappear in 1611 during a subsequent voyage. His crew would mutiny and place Hudson, his teenage son, and eight crewmen in an open boat and leave them in what is today Hudson's Bay, Canada. The crew was tried and acquitted of murder but the issue of their mutiny was never placed before a judge or jury.
As much as I appreciated the discussion of period exploration and of the how, when, and where the knowledge gained in various explorations was distributed and shared, I was most interested in the actual voyage on the Hudson River. This portion of the book is written with an eye on today's New York and its surroundings as well as on Hudson's experiences in and perceptions of the waterways and shoreline that surround the site of the future metropolis. I especially appreciated the charts of the Hudson River that accompany the author's discussion of that part of the story told here. I am really looking forward now to the opportunity to see this waterway first hand and to compare it with Hudson's experience of the river now named for him.

Overall this was an interesting book about a little-known explorer's little-known explorations of the northernmost coast of North America. However, while you have to applaud the author's efforts given the scarcity of historical documentation, as some other reviewers have already pointed out, the lack of information leads the writer to speculate more frequently than I'd like or to simply leave some loose ends untied. Similarly, the author does tend to jump back and forth within the time line of Hudson's story -- sometimes without forewarning the reader -- which can be frustrating at best, confusing at worst leading the reader to use a little more brainpower than one would sometimes like while doing leisure reading in order to straighten out the chronology in your mind. Others have correctly pointed out that the author employs a lot of detail regarding the nautical and political background but rather than find this distracting as some put it, I appreciate such attention to detail in a historical biography. But then I really enjoy history with a story behind it and read this book that reason. For someone who prefers a story with a bit of history to back it up, this text may prove too fastidious a read.

In Half Moon: Henry Hudson and the Voyage that Redrew the Map of the New World, author Douglas Hunter richly details Henry Hudson's third and penultimate voyage of discovery, the 1609 expedition aboard the Half Moon.

In the first several chapters, Hunter sets the stage for the Half Moon expedition by describing the explorers, voyages, financiers, and financial interests that shaped the maritime geopolitical landscape in the early 17th century. We come to understand how Hudson, an Englishman, was commissioned by the Dutch East India Company to search for and secure a northeast passage to Asia. When this attempt failed (as others previously had, and as Hudson himself supposed it would) near the Arctic islands of Novaya Zemlya to the north of Russia, Hudson reversed course, in breach of his contract, and sailed the Half Moon for North America in search of a northwest passage above Canada or a transcontinental portage route to the Orient.

In narrating the voyage, Hunter mostly draws upon the journal of Hudson's first mate, Robert Juet. After a stormy crossing of the Atlantic, the Half Moon spends considerable time probing several North American coastal waterways, including the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, before finally arriving in theretofore uncharted New York Harbor. Along the way, Hunter gives us an appreciation of the art and science that skilled navigators needed to master while exploring uncharted waters - most interestingly to this reader the soundings, wind behaviors, tidal patterns, and water salinities that were observed and recorded throughout the voyage.

As we enter New York Harbor about halfway through the book, we discover it as it once was. Hunter admits that a major challenge in deciphering the events of the Half Moon voyage is the fact that the geographic features have changed enormously in four centuries, as shorelines around metropolitan New York have been aggressively re-engineered. Hunter notes the irony that the Dutch, who would launch the development of this mercantile center a little more than a decade after Hudson's voyage, now account for less than 4% of its trade tonnage today. While China on the other hand, the country Hudson was trying to reach by finding a way either through or around North America, now accounts for about one quarter of it! But the heart and soul of this work is the adventure narrative describing Hudson's exploration up and down the great river that today bears his name.

I selected this book because I am an avid reader of historical narrative. However, I found it at times to read more like historical reference rather than narrative, particularly in the chapters preceding the Half Moon's arrival in New York Harbor. Although I greatly enjoyed Hunter's work, and appreciate the tremendous amount of time and effort he undoubtedly invested into his research, especially in light of the scarcity of available records, I would recommend it only to a reader with a keen interest in this topic, rather than to the reader of general historical narrative.

Having just read Champlain's Dream and been fascinated by the exploration and settlement of what is now Canada, I eagerly picked up this book about Henry Hudson, a contemporary of Champlain's. Unfortunately I found this a tedious and narrowly focused book, with a great deal of distracting detail about the internal politics of the Dutch East India Company. It describes one voyage, in great detail, which normally I would applaud, but it simply dragged.

Perhaps I should be looking for a broader review of his voyages - this felt too specialized.

Henry Hudson was was hired by the Dutch Trading Company in 1609 to find a northeastern passage around Russia to more easily access China. Hudson started his voyage aboard the Half Moon with a mixture of English and Dutch crewmen. Part way into his voyage, he decided to turn his ship around and go west to America where he would discover the Hudson River and other uncharted territories. Hudson found himself with his hands full, wondering if there was mutiny brewing and also wondering how he would be received by the Dutch when he finally decided to back. When he did go back, he found himself on another mission to find a northwestern passage to China. That was his last voyage.

When I closed the book after reading the last paragraph, I had to just sit in thought for a bit. Douglas Hunter, who is a sailor himself, wove such an intricate story of Henry Hudson. The amount of research that went into this book is amazing, and to present it like Hunter did was even more amazing to me. From the start I was drawn in, and felt like I was reading a puzzle with pieces being put together from all different sources, a little at a time, until the picture became clear. Who was Hudson? Where did he come from? Why would he blatantly disregard his orders and sail the opposite way?

Since there was no journal of Hudson's to go by, many of the notes about the voyage were taken from Robert Juet's journal. Reading some of the thoughts and feelings of an actual crew member was a real treat and very insightful. I had no idea what exploration was like in the 1500 and 1600's besides the basic textbook "stuff" I received in school. I had no idea of the amount of espionage, threats of mutiny, and pirating that went on. Most of all, I had no idea how much history was re-written for gain, both financially and politically. Hudson ended being a totally different man than the explorer that was captain of the Half Moon.

This book was a fascinating read, and now that I'm done, my family will be able to go back to normal dinner banter, instead of listening to me rattle on about what I found was amazing in the book. Both of my teens are now wanting to read Half Moon and I know they'll enjoy it as much as I did!

Don't bother buy this book. The author doesn't quite know what he's talking about. For some reason I can't send emails right now, so here's the email I was going to send the author:

Hi. I wanted to learn more about Henry Hudson's 1609 voyage, so, seeing your new book at the library, I borrowed it. I noticed you mentioned both Poole and Edge, two men I've read quite a bit about, and I have some questions on what you said about each man, as well as to Hudson's supposed discovery of Jan Mayen.

On page 23 you said: "Although Hudson's first Hopewell voyage of 1607 had failed as a transpolar venture, it had nevertheless paid dividends to Smythe's Muscovy Company in revealing an eminently exploitable whale and walrus fishery in and around Spitsbergen, for which it secured a monopoly." Numerous authors have made this claim, but it is in no way true. It was the report of a "great store of whales" by Jonas Poole in 1610 that resulted in a whaling expedition being sent to Spitsbergen the following year and ultimately a monopoly charter granted to the Muscovy Company in 1613. Hudson's voyage may have played some part (how great a part I can't say, as the English were already hunting walrus at Bear Island prior to Hudson's voyage and would have eventually sent hunting expeditions to Spitsbergen even if Hudson hadn't ever sailed there) in Poole being sent to Spitsbergen in 1610, but it was by no means the reason for the establishment of the English whaling trade. Credit should be given to Poole, the real father of English whaling (which Hudson has wrongly been called).

On page 58 you said: "When a Muscovy Company captain named Thomas Edge inspected the Hopewell's log in 1610 he noticed Hudson's discovery, and it only became public knowledge when Edge's observations of that fact was published in 1625."

I've read Edge's work in Purchas (the only source I know of where you could have obtained such information) several times, and he makes absolutely no mention of having "inspected" Hudson's log in 1610. None. Where did you come across this claim? Was it speculation on your part? Robert Fotherby (see below) had used Hudson's own journal ("written by his own hand") for his voyage in 1615, and he knew nothing about Hudson having found an island at 71 degrees north. Fotherby even came across Jan Mayen, and thought it a new discovery!

You then said: "In the meantime, whalers out of Hull called it Trinity Island in 1611; the Dutch who found it in 1614 gave it the name that would endure, Jan Mayen Island." The claim that Hull whalers reached Jan Mayen comes from Scoresby (1820), who was repeated by Muller (1874) and Conway (1906). I have found no evidence at all for this claim. The first documented Hull whaling expedition to Jan Mayen was in 1616 (see Heertje Jansz' journal). Also, the Dutch named it Mr. Joris Eylant in 1614, after Joris Carolus, pilot of one of the two ships sent on a voyage of discovery by the Noordsche Compagnie. The name Jan Mayen originates from a name given to a cape by Carolus, which was given to the entire island in 1620. You say on page 285 that the island was discovered by Cornelis Jacobszoon May, when in fact it was found by Jan Jacobszoon May van Schellinkhout, who was master of the Gouden Cath of Amsterdam in 1614 (The Englishman John Clarke, sailing in a whaling ship from Dunkirk, had discovered the island on 28 June 1614, prior to the arrival of May.).

In a following paragraph on the same page you made this claim: "The best explanation for Hudson's peculiar decision to ignore the discovery in the 1607 voyage journal was that he was loath to address a crew insurrection that might well have erupted at that time, when the men realized where he was trying to take them." This is pure speculation! Edge either made the claim up entirely; or, more likely, he was merely repeating claims made by the English following the discovery of the island by French and Dutch ships in 1614.
It was Robert Fotherby, in the 20-ton pinnace Richard, who made the first documented English expedition to Jan Mayen in 1615, which had been sent by the Muscovy Company on a voyage of discovery. This is why whaling ships from London and Hull were sent to the island the following year. Prior to Fotherby's 1615 voyage, I have found no evidence whatsoever for an English expedition having reached Jan Mayen.

On page 119 you said Poole sailed in the Amity in 1609, when in reality it was 1610 he was master of this ship--he actually sailed as master of the Lioness in 1609. This was a mistake made by Purchas, which you appear to have repeated. The year 1610 is given right above where it erroneously says 1609. On the following pages it again says "A.D. 1610". You further state Poole was sent north to exploit the "trail oil resources" found by Hudson in 1607. Poole had already sailed to Bear Island to hunt walrus in 1604-06 and again in 1608-09. Poole was supposed to go to Bear Island again in 1610 to hunt walrus then search for a passage towards the North Pole. Poole skipped Bear Island and sailed straight to Spitsbergen. Hudson's 1607 voyage played little (if any) part in Poole's career.

On page 140 you show a map that you say is from 1595. The map shows Spitsbergen, which was discovered the following year. Also, the expedition that discovered it didn't return until November 1597, with Barentsz' discoveries not being published in any map until 1598 or 1599. Thus, the map cited could not be from 1595.

There were a few other things I could have included, but I only would have been nit-picking had I done so. The above mistakes are very troubling. I'm not sure whether I can trust anything else you said in your book when you make such terrible mistakes as these.


--- Sadly, you can go on Wikipedia and find more accurate information than the above. Again. Don't buy this book. Hell, don't even bother borrow it from the library, like I made the mistake of doing.

I read an advance reader's copy of Half Moon. Personally I didn't have much knowledge of Hudson's journeys beyond the basics. Half Moon sheds light on the political and cultural aspects of 17th C Europe, and why the desire for exploration and colonization were so important. This book was easy to read, informative, and enjoyable. I would recommend it to people interested in the era of exploration and colonization in North America.